12-3-23 sunday Scott

The main ideas of this information are: - The book of 1 John is being discussed and will be wrapped up soon. - The focus of 1 John has been on fellowship. - There are several verses that emphasize the assurance of eternal life for believers. - It is possible to lose the joy and peace of salvation, but not the promise of eternal life. - Christians have been given everything they need to live a godly life, but they must choose to use the tools and follow the Holy Spirit's guidance. But we are still in the book of 1 John, and as a matter of fact, we should actually wrap that up today. It's been like maybe four months I think we've been in 1 John. It's kind of a little book, but it really took us a lot of different places. It took us a lot of different places, and even today it's going to take us to a couple of different places. And you can see our first slide, Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. One of my favorite verses. Before we go into our study any further, we always do like to go to the Lord in prayer, so let's do that. Dear Jesus, we come to you this morning, just again, so thankful that you have left us your word, so that we don't have to guess what it is you want us to do. We know what you want us to do by your word. And we thank you for that, Lord. We also would ask that you would forgive us of the sin that we've committed against you since we've last prayed, that you'd cleanse us, that we might receive your holy word in a clean heart. We ask this, Jesus, in your holy name. Amen. Alright, so 1 John's primarily been about fellowship. He's just spent a lot of time talking about fellowship. And he words a couple of passages really tough. He words a couple of passages in a way that it's hard, but we're going to kind of fight through those. We start with 1 John 5.13. It says, These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. I love that verse, because a lot of times Christians will say, Well, I don't really know 100% I'm going to heaven. It's funny, but a lot of the old-timers used to kind of feel like it was overconfident for them to say they know. But here, John tells us that you can know that you have eternal life. Now, how can you know that? Because it's not based on you. That's how you can know, because it's not based on you. You know because, just like the song we sang, Standing on the Promises, you know because the promises of God tell you that if you trust Him with your eternal life, if you believe in Him, which the word believe, as we talk about all the time, pastuo in the Greek means to put your trust in and to be convinced of something. And if you turn your eternity over to Christ and you believe in Him, you have eternal life based on Him, not on the works that He expects from you, even though He expects works from you, not by your faithfulness, even though He expects you to be faithful, not by anything you've done or are going to do, but for the fact that you handed your eternity over to Him and trusted Him with it. That's why we can know, and we also know, that once we have salvation from hell, that we cannot lose that. We're not getting a ticket that somebody can take from us later. We are getting a promise that can't be taken from us. I love all these verses, and there's so many, but these are just some of my favorites. We're going to be going through these pictures. It says, And those whom He justified, He also glorified. You notice there's no gaps. Everybody who trusted Him with their eternal life is justified, and they will all make it to glorification. 1 John 6, 39, And this is the Father's will which has sent me, that all which He has given me I should lose nothing. Next one. I love these. I will never leave you nor forsake you. Next verse, He even says, Though a mother of an infant might leave that infant, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Basically saying, I love you so extremely that even above a mother's love. Next verse, He says, And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hands. This one, the Apostle Paul really goes into detail. He says, For I am convinced, and I love that word convinced, because you don't believe because you choose to believe. You believe because you're convinced to believe. You can't choose to believe something that's untrue. You can try to lie to yourself, but if you're not convinced, you don't believe. He said, For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. I've had people say, What if I just decide myself that I don't want to be a Christian anymore? I said, Are you created? Well, yeah. He said here that nothing created can separate you from God. Even you can't separate you from God. Because once you become His child, you've been born again. And you can't be unborn when you're born again. Just like when your child is born, the child can pass away. The child can't be unborn. And so it's just tons of great promises we have from Him. That's why I love that they sing that song, Standing on the Promises of God. And then another one, For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. Now, you can't lose your salvation, but you can absolutely lose your assurance. You can lose that peace. You can lose the joy of your salvation. Remember when David committed the horrible sin, when he had an affair with Bathsheba, her husband, Uriah. Remember that story where he was out fighting for his country, and David ended up arranging their deaths. I mean David murdered Uriah and Uriah's friends. And David went through a really tough time, even though we know the Scripture tells us in 1 Samuel 16, 13, that the Holy Spirit was in David his whole life. It said it entered him from that day forward from his childhood. But still, he was living so out of the will of God. And finally, he turned back to God, and he repented of his sin, and he wanted to restore that joy of his salvation. He says, Restore to me, in his prayer in Psalm 51, Restore to me the joy of my salvation. So you can be a Christian who has lost the joy. You can be a Christian who has lost your assurance. You can be a Christian that has lost that peace. But you can't lose something that you had no part in, the promise that you will be with him in heaven one day. 2 Peter 1.3 says, By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. You ever think of that? When you become a Christian, immediately the Holy Spirit moves in you, and you have everything you need to live a good life. But you still have to choose to. He says, We have received all this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and glorious excellence. And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world's corruption caused by human desires. And we sang earlier, Standing on the promises that cannot fail. That's what we're talking about. When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail. You have to really listen to the lyrics of that song. Even when you are afraid, and even when there's doubt, we still stand on his promises. He says, By the living word of God, I shall prevail. Standing on the promises of God. Those songwriters in those days knew how to write the songs, didn't they? But that requires that you stand. You've still got to stand on the promises, and you've got to act on the promises. We all have tools that we need to use in daily life. And as a Christian, you have tools too that God has given you. He told you the Holy Spirit moved in you, and you have the ability to live a good life if you will just let the Holy Spirit lead you. Now, my dad worked with a guy. My dad worked at a foundry for 39 years, about half in labor and about half in management. And he said he worked with this guy who would hammer in screws. Have you guys ever met a person that would hammer in screws? I think Justin, that's how he put screws in, I know, in his business. And he said that the people would always tell him, why are you hammering screws in? Don't you see that slot on the end? And that guy would say, that's to get them out, he'd say. That's just to get them out. That's not to put them in. So he used the hammer the wrong way. He used the tools the wrong way. This guy here in this picture, for those of you on SoundCloud, he says, everything is a hammer, unless it's a screwdriver. Then it's a chisel. Have you ever used a screwdriver as a chisel out there? Yeah, me too. Now, my dad, every skill I have about fixing things, wiring, plumbing, none of them came from my dad. My dad could fix nothing. And he would drill a hole in the closet door to hang the shoe rack. Well, he didn't have the right bit. So it needed to be just a little bigger. He didn't have the right bit. So he finds a screwdriver that's just a little bigger than his bit. So he puts the screwdriver in the hole, and he's holding one side of the door while he's pounding on that screwdriver with the other side of the door. And lo and behold, it goes through the door and all the way through his hand. And so he has to run to the emergency room. And you know there wasn't a broken bone or anything. I think it went all the way through his hand and didn't even do anything but make a big hole. So it was amazing. He knew a little bit how Jesus felt that day, didn't he, when he got drilled through the hand. And then this next picture, you girls will like, shows a guy on his hands and knees or another guy using him for a sawhorse. One more reason why women live longer than men. Yeah, I'm not being your sawhorse, guys. Yeah, I've had saws slip out of my hands way too many times without somebody doing that. I'm not being your sawhorse. But it does come down to us having to make decisions. We've got to make a decision to use those tools. I mean, God loaded your toolbox up when you became a Christian. You've got a full toolbox. But you have to open the drawers. You have to use what he gave you. You have to learn. He said, Seek first the kingdom of God and all his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. But you have to seek it. You have to move. God's not going to force you to be faithful. He does not do that. You have to choose to be faithful. And that's why he rewards you. He couldn't reward you if he forced you to do good. He wants you to do good because you want to do good. You want to please him. You want to gain reward from him. It requires some tough decision-making. One thing it really requires is you have to know you have an enemy on board. You have to know that when you become a Christian, your sinful nature is still there too. You've got the Holy Spirit, and you've got the sinful nature. Now, when you die one day, that sinful nature dies and dies for good. But until you die, you have both sides in you. The apostle Paul spent so much time with this, this battle between flesh and spirit, this total battle. So it requires that you have to learn a few of his tricks, or you're going to live according to the world. This caption says, Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. That's out of Romans 8. You can't please God if you are controlled by your sinful nature. So you have to learn to recognize this. And you're not going to get this big evil feeling in you that tells you that you're doing this totally bad thing. The enemy is really good at making you happy in your sin. Your enemy is really good at rewarding you in your sin, letting you reason wrong in your mind. You start reasoning, Am I going to go to church Sunday, or am I going to go fishing? Sorry, Mike, I always have to hit fishing when you're in here. And you have to reason in your mind, I love to fish, you know what? But I love God more than I love that. I can still fish in the morning, and I can still make it to church. And same with me as deer hunting. When I became a Christian, I thought, Oh, man, there goes my Sunday mornings. I can't go deer hunting on Sunday mornings anymore. But I said, You know what? I love the Lord. He's not going to make me suffer because I choose him over a hobby I have. So you have to make a lot of those tough decisions. You have to hold yourself to a standard because talk is cheap, cheap, cheap. That's what the bird I know used to say, talk is cheap, cheap, cheap. And lots of people, they like to talk the Christian talk, and they like to use the Christian words and raise their hands up and all those kinds of things. And then they'll let just about anything get in the way of them worshipping their God after all that talk. You know, talk is cheap. You have to walk the walk. 2 Peter 1, 5 says, In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God's promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence. You know what a supplement is, right? You know when you take vitamin C or whatever you take as a supplement to help your immune system, you know, battle things. You take natural things that God made, you know, not potions that some pharmaceutical put together that kills you in another way while they cure you in another way. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence and moral excellence with knowledge. So he's saying, Listen, read your Bible, listen to sermons, listen to Bible studies, get the truth, confirm it's true. And now you have supplemented your faith and you have this new knowledge that you have another tool that you've just unlocked. You know, you guys that play video games, you know how that is. You go into the different rooms and you pick up different things. He said, Any knowledge and knowledge, he says, with self-control. Once you have the knowledge, you have to know how to control it. When I first started studying the scripture, I was raised in a very cultish Baptist church. And we had all these rules and traditions and no Bible to back them. And when I first started learning the truth, all my old friends, I just wanted to pound that in their heads hard. I wanted to make them learn it because I thought you have been robbed. You know, you can't, you have to have some self-control. You have to be gentle with that. Self-control, he says, with patient endurance. You have to be patient, patient endurance with godliness, living the way God told us to live. Godliness with brotherly affection. Meaning that you have to make some sacrifices and help people out sometimes, even though they're maybe not the type of person you like being around. Maybe they get on your nerves. But you still have to overcome that and help them out with some brotherly affection. Brotherly affection with love for everyone. And that all started with supplementing your faith. That all started with saying, Okay, God, I'm a Christian now. I'm going to heaven now. And I don't want this to be the pinnacle of my Christian life. I want this to be the starting line of my Christian life. I want to start doing good things for you. I know that I'm going to heaven either way. But I want to meet you one day with something in my hands. I want to meet you with something good to show for what I've done on earth. Making decisions that was hard at the time to skip that thing you really wanted to do. Me and Mike were talking yesterday and we were like, Oh, this will be a good deer hunting evening today. Oh, this will be a good deer hunting evening. But, you know, we were here with the kids and that was the right thing to do. That was the right thing to do. So I'm expecting tonight God's going to bless us with a big old giant buck. I'm thinking. I don't know. 2 Peter 1.8 says, The more you grow like this, what we just talked about, the more productive and useful you are. Don't you want to be useful? You don't want to be sitting on the bench, do you? You want to be the guy that the coach says, Get off that bench and go out there and score some points for me. The more productive, the more useful you will be in your knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. But those who fail to develop this way are short-sighted or blind. And this is amazing here. Forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins. You know that there are a lot of Christians who maybe can't. Some of those kids that came to our VBS yesterday may be kids that don't go to church very much. They just came to VBS because it was a fun thing with crafts and songs. And who knows? Some of those kids may have trusted Christ with their eternal life yesterday. We don't know because only God and them know. And some of those may grow up and never serve God. Their family maybe doesn't do that. Maybe they never do another good thing for the Lord the whole rest of their life. They sit at the bench. And they could even forget that they're even a Christian. Isn't that amazing? You could even forget. That's what Peter just said, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins. That's a sad place to be, to be stuck there. He said, so dear brothers and sisters, work hard to prove that you really are among those that God has called and chosen. Prove to who? To yourself. Prove to yourself. Accessing those tools. Knowing that, hey, if I wasn't a Christian, I wouldn't have these tools to access. But I do have them. Do these things and you will never fall away. And then God will give you a grand entrance. Not just an entrance, but a grand entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So what is this falling away thing? Apostasy is usually what it is in the Greek. And it just basically means becoming unfaithful. And a lot of times it starts very, it's a slow fade as the song says. It starts with, you know what? I'm tired this morning. I'm not going to worship this morning. I'm tired. I worked hard last night. I worked late last night. Or even more sad, I stayed out late last night having a good time and I don't want to go to church. And sometimes that's what we do. And then it's easier to miss the next week. And then the week after that's a little easier to miss. We saw that's what COVID did to the churches. It was a big spiritual bomb. It was a big nuclear bomb that the enemy dropped on us. And it caused a lot of people to get out of the habit of going to church. They said they were going to watch online, but that lasted about two weeks. And by the time they got their stack and went to the bathroom a couple times and service was over, the next thing they know they just quit doing it altogether. And then they find themselves spiritually starved to death. We saw that happen here. And that's how it usually goes. And then they set themselves up for loss of blessing, meaning that you kind of tie God's hands. God's like, man, I really want to bless you. I really want to bless you, but you are not letting me. Like your child that's very irresponsible all the time. Every time you get something for them, they mess it up. They break it. They don't take care of it. And then the next time you think about buying them something nice, you're like, man, I just don't really want to buy them something nice. Because every time I do, they mess it up. Why should I waste my money? That's kind of how God does. And then they set themselves up for discipline. Remember last week we talked about the sin unto death? That's how serious discipline can get, even to the point where God says, you know what? You are nothing but in my way. You're costing us people. And he may even take you home early. John talked about that last week. In Revelation he says, I correct and discipline everyone I love. One of the best evidences that you're a Christian is when you mess up, you get disciplined. He says, take this seriously and change the way that you think and the way that you act. A lot of once faithful Christians find themselves here. The enemy tells them, you've heard it all before. That preacher talks about the same stuff every week. You've heard it all before. You don't need to know it. You already know it. So why go to church and waste your Sunday morning when you could be out in a deer stand? And the enemy is just so tricky like that. So lots of once faithful Christians find themselves here. Suffering his discipline. Not getting blessed the way he wants to bless them. And he's trying his best to call them back. He's trying his best to put obstacles in their way to let them know they need to come back to him. But what the enemy tells them, oh, you're just going through a spell of bad luck. You're just going through a spell of bad luck. Things just aren't going for you. Somebody's against you. Everybody's against you. When really that's the hand of discipline of God trying to say, come back home. Come back so I can bless you more. Then the enemy tells you, what kind of God do you serve? Look at all the bad luck you've been having. So then you start blaming him. You know, you just start blaming him. And even Christians, we do this all the time. You know, I lost my best friend and got killed in a car accident. And I told my dad, why did God take him from me? And my dad said, God didn't take him from you. He got in a car accident. God wasn't driving that car. He just got in a car accident. Don't blame God every time something bad happens. You know, God doesn't want puppets. He doesn't want to control our every move. He wants us to make decisions. And sometimes somebody else's bad decision costs us, and that's what happened there. Now for a confusing statement that John makes. It's really a tough one, but we're going to kind of dissect it. He says, we know that no one who is born of God sins. But he who is born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. And you're thinking, wait a minute. Did he just say that we Christians won't sin? Because that's not what he told me just four chapters ago, which was all one letter when it was written. So it wasn't there were no chapters. So we know he doesn't mean that because this is what he just wrote the same man in the same book. He says, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. So it's pretty obvious that this writer doesn't think that Christians don't sin. We're going to take another little closer look at that. That word that's translated born here can be translated born or it can be translated begotten. That's 1 John 5.18. It can be translated born or begotten. Now, if it's translated begotten, as some versions do, he's saying we know that no one who is begotten of God sins, but he who was begotten of God keeps him, meaning us, and the evil one does not touch him. Who is it that was begotten of God? The only begotten son of God, who is that? That's Jesus. It's a very good translation here that when he says we know the one who is born of God, he is talking about Christ and telling us that the enemy can't get to him. The enemy cannot get to him, and since we are in him, we are in Christ, that means that our position transfers from his position, so that benefits us. Not that we don't sin here in this age, the church age, but we don't face judgment for that sin as far as death. Now, we definitely have to be judged for the way we live, but not when it comes to where we spend eternity because that has already been promised to us, that if we trust Jesus with our eternal life, that we would have eternal life. We still face judgment for how we live, but we don't face judgment to where we spend eternity because that was already paid for by Jesus himself. He placed our sin on him. He placed his righteousness on us. See, I'm a water treatment guy, so I explain everything in water treatment. That's what I do for a living, and it's like your softener. You don't even realize when that water runs through your softener, you don't realize what's happening, but what's happening is you've charged it with sodium ions because you put salt in that other tank, and so those little zelite beads grab all those sodium ions, and they're holding on to them like a magnet with paper clips all over it, and then in comes the water, and there's a trade that goes on. The little zelite bead says, if you give me your calcium and magnesium, what we call lime, you give me your lime, I'll give you my sodium, and they trade places, and that happens all day long until finally the bead is so jammed full of calcium that it can't take anymore. That's why salt's got to come over and do it again. That's kind of what God did for us. He took his righteousness, and he traded and took our sin and gave us his righteousness. This picture says, for he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him. He took like a kamikaze pilot. Greg knows about those guys. They got in their planes, and they charged them into American ships and European ships, and they took down themselves, and they took down their targets at the same time. Now, they're not as brave as you think. They usually chain their legs to the plane and put these heavy boots on them so that if they got out, they would drown, so they weren't as brave as you think they were, but they gave them enough fuel to get to their target, and that was it, so they made a lot of ways that they couldn't back out, but still, they were going down with the cause, and that's exactly what Jesus did. He took sin of the world on him, and then he dove for death, and he went down with it. But unlike the kamikaze pilot, he had the capability through the Holy Spirit to defeat death, to go through death's door and to leave sin behind like we will do one day when we go through death's door and to come back as our victorious Messiah. 1 John 5 and 18 says, so we know that we are of God and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. Ephesians 2, 2, Paul said something similar. He says, you were dead in your trespasses and sins, talking about before we became Christians, in which you formerly walked according to the course of the world, according to the prince of the power of the air, that's Satan, of the spirit that he is now working in the sons of disobedience. That's what we're seeing going on whenever you see all the stuff going on in the government today, all the laws that are changing, the support of homosexuality, the support of the transvestites, what bathroom you go to. When you see all the things that are going on today, trying to support both sides of everything, you know, straddling the fence, this is why, because you're seeing evil working through them is what you're seeing. And they're willingly used like the serpent in the garden. They're willingly being used by evil and they're taking the rewards that it brings. He says, and we know that the son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true and we are in him who is true and his son, Jesus Christ, this is the true God and eternal life. Actually referring to Jesus Christ in the term eternal life. This picture says, when he was on the cross, I was on his mind. You ever hear that song? Kind of an evil song, isn't it? And then the famous verse in John, greater has no man than this that he lay down his life for his friends. So what was the price he paid for our redemption? He hung on that old rugged cross, a place that was reserved for the worst of criminals. Not only were you being executed, but you were being executed in public and shame was brought upon you. You were stripped down to almost nothing, sometimes nothing. You were tortured. They wanted it to last as long as they could make it last for more of a show. And finally death would come upon you. So let's go back there just for a quick look at that. Matthew 27, 39. So the people were passing by and they shouted abuse, shaking their heads in mockery. Just imagine Jesus on the cross. Look at you now, they yelled at him. You said you were going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. They didn't realize what temple he was talking about, did they? They realized he was talking about himself. Well then, if you are the son of God, save yourself and come down from that cross. And the leading priest and the teachers of religious law and the elders also mocked Jesus. He saved others, they scoffed, but he can't save himself. So he is the king of Israel, is he? Let him come down from that cross right now and we will believe in him. That proved to not be true later too, right? He trusted God, so let God rescue him. Now if he wants him, for he said, I am the son of God. Even the thieves who were crucified with him ridiculed him in the same way. See, a lot of people don't realize this. Matthew shares this with us, that both thieves that were with him, one on his right and one on his left, the Bible doesn't tell us which is which. But one on the right and one on the left, even they were scoffing at him and yelling things at him and making fun of him, both of them. It says thieves, plural, both of them. But then something strange happened. Imagine this, they're crucifying this religious leader as they see him. And at noon, darkness fell across the whole land until 3 o'clock. What do you think they probably thought? That was just bad luck? An eclipse just happened to slip in on them that they didn't know was coming? At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until 3 o'clock. At about 3 o'clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice and he said, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? Which means, my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Or why have you forsaken me? Some of your versions will say both accurate. Why have you abandoned? Why did he say that about his father? Why did he say that God turned from him? Why did he say that? Because he became sin that day. He never sinned, but he became the replacement for sin. He became sin and he took every sin that everyone ever committed on his back so that every single person, if they would choose to trust with him for their eternal life, they would have a paid-off debt, just like putting the money in escrow. I like this picture. It says, God is holy. God is holy, see Isaiah 6, 3, and therefore cannot be tempted to sin, according to James 1, 13. Habakkuk said this, you are of pure eyes than to behold evil and cannot look upon wickedness. It is entirely acceptable to know that God chooses to be righteous and bestows upon us the same choice. God can never look favorably on sin. He can't look favorably on sin. So when Jesus became sin for us that day, God had to turn on him. The first time in eternity and the last time in eternity that God would ever be forced to turn from his son. The two others, both criminals, were let out to be executed with him. And when they came to a place called the Skull, they nailed him to the cross, and the criminals were also crucified, one on his right and one on his left, both insulting him all the way. And Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. And the soldiers gambled for his clothes by throwing dice. Now both of these men were on their crosses, and both of these men heard this prayer that God said to the Father. Forgive them, for they know not what they are doing. And the crowd watched as the leader scoffed. He saved others, they said, let him save himself, if he is really God's Messiah, the chosen one. And the soldiers mocked him too by offering him a drink of sour wine. And they called out to him, if you are the king of the Jews, save yourself. And then a sign was fastened above him with these words, this is the king of the Jews. Now the Jewish people, they didn't like that. The Romans put this up there. They said, you should say he says he's king of the Jews. And they said, no, what we put up there stays. This is the king of the Jews, one of the criminals hanging beside him, scoffed. So you're the Messiah, are you? Prove it by saving yourself and us too while you're at it. Now that prayer he just said a few minutes ago, forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do, I think that's what changed the mind of the one on the one side. Both heard it loud and clear, but one listened and let it change him. So many times we'll sit through a sermon, or we'll read something in our Bible, or sit through a Bible study or a Sunday school, and we'll hear something that contradicts how we're living. We're all guilty of this. And we'll listen to it politely, and we'll walk out and not let it change us. We'll just not let it change us. We'll just walk out and be the same person James talked about. That's like looking in the mirror at yourself, looking through your reflection, and then walking away and forgetting what you look like. That's how James compared it. And so many times we do this. We walk out and we still choose the fun things over the God things. We still miss church over something that means nothing in the big plan. When God gives us every breath that we breathe, he gives us every breath, feeds us, keeps us healthy, gives us life, and we choose a baseball game over him or something. It just amazes me that we put that kind of value on that. And we've done it so much now that now it's acceptable. See, when Christians let things like that go, then coaches start scheduling tournaments on Sundays. They never did that before. They never did on Wednesday nights or Sundays. The school system had rules, no practices on Wednesday night after 5, no games on Sundays, none. They used to have rules like that. I remember West Noble was the last school to drop those rules in our area. They said, no, Christianity is more important than sports. We will schedule our games and practices around it. Now they're just right over top of us. They schedule. You go out to the sports center or the sports complex in Kendalville on a Sunday, there's a thousand people out there almost every Sunday when any sport's in. Because we as Christians accepted that instead of saying, no, my kids are not going to be there. If enough of them did that, see, they'd quit doing that. But we let them away with it just like all these other things we've let them away with because we listen to the word and we just let it hang. So we have these two men hanging there representing all of mankind. The two kinds of people are hanging out there on that cross. You either surrender to him or you turn to him. That's your choices. But the other criminal protested. Don't you fear God even when you have been sentenced to die, he says. So he's talking over Jesus because Jesus is in between the two of them. I can just see him stretching his head out on that cross. Don't you even fear God even though we have been sentenced to die? We deserve to die for our crimes. But this man hasn't done anything wrong. This guy was just scoffing at Jesus minutes ago. But I think when Jesus said, forgive them for they know not what they do, I think he saw who Jesus was. Then he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. The same guy who was insulting him moments before. But he had a change of heart. And quickly he had a change of heart. He wasn't on some big repentance road. He wasn't working on himself, working on his life. He quickly, almost instantly changed his mind. And Jesus replied to him, I assure you, today you will be with me in paradise. Today. That guy had no time to do any religious rituals. He didn't have time to go take the Lord's Supper. He didn't have time to go get baptized. He didn't have time to prove himself to the community, to show all of his repentance. He had time for none of that. He just said, remember me. And Jesus says, I got you covered. Today, that change of heart, I love seeing that change of heart. I can remember in my own life when I hit these moments, the point of light, as Randy Travis used to say, when you hit that point where you just know I am going the wrong way and I am done going the wrong way. I'm stopping right in my tracks and I'm turning around. Today I'm doing that. I'm no longer going to listen to God's word contradict my life and just walk out and keep doing it. Then Jesus shouted again and he released his spirit. At that moment, the curtain in the sanctuary of the temple was torn in two because that represented the separation between God and man when it comes to prayer. From top to bottom, the earth shook and the rocks split apart and the tombs opened and the bodies of many godly men and women who had died were raised from the dead and they left the cemetery after Jesus, after Jesus' resurrection in the holy city of Jerusalem and appeared to many people. Why did Jesus make such a thing of that? Why did he have all that kind of stuff happening? Because he needed it to be so monumental, his death, burial, and resurrection. He needed it to hit the history books. He needed it to be talked about in all cultures and it is talked about in all cultures. Every culture has stories of this. A little different detail sometimes, but he knew. The dead rising and people witnessing and the temple splitting down the middle before the Holy of Holies. And then this pagan soldier, not even Christian at all, not even Jewish at all, notices all of this happened and he says, Surely he was the Son of God. And he heard when Jesus said, It is finished, that word is tetelestai. And it was what you did when you did a business deal. If you made a deal with someone and you haggled for price back and forth and finally when you finally came to the price you shook hands and you went tetelestai. That means done deal, it's over. We both agreed, now we can't change. It was a contract. So he said tetelestai, meaning it's finished. Contract's over. I have done what my father asked me to do and I paid for the sin debt of the world. And all they have to do is trust me to get it. Now this was an abbreviated, this wasn't our Easter message. We're in closure to Christmas. But it's an abbreviated touch on just a few of the details thing. But John didn't want them forgetting. Remember the theme of his whole book was abide in me, have fellowship with me. He wanted to remind them. I love how Peter said this and I know that Dane and I feel the same way. Peter was talking to them and he knew a lot of the stuff he was teaching they already knew. We know that when we're up there teaching. We know a lot of you already have heard a lot of these passages. But Peter says, therefore, I will always remind you about these things even though you already know them and are standing firm in the truth you have been taught. And it is only right that I should keep on reminding you as long as I live. It never hurts to hear it again. It's just like I said, I love my Jim's pizza and I love it again tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. I just keep eating it. I'm not saying, well, I've already done that, been there, done that. No, I keep eating it. Peter says, for our Lord Jesus Christ has shown me that I must soon leave this earthly life and all of us soon will have to leave this earthly life. So I will work hard to make sure you always remember these things after I am gone. For we were not making up clever stories when we told you about the powerful coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We saw his majestic splendor with our own eyes. And then John gives them one more warning before he finishes this letter. He gives them one more warning and it kind of seems a little out of context. He says, the little children, guard yourself from idols. Now, I was in a third world country for a couple of weeks over in India. And they have idols more like these people had idols, you know, little statues. The one with the six armed woman or six or eight armed woman, that was everywhere. We saw that one all over. Little plastic look like toys on their dashes. They paint things, all their cars they painted to represent their gods. Even Christians, even Christians painted all over their trucks and cars, scriptures and things. They had more of that kind of idol. But I like this picture. It says, idolatry isn't a statue or an image that you bow down to. It's anything that can replace Jesus in your life. Never allow anyone or anything to come before God. He's the only one that can give you true satisfaction, meaning joy in life. In the western part of the world, we don't do so much of the idol worshiping like they did in India and China and places like that. But we do a lot of idol worshiping with our sports and with our hobbies and with our cars and with all those kind of things. We are as idol worshiping as any nation, but we just do it in a different way. So, yes, we're going to go ahead and stop there. That finishes 1 John. Believe that? We finally got through 1 John. So we're going to go ahead.