INTRO.- ILL.- A man jumps out of an airplane with a parachute on his back. As he’s falling, he realizes his chute is broken. He doesn’t know anything about parachutes, but as the earth rapidly approaches, he realizes his options are limited; he takes off the parachute and tries to fix it himself on the way down. The wind is ripping past his face, he’s dropping like a rock, and at 5000 feet, another man goes shooting up past him. In desperation, the man with the chute looks up and yells, "Hey do you know anything about parachutes?!"
The guy flying up looks down and yells, "No, do you know anything about gas stoves?!"
Some knowledge is good or can be very good if you learn it at the right time in life.
And knowledge is a good thing if it’s a good knowledge. There is both knowledge of good and evil and I suspect that most of us know more about evil than we should know! How enlightened we are!
ILL.- In the hallowed halls of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Dr. Walter Stewart, an economist, watched several graduate students coming out of a seminar. “How did it go?” he asked one.
“Wonderful,” the student replied. “Everything we knew about physics last week isn’t true!”
This may be true when it comes to physics and many other things in regard to this world, but this is not true when it comes to a knowledge of God. God never changes. His truth is eternal. What God says in His Word stands true forever! You can take to the bank, so to speak, and draw big interest on it!
ILL.- Pollster George Gallup Jr. has long referred to America as a "nation of biblical illiterates." Only four in 10 Americans know that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount. A majority of citizens cannot name the four Gospels of the New Testament. Only three in 10 teenagers know why Easter is celebrated. Two-thirds of Americans believe there are few, if any, absolute principles to direct human behavior.
I would hope that people are not as ignorant of God’s Word as Gallup says. If so, we Americans are in deep trouble spiritually. Come to think of it, we are in trouble!
ILL.- A little boy saw his father use a square to see if a board he was planing was straight. “Why are you so careful, Daddy?” asked the boy.
“We can’t guess in carpenter work,” his dad said. “You have to be just right. People guess at too many things. God does not like that way of living.”
“I guess there are no squares for living by,” said the boy. “Yes, there are squares to live by, and you will find them in the Bible. Test all that you do by them, and you’ll go straight in life, my boy.”
It is always right to go by the Word of God!
II Timothy 2:15 “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth."
II Timothy 3:16-17 “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
Psalm 119:9-11 “9 How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. 10 I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. 11 I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
God’s Word is powerful! We need to know the Word in order to know God and when we know Him some good things will happen to us.
PROP.- John tells what we can know or expect to know when we know the Lord.
1- When we know Him we will know we have eternal life
2- When we know Him we will know we can ask anything of Him
I. WHEN WE KNOW HIM WE WILL KNOW WE HAVE ETERNAL LIFE
13I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN THE NAME!
ILL.- Napoleon found an artist once painting a picture, and asked him, “Whom are you painting that for?” And he, drawing himself up proudly, replied, “I am painting it for immortality, sir.”
“How long will your canvas last?” asked the Emperor. “It has been skillfully prepared; it will last at least a thousand years.”
Napoleon shrugged his shoulders: “Now we have an artist’s idea of immortality.” ONLY A THOUSAND YEARS?!
Most people have little idea when it comes to the matter of immortality or eternity. And many don’t believe at all.
- Frank Lloyd Wright (American architect) - I believe in God, only I spell it Nature. (Mother Nature? HARDLY!)
- Woody Allen - Not only is there no god, but try getting a plumber on weekends.
- Thomas Edison - I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is fake… Religion is all bunk.
- Katherine Hepburn - I’m an atheist, and that’s it. I believe there’s nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for each other.
- Andy Rooney (60 Minutes fame) - "I am an atheist... I don’t understand religion at all. I’m sure I’ll offend a lot of people by saying this, but I think it’s all nonsense."
- Bill Gates (Chairman of Microsoft and one of the richest men in the world at $53 billion) - In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don’t know if there’s a god or not, but I think religious principles are quite valid.
Who cares if these people and multitudes of others don’t believe in God or eternity?!! WE DO!
ILL.- Thomas Mann (6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer. He always worked on each book for a very long time. Even when the manuscript was supposedly ready, he continued to work on it. When he kept changing things in The Magic Mountain, his publisher finally called him up and wailed, “We’ll never get this book out! You’ve been working on it for eternity!”
“After all,” was his calm reply, “I’m writing it for eternity!”
That’s how I feel about my sermonizing and preaching. I’m doing these things for eternity. I’m writing sermons for the sake of my eternal soul and for those souls who will hear them or read them.
I believe in eternity! I believe in life beyond the grave! I believe there is a better and more beautiful life than the one we experience on earth. I am working, serving, writing, teaching, and preaching for eternity. That is, to make a mark on some for sake of eternity!
ILL.- Thinking of the fullness and duration of this wonderful life, W. B. Hinson, a great Baptist preacher of a past generation, spoke from his own experience just before he died.
He said, "I remember a year ago when a doctor told me, ’You have an illness from which you won’t recover.’ I walked out to where I live 5 miles from Portland, Oregon, and I looked across at that mountain that I love. I looked at the river in which I rejoice, and I looked at the stately trees that are always God’s own poetry to my soul.
Then in the evening I looked up into the great sky where God was lighting His lamps, and I said, ’ I may not see you many more times, but Mountain, I shall be alive when you are gone; and River, I shall be alive when you cease running toward the sea; and Stars, I shall be alive when you have fallen from your sockets in the great down pulling of the material universe!’ "
ILL.- I read that baseball great, Mickey Mantle, said these words a few days before he passed away in August of 1995: "I’ll just say, ’For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ I am trusting Christ’s death for me to take me to heaven."
What about you? Do you know that you will live forever? You can know when you know Him who gives eternal life. And do you know Him? You can only know Him through His Son, His Spirit and His Word. The more we know of them, the more assurance of eternal life we’ll have!
II. WHEN WE KNOW HIM WE WILL KNOW WE CAN ASK ANYTHING OF HIM
14This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. 15And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.
ILL.- One day, some years ago, a policeman walking his beat in Chicago, observed a man standing before a little building, with bared head, acting—as the cop thought—“pretty queer.” “Either sick—or drunk,” he concluded, eyeing the man suspiciously.
Then he walked up to where the man stood with eyes closed, and grunted: “What’s the matter, Mac? Are you sick?” The man opened his eyes, and smiled. “No, officer. My name’s Bill Sunday, and I was converted right here in that little mission. I never come by here that I don’t take off my hat and say a prayer.”
The cop grinned, reached out a giant hand to Billy, and said, heartily: “Put ‘er there, Bill! I’ve heard about it. You keep right on with your prayer, and I’ll keep the crowd away.”
Billy Sunday believed in Christ and he also believed in prayer.
There may be nothing more unsettling than a person who is down on his knees in prayer! People don’t know what to think or what to do. And they fear approaching such a person. He or she is only holy ground. Approach cautiously!
Matthew 7:7-11 7"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. 9"Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”
Acts 16:25-26 “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everybody’s chains came loose.”
Hebrews 5:7 “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.”
James 5:16 “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”
I Peter 3:12 “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil."
When you read scriptures like these, how can you not believe in the power of prayer? And John says that when we know Him we also know that we can ask anything of Him and He will hear us and answer. PRAISE HIM!
ILL.- E. M. Bounds wrote: “The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men. The Holy Spirit does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men, men of prayer."
ILL.- Corrie Ten Boom put it this way: “Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?” For us who know God and believe, prayer is a steering wheel in life.
CONCLUSION-------------------
Someone said that knowledge humbles the great man, astonishes the common man, and puffs up the little man.
It could well be! I know this for sure: That a knowledge of God, Christ and the Bible will both humble and astonish a person who is honest, sincere and seeking.
God, please help us to know you better, to know you more, to believe you, to trust you and walk with you always.
