INTRODUCTION
• SLIDE #1
• I am so glad to be here today. What a blessing it is to be able to share from God’s Word with you today!
• Life is a joy, or it cane be a joy if it does not seem to be right now.
• With that said, life can have its share of downs and discouragement.
• I know there are days when you just feel so beaten down that you want to stay in the comfort and safety of your bed.
• When you feel discouraged, it can suck the joy of life right out of you.
• We are half way through the baseball season already. I feel sorry for the fans in many cities because they are already out of playoff contention. Philadelphia, The White Sox, Oakland, Colorado AND my favorite team BOSTON are all in the cellar of their respective divisions.
• What a sad time to be a fan of those teams this year, hey, even the Cubs have a chance to make the playoffs this year.
• Imagine being a player on those last place teams. In fairness, Boston is only about 6 games out.
• Going to the ballpark everyday knowing you are not going to make the playoffs, that your World Series dreams are crushed. For some teams, the dream was a fantasy in the first place. Colorado!
• When you are a Christian, you do not have to wake up knowing you are going to lose, because we play on a team with is the winning team!
• The team we play on, God’s team has already won the victory for us; we just need to live it and enjoy the victories already won for us.
• The great thing about being the God’s team is the fact that God is the one who has provided the victory for us, He hit the game winning homeruns!
• He is the winning pitcher; the Jesus came in the 9th inning to get the save!
• Today we going to see that Faith is the Victory. Through our faith, we get to experience some wonderful victories in life.
• Can you imagine being on a winning team and living like you do not even know it?
• Let’s start with verse 1!
• SLIDE #2
• 1 John 5:1 (HCSB) Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Messiah has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father also loves the one born of Him.
• SLIDE #3
SERMON
Faith in Jesus gives you…
I. A victorious family.
• When we believe in Jesus, we become a part of His family!
• We are new creations in Christ! Because of what Jesus did when He came to die on the cross for our sins, we achieve a spiritual victory!
• Making a decision to want to be a part of God’s family is the most important decision you will make in your life.
• If you are not a part of God’s family through the blood of Jesus, you will not receive eternal life, the forgiveness of sins, the indwelling gift of the Holy Spirit or the wonderful blessings God wants you to have in this life also!
• In a moment we will look at what it means to believe in Jesus.
• John tells us that if we believe that Jesus is the Messiah, or the one sent from God we are born of God.
• Being born of God is a one time past act with continuing present day results.
• When you are struggling, it is good to know that because of your faith, you are a part of God’s family.
• 2 Corinthians 5:17 reminds those in Christ that they are a NEW CREATION!
• Your faith in Jesus gives you this wonderful gift! You no longer lost and dead in your sins you are child of God!
• Now, let us take a second to see what it means to believe in Jesus.
• This verse does not imply faith alone. The word belief is a figure of speech that represents all the requirements of God which are necessary prior to one becoming a child of God.
• It would encompass the issue of repentance confession and immersion. It entails being obedient to Jesus and His teachings.
• SLIDE #4
• Galatians 3:26–27 (HCSB) for you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ like a garment.
• To believe means more that an intellectual exercise it involves action.
• If we believe, we will be led to do certain things like being obedient and loving others. We will look at both of these issues in a moment.
• Belief is not just saying you believe; it is acting on what you believe.
• Your belief or faith should lead you to change; it should motivate you to serve!
• We are told that the one who continues to believe is born of God.
• One of the things believers do is to love everyone in our new family!
• When we are in a family it is natural for us to love our parents, in this case, if we are born of God, we should love God.
• By default, if we love the Father we are to love our brothers and sisters in Christ also since they are a part of our family.
• We are to have more than a superficial love for one another. Our love is to be deep and strong.
• We have three compelling reasons to love one another.
o It is logically necessary- If we cannot love those who we see, how can we love a yet unseen God?
o We are commanded by scripture to do so by God. 1 John 4:21, and MANY others
o It is the right thing to do to love the members of your family.
• Let’s turn to verses 2-3
• SLIDE #5
• 1 John 5:2–3 (HCSB) — 2 This is how we know that we love God’s children when we love God and obey His commands. 3 For this is what love for God is: to keep His commands. Now His commands are not a burden,
• SLIDE #6
Faith in Jesus gives you…
II. The victory of love.
• Love can be so difficult to understand, making it hard to extend to others.
• How do we know if we love the members of our new family?
• Verse two gives us a two-fold test for us to gage how much we love our brothers and sisters in Christ.
• The first test is simply; do you love God?
• Our faith gives us the victory to love God. We can love God even during the difficult times in life.
• There are many who cannot love God when things are not going right for them they want to blame God.
• It is easy to quit loving God or it is easy to never love Him.
• Our faith gives us the ability to love God.
• I have had times in my life where I wanted to get mad at God, or I wanted to think God was not with me because things did not go the way I wanted them to go. My faith kept me ground in Him.
• If we love the Father, we will love His children!
• The second test is; do we obey His commandments?
• This would seem like it would have more to do with loving God than loving others doesn’t it?
• The meaning of OBEY is to carry them out, or to do them.
• When you think about it how many of God’s commands to us are directly tied to how we treat one another? If we are practicing God’s commandments in our life, then by default we love one another since that is one of God’s commands!
• When Jesus was asked by one of the scribes in Matthew 22:36-40 what the greatest commandment was He told them it was to love the Lord God with all you have and the second one was to love your neighbor as yourself.
• Then Jesus throws this in to punctuate the point!
• SLIDE #7
• Matthew 22:40 (HCSB) All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”
• Now when we look at verse 3, John offers two tests in order for us to determine whether we truly love God.
• The first one sounds familiar.
• We are to keep His commandments.
• John says if we love God, then we will keep His commandments.
• How many of them? We will try to keep all of them.
• We cannot separate obedience and love; they go hand in hand.
• Our faith gives us the ability and desire to keep God’s commandments. Sometimes, many times it is not easy to keep them.
• Too many Christians are just ignoring God’s commands when they get in the way of what they want. BEEN THERE DONE THAT AND TRY NOT TO DO THAT!
• If you love you parents, you will try to obey them if you love your spouse you will try to do what they want you to do.
• If we do not have faith, we will not love God enough to want to even try.
• I have always felt that if a child is defiant and refuses to obey reasonable commands from their parents, they do not really love their parents, they love themselves more than their parents.
• If we do not want to obey God, we do not love Him as much as we should.
• THE SECOND TEST IS TIED TO THE FIRST.
• His commandments are not a burden.
• If we love God, then what He wants us to do is not a burden to us. It may be difficult at times, but we are not oppressed by them.
• Burden means that something is, heavy, oppressive, or difficult to observe.
• How many of you men have been asked by your lovely wife to do something, you know a “honey do” and you did it while you grumbled the whole time? DON’T RAISE YOUR HANDS MEN, IF YOU KNOW WHAT IS GOOD FOR YOU!
• You felt oppressed by the request. Now if we love our wives, we will do what she wants with joy (if we know what is good for us )
• Would you enjoy a meal that your wife made if she were cursing you under her breathe the whole time she was making it and if she acted angry at the thought of cooking for you? NO! YOU NIGHT WATCH WHAT SHE PUTS IN IT!
• You would wonder if she was mad at you.
• If everything God wants you to do causes you to be angry or unloving to Him, you need to step back and look at the love you have for Him.
• This leads to the point of this passage, our faith gives us the reason and the power to love God and our new family!
• There are times when it is hard to love God and even harder to love our brothers and sisters in Christ.
• Our faith gives us the power to love even when it is difficult!
• Let’s look at verse 4!
• SLIDE #8
• 1 John 5:4 (HCSB) because whatever has been born of God conquers the world. This is the victory that has conquered the world: our faith.
• SLIDE #9
Faith in Jesus gives you…
III. Victory over the forces of the world.
• THIS IS THE PART I LOVE!
• I love to win, and in Christ and through Christ, I WIN!
• I get the sprinkles, because sprinkles are for winners!
• If we are born of God, we have overcome the world! This is the state of those who are born of God, they are over comers, they are winners, they play on the winning team.
• Jesus defeated Satan!
• Jesus defeated DEATH!
• SLIDE #10
• Verse 55 OF 1 CORINTHIANS asks, DEATH WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY AND WHERE IS YOUR STING!
• 1 Corinthians 15:57 (HCSB) But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!
• Our faith gives us the victory! The world cannot defeat us!
• What does it mean to CONQUER the world?
• The word “world” denotes the system or people opposed to God’s purpose.
• To CONQUER means to carry off to victory, to conquer. By the way the word for victory of which is the root word for CONQUER is transliterate from the Greek into English as “NIKE” pronounced NEE-KAYO.
• Our faith has allowed us to defeat the world so we can follow God!
• Jesus has given us the victory! It is time we live like champions!
• It is time we understand that we are on the winning team we need to live and act like it!
• In Romans 8:30-39 we are told of all that can come between us and it speaks of what we could allow to separate us from the love of God.
• SLIDE #11
• Romans 8:37 (HCSB) No, in all these things we are more than victorious through Him who loved us.
CONCLUSION
• As a Christian you have a lot to be excited about. Jesus gives you the victory; it is your job to live it. Live like a winner; do not let the world drag you back down.
• Through Jesus you can do all things; God is greater than anything the world has to throw at you!
• Jesus reminds us…
• SLIDE #12
• 1 John 4:4 (HCSB) You are from God, little children, and you have conquered them, because the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
• FAITH IS THE VICTORY!
