Life of Jesus Volume 1: Jesus Tests and Builds Faith Pt 4a by Darrell Ferguson. Edited sermon notes
The heart of unbelief refuses to understand. There are many phony Christians. What is a phony Christian? What is a genuine Christian? If you read the book of John, he puts it very simply. A true Christian is someone who knows the true God and loves him. Jesus replied "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him (Jn 14:23, NIV).”
“The Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God (Jn 16:27).”
The man who loves God is known by God (1 Cor 8:3). A Christian is simply somebody who knows God and loves him.
Paul
puts
it
in a
little
different
terms
and
Jesus
puts
it
in
still
different
terms.
There
are
a
number
of
different
ways
of
looking
at
it.
It doesn’t do any good to know a god who isn’t the true God. If you worship some other god beside the God of the Bible and you love that god--that doesn’t do any good—that isn’t the true God. If I pick up a banana and call it Jesus and I love it--so what? That doesn’t make me saved. It just makes me loony. You need to know the truth about God. You need to know who he is. And if you do know the true God but you do not love him then you just have knowledge. That doesn’t do any good either. You have to know God and love him.
The way Paul said it is this—you have to believe the truth about God and commit—entrust your life to him. That’s what the word faith involves—entrusting your life to him.
That is the same thing John says. John says you have to know God and love him. Paul says you have to believe the truth about God and entrust your life to him. It’s just a different way of looking at the same thing.
Jesus put it another way. He simply said "follow me" (Jn 2:14). There are a lot of ways of looking at it but they all focus on the same reality. A genuine Christian is somebody who has made a full-blown commitment from the heart--a lifetime commitment from the heart. Becoming a Christian is like getting married. It’s a life of commitment. It happens when you come to the point in your life when you realize that you are hopelessly corrupted morally on the inside and that you are guilty before God and in desperate need of forgiveness and so at that point you entrust your life to him. Not only your eternal destiny; You are not trusting in: your own efforts, your own goodness, or your own righteousness for your eternal destiny but you are also entrusting your life to him here and now. You give it to him. You say I’ll follow you. I’ll do what you want me to do. That’s what faith is. When you do that God, comes into your heart. God gives you a new heart and you are born again. If that never happened in your life then you are not born again. Life of Jesus Volume 1: Jesus Tests and Builds Faith Pt 4a by Darrell Ferguson. Edited sermon notes
Life
of
Jesus
Volume
1:
Jesus
Tests
and
Builds
Faith
Pt
4a
(right
click,
'save
target
as'
to
download)
by
Darrell
Ferguson