FEBRUARY 18^th, 2024

FIRST JOHN:  SERMON ONE – INTRODUCTION  

“THE GREATEST THING A MAN CAN HAVE!”

1^ST John 5:12-13

(12) “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. (13) I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.”

A few months ago, I had the idea to ask you what I should preach about beginning the first of this New Year. I received four specific responses: The Names of GOD, (which I did in three sermons) Angels, Can GOD Die?, and would I do a survey of First John?

By the grace of GOD, I have completed the first three of these subjects. This morning, I will begin a six-sermon series as a brief overview of First John.

In both The Gospel of John and The Epistle of First John, John tells exactly why he is writing…

John wrote The Gospel of John so we can be saved!

John 20:30-31

(30) “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; (31) but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

John wrote The Epistle of First John so that we can know that we are saved!

1st John 5:12-13 (12) “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. (13) I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.”

BY-THE-WAY, as I have shared with you before, 1st John 5:12-13 is the passage GOD used to bring me to saving faith in Jesus on November 6th, 1982.

As my introduction to The Epistle of 1st John, I want to magnify the purpose of the epistle by sharing my testimony that GOD worked in my life through this Epistle and through these two verses!

I want to submit to you that after over seventy-three years of life, having lived in nine states,(KY, LA, TX, OK, FL, TN, GA, AR, and IL) and three different Countries; (US, Viet Nam, and Guam) having been married to the same woman for over forty-three years; having raised three children; having worked as a gas station attendant, a milk man, an Airman, a Staff Sergeant, an automobile and mobile home salesman, a aircraft refueling technician, a flight operations manager, an engine rebuilder and shop manager, a personnel manager, a College student,

a Seminary student, A PhD STUDENT, a Pastor, a Chaplain, and a Director of Missions, and now as a Pastor again; after all of that, I can tell you that the greatest thing that a human being can have is the absolute assurance that your sins are forgiven and that you are going to go to heaven when you die!

From my birth until the summer of 1976, I had almost no religious influence in my life. I only remember being in Church for the funerals of my two grandmothers, and my mother: the wedding of my sister Donna, one day of VBS, and my 8th Grade graduation.

I was recently given a photo of me and my sisters and three of my cousins dressed up for an Easter Service, but I have no memory of that except the photo.

Not once until I was twenty-six years old did I hear anyone explain anything about Christ and His church.

Looking back on my life, I want to tell you briefly about seven very commonly tried things that could not and did not give me the assurance that my sins were forgiven and that I would go to heaven when I die.

First, religion could not and did not give me any reason for assurance that I really knew God, that my sins were forgiven, and that I would go to heaven when I died.

By being baptized in Oklahoma City into a Southern Baptist Church, and joining the Harvest Baptist Church of Tamuning, Guam, I had gotten into Church, but I had not gotten into Christ!

Second, being baptized could not and did not give me any reason for assurance that I really knew God, that my sins were forgiven, and that I would go to heaven when I died.

When I got back from Viet Nam, I was stationed at Tinker AFB in Oklahoma City. There I met and began dating a girl whose dad required me to go to their church if I wanted to date her. (I have to be very careful here – the girl in question is not the girl I married).

Truthfully, I would have joined the Moose Lodge to get to date her, so the next Sunday night I went to the dressing room at the Wilmot Place Southern Baptist Church in Oklahoma City; I changed into a gown they gave me, I was baptized by someone, and I put my uniform back on and went home. No one at the church ever talked to me about the gospel and I have never been to that church again. But I had been baptized, and I was now a Baptist!

Third, joining a church could not and did not give me any reason for assurance that I really knew God, that my sins were forgiven, and that I would go to heaven when I died. After Lin and I were married, I was transferred first to Florida and then to Guam. Lin could not accompany me on Guam, so I took up residence in the Enlisted Men’s Barracks.

After being there for some time, I began to attend Sunday evening services at the Base Chapel because I had met and grown to like the Baptist Chaplain who led a Bible Study at that time. A civilian who worked at the Chapel started attacking a new preacher who had come to the Island to start a new church. He said that the preacher was from Kentucky, and he was an “old-fashioned fundamentalist” (whatever that was). Well, I visited the Harvest Baptist Church, and I really came to love and admire Pastor Bruce Wring and his family.

I came one day under great conviction to the altar. A well-meaning fine Christian Deacon asked me why I had come, and I told him, the best I knew how, that I was sick of my sins. He asked if I had ever been baptized and I told him about my experience at Wilmot Place. He announced to the church that I had re-dedicated my life and was coming “By Statement” (whatever that meant) from a church in Oklahoma. This began a 6-year-long process in my life of re-dedicating and re-re-dedicating my life and trying to get victory over sin and peace with God in my heart and soul.

Let me park here for a moment and tell you that one of the worst things that can happen to an unsaved person is to get into the membership of a church! Once you are in, you are in! Those of us inside churches almost never deal with our members about the possibility that they are not truly saved!

Fourth, “turning over a new leaf” could not and did not give me any reason for assurance that I really knew God, that my sins were forgiven, and that I would go to heaven when I died! Beloved Ones, I am not kidding – I have turned over more “new leaf’s” than Smoky Bear. Many times, I was under conviction about my sins, and I would seek to get more involved, or quit this or start doing that; and none of it – none of it – gave me any peace of mind that I was any different than I was before.

Fifth, Christian education could not and did not give me any reason for assurance that I really knew God, that my sins were forgiven, and that I would go to heaven when I died! After eight years in the Air Force, I knew that if I was ever going to do the things in life I wanted to do, I was going to have to get a college education.

So, I applied and was accepted at Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga. While there I took a full load of classes and went to Summer School every year. By the grace of God and with lots of help from Lin, I was able to complete a Diploma in Theology and a Bachelor’s Degree in Christian Education before my VA benefits ran out after four years.

I was thirty-one years old; I had two University degrees; I was ready to take on the world; and… I was as lost as a man can be!  I have often been asked how I could attend such a good conservative Christian University and still not get saved.

Sadly, it is very much like church – everyone assumes you are a Christian, and since I did not know that I was not saved there was no way really for others to know that I was not saved.

The truth is, I was doing my best to live the way I was being taught to live, and I was living about as good a life as anyone else I knew there.

Sixth, serving the Lord could not and did not give me any reason for assurance that I really did know God, my sins were forgiven, and I would go to heaven when I died! While I was on Guam I was helping with the van and bus ministry. When I went to Tennessee Temple, they required students to take part in some Christian activity. For a year I worked in a small Baptist Church in Ringgold, Georgia where Pat Pajak served as our Worship and Youth Leader.

Seventh, sincerity could not and did not give me any reason for assurance that I really knew God, that my sins were forgiven, and that I would go to heaven when I died! I was a lost Baptist, a lost church member, a lost Christian University student, even a lost church worker, but I was not a hypocrite!

I was not playing church; I was not trying to be something I knew that I was not; I was not trying to fool anyone. I was sincere, but I was sincerely wrong, and I was sincerely and completely lost!

After leaving Temple and moving back to Oklahoma, I was offered a job at the Little Rock Air Center by a man I had worked for at the airport in Chattanooga. It meant a promotion and a pay increase, so I took the job. By that time, all my religion was gone. I had completely given up on trying to come to peace with God and to have victory over my sins. I was out of church, I was out of patience with God, and there was no possibility of anyone mistaking me for a Christian.

It was 10:30 Saturday night, November 6th, 1982; – I was in the midst of an emotional tirade against God – and in the midst of my anger and hate, as I read these two verses from 1st John, God opened my understanding and for the first time in my life I knew for sure that I was not saved, and I knew for sure exactly what I had to do to be saved!

You have often heard the expression, “I saw the light”. I know that everyone does not have a deeply emotional experience when they are saved, but at that very instant it seemed to me that all the lights of heaven came on and I knew as clearly as I knew my name that I was not saved and I knew exactly what a person has to know and do to really know God, to have their sins forgiven, and know for sure that they are going to heaven when they die!

There are only four of them:

First, You have to Realize that you are a sinner in need of a Savior!

Romans 3:10 and 23 says, “There is none righteous, no not one. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”

Second, You have to Repent of your sins!

Luke 13:3 and 13:5 says, “Unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”

Real repentance is more than just changing your mind. Biblical repentance that brings salvation is a change of mind that produces a change of life as you turn away from sin and turn to the Savior!

Third, You have to Recognize that Jesus Christ is God in human flesh and your only hope of salvation!

John 14:6 says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; and no man comes to the Father except through Me.” Acts 4:12 says, “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

Finally, you have to Receive Jesus Christ as your personal Savior and Lord!

John 1:12-13 says, “But as many as received him, to them He gave the right to become Children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

Romans 10:9-10 says, “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” And Acts 16:31 says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, you and your household.”

The following morning, Sunday November 7th, 1982, I followed Jesus Christ in believer’s baptism at the Heritage Baptist Temple in Little Rock. From that day to this, I have been clinging to Jesus Christ as my only hope of salvation. I have staked my eternal soul on the truth of these verses of scripture.

I know this: I believe these four things and I have done these four things, and I have never been the same. As weak and imperfect as I am, I can see that over these forty-one years I am in the process of becoming a new creation; and I can tell you that I love God and the things of God more than I love my own life!

John wrote The Epistle of First John “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” and it was this Epistle and these verses that GOD used to bring me to saving faith in Jesus!