1st John – Part 3 Lawson and Aaron Perdue

  Praise God, friends. I’m so glad that you are with us. We’re gonna talk about living the overcoming life today. Did you know what? It is not hard to live the Christian life, it’s impossible to live the Christian life without the Christ life. And when we talk about this, it’s really not you, but it’s Jesus living His life through you, so open your heart and receive the good Word today. Blessings. Friends, I’m so glad that you’re with us today. We’re continuing to share on 1 John, our relationship with God. And we’re actually gonna be talking today about how we can walk in victory. But before we teach on how we can walk in victory, I wanna end where we left off yesterday from 1 John 1:8-10, because you’ve got to enter into the victory. So, Aaron, if you wanna read 1 John 1:8-10, and we’ll talk about how does humanity enter into the victory Christ already won.

 

  This is awesome. So here in 1 John 1:8 it says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.”

 

  Yeah.

 

  A lot of people don’t come to Jesus because they just feel like they don’t need a savior, they’re good enough on their own, they have it all figured out.

 

  This is really interesting because my grandmother grew up in a traditional church and she went to the altar when she was a young child seven or eight years old, and received Jesus Christ as her Savior. And yet her brother went to that same church for years and never saw his need for the Savior. And her brother, my great uncle, was like up about 70 years old before he got born again. And what happened was my pastor, he was pastor of the Assembly of God church in Lamar, Colorado for years. His name was Kenny Davis. And after Andrew Wommack left Lamar, Kenny had a revelation of faith in God and some revelation of the grace of God, and really was a good pastor for me and really developed me and helped me. But I was at the church and we were having one of these Pentecostal revivals that went on for a week or two. And one of the nights the evangelist asked me to preach and I preached. And Kenny Davis’ sister was married to my second cousin, my great-uncle’s son. And so when I preached that night, my great uncle’s son, his name was Bill, he came up and received Christ. And my pastor’s sister, they were married, was backslidden, she came up and recommitted her life to Christ. And so my great uncle worked at my second cousin’s store at a western store in Lamar, Colorado, Davis Western Store. And he owned that, but my great uncle would come and work for him and volunteer. And so when my great uncle was in there volunteering, my pastor Kenny Davis started witnessing to him and talking to him about Christ. And he got born again when he’s about 70 years old. And I know there’s a lot of people that even though they’ve grown up in church, they’ve never really received Jesus, they’ve never believed on Jesus. I remember years ago we were having a revival in Kit Carson, and I had this special guest preaching. And when he got done preaching, I got up and gave the altar call. And there was this lady up in her late 80s that had come from the nursing home that night to the service. And she received Jesus. And she said, “Why didn’t anybody ever tell us that all we had to do was receive Jesus?” And she said, I’m concerned that my husband is dead and in hell, even though we went to church all of our lives, and nobody ever told us that you had to receive Jesus. And this is a major plague in churches where they never give altar calls for salvation, never give altar calls for the baptism of Holy Spirit. They think people are just gonna get this by osmosis. And I’m not saying you have to do that every time. We do it in every service. But I’m saying we need to make the focus on, we need to, you know, how do we enter into that victory? Well, number one, we need to admit that we’ve sinned. And number two, we need to look to Jesus for righteousness and keep our focus on Him. The focus of 1 John chapter one, verse eight through 10 is not sin. It says, “If we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” But if you look at it, the focus is really putting your eyes on Jesus. Jesus is the answer for sin. And so many churches just focus on the sin rather than focusing on Jesus. Focusing on sin can’t free you from sin. If focusing on sin would free you from sin, everybody in the Old Testament would be free from sin because by the laws, the knowledge of sin, but nobody was free from sin. The focus needs to be Jesus. So, how do we overcome? Let’s begin to move into 1 John 2 and talk about how we overcome. Aaron read 1 John 2:1.

 

  Yeah, one thing I wanna say too is that God has actually created you to overcome. You’re not supposed to be defeated. Part of the gospel is that we are made victorious in Christ. The Bible says, “That we’re more than conquerors through him who loves us.” So knowing that Jesus loves you, it’s actually gonna make you more than conquer.

 

  Amen.

 

  And the Greek word from more than a conquer, it’s, hypernikao. It’s like hyper is more than, and nikao, Nike. It’s like where we get the word Nike from, victory. We are more than victors.

 

  Amen.

 

  That’s how we are in Christ. We shouldn’t just be defeated, beat up, feeling like we’re just depressed and just trampled on all the time.

 

  Amen.

 

  We’re victorious because Jesus has already defeated the enemy.

 

  Amen, and that’s what we’ll find out. So in 1 John 2:1, it says, “My little children, these things right out to you that you sin not, but if any man’s sin, we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ, the righteous one.” It’s not so much what we know, it’s who we know.

 

  I love that term advocate.

 

  Right.

 

  You think like it’s appointed for every man to die. And then the judgment, God is the Judge of all judges, but we have an advocate as believers. Man, what an awesome advocate to have.

 

  Amen.

 

  People spend a lot of money on good lawyers, but we have the greatest advocate in the entire universe in the courtroom of heaven, God’s only beloved Son who died for us. Man, how amazing is that? That Jesus is our personal advocate.

 

  Amen, so we overcome through our relationship with Jesus, if you could see heaven’s court and God the Father is sitting on the judgment seat and throne, and the devil over here is the-

 

  And he’s the plaintiff.

 

  Plaintiff.

 

  And he’s the accuser.

 

  He’s like, Lawson Perdue cussed and Lawson was all these things. I mean, he could just name all the bad things that I’ve done in my life. And then, you know what? Jesus, I’m sitting here, and I don’t say a word, but Jesus is my defending attorney. And Jesus stands up and the Father says, “What do you have to answer?” And Jesus said, “My blood paid the price, my blood paid the price, my blood paid the price.” Praise God.

 

  That’s what it says here in verse two. That he himself is the propitiation for our sins. He’s the payment for our sins.

 

  Yeah, He’s the atoning sacrifice. The covering, that also means the covering. Thank God it’s been covered, it’s been taken care of. Jesus paid a debt He did not owe, we owed a debt we could not pay. And so the number one way that we overcome sin and Satan is through Jesus, through our relationship with Jesus. Peter went to Princeton University, your younger brother, and Peter said, it’s not so much what he learned, he said he learned that it’s who you know, and it’s very important the relationships that you build. And Peter’s been very, very successful at the corporate level in business. He’s the chief operating officer of a major world corporation, and he’s just 33 years old or something like that. Miracle. Praise God.

 

  So verse two, “He himself is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. Now by this, we know that we know Him if we keep His commandments.”

 

  Amen, so let’s stop right here. So number one, we overcome through our relationship with Jesus, He is our advocate. Number two, we overcome through the payment that He made. Jesus said three beautiful words on the cross. He said, “It is finished.” And Jesus finished that work. He completed it. He totally paid the sin debt. And you need to believe that so you can receive it.

 

  Yeah, and if something is paid in full, you don’t keep trying to make payments or you don’t keep feeling indebted to something,

 

  Right, you don’t go keep digging it up. God got over your sin on the cross, and you need to get over it. God let it go, you need to let it go.

 

  Yeah, maybe you’re making payments at one time on your house or on a vehicle. When you get that final notice, this is paid in full. You don’t keep trying to make payments on it. Religion keeps you trying to make payments. And if you try to add anything to the payment of Jesus, it’s actually lunacy.

 

  Futile. It’s like saying Jesus wasn’t enough. Paul asked this question in Galatians 3:2. He said, how did you come into a relationship with God by your works, or by the hearing of faith by believing Jesus. And the answer is by the hearing of faith, by believing Jesus. Then he asks another question in verse five. He says, he then, who ministers to you and works miracles by the Spirit, how does he do it? Does he do it by his works or by faith in Jesus? And the answer is faith in Jesus. And he basically goes on and tells us everything that we receive from God, salvation, justification, righteousness, the blessing of God, our inheritance, being a child of God, all that is simply by faith in the grace of Jesus. So when you put faith in the grace of Jesus, man, it’ll change your life. And you overcome through a relationship with Jesus, you overcome through the payment He made. The third thing is we overcome by Jesus living his life through us. Aaron read verse three through verse seven of 1 John 2.

 

  So this says, “Now by this, that we know him if we keep his commandments. He who says, I know him and does not keep his commandments, is a liar. And the truth is not in him.” I really love that because some people say they know Jesus, but they just don’t act like it at all.

 

  Right.

 

  And man, if you really have a relationship with Jesus, it’s gonna affect how you act.

 

  Amen.

 

  If I told my wife I loved her, but just acted-

 

  Lived like the devil.

 

  Well, terrible to her. Well, what I’m saying isn’t true, I’d be a liar.

 

  And that’s what he’s saying.

 

  Yeah. Verse five, “Whoever keeps his word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this, we know that we are in him. He who says he abides in him ought himself also to walk just as he walked. Brethren, I write no new commandment to you, but an old commandment, which you have heard from the beginning. The old commandment is the word, which you heard from the beginning.”

 

  So comment just for real briefly on verse six.

 

  Yeah, verse six. Really, when you believe on Jesus, you’re gonna abide in Him. There’s gonna be an abiding, a living, a dwelling, a relationship, an ongoing relationship with Him. And that’s going to, you know how He is, it’s gonna affect how you are.

 

  Amen, John goes on to say, “This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith,” in 1 John 4. And when you put faith in Jesus, you are made an overcomer by the nature of Christ in you. Paul says, that’s the mystery that I’m preaching from all ages and generations. And that’s what gives you the victory. We’re gonna come back and talk more about how we live this overcoming life. But if you need prayer, feel free, we’re gonna come back just in a few seconds. Feel free to call in during the break. Thank you so much, and stay tuned. We’ll be right back. Friends, we’ve been sharing from my Bible school class, 1 John, our relationship with God. And these truths have revolutionized my life. We are making the teachings of this available live from church, and you can receive them downloadable free in audio form and my syllabus, free online. Blessings. If you’re really operating in faith, two things are gonna be happening. Number one, you’re gonna get joyful. And number two, you’re gonna get thankful. And you’re gonna start seeing what you have instead of what you don’t have. You’re gonna quit complaining. You’re gonna quit whining. You’re gonna quit acting like a victim. As you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted, built up, established in the faith as you’ve been taught, abounding there in with Thanksgiving. Friends, I’m so glad that you stayed with us. We’ve been talking about how we can live the overcoming life and how we can walk in the victory that Jesus already won. Jesus conquered the devil in His death and resurrection, but you have to learn what the Word of God says and begin to let that have a working relationship with it so that you can allow Jesus to live that victorious life through you. So the first thing we talked about is you have to admit from 1 John chapter one, verse eight through verse 10, that you’re a sinner. But the focus is not the sin. The focus is believing on Jesus. And if you never admit that you’re a sinner, you don’t admit your need for God, you’ll never believe on Jesus. But then we talked about in 1 John 2:1, John says this, “My little children, these things I write to you, if that you sin not.” We’re not making excuses for sin. We’re not saying you should still live in sin. If you understand who Jesus is, and if you understand the true gospel, you’re gonna start walking in victory over it. And he says, “If any man’s sin, we have a advocate.” Jesus is our advocate. Jesus is our great high priest. Jesus is the one who already shed His blood and already made an offering for us. And when you really understand the gospel, if you sin, what you’re gonna do is run to Jesus. The problem with preaching sin and making sin big and not really preaching Jesus is when people sin, they’ll run from Jesus instead of running to Jesus. So it’s number one, through our relationship with Jesus. Number two, it’s through the payment that He made. He says in verse two, “He is the propitiation, he is the payment, he is the covering for our sins. Not only for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.” The sins of the whole world have already been paid for. And you know what? You don’t have to go pay for ’em again. You just need to believe what Jesus did satisfied the debt, that Jesus’ blood paid it all. But then we talked about in verse three through verse seven, through allowing Jesus to live His life through us. And the way that we keep His Word, the way that the truth works, is through Jesus living His life through us. We can’t live out the gospel without the life of Christ. It takes the life of Christ to live. You need Christ’s life to live the Christ’s life. And he says, “He who says he abides in him, ought himself ought to walk even as he walked,” in 1 John 2:6. Man, if you’re saying that you have a relationship with God, if you’re saying that you’re abiding in Jesus, you ought to start living different. And if you don’t live different, we’ll question that, we’ll wonder about it. So if you haven’t started living different either one of two things happen. Either, number one, you’ve not been born again. Billy Graham said that he believed that over half the people who said that they were Christians had never truly been born again. Or number two, you haven’t renewed your mind and been transformed by the renewing of your mind. And there are a lot of Christians that are in that state. They’re saved, but they’re very, very stuck because don’t understand.

 

  John here throughout 1 John talks about that spirit of antichrist and it’s a deceiving spirit. And even some believers deal with deception that’s from the world.

 

  Yeah.

 

  But we have a antidote against that deceiving spirit of air that’s in the world today. And man, I think every born again believer needs to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I remember I had a good friend in college who loved God, who was a believer, but she thought kind of wrong on a lot of things. But I actually led her to receive the Bachelor of the Holy Spirit. It’s just like a light bulb went off and she saw a lot of these things that she thought were okay in the world, were were actually wrong. And she shouldn’t be supporting those things like all types of things.

 

  Right.

 

  But just as soon as she received the Holy Spirit, it’s like just a light bulb went off.

 

  Amen, that’s what happened to me, Aaron, when I got baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues, I’d been saved for six years. I was only 14. But it’s like immediately the word came alive to me. Immediately I began to understand who I was in Christ. Immediately I was saved in a church that didn’t even preach water baptism. But when I was baptized the Holy Spirit, immediately I saw in the scripture, when people got saved in the Book of Acts, they got water baptized. So then we were going to a different church that I got saved in. It was actually a church my grandparents had helped start years before. And I went to the pastor and I asked if I could get water baptized, because God made the Word a reality. This is one of the first things that the baptism of the Holy Spirit will do for you. And some of you that are watching today have never been baptized the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues. And you ought to call in and let our prayer ministers pray for you. We get lots of people in our services at church, have lots of people who watch us on broadcast, call in and receive this wonderful gift for believers, the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, “When he, the Holy Spirit comes, He’s gonna take the things that I’ve said to you, and He’s gonna make them real.” That’s like in John 14:26. “He makes Jesus real to you,” John 15:26. He convicts the world of sin, of righteousness, of judgment, the things we’re teaching right now. And then he teaches us about God’s plan for us. But as we read this when I was thinking He that says he abides on him ought to walk even as Jesus walked. I was thinking of this scripture that Paul shared in 2 Timothy 3:10. He said, “You have fully known my doctrine, my manner of life, my purpose, my faith, my long suffering, my charity and my patience.” Your doctrine ought to affect your manner of life. And if your doctrine doesn’t affect your manner of life, maybe you have the wrong doctrine. Praise God. But when I got a revelation of grace, Aaron, it transformed my life. And I began to live better accidentally than I did on purpose before. And we’ve got some great teaching on our website. I actually got a revelation of grace when Andrew Wommack came to our church in Kit Carson, where I’d been pastoring for six years at that time. In 1994, Andrew came and I got a revelation of grace and it transformed my life. So, we got four teachings with Andrew Wommack in audio and video. They’re downloadable, they’re on our website, and they’re absolutely free of charge. You can get ’em. It’s great teaching.

 

  And I wanna say, when you know that your heavenly Father really loves you, when you have a strong relationship with your Heavenly Father, you’re gonna want to be like your heavenly Father.

 

  Amen.

 

  I have a close relationship with my two children. I have a 10-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter. And because we’re so close, they want to be like me.

 

  Yeah.

 

  I like to wear cowboy boots. So my little three-year-old girl, she wants to wear cowboy boots. And she wants to wear cowboy boots, brown boots just like her dad at. When she comes to church, she sticks out her foot to everyone and says, “Look at my boots.”

 

  Yeah.

 

  “Look at my boots.” Because she knows I love her, she wants to be like me. When you really know that God loves you, what He’s done for you through Jesus, you’re not gonna want to be like the other Father, the father the devil. You’re gonna want to be like your heavenly Father.

 

  Amen, praise God. Again, it’s the life of Jesus. It’s Jesus living through you. We can’t live the Christian life without the Christ life. But the last thing that I have, how do we overcome? Number one, our relationship with Jesus, the payment He made, Jesus living through us. But here in verse eight through verse 11, it’s the nature of God reflected through me. We have God’s nature in us. And so he says this 1 John 2:8, “Again, a new commandment I write to you which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passed and the true light now shines. He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in darkness even till now.” Man, if you hate people, do you know the Bible says “That love is the bond of perfection or maturity,” in Colossians 3:14. And God lives in you and He is perfect love. And if you hate people, you gotta fix something. Something’s broken.

 

  Well, just let God work in you and through you. I know I’ve met people who’ve dealt with a lot of anger, PTSD, just hatred towards people, but as they’ve just gotten closer and closer to Christ, they’ve actually supernaturally recovered from a lot of stuff, a lot of the anger, a lot of that just snapping at people, just PTSD even. I’ve seen people supernaturally healed of that from the inside out. And it’s from your relationship with Jesus.

 

  Aaron, we have a person, and we actually have this book available. I don’t think it’s on our website at this time, but if you want to get it, you can call in and request it if you’re in the United States. We don’t mail outside the United States because of difficulty with that. But his name is Mike Peterson. And Mike went to Vietnam and stepped on a landmine, lost his legs and his eyesight. But Mike and his wife Mary, helped us start this church. And he got born again and baptized the Holy Spirit after he came back. And it helped him overcome PTSD. And he has a book that he’s written on overcoming PTSD. And if you’d like to get that book, you could call in and you just request it from our secretaries and we’ll probably mail it to you for $20 or something. And that’ll cover the shipping and the price of the book. So, but anyway, it’s talking about this is the nature of God, and you can’t say that you’re in the light and hate your brother. I have a person in my family and they told another person in my, “I hate Lawson, I hate him. I’d hate him if he did this. I’d hate him if he did that.” There’s no cure for that. I can’t cure that. I hate him no matter. The Bible says in the next chapter here in 1 John 3, “If you hate your brother, you’re a murderer.” So we gotta, as believers, let the love of God rule us. And let the love is the nature of God. The fruit of the Spirit is love. All of the other nine fruit of the Spirit flow forth from love. And if you don’t have the love of God working, man, you need to get saved, or you need to drastically renew your mind again. And so he says, verse 10 and verse 11, “He that loves his brother abides in the light. There is no occasion of stumbling in him.” The Bible says in Romans 13 that love is the fulfilling of the law. And he says, “But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness and does not know where he goes because darkness has blinded his eyes.” So it’s just like you’re saying, Aaron, you gotta get a revelation of the love of God. And if you get a revelation of the love of God and how much God loves you, then you can’t help but start loving your brother.

 

  And it’s actually gonna help you see more clearly. The Bible talks about having eyes to see, having ears to hear, having a heart to understand. When you know that God really loves you, it’s actually gonna give you better spiritual eyesight.

 

  Amen, praise God. And so I wanna encourage you again, if you need prayer, you know the Bible says this in Romans 5:5: “The love of God is shed abroad in our heart by the Holy Ghost that’s given to us.” And so if you need prayer to receive Jesus, to receive the Holy Spirit. If you need prayer, and just say, Hey, I need some help in relationships, or you need prayer for divine healing, I’ll tell you one thing that’ll stop up. Divine healing and the flow of God in your life is envy, strife, bitterness, unforgiveness. Don’t let those things rule. But if you need prayer for that, or if you wanna partner with us and help us share this message around the world, give us a call today. We’d love to hear from you. And I have trained prayer ministers that are right here, ready to receive your call. God bless you. We appreciate you and check out our website blessings. I’ll be back right after.

 

  When you know Jesus and experience His incredible love for you, you’ll know who you truly are. You’ll understand the anointing that’s in you, and you’ll realize that you’re part of God’s great family. You can come home to Him today through the person of Jesus. We’d like to bless you with a digital copy of 1 John, a relationship with God, a $21 value free of charge. Download your copy today at CharisChristianCenter.com.

 

  Friends, I want to thank you for being with us today. It’s our pleasure to share with you the Word of God. We believe it changes lives. And because of that, we’re broadcasting all around the world. It costs me right now around $2 million a year just for my staff and paying for our broadcast costs. But if you wanna become a partner and help us share the message all around the world, we would love to hear from you today. Friend, I want to invite you to pray with me right now. Heavenly Father, I believe that Jesus Christ is your son. I believe that He died on the cross for my sins, and I believe that you raised Him from the dead and made Him Lord. And right now I surrender to your Lordship. In Jesus’ name, amen.

 

  Thanks for watching, “Grace for today.” This broadcast has been made possible by our faithful partners. If you would like to become a partner, need prayer or have a question, please call us at 719-418-4000. Or to partner online, go to CharisChristianCenter.com/Give. You can write us at P.O. Box 63733, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80962. See you next time on, “Grace for today.”