Complete dependence upon the
Lord for all needed help this evening. I wish to direct your
very prayerful attention to the first general epistle of John,
chapter 5. And by way of text, I'll read
verses 6 to 8. 1st General Epistle of John,
chapter 5, verses 6 to 8. I'll just read the verses through
the once. This is He that came by water and blood, even Jesus
Christ. Not by water only, but by water
and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth
witness because the Spirit is Truth. For there are three that
bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost,
and these three are one. And there are three that bear
witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood,
and these three agree in one. During her reign, her long reign,
Queen Victoria would often attend St. Paul's Cathedral. Now I don't
know what the preaching was like in those days, but one particular
sermon caught her attention. And it was on the matter of eternal
life, eternal safety, eternal security, and assurance of which
she was concerned. And she said to the parson, is
eternal safety, is it possible to know that one can be safe
for eternity? And the man said, alas, your
majesty, such knowledge is not possible. Now, this was reported
in the royal paper, the local royal paper, and came to the
attention of a minister by the name of John Townsend, who wrote to the monarch and pointed out
a number of scriptures, and that very clearly it was possible
to know that we have passed from death unto life. Now we don't
know where Queen Victoria stood, we just leave that. But the point
is this, the principle is correct. It is correct. How many sermons
do we hear from this epistle? We heard one this afternoon upon
verse 7. As it happens at Hedgen Chapel.
But very seldom Very seldom, certainly growing up under the
supply ministry, it was very seldom we heard anything on this.
Why was that? Well, I can't help but feeling
that part of it is there is a rather regrettable aspect and element
of some of our people that do not believe that it is possible
to know. Not in reality, but dear friends,
I would say it is. It is. This is the we know epistle. What's the very evidence? What's
the very essence? What's the very kernel of the
epistle here? It's found in verse 13. These
things have I written unto you, this is the reason why he writes, that believe on the name of the
Son of God that ye may know, that ye may know that ye have
eternal life. and that ye may believe on the
name of the Son of God." That's the purpose. Now, once more here, we are dealing
with a letter. And once more, as we had on Wednesday
evening, the context and the circumstances of the letter,
it is vital to consider. If we don't consider those things,
we find ourselves in a fog. But here we see that John is
writing, this is a man in his old age, he'd learnt many things.
This was a man who had the closest of relationships with our Lord
Jesus Christ. He'd lived, he'd outlived all
his contemporaries. And thus he'd seen, even in a
short time, many errors come into the church. Now, these errors
were, many of them, of a Christological nature. That is, they concern
the doctrine of Christ, they concern his person, they concern
his work, they concern who he is. And we see that even in his Gospel,
the way he opens the Gospel. In the beginning was the Word,
the Word was with God, the Word was God, etc. and so on. You
can read it for yourselves. But he's setting forth the doctrine
of Christ in no uncertain terms. And it's no good us puffing our
chests out and saying, well, we're strict Baptists, these
things don't affect us. They do. They do. In fact, they've affected us
for 200 years. And the errors and the dangers
are still present. It's sad to say many preachers
are very weak upon this subject. We just read it and it really
forced it home to me. Beloved, believe not every spirit
but try the spirits whether they are of God because many false
prophets are gone out into the world. What kind of false prophets
are we talking about? If you flip over the page into
the 2nd General Epistle of John, in verse 9, you read this. Whosoever
transgresseth and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ hath
not God. He that abideth in the doctrine
of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any
unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into
your house, neither bid him Godspeed, chop him off, cut him off, Thus,
for a man to deny the humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ that
He has come in the flesh, it is the most serious of errors. And thus, we must make it plain. Such heresy is damnable heresy. It's so serious. It's so serious. We can have all the facade and
look very solemn and all the rest of it and give the impression
of a very close walk with the Lord. But if we don't have these
things in our minds and in our hearts, we've got nothing. We've
got nothing. The Word says so. And thus here,
I come back to this. This is the reality. that the
Apostle has written these things that the Church, not just to
select one or two, but the Church in general would know, would
know, and can say they know whom the Lord is, mind and heart. Whosoever believeth that Jesus
Christ, believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God. Now people say unto us, well
you don't believe in the whosoever. We absolutely do. We absolutely
do. We believe in the whosoever will,
not the whosoever won't. That's the difference. That's
the difference. This is a free grace message
we have before us. But what does that word mean?
Whosoever, it doesn't mean all men indiscriminately. It means it could be anyone.
You and I don't know who the Lord's people are. One here,
one there, one in another place, one in another place. We don't
know who the Lord's people are. We know they're a remnant. We
know that. We don't know who they are. And thus, here we see,
whosoever believeth that Jesus Christ is born of God. And thus we see here that there
is a witness to this. What does it say? By this we
know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep
his commandments for this is the love of God that we keep
his commandments and his commandments are not grievous. Now I would
maintain to you, again it might be seen as unorthodox and rather
unpopular, but this is not the moral law. This is not the moral
law at all. Dear soul, let me put this to
you. The moral law, once more, is there to condemn. The commandments
we have before us are the Gospel ordinances. The commandments
we have before us are the Gospel promises. The moral law says
nothing about following the Lord in believers' baptism. Nothing. The Lord doesn't say anything
of that. The Gospel does. The Gospel does. The moral law
says nothing about forgiving one another. It says, pay what
you owe. Pay what you owe. Pay what you
owe. And it's unrelenting. The Gospel speaks of a great
and a wonderful and a liberated forgiveness. Forgiveness. To
let go. You know, there's no There's
no more sadder person to meet than a bitter person. And there's
no sadder person to meet than a bitter Christian hanging on
to things that have gone on years ago and holding grudge and gripe. Dear soul, is there love to the
brethren? Here, there is without question,
there must be love to the brethren. Of course they must. Of course
they must. Of course they must. But you
know, our love for one another is so weak, it's so failing,
it's so poor, that we dare not use that as the grounds for our
assurance. The grounds for our assurance
is clearly seen here as faith in a person. In a person. It is Jesus Christ Himself and
this witness. Now, John has written in the
way he has for a reason. I'll text here this evening. He's written here in a certain
way. This is He that came by water
and blood, even Jesus Christ. Not by water only, but by water
and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth
witness, because the Spirit is Truth. If you and I are to trust,
are to trust this Man, the God-Man, for our eternal souls, salvation,
for our assurance, we must have, we must have a reason for it.
We must have a reason for it. And John writes this reason here. He writes it in the style that
the Jews and those of whom would be reading this, this was a letter
written to a region, a series of churches within a certain
parameter, they would be well aware of the court system. And
that is that when a man was convicted of anything, in order to prove
anything in a Jewish court, there would have to be two or three
reliable witnesses who would have to state that these things
are so. And even today in our rather flimsy Justice system,
it's supposed to be the case that there are supposed to be
independent, credible witnesses to condemn or to confirm a matter. It's a principle. And this is
a principle that John is setting. But he's saying, this is going
far above man. This is speaking of the divine
person. This is he that came by water
and blood. Three bearing record in heaven.
and three bearing witness in the earth. That's the principle
that we have here. Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost. Now you may say to me, what about
verse 6 here? He that came by water and blood. What about this water? Well,
I would maintain to you that this water here is that which
is spoken of as the Word. Look at John 15 and verse 3. We see this. Now ye are clean
through the Word, the Word which I have spoken unto you. And then we have another evidence
of this in Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 26. that he might sanctify and cleanse
it with the washing of the water by the word." The word is used
here. The word is used as that which
is infallible. There's a man in Rome, people
say he's infallible. Dear soul, we have the infallible
word before us and none other. I'm a preacher. I preach the
truth. We have preachers amongst us
who preach the truth. We're not faultless. We're not
infallible. And so we have a Word before
us that is infallible. You know, in fact, the only aspect
of our worship that is completely free, we might say, of any possible
error or fault is the reading of the Scriptures. It's the reading
of the Scriptures. It's a precious thing that we
have before us here. This evening is the Word. The
Word of Truth. And what does the Word of Truth
witness to us? It witnesses the blood. The blood. The blood. This is it. The blood. All the Old Testament prophets,
what were they pointing to? What were they pointing to? This
is where people get it so wrong. All the feast days, the observations
of food laws, they weren't an end in themselves. People think
we're going to go back to them. Why would we want to go back
to them? We have the glorious liberty of the Gospel in the
person of the Lord Jesus Christ. We don't need anything else.
We don't need anything else. And the word witnesses to the
blood. Not by water only, but by water
and blood. Notice here, "...and it is the
Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth."
Is this not a Trinitarian salvation? The Father's electing love, the
Son's redeeming power by His blood, and the Spirit's regenerating. Mercy, here we see it. It's all,
it's all here. It's all here. The Spirit. Now you know there's a wonderful
word here that some, I'm pointing out here in respect of the work
of the Spirit. It's connected, we have it in
verse 5. Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth
that Jesus is the Son of God? We know that whosoever is born
of God sinneth not. But he that is begotten of God
keepeth himself and that wicked one toucheth him not. Sinneth
not. That's the Holy Spirit. That
is the Holy Spirit. The work that is done in you
and I in regenerating power is perfect. Because it's the Spirit's
work. We have a body, a flesh of sin
and death. but the Spirit's work is a perfect
work and you know that is why that which is born of God cannot
die it cannot die we have it here boldness in the day of judgment
you might say these are high things well they might be high
things but they're real things and they're true things the gospel
has always been a prospect that is almost too good to be true.
I say almost, because it is true. It is true. It is true. And these things are written
that we may know them, that the saints may live in them. You
might say, well, I don't know about that. Well, let me say
this. There is one church that is renowned
for the doctrine of doubts and that denies that there is such
a thing as knowing that we are saved from eternity. The Roman
Catholic Church, they say it's not possible to know. The Mohammedans
say it's not possible to know. The Jehovah's Witnesses always
tell you you've got to work harder. And so on. I don't need to go
on. Free grace religion, once more, is a religion of liberty. Where the Spirit of the Lord
is, there is liberty. There is liberty. And it's the
Spirit that beareth witness because the Spirit is truth. It's truth. And the Lord reveals to us truth
by His Word. And the Word always reveals Christ. You know, some people look for
a semi-apostolic experience. I'm not told anything of that
or told to look for anything like that in the scripture. What
do you read? Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born
of God. That's not an easy believism. That's a casting all upon him.
It's a casting all upon him. Lydia believed, didn't she? Whose
heart the Lord opened. That's nothing spectacular, nothing
dramatic, nothing Amazing in the outward physical sense happened.
The Lord opened her heart. The Lord did it. He did it. But
He opened her heart. These are the things that we
read here. This is all Gospel. And 7. Verse 7. For there are three that bear
record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost,
and these three are one. It was pointed out this afternoon
and it's true. If you open many modern translations
of the Scriptures, this will not be there. Verse 7 will be
missing. There may be a footnote or something
of that nature, but this is a verse that has come under attack from
the various modern critics, who say it shouldn't be in the canon
at all, and so on and so we hold no truck with such a view. This is a glorious confirmation. Once more, John is proving a
point. And the point wouldn't make sense if we read the chapter
without it. There would be so much missing.
These are the three witnesses of which cannot be denied. Cannot
be denied. And what is this witness? Well,
when the Lord Jesus Christ said, it is finished, it was settled
and accepted in heaven. Salvation is therefore secure,
complete and done. A lot of people preach do, but
we preach done. That's what it is. Salvation,
full and free. and thus here these three are
one that is one God not three gods but one God in three distinct
persons and all we see have their offices have their operations
if it were not for the word we would not have these things opened
up to us but this is the thing the spirit has favoured us with
the word and favours the word and opens up to us. It's the
spirit that leads us into all truth. And there's no truth outside
of this word. None at all. There's no divine
truth that we can take outside of the Book of Mormon. It's false.
We know that. There are those parts, in fact,
in the modern translations there's bits that have been added. There's
all sorts of fables. There's the Apocrypha. There
are many things. But we can trust in what we have here before us. These three are one. This is what we have before us.
And in verse 8 we read this, and there are three that bear
witness in earth, the Spirit, the water, and the blood. And these three agree in one. There is always agreement in
the Godhead, and there is always agreement in the salvation of
a sinner. the Father's election, the Son's
redemption, and the Spirit's regeneration. These things are
always agreed. They bear witness in the earth. Now the Spirit was sent down,
we know, at Pentecost. And it's the word that is therefore
used, and once more we have this witnessing with the blood, agreeing
in one. Verse 9, if we receive the witness
of men, the witness of God is greater. For this is the witness
of God, that he hath testified in his Son. Now this once again
is pressing the exaltation and the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ
himself. that all believers are brought
into Him and to trust in Him. Now, it's an interesting word.
When we read of believing, when we read of trusting, some of
you may be aware that really, that's simply the best word that
is available in the English. The English is a very good language
in many ways, but it has its limitations. The original has
words for things that we do not. And this believing, this trusting,
this having all upon, it's a much more pressing word than what
we have here before us in the English or as we would generally
read it. It's to have everything, to have our lives itself, to
be hanging on Him. And that's what we're witnessing
here too. The Spirit that goes forth, what
does it speak of? What does the Spirit speak of?
It speaks of the Son. It speaks of the Son. For we
have a promise here, do we not? But it's only unto them that
feel here their sins. There's a great deal, of course,
John deals with sin extensively. in his gospel and he deals with
it here in his general epistle. And sin is not simply some abstract
thing. It's not something that is separate
from it. It's that which is within us. It's that which is within
us. What did Paul say? What did Paul
say? He speaks of the evil, that he
would not, that he does those things he wouldn't do. He does
and thus Here we see something else. This is the very basis
of our assurance. And it is a looking unto Him. These are the things that are
witnessing. The Spirit, the water, and the blood. And these three
agree in one. What's the basis of our assurance?
Well, if the basis of our assurance has anything to do with us, then
we have a problem. In fact, it will only lead to
despair. This is the problem. This is
a very, very big problem. If you're exhorted to look into
yourself, you will only find darkness, you'll find drudgery. In fact, you could be driven
to the very end of yourself. You would be. There's no release
there. There's no merit there. There's
nothing to commend us there. But what do we see here? The
Holy Spirit witnesses to the blood of Christ. And this is
something that we must know, though, for ourselves. This is
the subjective element of Him. This is the subjective element.
I can preach it. We preach salvation, full and
free, but I can't infuse it to you. But dear soul, I would say this.
It is something to be known. This is the work of the Spirit.
The work of the Spirit is not in strange abstract things. Many people talk about the work
of the Spirit in speaking in tongues and all these apostolic
elements and nature. Some of you have even walked
through it. I've seen some of it, but some of you have seen
a lot more. But that's not the work of the
Spirit. The work of the Spirit is to witness to His Son in the
heart of a sinner. And it is to shed abroad the
love of Christ in a sinner's soul. That's the work. That's the work. Do we know anything
of it? Do we know anything of it? What
is a Christian? What is a Christian? A Christian
is a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, who has Christ. A non-Christian
is a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, who does not have Christ.
Verse 12, "...he that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath
not the Son hath not life." There's life here. There's life in the
eternal Son of God. And this is an operation that
is done in your soul, in mine. If we are to know that we are
saved, it's to have all in this person. In this person. And there is, inevitably, love. There's love. Because the love
of Christ Constraineth us, constraineth us in so many ways. In so many
ways. What was it that took the martyrs
to the stake? It could be nothing else than
the love of Christ within the soul of a sinner. And these are
the things that He makes known. But He makes them known by His
Spirit. What does Paul say? But God hath
revealed them, oh, I should go to the previous verse, but as
it is written, I hath not seen, nor ye heard, neither have ye
entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared
for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto
us by His Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all
things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth
the things of a man save the Spirit of a man which is in him,
even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God."
Now we have received, not the Spirit of the world, but the
Spirit which is of God. Many people have a problem with
that word there, Revelation. They say, we shouldn't, we shouldn't,
because God Once more, his work is to reveal his Son. It's not
some strange work. It is to reveal his Son in the
heart of a sinner. He says the same thing, actually,
a similar thing, in the second epistle to the Corinthians. And he makes it clear. He makes it clear. that we can
only know these things by the Spirit of God. That's the only
way that we can know these things. And it's the Spirit that witnesseth.
His Spirit witnesseth with our spirit that we are the sons of
God. Now, we say here, this evening,
once more as we close, it's not for me It's not for any preacher
here to persuade you and press you into the Kingdom. Because
somebody much more slick, much more clever could come along
and persuade you otherwise. But if you have the inward persuasion
that you have passed from death unto life, that you truly believe
by His Spirit on the Eternal Son of God, No one will move
you. No one will move you. And no
one will be able to persuade you otherwise. And thus, you
will have to and will stand upon these things. This is He that
came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ. Not by water only,
but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth
witness, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that
bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost,
and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness
in earth, the Spirit, the water, and the blood. And these three
agree in one. May it be a witness to you and
to I. Amen.