My pulpit message notes

Faith That Overcomes

My Pulpit Message Notes are extracted from the sermon preached at the Nairobi Baptist Church (NBC) Ngong Road on Sunday 28th August 2022. Preacher: Reverend Evans Mutamba, Lead Pastor NBC Kikuyu. Scripture: 1 John 4&5 Topic: Faith that overcomes.

John takes time to explain to us that faith that overcomes manifests itself in three aspects:

1. Believing in the Son of God.

2. Loving God and His children.

3. Keeping the commands of God.

Believing in the Son of God.

Marks of those that believe in Jesus Christ are:

A. They believe in the incarnation of Christ. 1 John 4:2

“2 This is how you can recognise the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.”

- John is clear that Jesus was born. He is the Christ. He lived here and He died and rose again from the dead.

- John is restating what he said in 1John 1:1-4

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard,…

- In other words, Jesus was not just a Spirit, but had a body we touched, hailed Him, saw Him, fellowshipped with Him and He is the one we are telling you.

- John writing in the gospel in chapter one, he reminds us that the Word became flesh and He dwelt amongst us and we have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only son who came from the Father full of grace and truth. John 1:14

- So the belief that Jesus came in the body is critical. It is a clear demonstration that you believe in the right thing, the sound belief, the sound conviction and the sound faith.

B. Those who believe in God listen to the Word of God, to the truth of the Scripture, to the proclamation of the Biblical teaching and are not rejecting it.

Verse six, “6 We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognise the Spirit[a] of truth and the spirit of falsehood.”

- Jesus speaking to the Pharisees and Jews who had gathered around Him, who wanted to stone Him in John 8:47, he said almost the same words,

“Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”

- People who do not believe in the Scriptures, in the entirety of the Bible, they demonstrate the negation of their belief in the Son of God and they are demonstrating they do not belong to the family of those who belong to God.

- Listening is not just listening but listening to do what God requires of us.

- Those who believe in God have come to the place where they can overcome the world. We cannot overcome the world without believing in Jesus Christ. - World here represents the systems that are against God’s purposes/will/agenda. - 1 John 4:5 “4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcomethem, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”

- ‘Them’ refers to the false teachers, who deny that Jesus Christ has come in the body. They are people who do not listen to the teachings of God’s Word. They are people who negate the Biblical truth.

- ‘You have overcome

them’. Why? Because the one who is in you is greater than the one in the world. So we do not have to live in fear because of the false teachers, or the world systems that opposes our faith and our submission to Christ because the One who is in us is greater than the one who is in the world.

- Our faith in Jesus is the source of victory over the systems of this world

C. Those who believe in Jesus Christ will receive eternal life.1 John 5:11

“11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”

- This means we are not scared of death, because death cannot take this life away. We are not scared of eternal condemnation, because God has delivered from it. We are not scared of anything, because we know God is on our side and we have confidence to face our future that we are not so much aware of how it will be, but one thing we know is that we have life in eternity. - John writing in his gospel says, “We have life and have it abundantly.”

Loving God and His children.

- This is a demonstration of a faith that overcomes the world.

- John 4:7-9 says we are to love each other first because God is love.

“ Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ”

- God has demonstrated that we can love and should love one another because He is love and He is in us. God has given us the ability to love because He is in us and Him being love, He gives us the ability/grace to be able to love.

- You may be saying, pastor you are saying this, but you do not know how much I have been hurt by the one that I have loved. Jesus was in the same situation. The ones He loved and walked with them and fed, are the same guys took Him to the cross and nailed Him there. And on that cross He demonstrated His love by saying,

“They do not know what they are doing. Father forgive them”.

- There are people that you love so much, but they have caused pain in your life. That doesn’t mean that you stop loving. You pray for God’s mercy and grace that God will help you to love them.

- Secondly we love because God loved us and He loved us by sending His Son to die for us. - Paul says, “While we were still sinners, God sent His son.”

- What John and Paul are telling us is that we do not love people because they are good. God loved us when we were ‘unloveable’, when we were pathetic, rotting in sin, rebellious in nature, yet He loved us.

- There is a human tendency of saying, let him/her improve, work on themselves, show that they deserve to be loved. That is not the love that God is talking about here.

- They’ll persecute you, but love them. They have some under-cuttings against you, but love them. They are plotting evil against you, but love them. These are not people just out there. They are people in the family of God. That’s where we struggle most. They call on the name of the LORD, but they cause pain in our hearts and we wonder how can we keep up with such people. Because we are the children of God, we love them and ask for God’s grace that will help us to love them.

- We love one another because it is a demonstration that God is in us and is the One making a difference in our lives.

- Jesus asked, “If you love only those who love you, what difference does it make? Even beggars do so.” If we love those who are good to us, what difference does it make? Because non believers do so. But we are children of the Most High. We have come to the space where God dwells in us. We are living above the earthly standards. We are sons of the Most High and He lives in us, and He is calling on us to show that we belong to Him.

- Jesus talking to His disciples one time, He said,

“And by this they will know that you are my disciples, when you love one another” John 13:35. -

Friends may I submit to us by saying, It is impossible to say that you love God without loving His children. John is saying that you are a liar because you have never seen God.

- John is saying in 1 John 4:14-21 and verse 2-3, he brings the love of God and love for God’s children in perspective. In 1 John 5:30 he says,

“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. 2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands.”

- You cannot separate loving God and loving His children. They go hand in hand.

Keeping the commands of God

- Jesus summarised all the prophets and the laws, the Torah into two commands. And He said this,

“Love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it, Love your neighbour as you love yourself. All the law and prophets hand on these two commandments.”

- John talking on these commandments he says, they are not burdensome in nature.

- I remember when Jesus was giving that invitation after His disciples had gone to share the gospel and people had been delivered from demonic oppression, He made this declaration,

“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” The demands of Christ are not burdensome." Matthew 11:29-30

- We have been empowered to live in a manner that honours God. And he who has been born from above has the ability to do what God requires of them. We are able to keep His commands because we have been empowered through our new birth. Our new birth gives us the space to overcome not only the new world, but also to keep the commandments of God.

- Those who love God also keep His commands because they have overcome the world, because they believe in Jesus Christ, God from above. - You might be in a situation where you are wondering, how can a good God allow me to be in this space, to go through what you are going through? You are struggling to believe in this God.

You may be wondering if God still loves you because of where you are. You could be wondering, does God still love me? And is it possible that your are struggling to love your brother / sister because of the pain they have caused you. You wonder how you can love. They are born again and when they call on the name of the Lord Jesus you wonder how hypocritical they are.

- This is what Paul says, Romans 8:35-39

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”