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Chapel Home Pastors Reverend KyungMo Koo Audio Sermons
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The Testimony of God1 John 5:6-12
A police officer pulled over a driver and informed him that he was speeding. Just then, his wife, who was seated next to him, said, “I told you; you have to drive slowly until you get a license!” The policeman, surprised, exclaimed, “Were you driving without a license?” His daughter trying to defend her father, “Officer, please consider my dad. He gets excited when he’s drunk.” The policeman stunned, stammered, “You were driving without a license while intoxicated?” His son in the back seat, shouted out, “I knew we wouldn’t get far in this stolen car!” The father had three unwanted witnesses. Today’s Scripture is the story of a witness—not a human witness, but God himself. According to Jewish law, the testimony of one person is not a valid witness. Truth or validity has to be established by two or three witnesses. “A single witness shall not prevail against a man for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offence that he has committed; only on the evidence of two witnesses, shall a charge be sustained” (Deu. 17:6). A triple human witness is enough to establish any fact. Since people believe human testimony when validated by two or three witnesses, John explained that surely they could believe the testimony that comes from God. John said that if they believe testimony from people, then they can surely rely on the threefold witness of God. The three witnesses, the Spirit, the water and the blood, are united because God himself is behind them. All three form a single “testimony from God” that Jesus is the Christ. Those who do not believe… the testimony that God has given concerning his Son should realize that by rejecting what God has so plainly said, they are calling God a liar. John has a shocking assessment of those who refuse to believe the testimony of God: “You are, in essence, calling God a liar.” John was blasting the false teachers who claimed to know God but did not believe what God himself had said concerning his Son. This was logically impossible and amounted to calling God a liar. This is the testimony that the Christians held on to as the truth: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. The divine, eternal life is in Christ, who makes it available to all who believe in him. That Jesus is indeed God’s Son has been established by testimony from God himself. Believers have eternal life in relationship to and in union with Jesus Christ, who is himself “life”, and they have eternal life because of him. Human beings do not have life in themselves; they receive life from God. God has life in himself and is the source of his very own life. God gave his Son the same capacity—to have life in himself. No created being shares this uniquely divine characteristic. Through faith, believers have Christ within, so whoever has God’s Son has life — eternal life — now. I love war movies. Especially I love to see Steven Spielberg’s movie. “Saving Private Ryan”, which tells the story of an Army captain named John Miller, played by Tom Hanks, who in the aftermath of the World War II D-day invasion at Normandy beach is ordered to find a solitary private among thousands of displaced soldiers. He must return Private James F. Ryan home to his mother, whose other three sons have just been killed in action. Captain Miller and the small group of men assigned to him successfully locate Ryan, but then are forced to defend a strategic bridge against enemy tanks and troops. Captain Miller is fatally wounded. In his dying moments he reaches out to Private Ryan, and with great emotion says, “Earn this! Earn this!” Many years later as an old man, James Ryan stands in a veteran’s cemetery tearfully looking at the tombstone of the man, Captain Miller, who saved his life. He wonders aloud if he has indeed earned the great gift he received. Two thousand years ago Jesus Christ died on the Cross that we might live forever. In today’s scripture, unlike “Saving Private Ryan”, John explained that people gain eternal life through a relationship with the person of Jesus Christ —it is not a payment that anyone is able to pay or a prize that can be won. Because Christians possess eternal life through a relationship, God made that relationship available by sending his Son, Jesus Christ, to earth in human form. Whoever believes in God’s Son has eternal life. There is no obligation incurred to get it and there is no option to pay something to earn it. The eternal testimony of God is greater than any human testimony to the Son of God. That is, God’s own testimony is found in the giving of eternal life to believers, and eternal life that is found in God’s only Son, Jesus Christ. Eternal life comes through Jesus Christ and in no other way. Why should that be? The Son alone fully knows the Father and, therefore, only he can fully reveal to us what God is like. As John had it in his gospel: “No one has ever seen God; It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known”(John 1:18). And Jesus Christ alone can bring us to God. It is in him that there is open to us the new and living way into the presence of God. We may make a simple analogy. If we wish to meet someone whom we do not know and who moves in a completely different circle from our own, we can achieve that meeting only by finding someone who knows him and is willing to introduce us to him. That is what Jesus does for us in regard to God. Eternal life is the life of God and we can find that life only through Jesus Christ. There was a soldier in the Union army, a young man who had lost his older brother and his father in the war. He went to Washington, D.C., to see President Lincoln to ask for an exemption from military service so he could go back and help his sister and mother with the spring planting on the farm. When he went to the White House, he was told, “You can’t see the president! Don’t you know there is a war on? The president’s a very busy man. Now go away, son!” So he left there and was sitting on a little park bench not far from the White House. A little boy came up to him and said, “Soldier, you look unhappy. What‘s wrong? The soldier began to spill his heart out to this young boy about his situation. The little boy took the soldier by the hand and led him around to the back of the White House. They went through the back door, past the guard, past all the generals and the high-ranking government officials until they got to the president’s office itself. The little boy didn’t even knock on the door but just opened it and walked in. There was President Lincoln with his secretary of state, looking over battle plans on the desk. President Lincoln looked up and said, “What can I do for you, Todd?” The little boy is the son of President of Lincoln. And Todd said, “Daddy, this soldier needs to talk to you.” And right then and there the soldier had a chance to make his case to President Lincoln, and he was released from military service due the hardship he was under. Such is the case with our Lord, Jesus Christ. We have access to the Father through the Son. It is the Son who brings us to eternal life. Believe the testimony of God! God’s promise and testimony is that he has given us eternal life through his Son, Jesus Christ. We have special access to God, direct access through Jesus Christ. We don’t have to earn it, but we must take advantage of it, use the opportunity, appreciate the gracious offer; that wonderful gift called salvation. |
Audio
Link: The Testimony of God