New Life Overcomes the World (1 John 5:1-5) | Adult Sunday School

Good morning, everyone. Glad that you're all here in the house of the Lord. Beautiful place to be, isn't it? Talking about the Lord, talking about the Scriptures. You can't ever go wrong doing that. We're going to be in the book of 1 John.

If you'll take your copy of God's Word and turn there, we'll read our passage that we're going to be covering for today. Chapter 5. We're going to be looking at the first five verses of the book of 1 John.

Alright, you all there? Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And everyone who loves the One who gives new birth loves also the One who has been born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and do His commandments.

For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome. For everything that has been born of God overcomes the world, and this is the overcoming that has overcome the world, our faith.

Who is the one who overcomes the world? But he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. Let's go to the Lord for a word of prayer. Father, we just thank You that Your Word is truth and that You've given us the ability to understand and know what that truth is.

The scriptures are so pure and true and it gives us guidance to live our lives. We're so thankful for that. We're thankful for this church, the ability to come in to a free place to be able to talk about the things that You have for us, to talk about our faith, to be able to dive into the Word of God and to see what it is that You have for us.

We're just so grateful for the church that we have here and just ask the Lord that You'll go before us this morning, give us Your wisdom, give us Your understanding of the scriptures and help us to live out Your Word in our daily lives and to share it as often as we possibly can with those that we come in contact with.

We just give You all the praise and all the glory now in Jesus' name, amen. Our focus today is gonna be on the new birth, the new birth, and how that helps you have victory over this world. It's who is and who isn't a child of God and that's been John's focus throughout this book, hasn't it?

The question has eternal consequences for us. The new life, the new birth, born again. What does that mean? It's a question that everyone has to wrestle with at some point in time in their lives and it is the most important question that you'll ever be asked and ever be asked to answer because it has eternal consequences whether you answer one way or the other.

So we're gonna spend some time just fleshing this concept out just a little bit today and going through it. One thing that I've noticed over the years is that there tends to be a little confusion around what the new birth means, how it happens, what's it all about.

I know for a fact that that terminology makes little sense for an unbeliever, right? They have no idea what being born again is or why they need to have it but we need to talk about it nevertheless. Even to believers I think sometimes it's hard to understand what's the process of the new birth, what happens after that, what's the dynamics around all of that because it does matter in the whole scheme of things but we all should be able to agree on the fact that the new birth is key to our Christian faith.

We've gotta have that, we've gotta have an understanding of it. John 3, 3, Jesus answered and said to him, truly, truly I say to you unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. So obviously without being born again, you're never gonna see heaven, never gonna see heaven.

Your life is destined for eternal wrath, eternal separation from God's love and I think that's the reason why it's the most important question, isn't it? On one side you have eternal life, on the other side you have God's wrath for all of eternity so it's an important question that needs to be answered.

What is new life? Am I born again? How do I know I have new life? We've been covering a lot of these things in the book of John, this book so far and there's nothing inside of you that can ever make you worthy of God's love.

Nothing that you can do. We're always in a state of perpetual sin if you're an unbeliever. There's nothing you can do to please God. Many think that they can do good works to please him and to get closer to God and have the new birth but that just doesn't work.

You actually need the new birth. So if I was to ask you that question, what is the new birth, what would you say? How would you answer that?

What?

New life in Christ?

Sure.

It's new life in Christ. Nicodemus asked the right question when he said, how can a man be born when he is old? He was referring to being born again, wasn't he? To the outside world, it makes no sense but the Bible describes new life this way.

Second Corinthians 5 .17, therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things passed away, behold, new things have come. So the new life comes with change. You are a new creation. What does that mean?

If you're a new creation, you are created into something other than you were. It's new, never seen before. Something has been created that didn't exist before. It means that the person you used to be is gone.

That person is no longer there. Different. And in its place is something completely new. It's a new creation, a new person, a new being. It's like a caterpillar that turns into a butterfly. It's completely different.

Everything about you is different than before. The old ways are dead. The way that you lived your life. New things have come. The old ways, what were they? Well, you were disobedient to God. You didn't even know that.

You were not looking to please him, that's for sure. Because dead men can't please God. But your mind was on the things of this world only. And it wasn't on Christ. Wasn't on Christ. Might've been on money, fame, unholy relationships, but it certainly wasn't on the Lord Jesus Christ.

That's for sure. You went to places that you would never go now in the old life. Your walk was different. There was no motivating factors to be truthful or honest when you were dead in your sins. Your language proved that you belong to the world.

If you're like me, you know, I was in the Navy, right? Swear like a drunken sailor. Yeah, that's true. But in the new life, your way's much different. Your new ways are much different. You have a new purpose in life.

You wanna glorify the Lord. Your life's not the same. You look at it and you have a new purpose now. You're not just a wandering generality. You're more of a meaningful specific. You have a purpose in life that you just didn't have before.

Your mind is completely different. You think of new things now, don't you? You have new thoughts. It's being transformed, your mind is. You're continually thinking about the things above. You're thinking about how can I walk after the Lord?

How can I follow him? How do I search him out? You wanna please him. That's the goal. You wanna please him. You walk differently now. You look carefully, not as unwise, but as wise do. You're carefully considering your path and you're not just arbitrarily moving in any direction.

There isn't a carousing and a drunkenness anymore. Instead, there's a pursuing of his holiness. You desire to set yourself apart from sin because you know how destructive sin can be in a person's life.

So the pursuit of holiness is critical. You're walking in faith instead of fear because you know that your life is hidden in him and you're safe, you can trust him. There's that peace and joy in a person's life when you walk with the Lord.

You walk in the light before it was darkness. That's all you cared about was the ways of this world. But now you wanna be in the light. You wanna come among the believers. You wanna come to church. You wanna read his word.

There's so many things about the new life that are just so amazing. So amazing. You walk now in the truth of his word. John says there is no greater joy for him than to find his children walking in the truth.

That's the goal. We're walking in the truth. And he's urging us all to take note of this new life, what it means, so that there is no way you will ever doubt or be led astray from the truth that lies within the pages of the Bible.

He's continually done that so far in this book, hasn't he? Over and over again, he's told the saints, you know, how to live their lives, reflect on their lives, basically saying that if you belong to Jesus, you should be doing some things.

You should be doing some things. He said in this book that we should be walking in the light, as I just mentioned. We should be confessing our sins before the Lord. The evidence of our faith should be relevant and should be manifest to anybody that could be looking at us, to keep his commandments, to keep his word, to follow after him is what we're to be doing.

Don't love the world. Don't love the world's system. Keep yourself pure, he's told us already. Purify yourself as he is pure. Practice righteous living. These are the things that prove that we're a believer.

Love each other. We're to test the spirits to make sure that they're from God or not. Believe in the deity of Jesus Christ because the Gnostics did not believe in the deity of Christ in this book. They were trying to lead people astray from the true Christ into a false Christ.

And so this is how you know someone is a believer. And this is the evidence that you're born of him. In our passage today, we're gonna look at a few evidences for the birth that we're talking about, the new birth, evidences that we're gonna be looking at, our faith in Christ.

We're gonna be looking at love of God. We're gonna be looking at love for the son, love of his word and victory over the world. These are the evidences of the new birth in these passages that we're gonna be looking at.

We're gonna look at the evidence. So we come to our first verse in chapter five, verse one, evidence of the new birth, faith in Christ. Let's read that again. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of him.

Excuse me, has been born of God. And everyone who loves the one who gives new birth loves also the one who has been born of him. So everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of him.

It is only the one who has been regenerated that can say they're truly born of him. But the everyone, it certainly can be in the believers, but also anyone that believes. Can be unbelievers coming to know the Lord.

Everyone who believes is the one that has been regenerated that can say they are born of him and is the one who is born of him that believes. That's the idea. Believes is pistis, which means faith. So to believe, everyone who believes, everyone who has the faith that Jesus is the Christ has been born of him.

That's really what he's saying in this verse. And it's in the passive sense. Believe is in the passive sense, which means it's a continual ongoing belief. So if you're born of him, you don't fade in and out of your faith.

You don't believe one day and say next two days I don't believe and you keep fading in and out of belief. No, it's a continual ongoing belief in your faith. You keep following after him, you keep returning to him.

The question is, where does this faith in Jesus come from? That's a good question. Is that you believing on your own, under your own power, under your own abilities? Is that how it happens? Or does God give you the faith that you need to believe and become born again?

Which is it? God gives it. Scripture tells us that faith is a gift from God. Ephesians 2 .8 and 9, for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works so that no one may boast.

I always love that verse because grace and faith are a gift from God that he's given us. Because if it wasn't, what would we do? We would boast, we would say, oh, look what I've done. I've made this happen all on my own.

I've done everything I possibly can and I've made the decision to follow after Jesus. But that's not the way it is. Grace and faith are a gift from God. It's critical to know that because anyone that calls on the name of the Lord does so because he has given them the ability to do it.

He's given them the ability. We see that in Philippians 1 .29, for to you it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake. So you see in that verse how belief and faith has been granted to you.

That's an amazing gift, especially since we couldn't attain it on our own. So God gives it to us as a gift to be able to believe in him, to follow him and to live our lives for his glory. You didn't have that faith on your own.

God gave it to you. If you'll turn over to Romans 8, we wanna look at a passage there. Romans 8, because we wanna look at kind of the order of salvation here, just to run down through it. The passage is often called the golden chain of redemption because the links are all connected.

You can't take out one or two links because it breaks the redemptive plan of God in the process if you do that. So Romans 8, verse 28 through 30, we'll just kind of read down through that. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good to those who are called according to his purpose.

Because those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified.

And those whom he justified, he also glorified. So there's the order. He foreknew before eternity passed those who will be saved. He knew that ahead of time. He didn't look down through the corridor of time, like one pastor told me, that God sees who's gonna believe at some point in time in their lives, and that's why he chose them.

That's not how this works. He elected or predestined those, so he chose before time who was gonna be saved. Gospel messages preached, and the call goes out to people to believe, and they're regenerated.

The new birth happens in their lives. Then they have the ability to have faith and to believe. And it all happens just in a split second, right? It doesn't take days. It happens in an instant. And then there's justification that happens.

So when God declares you just on the basis of what Christ has done, he's paid the penalty for your sins. He declares you just. And then there's sanctification. It's a lifelong process, right? Progressive sanctification.

We're continually growing in our faith in Christ, and then ultimately, we are gonna achieve or receive the glorification that he has for us when Christ comes back. But it's important to note this because the order is important.

Because you have the other side of the aisle, which is the synergistic or the Arminian view, which says that we believe, then we repent, and then we have new faith, we have new birth, which more is about making a decision, walking an aisle.

It's about possibly an emotional response. This is how there are many unbelievers out there that think they are saved, but it never really happened. Never really happened. So the order is important. I wanna look at a few verses just to kind of drive this point home, and it's in the book of 1 John.

There's three verses that really speak to this, the fact that it's God's work, that God regenerates, he draws, and he does everything for us. If you look at verse two, verse 29, it says, if you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone also who does righteousness has been born of him.

That's one of the verses. So if you look at that verse, everyone who does righteousness has been born of him. And the question is, is it right to say that by you doing righteousness, you are born of him?

Or is it better to say that you are born of him, and that's the reason why you do righteousness? See, there's the order of it is important. And then if you look down to chapter four, verse seven, beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

Are you born by God by loving, or do you love because you're born of God? That's the question. And then in our verse that we just read, chapter five, verse one, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.

And everyone who loves the one who gives new birth loves also the one who has been born of him. Are you born of God because you believe, or is it you believe because you're born of him? See, the main verb, born, that's the main action there.

And the subject is, who does righteousness in verse 29? That's the subject. Subject in chapter four, verse seven is who loves, and the subject in five one is everyone who believes. Everyone who was born of him practices righteousness.

Everyone born of him loves one another. Everyone born of him believes Jesus is the Christ, and everyone who is born of him loves God, the one who gives new birth. You know that you have new life because you have that continual faith in Jesus.

And to be born of him is in the passive voice here. It's in the passive voice. We were passive in the process, but God was active. See, it's not a work of our own. We were passive in the process, and God was active.

We didn't use our own volition to come to him to be born again, to get this new life. Dead men cannot seek God. They cannot follow after him. It has to be God initiating that process. The verb born is in the present tense.

It happened in the past, but it carries on to this present day, you see. It was God who initiated your salvation and carries it out, and it is those that continually believe and have that faith. Those are the ones that have the new life.

It's a beautiful thing. I would just draw your attention to one other thing in our verse there, in verse one. The object of your faith is important. Can't just have faith in anybody, yeah, right? Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.

So the object is Jesus of your faith. Jesus means Jehovah saves, Jehovah saves. There's only one Savior, right? There's only one Savior. John 3 .17 says, "'For God did not send the Son into the world "'to judge the world, "'but that the world might be saved through him.'".

See, there's only one Savior. He came to save, and I think there's a lot of false Christs that are being presented in the world, but there's only one true Savior. The Christ means the anointed one, the anointed one.

He was predicted in the Old Testament as the coming Messiah, which means the same thing as the Christ, and the point here is that the object of your faith must be the true Jesus, the true Jesus. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ, the true Savior of the world, has been born of him, and you have evidence then of that in your life, and you should manifest that to the world is really what we're talking about here.

So the second evidence of the new birth is your love for God, and that's in the second half of verse five, or excuse me, verse one of chapter five. And everyone who loves the one who gives new birth, which is God, everyone who loves the one, God, who gives new birth, also loves the one who has been born of him.

So God is the one who gives the new birth. Evidence of saving faith is that you love God, that your faith is connected to him because he has given you the new birth. You were dead spiritually. There was no desire.

You had no means to follow him. You had no desire to do it. There wasn't any reason for you to learn his ways, to follow after him, but now that he has saved you, it brings with it a sincere desire, doesn't it?

To follow after him. You're here today. You wanna learn about his ways. There's a sincere desire for that. Not because you have to though, right? You're here of your own will. You want to do it because you love him.

That's the idea. To love God means you worship and you praise him. Jesus answered the devil in Luke 4 .8, it says, it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only. You serve him only.

He's the only one. That's your single focus. You should have such a desire to come before him and to bow down and to worship him because he is the one who gave you the new birth. He's the one initiated that flame with inside of you when you were dead.

And there's such an appreciation that you wanna follow after him. It means that you put him first in your life. You have two commandments to follow and the first one is to love the Lord your God with all your heart.

And we have to remember that he's taken our heart of stone out of us, as Ezekiel says, in Ezekiel 36, or 38, 26. Let me say that again, 36, 26. He's removed the heart of stone from your flesh and he's given you a new heart.

That's what it is. He's taken the old one out, the stone one that's dead, that can't do anything to please the Lord. And he's given you a new one with spiritual life, spiritual desires. The heart of stone is your old life, dead and unable to follow him.

Your new heart is connected to him. It desires to be with him, to love him because he loved you first. It means that you long to be with him. It means that you long to be with him. When your life is hectic and chaotic and crazy all over the place, search him out.

That's where you're gonna find the comfort and the peace. As we read in Psalm 63, one and two, it says, oh God, you are my God. I shall seek you earnestly. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh yearns for you in a dry and weary land without water.

Thus I have beheld you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory. Those born of him seek him out. They run to him when their souls need water, when they're dry and parched. They go to him for refreshment.

They thirst for him. Everything within their flesh and bones is drawn to him. They long to be close to him. They have a longing to come to church and to the sanctuary and to praise and to glorify him.

There's that desire and longing for that. The new birth is a radical change, isn't it? It's not like the old life at all because before you had no intention of following God, but now all you think about is doing that.

All you think about is following after him. Psalm 40 verse eight says, I desire to do your will, oh my God. Your law is within my inner being. It's within my inner being. Everything that I think about, everything that I desire comes from him.

We move on now to another evidence of the new birth, which is obedience to his word. Obedience to his word. Look at verses two and three of chapter five. By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and do his commandments.

For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome. To love God is to keep his commandments. It's to love all his laws and statues laid out in the Bible.

Psalm one, very clear, it says, how blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of Yahweh.

And in his law, he meditates on it day and night. That's the passion. That's the kind of passion that someone who has a new life goes after. They go after it because they love him. They're chewing on his word, understanding it.

They're meditating on it. They're constantly turning it over in their minds to follow after him. Deuteronomy 6 .17 says, you should diligently keep the commandments of Yahweh, your God and his testimonies and his statutes, which he has commanded you.

To be diligent is not to be careless in keeping them, but to have a steady pursuit of them. To keep is to stand guard like a military on duty. You're surveying and you're keeping guard over the truth, over his word.

You're diligently following after him. 1 Kings 8 .61, let your heart therefore be wholly devoted to Yahweh, our God, to walk in his statutes and to keep his commandments as at this day. To be devoted means to be committed to him.

Be committed to him, be devoted, continually following after and seeking out his commandments and guarding them. It means you direct time and resources into keeping his commandments and walking with him.

Psalm 78 .7, that they should set their confidence in God and not forget the deeds of God, but observes his commandments. Psalm 119 .4, you have commanded us to keep your precepts diligently. We walk after him, we pay attention.

It's not arbitrary, we're continually diligently chasing after what these words have to say, what they mean in our lives. Psalm 119 .10, with all my heart I have sought you. Do not let me stray from your commandments.

That'd be bad. I don't want to fall away from the Lord and I don't want to fall away from the truth because like the Gnostics were trying to do, it leads you into error when you get away from the truth of the word of God.

Psalm 119 .19, I am a sojourner in the earth. Do not hide your commandments from me. Don't hide them from me. You want to know what they are so you can follow them. That's the idea. And then Psalm 119 .47 and 48, I shall delight in your commandments, which I love, and I shall lift up my hands to your commandments, which I love.

Do you love his commandments? Do you love his ways? Do you love his truth? If you do, then that's the evidence of the new birth. That's the evidence that you have that new life, that flame inside of you that wants to go after the truth of his word.

For those of him, for those born of him, they have that deep love and passion for his word and a willing spirit, isn't it? It's a willing spirit to keep his commandments. Many feel like God's word is restrictive.

I talk to people all the time. They're like, oh, it's so burdensome to keep his word. Is there so many, there's more don'ts than do's. And anybody that says that, I automatically think that they're not born of him because there's way more do's in the Bible than don'ts.

And when God asks us to do something, it's for our own good. He's not doing it to harm us. The don'ts keep us from the harm. Don't do this because if you do, there's gonna be consequences and you're not gonna like it.

God cares about our wellbeing. So when he tells us to do something, it's good for us. When you learn his word and keep it, it helps you stay away from danger. That's the idea here. But to us that have new life, keeping his commandments, it says in this verse, it's not burdensome.

It's not burdensome. For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome. That means they're not heavy. They're not heavy for you. They're not difficult to keep.

They're not too weighty for you. The Pharisees and the scribes created more work for the people. Luke 11 46 says, but he said, woe to you scholars of the laws. Well, for you weigh men down with burdens hard to bear and you yourselves will not even touch the burdens with one of your fingers.

The Pharisees and the scribes added hundreds of laws for the people to follow. It was such a burden for them. They created so many difficulties and struggle for them. But you know what Jesus, that's not the way at all.

Because what Jesus, he says, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. It's easy because he helps you carry those burdens. So you don't have to do it by yourself. The Holy Spirit pulls you along and shoulders the load with you.

You're not alone. That's nice to know, right? Can live my life with help. Lord knows I need it. The next evidence that we wanna look at is victory over the world. And that's in verses four and five. For everything that has been born of God overcomes the world.

And this is the overcoming that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the son of God. This verse is speaking about having victory over the world.

The one who overcomes has conquered the world. How does one do that? How do you conquer the world? Look at the end of the verse for the answer. Our faith. It's our faith that allows us to conquer the world.

Remember, it is God who gives you the faith. He gives you the faith so you can conquer. He helps you to do that. So it's not unusual that Jesus said this in John 16, 33. These things I have spoken to you so that in me, you may have peace.

In the world, you have tribulation. But don't worry, he says, take courage. I've overcome the world. He's overcome it. Jesus has overcome the world and so have you through the faith that he has given you.

That's what allows us to do that, to overcome. You would not be able to have that kind of a victory in the old life because you don't have the faith inside of you to do it. And the world here is the world system with all of its complexities and people.

You have victory over this corrupt evil system because of your faith. Look at chapter two, verse 16. Your faith overcomes all that is in the world. Verse 16, for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the father, but it's from the world.

Those are the things that you overcome. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, boastful pride of life, pride of life. And it's done by our faith. And I think about in Hebrews when we're going through Hebrews chapter 11 with all the saints there.

Remember by faith, Abel offered up to God a better sacrifice than Cain. By faith, Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death. By faith, Noah being warned about things not yet seen in reverence, prepared an ark.

By faith, Abraham, when he was called, he obeyed. By faith, Isaac believed Jacob and Esau. By faith, Jacob, as he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph. By faith, Joseph, when he was dying, he made mention of the exodus of the sons of Israel.

By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down. By faith, Rahab the harlot did not perish. I don't know about you, but all these people seem like superheroes to me, but they're really not.

They're really just people like you and I. They're ordinary people that faced many difficult and trying situations in life, just like we do. And the most amazing thing about it is that they faced the same world system that we do, the same corruptness, the same difficulties and challenges.

And what happened? Their faith is what allowed them to overcome. It's their faith that did it. That's what we can rely on. It's an example for us to follow after. It helps us to persevere until the end of their lives.

It's that faith. Their lives are an example to you and I that we can have victory over this world system, and it's not us doing it. It's Christ through us that allows us to do it. That's the exciting part about it.

And just in conclusion, I'll summarize, you know, kind of where we've gone, but the new birth takes a spiritually dead person and it makes them alive again, makes them alive in Christ. It's taking someone that had no idea about Jesus, turning them into someone that has a passion to follow after him.

And I would say the order of salvation is important to know. You're regenerated, then you believe and repent. It all happens in just a split second. The order is important. And the new birth puts a new mind into you.

Puts a new mind into you. I call it a one-track mind. It's a one-track mind. The mind's always focused on God. You're always thinking about it. Every moment of every day, you have that single focus, one-track mind that is taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

How can I please him? How can I follow after him? How can I learn more? How can I read more? How can I share my faith more? You have a single focus. And that's the attitude of the new life. You can look at your own life and make an assessment.

Do you have these evidence in your own life that shows and demonstrates that you are born of him? And faith is a gift. Faith is given to you at the new birth. And that faith is supernatural, isn't it?

Comes to us through God. It enables you to have victory in life over the evils of this world system. That's the exciting part about it, is that we don't have to live in the sin that we did before. We're now aware.