The testimony
This week is on 1 John 5:9-12:
God's word on something is the ultimate authority. He's not corrupted like we are, or limited in his ability to think. He creates reality, and things that happen do so as a result of his design. He sees all things and is the smartest of all beings. When he says something, we can trust it.
We trust human authorities, even though they're fallible. Human authorities have changed their decisions on diet, cosmology, morality, and a whole variety of other areas, oftentimes more than once in the last hundred years. We still trust what they say. "Scientists have found..." means as much to some people as "Thus saith the Lord..." ever did. But how can that be, when God is greater?
God's testimony, which most men contradict, is that we have eternal life because of Jesus. It is the truest statement there is, but we almost never hear about it. Do we learn about Jesus in school? Do they talk about him on the news, or in the paper? Why do we hear about men's opinions on science, and politics, and beauty, and morality, but never hear God's truth about our lives?
Whoever believes in Jesus has eternal life. We have more life than we can know what to do with. Even if we died the day we found out about Jesus, we'd still have an inexhaustible source of life. It's eternal. It stretches on beyond what our eyes can see or our minds can imagine. How is it that something like this isn't proclaimed everywhere?
Most people don't know Jesus. They don't have his life, and they make him out to be a liar by saying that the world is limited by what we can see or measure. Men used to believe that nothing existed over the horizon, because they couldn't see it with their own eyes. The eternal is just as difficult for us to fathom. (You're telling me there's a giant place called Shanghai to the west? I'm already as far west as I can go, and all I see is water. I'm looking as hard as I can! I don't see it. I don't even hear it, and we know how sound carries across the water. That's science. So I think you're delusional.)
So if most people don't believe in God, is it any wonder we never hear about Him? Does that make his testimony untrue though? Is truth something we can vote on?
Meditate on this: "Jesus died for our sins, so that we can have unlimited life." Mull it over. Savor it. Does it feel real to you? If someone said it to you, would it seem obvious to you that it is true? If someone asked your opinion on how to live longer, or get more out of life, is it one of the things you would tell them?
God's testimony is true. Jesus gives us an abundant, eternal, limitless future. There is no research that can prove this. Nobody is going to travel a trillion trillions of years ahead in time and come back and tell us about what life will be like. Our only source of a truth this big is God himself. We can either believe him and have the life he offers, or disbelieve him and end up with nothing. I believe God's testimony.
We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
God's word on something is the ultimate authority. He's not corrupted like we are, or limited in his ability to think. He creates reality, and things that happen do so as a result of his design. He sees all things and is the smartest of all beings. When he says something, we can trust it.
We trust human authorities, even though they're fallible. Human authorities have changed their decisions on diet, cosmology, morality, and a whole variety of other areas, oftentimes more than once in the last hundred years. We still trust what they say. "Scientists have found..." means as much to some people as "Thus saith the Lord..." ever did. But how can that be, when God is greater?
God's testimony, which most men contradict, is that we have eternal life because of Jesus. It is the truest statement there is, but we almost never hear about it. Do we learn about Jesus in school? Do they talk about him on the news, or in the paper? Why do we hear about men's opinions on science, and politics, and beauty, and morality, but never hear God's truth about our lives?
Whoever believes in Jesus has eternal life. We have more life than we can know what to do with. Even if we died the day we found out about Jesus, we'd still have an inexhaustible source of life. It's eternal. It stretches on beyond what our eyes can see or our minds can imagine. How is it that something like this isn't proclaimed everywhere?
Most people don't know Jesus. They don't have his life, and they make him out to be a liar by saying that the world is limited by what we can see or measure. Men used to believe that nothing existed over the horizon, because they couldn't see it with their own eyes. The eternal is just as difficult for us to fathom. (You're telling me there's a giant place called Shanghai to the west? I'm already as far west as I can go, and all I see is water. I'm looking as hard as I can! I don't see it. I don't even hear it, and we know how sound carries across the water. That's science. So I think you're delusional.)
So if most people don't believe in God, is it any wonder we never hear about Him? Does that make his testimony untrue though? Is truth something we can vote on?
Meditate on this: "Jesus died for our sins, so that we can have unlimited life." Mull it over. Savor it. Does it feel real to you? If someone said it to you, would it seem obvious to you that it is true? If someone asked your opinion on how to live longer, or get more out of life, is it one of the things you would tell them?
God's testimony is true. Jesus gives us an abundant, eternal, limitless future. There is no research that can prove this. Nobody is going to travel a trillion trillions of years ahead in time and come back and tell us about what life will be like. Our only source of a truth this big is God himself. We can either believe him and have the life he offers, or disbelieve him and end up with nothing. I believe God's testimony.
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