1st March 2024

1st March 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read - (1 John 5:6-12 focus v11-12)


Message (Alan Burke)


I was speaking to a retired minister a few weeks ago, he got challenged at the door about what he preached, he called people to faith and repentance, how trusting in Jesus is the only way to be saved. The person at the door said that it was obvious that the ministers view of faith was different than his, to him faith was about coming to the church that he’d been all his life, supporting it, trying to be a good person and when the retired minister asked him had he repented of his sin the man said that he’d nothing to repent of. The saddest part of it all is not only that the man is going to a lost eternity facing the pains of hell forever, the convenor that week phoned the retired minster to cancel all the future dates he had him preach in that vacant congregation. 


For every single person who has ever lived or will live, there is only one way to be saved from our sins. Not all roads lead to the same destination, all roads do not lead to Rome, the saying is a nonsense. It doesn’t matter what we were brought up to believe, it doesn’t matter where we grew up, it doesn’t matter who were connected to and it doesn’t matter how good we think we think we are, unless we know Jesus then we are lost, we don’t know God and the road that is traveled leads to death and you deserve judgment because you are rejecting the very testimony of God himself. 


As John begins to wrap up he does so by telling us of the testimony God has given us eternal life, and life is in his Son. Jesus himself said, I am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the Father except through me (Jn 14:6). It may not be popular in this pluralistic society that rejects absolute truth and it may not sit easy with you here today but eternal life comes in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, there is no other way, he is the only way, the way the truth and the life the only means that men and women and children may come to the Father; there is no other way.


How do you know you have life in the son, well John has already made it clear how we have life in the Son, three things that he’s been like a broken record on, we know we are his when we confess Jesus as our Savour, when we obey and when we love. That doesn’t mean we won’t doubt, we wont struggle with obedience or to love but we desire to do these things and the very moment we believed in him we had eternal life, the Son was all that we needed. 


Notice that eternal life while it comes in fullness in the future it dose’t begin in some far of future it begins now, it is ours already, we have been given eternal life and it is guaranteed, it won’t be taken away from us. And what lies ahead for the believer is that when we die we immediately go to be with our God, we will be at home, home with our Triune God, where we will dwell permanently with our God and we as his children. Where we are now is not our home, for everything we have is temporal, the house that we live in we will leave behind, although we do not live in tents we are just like Abraham for we are sojourners, we just passing through, our stay is but a temporary one and we are awaiting that day when we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever, when the eternal life that we have already received will reach its fulfilment in resurrected, perfected bodies.  


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q82 Is any man able perfectly to keep the commandments of God?
No mere man since the fall is able in this life perfectly to keep the commandments of God, (Eccles. 7:20, 1 John 1:8,10, Gal. 5:17) but doth daily break them in thought, word, and deed. (Gen. 6:5, Gen. 8:21, Rom. 3:9–21, James 3:2–13)
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