As I’m sure you know, we are very blessed with a wealth of very qualified and competent biblical teachers and so it is and I get to benefit from that often with the leadership in our church that we have that are a treasury of encouragement and wisdom and they’re the elders of our church are so helpful to me and so it’s my privilege tonight to invite one of our elders Dr. Ben Mulparthi to come and share with us from God’s Word.

Thank you, Pastor. It’s definitely a privilege to be with you this evening. And for our scripture reading, we will look at the epistle of 1 John chapter 5. If you would please turn your Bibles with me to 1 John chapter 5. The title of our sermon this evening is The Overcomer’s Secret. With that in mind, let’s read the first five verses of the letter that John is writing to the churches in Ephesus.

First John, chapter five, starting from verse one. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey His commandments. For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

Let’s pray. Father, we come to you this evening with a humble heart, asking you that to teach us what we don’t know and to make us who we are not, that you would hide me behind your cross, that you would lead us and guide us. In Jesus’ name, amen.

John is writing to a group of churches in ancient Ephesus, and this is a collection of home churches that came together, and John was in their midst, teaching and preaching, encouraging, building this network of churches. Now he’s addressing a crisis that happens to be plaguing some of these churches. As part of his address to resolve this problem, he writes this particular letter.

I’ve grown in a home church myself. I’ve experienced a little bit of what it is to be part of a home church. My parents decided when we were probably in our elementary school that they would start a home church in our neighborhood. So every Sunday we would get up, me and my younger brother, and we would take all our furniture and we would move it to the backyard. Then we would empty our one-bedroom house. So people would come, they would sit in the living room, then the overflow would come into the bedroom. And then if it is still not enough, then some of them would start coming into the kitchen, right? And by the time the service was over, you know, we would barely have any room left for people who are trying to worship.

Things get pretty complicated in these small home churches. Your business is everybody’s business, and everybody else’s business is your business, right? So they’re very tight-knit, almost like one big family. They celebrate life together, they rejoice together, they mourn together. And in that context, there is a problem that is brewing in Ephesus. Some folks in these churches, they decided to turn their back on God. In fact, they just left. They decided to walk out.

Look at 1 John 2, verse 18. Actually, verse 19. This defines what the problem is. It says, they went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that it might become plain that they are, they all are not of us. So they just deserted. Now John has a problem. What is he going to do about this? Is he going to just be quiet and let this problem kind of brew into a major issue so that what they have worked so hard to build will just go by the wayside, or is he going to address this issue?

So John starts to write this letter. And what he’s about to do is to separate the wheat from the chaff. He’s going to make a distinction between those who are of authentic faith and those who are not. Those who are serious about walking in the light, and those who’ve been lurking in the shadows, pretending to be those that belong to the light. So he has a tall order. And in the process, he’s writing to them about what it means to be a follower of Christ. Because if the foundations are not strong, the psalmist says, what will the righteous do? So before it comes to that, John gives us a glimpse of what’s happening here. It is a reminder for those who are still in the church that they would stay true to the words of Jesus.

So he explores these concepts about who is God, what does it mean to be in his presence and to have a relationship with him, and how does he reveal himself to us? And he uses this concept of light. And he encourages people to understand what it means to walk in the light. And those who are able to walk in the light, he explains to them that they are the ones who will experience the love of the one who is their light. In him was life, and that life became light to men, to those who are walking in darkness. So you see this juxtaposition of ideas between light and love.

So John is looking at this particular issue and he’s saying, when God’s light is shining through the lives of his children, the darkness of this world is dispelled. The fraud that is practiced in the congregation is going to be addressed. Because when there is light, there is no room for darkness. God is victorious over evil by shining his light. And through us, he gives us victory. And his victory is our victory, because when he shines through us, you know what happens? He makes righteousness possible. He makes right living possible. That is what John is explaining to his readers.

And he says, that is what eternal life is all about. Because for most Christians, eternal life simply means a ticket to go to heaven. This is what people are thinking. It says, Jesus is coming back. We get to go to heaven. And that is eternal life. All our problems solved. Doesn’t matter how you live your life right here. And John is saying that is so far from the truth. If that is all that motivates you to get up in the morning and think that you are a Christ follower, you’re missing out on the entire concept of abundant life, what it is. So coming back to the passage that we have, he starts with the foundations of what does it mean to be regenerated. What does it mean to be born of God? This morning, we started looking at the concept of the union of God.

Pastor Ryan was laboring about who are the sheep and who are not the sheep. Those who are sheep, are the ones who are born because salvation is of the Lord from the beginning till the end. Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Because the folks who walked out of the church, they did not want to believe that Jesus is the Lord. They did not want to believe that Jesus is the Messiah. They tried to be part of this group. They thought all we have to do is just come, you know, hang with these guys, you know, do some kumbaya. And all of a sudden, you know, we can start experiencing certain things in life that those guys are experiencing. And then when things did not start to work out the way they wanted to, they said, okay, this is enough. It’s been good knowing you guys. We are out.

So now he has to laborer, what does it mean to be born of God? And he’s saying, Born of God implies that it is only by the grace of God that we can put our trust in Him. John Calvin, you cannot have faith unless you’re born of God. What is he trying to say? He’s trying to bring out the Reformed truth that Even for you to be able to put your trust in the one who is our Savior, it has to be the work of God to kind of change your disposition to be able to put your trust in Him. Regeneration always precedes what we are able to trust. And that’s what Nicodemus was struggling with. How do you expect me to be What? I am not. I’ve been trained from my childhood to do certain things. I’ve been told to keep the commandment. That I can do. I know. But this whole born again thing is kind of a foreign concept for me. And John is saying, oh no. You can’t even attempt to put your trust in God, unless you’re born of God. And John explains that a little further by appealing to what he wrote in the Gospel of John.

In John chapter one, verse 13 says, we are not born. Who are those who are born of God? They’re not born of blood. They’re not born of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of the man, but of God. He’s saying it’s not a biological process that you can bring into being. It’s not an intellectual thing that you can somehow convince your mind to actually make a choice. Or is it an emotional thing that you can stir up? And he said, oh no, this is from above. He is the one who is going to be able to bring about the change in your life. That all of a sudden now, you know what happens? You start showing interest in the things of God. You will be able to understand the mind of God. And you will start expressing a desire to know who that God is so that you actually want to be in that light.

In fact, it becomes such an obsession for you, it is irresistible. Nobody can stop you from being there. What a blessing it is for those who are called according to his purpose to be predestined into the image of his son, because we Those who have the experience of enjoying an authentic faith are those who are born of God. So he needs to lay the groundwork to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Now that he’s laying a foundation, he says, this is where you go next. People who are born of God, you know what they do? They love God. They will have this desire to love him who loved them first.

Because Romans chapter five, verse five, it says, you know what? God has poured his love in our hearts, our hearts which were hostile to him at one point. When he changes our disposition towards him and he makes us to be born of God, We start to love him back. We didn’t know how to do that before. And not only that, he says, you get to start to love him. And that overflows into a community of prayerful love, where you can express that love towards one another. You start to love your brethren. And what comes out of that is a joy that allows you to keep his commandment. If you love me, keep my commandments. They become kind of inseparable where it doesn’t need that extra effort when I need to put myself back in that seat. So you know what? Today I got to kind of make myself a reminder that I should keep his commandments. In fact, if you don’t keep his commandments, you feel like something is out of sync.

We will look at a New Testament concept of what it means to be an overcomer, and then we will reflect in the Old Testament and see how God was bringing that same concept together in the Old Covenant. There is a balance here, because it says in verse three, for this is the love of God that we keep his commandments, and then he says, and his commandments are not burdensome. How many of you felt that? That keeping his commandments are not burdensome? Or does it become a burden? Do you feel like you’re walking around with that weight on your shoulders and you say, oh man, this Christian life is so hard. I wish somebody else can do it for me. I can go to church on Sunday. Maybe once in a while on Sunday evenings. But I’d say, let me just go do my thing. Let me have fun. Because all those do’s and don’ts, they don’t kind of appeal to me.

If that happens to be our experience in life, especially for those who are exposed to the culture of today’s world, that means we are missing something. We are missing something very crucial that John doesn’t want us to miss. And he wants us to understand what that means. That’s why he’s reminding his readers, for those who have left, they left because you know what happened? It became a burden. for them to continue in the faith, because that was not faith at all. But for those of you who are born of God, his commands are not burdensome at all. And he tells them why. He tells them why.

Now here we have the danger between two different aspects that are in tension with one another. There is a camp that wants to say, you know what? Tell me what to do. I’ll do it. Even if it means I got to kill everybody on the way to get there, I will just get it done. I don’t care how. And the others, they’ll say, oh, no, no, no, no, no. It’s all about love. We can do anything under the sun as long as you do it in the name of love, right? There is a man who’s been trying to struggle with this balance his entire life. His name is Sinclair Ferguson. His entire preaching life has been to reconcile between legalism and anti-nominism, right? Anti-nominism is saying, you know what? I’m anti-commandment. I don’t want to follow it. I just want to go with the flow and do what I feel like doing as long as it’s done in the name of love. John is saying, you can’t do that. Loving is having obedience to the commandment. And having obedience to the commandment is the expression of your love to the one who loved you first.

So he’s talking about what it means to be born of God, and he’s saying the expression of that new birth comes out in loving God, loving the brethren, and keeping his commands. And that, he says, is eternal life. If it becomes a burden, you’re missing something here. And then he says how, how is very important. How you can actually accomplish to be able to in that joyful state of doing what he wants you to do and be in that loving relationship. You get to walk in the light. And when you’re walking in the light, you’re able to experience his love. And that love will allow you to reciprocate. And you get to love him. You get to love the brethren. And you get to keep his commandments.

And this is what he says in verse four. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world. And he’s not saying he is the one who is victorious. He’s saying this is the victory. He’s not saying the believer. is the one who is the victorious one here. Victory belongs to Him, the King of kings and the Lord of lords. And guess what? The real victory that we get to experience is our ability to trust in Him, our faith, to give us the victory. If I get up in the morning and I say to myself, today I’m going to do this on my own, even before I step out the door, I’m going to fall flat on my face. Because your heart and my heart is so deceitful, even we don’t know how messed up we are. But on the other hand, if we say, you know what, I will trust him. to be able to do what he desires of me to be able to do. In other words, I’m saying I am depending on his grace for me to be able to walk in the light so that I can have this relationship with him who is light.

This morning we read this passage where he said, you know what, he is unapproachable light. To be able to be in the presence of that light, it has to be from Him. We need to be born of Him, and we need to be trusting Him to be able to be victorious. It’s completely of Him. Can you imagine how relieved you will be when that burden is lifted? It’s about Him that I place my trust in. So it’s not just my deliverance is from Him, even my righteous living is from Him.

We’ve been spending some time in the book of Isaiah on Wednesdays. And for those of you who’ve been on this journey with me for the last few months, we’ve been exploring what the prophet had to say to the people who were his contemporaries 800 years before Christ. Guess what? Isaiah is honing on. Isaiah is coming back to the same thing that we are looking at in the epistle that John is writing to the New Testament churches in Ephesus. Isaiah is saying, trusting God as a way of life will lead you to a place where right living is made possible by Him who is trustworthy. Because the people of Israel, they ended up in a bad place because they chose not to trust their God. And God had to take them through a series of lessons to be able to bring them to a place where they said, you know what, he will keep the minds of those who will trust him in perfect peace. And he is the one who will teach us that trusting Him is the requirement for us to be able to have that relationship with Him. Let me pivot a little bit to the Old Testament concept of what the overcomers look like.

This is what Isaiah is saying, starting from chapter six. He’s saying, separate, separate, separate, the Lord God Almighty is the Holy One. The Holy One of Israel lives in unapproachable light, and for us as human beings to be able to have a fellowship, a relationship with him, it is only based on the terms that he defines. If you want to have a relationship with the righteous God, he’s saying righteous living is required of us. But we as human beings, very quickly we will come to the conclusion that we cannot accomplish that on our own.

We can try, by the way. People have been trying for thousands of years. We can try. Sometimes we feel like we’re getting close. Just when you feel like that, you know you’re 10 steps back. Without grace, you know what happens? That becomes a repeated failure. So what does Isaiah say? Isaiah says, just as the Judeans of the Old Testament were incapable of coming to a place where they could accomplish their deliverance on their own, we in the new covenant cannot pull ourselves by our bootstraps and think that we can accomplish this on our own. To come into a place where we can have righteous living.

There are all the major religions of this world, they aspire to come to that place, by the way. All the philosophers wanted to solve that problem. Until Jesus. They wanted to have a good life. And they were trying to figure out the secret sauce for that. Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, you know, you name it. Say, what can I do to have that good life? And Jesus comes and he says, I have come to give you that life. John chapter 10, verse 10 says, in fact, that life is gonna be so good, it will be an abundant life. You get to enjoy the quality of that life and you will be able to have that right relationship with me. When you get to experience that, guess what? The impossible becomes possible.

All this time, outside of grace, I’ve been trying. I’ve been trying to do this. I’ve been trying to do that. All my works will show up as filthy rags in the presence of the one who is holy, holy, holy. And he’s saying, unless you’re born of God, unless it’s my work that is accomplished in your life, you can try all you want. So Isaiah is talking to his contemporaries, and this is what he’s saying. God alone had to deliver his people from captivity, and he is the one who alone can empower them to fulfill his commands. Have you ever thought about Jeremiah 31, 31? He said, I’ll make a new covenant with you. I’ll transform your heart. What has been impossible for you one day will become possible because what I can accomplish in your lives. He’s asking us to trust him. He’s asking us to put our trust in him.

Isn’t that what Paul is telling the believers in Rome? He said, these are the three things that I want you to place your trust in. The deity of Christ, the death of Christ, and the resurrection of Christ. That will bring you to a place where you’re born of God. If you confess with your mouth, about the deity of Lord, that He is Lord, that He is the Son of God, and then you believe in your heart His death and His resurrection. Basics of what God is telling us about what it means to be born of God. So this is what Isaiah is saying. Righteousness is only possible with the infusion of God’s spirit in you. Outside of me, you cannot do anything. Think about this for a second. He is so loving that he not only wants to deliver us from our sins, but he wants to give us an abundant life where we can enjoy righteous living that is solely based on our faith in him. And that is the secret of the overcomer’s life.

So the good life that people have been looking since the beginning of creation, the one who came to die for us on the cross, he is telling us, oh no, it is so possible. With you, it is impossible, but with me, I will make that a possibility, and not only that I will make that a possibility, I will make that an everlasting joy for you. Isaiah concludes his work by announcing what the reality of the kingdom life will look like for those who are born of God. Starting from 60, Isaiah chapter 60, he will start explaining to his readers, what does that look like? What is this abundant life going to look like?

He’s talking about some realities that will come into fruition. Zion will be the place that is going to be surrounded with this light, the light that John is talking about, in which he wants us to walk in. And he says, Zion will be the lamp in the day where the light is going to shine out of. And all the nations of the world will be able to see that light. And in fact, that light is going to be so bright They will come from the ends of the earth streaming into the city of God to be able to worship Him and to adore Him by night and by day. People are streaming in to be in the presence of that light. And he says, a witness has gone out to all the world from Jerusalem, and there is a clarion call to rise because of the light has come. There is a call that is going to be issued to the entire planet. It’s saying, rise because there is a light shining out of Zion. And you can bask in the beauty of that light by walking in his light. And the nations shall come to your light and the kings to the brightness of your rising, Isaiah 60, verse 3. Your people shall be righteous.

He’s talking about Abraham’s descendants now, right? So far they haven’t been able to accomplish this feat. But Isaiah is prophesying a future promise and he’s saying there is a time coming, these folks are going to be righteous. That means they will be able to have a right living that becomes a way of life for them. And you know what happens when that happens? They shall possess the land forever, all the promises that God has made to Abraham. There is a day coming when that will be completely fulfilled. the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, and he says, in the end, all of this is going to bring me glory, that I, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, may be glorified. He’s going to accomplish his purpose.

After Isaiah wrote these words, a few hundred years later, a Jewish rabbi walks into a synagogue in Nazareth. And he opens a scroll, and this is what he reads. Luke 4, starting from verse 18. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and the recovering of the sight to the blind and to set at liberty those who are oppressed and to proclaim the ear of the Lord’s favor. Let me read that one more time so you’ll sink in. The spirit of the Lord is upon me. because he has anointed me to proclaim the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of the sight to the blind and to set at liberty those who are oppressed and to proclaim the ear of the Lord’s favor. It’s all about grace.

He has come to proclaim unmerited favor to those who are weary and burdened to be able to lift the weight of the commandments that have been put on their shoulders. What did he tell the religious establishment? He said, you don’t even lift those burdens with your pinky. But you want to take all those burdens and put on the shoulders of those people, and you’re wearing them down. And he says, I have come to take them into the year of the jubilee, to a place of rest, to a place of liberty, where their burdens are taken off. And he says, I am the one who will give them rest. The anointed one is the means by which the people can have righteous living. And when God makes a promise, this is what Isaiah says, 37:32, the zeal of the Lord of the hosts will accomplish this. The king or the commander of the heaven’s armies will intervene in the affairs of human beings to bring about the changes that he wants to bring about so that he can affect the quality of life that these people can have for the rest of their lives. And if it says those who are weary by these burdens, I will make a difference in their lives.

So now the question remains. Are we walking in that light? Are we experiencing what he has for us? Or is your Christian walk has come to a place where it became a burden? Are we at a place where we are thinking like those believers in the ancient Ephesus who are saying, you know what? Maybe it’s time for us to jump ship, to go somewhere else. The promise is ours. And the invitation remains. And he says, if you trust him in his deity, in his death, and his resurrection, and he says, not only is that deliverance is possible for you, more importantly, you will be able to experience that abundant life on this earth right here, not when you die and go to heaven. And he’s saying the quality of life that you’re going to experience right here, that is going to be your eternal life. totally, completely different perspective of what it means to be an overcomer.

What a joy would that be for us to practice that authentic faith. And the end of Isaiah chapter 61, he says, you know, once they get this, they’ll be singing all the way home with the songs of joy that will fill their hearts with thanksgiving and praise because they finally got it. And they’re saying, oh my goodness, not only that he make my deliverance possible, but he is the one who is going to make my righteousness possible. It becomes so much more relevant for us in 2025 who are swimming against the tide of the impact of the culture that we’re seeing in the lives of us and our families and our children. God is encouraging us through John this evening. He’s saying, you get to be overcomers because of your faith in me.

Let’s close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for speaking to us this evening from the Holy Scriptures. Thank you, Lord, for giving us that abundant life that so many on this planet just dream about, but it never becomes a reality. But you have been merciful towards our sinners who are lost in bondage and captivity, who are blind to that light that you have made a difference in our lives. And if there is anyone here tonight who have not experienced that love, where they get to walk in the light, where they can reciprocate in the love towards you, towards the brethren, and have the joy of keeping the commandment, I ask, O Lord, that you would minister to them in a very special way. Even as we go to live that righteous life, we ask, O Lord, that you would send us with your blessing. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.