1 John: Faith Alone

Well, a few weeks ago I was sitting at uh my middle daughter's soccer game, so she's eight years old and has at her soccer game.

And it's important to know at this point uh they had not won a soccer game in two years.

So that's important to this story because we're two years of hard work and a lot of fun.

Um sometimes I don't think they were aware of the two years running.

We were we were aware of it, the parents uh sitting over there, and at some point we had just sort of like resigned it, like we're good, we're gonna hang out over here, they'll have fun, and we'll grab pizza afterward.

But this game, we heard this other team was especially awful, and so that gave a lot of hope to us.

There's another team out there, and so the the game started and we scored, they scored, and it was one to one at halftime.

We've been there.

None of us got real excited about that.

We've been to this point, and so we're just still okay, whatever.

Second half starts, we score again, it's two to one, and then the time starts going, time starts clicking off the clock.

And at some point, one of the parents looks at us and like, how much time's left?

And they're like, now what's the score?

They're like, it's two to one.

Yes, two to one.

How much time?

Did we start to realize?

Oh my gosh, we might win.

We might win this.

And so we start getting louder and louder and louder.

I mean, we are we are obnoxious loud as a group of you know soccer moms and soccer dads.

We are going to will them to win out of our volume.

We are so loud.

Every, I mean, every girl that has a ball, we are yelling their name and we're yelling.

I mean, we are gonna make this happen.

And then we're getting toward the end of the game, and there's a handball in the goalie box.

Now, if you don't know what that means, it means that they were just about to score on our goal, and one of our defenders handballs in the goalie box.

So they have a free kick, one girl, they picked the biggest girl, mind you, one girl, and then the goalie who is my daughter.

Okay, so this is the setup.

Two to one, never won in two years.

We haven't won in two years, and this is the setup.

And I'm hiding in my chair, and everybody's nervous.

One I threw up and you know, get my nerves back.

So you know, this girl had to be 15.

I don't know.

She was she was something, and she ran at that thing, and she I mean, she creamed that, she blasted that ball, and it went dead straight.

And my daughter, she didn't move.

She had not moved.

I don't, you know, I don't know if that was strategy or not, but she didn't.

Usually the goalie moves.

Uh I've watched a couple soccer games, usually they dive or something, and she didn't.

She just stood there, and it came full black, and it hit her shins, and then she just fell down.

And we go crazy.

I mean, we are going crazy.

The girls are, you would have thought we won the game there.

We hadn't won the game, we just you know didn't get time.

And so we're going, the parents are going crazy.

It's at this point I realize I'm sitting next to a mom of the other team.

And so I just I lean over to her after realizing what you know, you know, the amount of obnoxiousness that I've displayed here with a group of other parents in this church, mind you very much.

And we're not wearing t-shirts, we don't have Redeemer t-shirts, and this is one reason why is when we get in public, you just don't know what our behavior is gonna be.

And so I finally look at the mom and I just say, uh, I said, I'm I am so sorry.

I said, We we haven't won a game in two years.

And she's like, Oh, you know, like a little bit really, yeah, and I was like, I'm so sorry, we haven't won in two years.

And and then we scored another goal.

We're getting louder, we scored another goal, we're getting louder.

It we win four to one, we we're like charged the field, the girls are going crazy.

I mean, it was the feeling of victory.

And I looked over at the other mom, and you know, this feeling of defeat over there, right?

Like, we knew that feeling, we'd overcome it over time, but it's the feeling of victory, what a great feeling, what a relief when you win something, right?

We know that feeling, and we know the feeling of loss.

We know the feeling of loss in life, right?

When it's that feeling where that person or that other team or that person or that habit or that feeling or that thought, it has the edge on me, and it keeps getting the edge on me.

You keep getting like beaten down.

So we're gonna talk about victory this morning.

That's what these four verses are about.

The key words in there, you know, overcome and victory.

So, what does it mean?

We like to throw that around in the Christian church.

I mean, that's kind of like we have victory, we're gonna have victory, we have victory.

What does that mean?

Like, what does that mean?

Because a lot of my life I don't feel like I have victory.

So, what does it mean?

Well, I I like to start a sermon with a quote if you haven't picked up on that.

Sometimes I use that little technique.

And so I got online and I and I'm searching for just a great, um, you know, I want to get a good quote for you guys.

And and I I keep running into the same phrase that's within a whole bunch of quotes by different people.

And here's the phrase, here's the phrase coming up.

We fight from victory, not for victory.

Whole bunch of different, I couldn't find out who originally said it.

Right?

I mean, this is this is good this is good stuff, this quote right here, this this line.

We fight from victory, not for victory.

Now that's good.

Put that on a bumper sticker.

I mean, this is this is good.

But where does that come from?

What does that mean?

What is it, how does that happen?

So we're gonna start in verse four.

Not that we're gonna dismiss verses one through three, but verse four is what shines light on the empowerment of verses one through three, which talk about loving other people, loving God's ways, loving his laws, and that they're not burdens.

So, well, how do you get to that?

How do you get to loving other people?

We've been talking a lot about that the last couple of months.

And then here, John says in verse four, he just lays it out pretty cleanly.

For everyone who has been born of God, this is 1 John 5, 4, for everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world.

And this is the victory that has overcome the world.

Oh, what is it?

Our faith.

So there in the first sentence, there's this word overcome, which is from the word nickeo, which means to conquer or to have victory.

And so we're overcoming what?

We're overcoming the world.

The world is from the word cosmos, meaning all earthly goods and values which are hollow.

Maybe you've been figuring that out over time.

And seduce us from Christ's redeeming work and what is truly meaningful.

So, this is what this means, we've kind of pieced that together.

So, victory or overcoming, uh that relief over hollowness and meaninglessness comes as we rest in our identity in Christ or our rebirth.

And so the point number one is this we are already victorious by position of rebirth as children of God.

You say born again.

So just as you're born physically, a soul becomes reborn or brought alive or born again, a rebirth to God by his love for you, by his grace for you.

So that means by position, we're already victors.

By position, not by experience, not by uh performance, not by pretending, not by behavior, but by position.

That's our surrender.

When we say stuff like, uh, all your sins have been cast upon Jesus, all his righteousness has been given to you, that's what we're surrendering into.

We're surrendering into.

We're done with pretending, we're done performing, we're done for earning faith, and we're receiving the gift of righteousness, the gift of faith.

That's a that's a rebirth, it's a new way of life.

It's the soul coming alive to God's love.

Part B of uh 5.4, 1 John 5.4, part B.

And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith.

So John doubles down.

Like so, if you didn't catch it in the first sentence there in this verse, here's the second sentence, and point number two is this victory is by faith in Christ with nothing to add.

Maybe you've been taught in places that faith is your behavior.

Right?

You just constantly hear, and you hear it long enough, you start to believe it.

Live out your faith.

What do you do?

What are you doing with your faith?

How are you affecting eternity with your faith?

Now, all these things are true.

All those phrases I just said, those are true phrases, right?

I mean, the book of James, James says, like, I'll show you my faith with my works.

But, but, but, but, you hear that long enough without remembering how that faith got there, or that that faith of its own is your victory, and slowly you begin into a life of performance faith.

When the whole time it's by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, victory from, not victory for.

So if we go back to the soccer fields, let me explain it this way.

We go back to the soccer fields.

When my daughter goes to a soccer game, and she gets, she wants to win.

Okay, like she wants to score, she wants to be a part of a score, she wants to win, she wants a moment of some great victorious moment, and then she wants the team to win in the end as well.

She wants all of this, right?

And she's gonna play her hardest.

I mean, she's gonna fight, she's gonna push, she will push.

We've seen her push, talked about it a little bit, and she's gonna push.

And if somebody else scores, she's gonna jump up and down, they're all gonna hug.

All the girls hug, they begin to hugging after scores.

So they they hug, sometimes they just hug, anyways.

You know, a group of eight-year-old girls playing soccer.

Lots of cartwheels and twirling going on on the field, might be might be part of the losses, I'm not sure.

So that's going on.

But she wants to win.

She's gonna fight for it, she's gonna push for it.

She, you know, sometimes she's kind to the other player, sometimes she's not.

But here's the thing my daughter is not her soccer.

You would never, you would never do that, would you?

You would never say that my daughter is her soccer.

That would be an insane thing to say.

But also, my daughter is not her behavior.

My daughter simply her.

Her behavior is a result of her.

Now that distinguishment is really, really important.

Because you're not your behavior.

You're not your actions.

Your behavior and your actions are a result of who you are.

Which is you're more broken than you originally thought, but you're more loved by God than you could dare to dream.

So you have a secure identity first, and now that secure identity comes, behaviors of which some are great and some aren't great.

And so the point is, the point is that faith is its own thing.

Faith alone.

Faith is its own thing, which the Spirit births in us and empowers us to do something else.

Now, when this is confused, what happens is all of a sudden Christian faith becomes more about what you do than what God has given to you.

So you don't have any rest and relief.

You don't really have victory.

What you have is you have burden.

God's ways are burdensome.

Life is burdensome.

A lot of exhaustion.

See, we fight from victory, not for victory.

Maybe you remember the verses in Ephesians, Ephesians 2, 8 and 9.

For by grace you have been saved through faith.

And this is not your own doing.

Right?

So it's not your behavior, it's not what you did.

It's by grace, through faith.

It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

And the word faith there means belief, nothing more.

It doesn't mean anything more.

Now we're not saying that faith doesn't lead to something else or create something else, but what we are saying is just faith, just faith, faith alone.

So even if you get that, maybe you're with me at this point, maybe you're not, maybe intellectually you're going, I don't know, I'm gonna fight you a little bit on all this.

But maybe you're with me.

Even if you're with me at this point, what's easy at this point to say, like, what degree of faith?

Like, like how much belief?

I was talking to a friend this week, and he told me that he decided that church wasn't for him because he could never associate with the people on stage who had so much faith.

And I thought it was like, like, what church were you going to?

Like, go to it, just go to a different church.

Because this idea of measurement of faith, well, first off, we have all different personalities, or of course our faith is going to look different, or we're gonna verbalize it differently, and we just gotta get real on that.

And then, secondly, like this idea of measuring faith, what a crazy idea.

I mean, any honesty upon your own life would say, like, there's been times in your life when you just had incredible amounts of faith.

There's been other times where you're like barely holding on, or maybe you realize, you know what, you weren't holding on, but God was kind of holding on to you, and then you come back, you go, Oh, there's my great faith.

I think that's why Jesus teaches in Luke 17.

You know, just have faith like a mustard seed.

What a what a gift.

What a gift in all the Bible talking about faith and all these ways, and what a gift to have this passage, just have faith like a mustard seed, the smallest of seeds.

Right?

And he's saying faith is not like grades in school, it's not like a tape measure, it's like a seed.

Just the smallest little bit's enough, and that has great effect.

So Paul teaches us faith ends the toil of earning.

And then Jesus teaches us faith ends the toil of measuring.

Franciscan priest and author Richard Rohr, he wrote this about faith.

You don't really do faith.

It happens to you when you give up control and all the steering of your ship.

Frankly, we often do it when we have no other choice.

And you also see why the saints always said that faith is a gift.

You fall into it more than ever fully choosing it.

And only then do you know how grace, love, and God sustain you and strengthen you at very deep levels.

I think, at least for myself, I just keep wanting to do something to be a person of faith rather than be a person of faith who does something.

Right?

I mean, maybe you hear the difference there.

We just we just keep wanting to do something, to be a person of faith, because then we're in control.

We can measure that, we can see it.

Rather than just be a person of faith, who does something?

There's a story in Matthew 15, which at first it looks like this lady has enormous faith, and at first it looks like faith as action.

And then we dig into the story and we get to see something else.

And so what the story is, is Jesus is dining with his disciples, and while he's dining with his disciples, they're eating a meal, a non-Jewish lady comes up to ask for healing for her daughter.

It's a very bad condition, and a demon is in her.

And the disciples, they see this non-Jewish lady coming up, and the disciples are still tied into some old paradigm of who can approach Jesus and who can't.

And this is a kosher table and a kosher mills, a non-Jewish lady, and all this is a little scandalous, scandalous.

And so they say, Hey, you know, do you want us to ask her to go away?

Maybe you should ask her to go away.

Can we should we get rid of this lady?

And then Jesus says to her, Hey, like, hey, he says, uh, I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.

Now he's making a racial comment.

She's non-Jewish, he's Jewish.

But he's making a bigger comment.

The bigger comment here is that he's saying, hey, I came to make to reveal myself to the people of Israel first, and then through the people of Israel, for that to be revealed to the entire world, to all people, which at the time was a huge statement because every people group had their own God.

But this lady doesn't like that.

Like this idea of order.

Like she's not happy.

That's not okay with her.

Because her daughter is sick and she doesn't have anywhere else to go.

And she says, Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs.

So, in other words, what she's saying is, she's saying, I don't have anywhere to go.

Like, I'm at the end of myself.

All I have left is belief that you could do something.

And that's the point.

The point here is that she's not there out of status, she's not there out of some performance or some righteousness resume.

She's not even out of there, some like navel-gazing, self-consumed measuring of her own faith and how she's doing or how she's not doing.

She's out of there completely of like, this person can do something to help me, and I don't have any ability.

She knows she needs help, and she's at the end.

So this is not performance, this is actually death for her.

It's a dying into faith.

And Jesus says, for such a reply, you may go.

The demon has left your daughter.

And the point is, is your faith, it's not your merit, it's not your performance, it's not your pretending, it's not your status, it's not your measurement, it's security in Christ's work for you, not your work for him.

So now, if we go back and we think about verses one through three.

Love other people, love God's commandments, love the way that God would have us live, I see all of that.

I haven't dismissed it.

It's just the only way to do that is to understand verse four.

You won't do that with joy or freedom until you understand faith alone, the gift of faith alone, that you are free.

And out of that secure, victorious faith that is given victory from, not victory for, comes a growth in grace and an empowerment by the Spirit to say no to the world and the hollowness and the meaninglessness of the world.

Because you've tasted of a victory given to you.

It's in that death that the Holy Spirit begins to work in our hearts because we're finally finished.

We're like the lady, we just don't have anywhere to go.

I mean, we just don't have anything left.

We don't have any status to stand on.

No moralistic behaviors to count up and hand over to God to say, Hey, you know, am I good now?

Do you let me know?

There's always victory from that empowers our victory for.

19th century British pastor Charles Spurgeon.

He preached on this verse, this one verse.

And when he ended his sermon, this is what he said to his people.

My words are powerless, my thoughts are weak.

Old Adam is too strong for this young child to draw or drag.

But God speak to you, dear hearts.

God send the truth home, and then we shall rejoice together.

Both he that soweth and he that reapeth, because God has given us the increase.

God bless you.

May you all be born again and have that faith that overcometh the world.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for the gift of grace that births our faith.

May we die into it, not earn into it.

May this morning not be shame on us, more shame on us for a lack of faith or doubting in faith, but may it be more grace on us that there might be more faith birthed in us by your spirit.

May we be astonished more that you would only call us to a mustard seed of faith.

Would that give us even greater faith of how good you are?

May we see how scandalous you are, that you would love us while we're broken.

You deem us worthy when we have little faith.

And we do pray that, God, whatever amount of faith we have this morning, even as small as it is, would you do great things with it?

Would our lives honor you?

Would we love our neighbor?

Would we love our family?

Would we love your ways?

That call us out of the world of hollowness and meaninglessness and into a life that honors you and means something for the cause of Christ.

For all of us that are here this morning, God, that that lack and feel ashamed of our faith.

God, would you pour out your spirit that never condemns, but convicts and comforts.

Would we find great healing as we come to our end of ourselves?

We thank you that you love us wherever we're at.

Help us even more to trust that you are not.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.