The Truth About Jesus - Who To Believe Series

The Truth about Jesus – Who to Believe

1 John 5:6-12

Slide

Our Youth kids went to the Dare2 Share Survive conference this past weekend.

It had some great speakers who were talking about the importance of sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with their friends and family who don’t know Jesus.

They equipped them with the gospel message and also encouraged them in their own faith as they talked about the reality that Jesus is going to be coming back so this should encourage us to live in a way that we are glorifying and worshipping Him.

The challenging part of sharing your faith with others is that there are so many beliefs and views about Jesus and who He was, about God and what He does and how He does it.

There are those who have views of Jesus as a prophet or a great teacher while Christians believe that He is God come in the flesh.

Is this just our opinion versus their opinion?

Are Christians intolerant for thinking that there is only one way to God, through Jesus Christ?

Can’t there be different truths for different people?

Why can’t all faiths lead to God, if people are sincere about their belief?

Now, if you are honest with yourself, one or more, or perhaps even all, of these thoughts have crossed your mind at some point in your life.

The fact is, however, that most faiths, in their essential beliefs, have some doctrines and beliefs that are directly contradictory to one another, which makes it impossible for them to all be true at the same time.

The only options are that

they are all false or

one is true in the essential teachings and that the rest are false.

And

depending on where we are in our faith,

depending on if we have dealt with the truth of what we believe,

these thoughts in our head can be a hindrance to us in sharing our faith with others.

Not only that, but if we on the edge of Christianity ourselves, these thoughts along with the vocal chorus of people who try to teach that there cannot be only one way to a relationship with God, can lead us astray and onto a path of destruction.

Because as our kids learned at the Survive Conference this weekend, if Christianity is true, then Jesus will be coming back, and we have only this lifetime to make our decision about what we believe about Jesus and who He is and what He has done.

Thankfully, the apostle John faced some of these same issues.

Turn with me to

1 John 5:6-12

Slide

In our study of 1 John, the apostle has been writing to refute some of the false teachers that have come into this church and were trying to teach things opposed to Christianity and lead these people astray.

They people have known some of these false teachers and are challenged with who to believe.

We tend to think of false teachers as mean and nasty and think how could anyone ever believe or follow a false teacher.

But that is not hardly ever the case.

The Bible tells us that Satan masquerades as an angel of light.

Those Satan uses are not going to come across externally as raving idiots, either.

Thankfully, Christianity is faith of truth, and Jesus tells us that the truth will set us free.

So as John’s readers were faced with the dilemma of who to believe about Jesus, John turns to some other facts that testify to the truth of who Jesus is and what He did.

Let’s read

1 John 5:5-12

5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

6 This is the one who came by water and blood-Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. 9 We accept man’s testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. 10 Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. Anyone who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because he has not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. 11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

Ok, John talks about 3 witnesses that testify to the truth of who Jesus is as the Son of God.