If there is anything this post-modern culture that we live in is sure of it is that you cannot be absolutely sure of anything. You can believe in many things. You can be passionate about a lot of things, but nothing can be known absolutely, especially in the area of spirituality and morality.
I discovered this quote by Gandhi that serves to emphasize the almost universal uncertainty that is associated with religious belief of any kind. When he was asked why he tried to persuade people of his political beliefs, but not his religious beliefs, he said this - "In the realm of the political and social and economic, we can be sufficiently certain to convert; but in the realm of religion there is not sufficient certainty to convert anybody and therefore, there can be no conversions in religions." [[1]]
The man who is known as perhaps the most brilliant scientist who ever lived, Albert Einstein, once said, "Certainly there is a God. Any man who doesn't believe in a cosmic force is a fool, but we could never know Him." [[2]]
The post-modern view of God - that is if there is a God - is that nothing certain can be known about God and you certainly cannot know Him personally. Let me make a concession here. If the Bible is not God's word and if God has not spoken to us and revealed Himself through His word, then the post-modernist is absolutely right.
That is why the foundational message in this series that we have been giving on "The War of the Worlds" began with an investigation of the Bible as absolute truth. I gave you four, rock solid, fire proof, fail safe reasons why you can and should believe the Bible as an authoritative and reliable repository of theological and historical truth. This Bible says you can know two things that the post-modernist says you can't.
First of all, it says that you can know God and know Him personally. God himself said this to the Prophet Jeremiah. "This is what the LORD says: 'Let not the wise man gloat in his wisdom or the mighty man and his might, or the rich man and his riches. Let them boast in this alone: that they truly know Me and understand that I am the LORD… I, the LORD, have spoken!'" (Jeremiah 9:23-24, NLT) God not only says that we can know Him, but that we can brag about it!
The second thing the Bible says is that you can know God eternally. That is, you can have a relationship with God which can never be broken. This is exactly what Jesus said in the passage that we are going to study today. "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand." (John 10:27-29, NASB)
Now if the biblical world view is true, then we can know God personally. We can know God eternally and we can know that we know God now and forever.
I find it incredible that God not only says that we can know Him, but that we can indeed boast about it, because there are some things we should not brag about knowing. I read about three men who were on business in Mexico, who got drunk and they woke up in jail to learn that they were going to be executed, though none of them could recall what they did to deserve it.
They put the first man in the electric chair and he was asked for his last words. He said, "I'm from YaleDivinitySchool and I believe in the power of God to intervene on behalf of the innocent." They threw the switch and nothing happened. The jailers figured that God evidently wanted the man to live, so they let him go.
They strapped the second man in and asked for his last words and he said, "I'm from HarvardLawSchool and I believe in the power of justice to intervene on behalf of the innocent." They threw the switch again and again nothing happened. The jailers thought the law evidently was on this man's side, so they let him go.
They strapped the last man in and asked for his last words. He said, "Well, I'm an electrical engineer from M.I.T. and you aren't going to electrocute anybody if you don't connect those two loose wires down there!"
According to Jesus Christ, there are three truths that we can know for absolute certainty that are absolutely life changing.
I. I Can Know I Have A Personal Relationship With God
I realize that I am dealing today with a topic that is relevant for every person here whether you are a follower of Christ or you are not a follower of Christ. Some of you have this problem today and some of you will have this problem tomorrow and it is the problem of doubt. There are some of you here that doubt that you have a personal relationship with God. There are some of you here that perhaps doubt the very existence of God. Perhaps, you doubt the Bible is the Word of God.
Maybe you have been struggling with this whole issue of God in your life and you've even cried out for help, but you don't feel like you have gotten an answer and you feel like when you talk to heaven nobody is at home. Let me just say up front that I have been where some of you are. When I was a freshman in college, my faith was challenged by a philosophy professor who asked me some questions that I couldn't answer.
For the first time in my life, I began to doubt the very existence of God. I began to doubt the reality of Jesus Christ. I began to doubt the truth of the Bible. Let me let you in on a little secret. There is a spiritual virus that has been going around Christianity for 2000 years and it is the virus of doubt. If you live long enough, you will catch it. I want you to understand that there is nothing wrong with doubt. Many people think that doubt is the opposite of faith, but it is not. The opposite of faith is unbelief. There is a big difference between refusing to believe something and doubting something. If you have even an ounce of doubt that you do have a personal relationship with God or you can have one, Jesus Christ speaks directly to this issue. He begins by saying, "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them." (John 10:27, NASB)
You may or may not know that Jesus was called both "The Good Shepherd" and "The Great Shepherd." He referred to his followers as His sheep and just as a shepherd has a personal relationship with his flock, we can have a personal relationship with the Son of God.
Do you notice that He says, "My sheep hear My voice"? It is incredible how even a small toddler can pick out the voice of his mother or his father in a big crowd of people. One of the marks that you have a true relationship with God is that you have an ear and a heart that is tuned to His word and tuned to His will.
I read about a man who walked into a china shop to purchase some glasses and he said, "I want to buy all your glasses that are pitched to the key of ‘A'." The shopkeeper said, "How am I supposed to know which ones they are?" The man then pulled out a tuning fork and struck it. Immediately, every one of the glasses that were pitched to the key of ‘A' vibrated.
One of the marks that you know God and you know that you know God is that your heart is pitched to His word; your heart is pitched to His will. In other words, Jesus Christ becomes the "E.F. Hutton" of your life.
Jesus went on to say, "I know them." He knows not only who His sheep are, but He knows His sheep personally. He goes on to say in verse 14, "I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me." (John 10:14, NASB) Jesus makes a bold statement. He says not only does He know His sheep, but He says His sheep know Him.
This whole world can be divided up into three categories of people. There are people who do not know anything about Jesus Christ, people who know something about Jesus Christ and people who know Jesus Christ. Even if you were in the first category, when you walked in here, you are no longer in that category now because I just told you about Him. There is a huge difference between knowing about Jesus and knowing Jesus.
I've had the privilege of being in the Oval Office with the President of the United States. In fact, I have been with the President on four different occasions and all four times (believe it or not) he recognized who I was. Of course, I want you to know that I also recognized who he was! If you come to my house, you will find some pictures that I have with the President and in my office I have a letter that is framed from the President.
I will let you in on a little secret. I don't know the President and he doesn't know me. We do not really have a personal relationship. You can have a personal relationship with God, through His son, Jesus Christ.
Let me just make one clarification. Jesus went on to say about those who really know Him, "They follow Me." (John 10:27, NASB) Not everyone who says they have a personal relationship with God really do, because those that do will consistently live like it.
That is why I just want to stop and say it is so important for those of us who claim to have a relationship with God to live like it, talk like it, walk like it and model it, because not everyone who says they have a relationship with God really does.
I have to be honest with you, I have seen people all of my ministry who filled out a card, even got baptized, came for a while and then were never heard from again. I call them "Alka-Seltzer Christians", you drop them in some water, they fizzle for a little while and then they disappear. The truth is if you want to have a personal relationship with God you can. Once you establish that personal relationship with God, you can know that you have it.
II. I Can Know I Have A Permanent Relationship With God
Jesus goes on to say in verse 28, "And I give eternal life to them." (John 10:28, NASB) Every word of that statement is crucial to your understanding the kind of relationship that God wants to establish with you. The stability and the strength of your relationship with God does not depend on what you do for Him, but depends on what He has already done for you. That is why Jesus said, "I give you eternal life." If eternal life is not earned by being good, it can't be lost by being bad.
Do you see that eternal life is something that you are given right now, once you establish a relationship with God? Jesus did not say, "And I will give eternal life to them". He said, "I give them eternal life." Eternal life is not something you get when you die, it is something you receive the moment you place your faith and trust in Jesus Christ. John 3:36 says, "He who believes in the Son has eternal life." (John 3:36, NASB)
Notice it is eternal life. You know what the word "eternal" means; it means forever. Think about this - if you have a relationship with God today, but five years later somehow that relationship with God was ended, then you didn't have eternal life, you had five year life. Jesus does not give us five year, ten year, one hundred year or even one thousand year life. He gives us eternal life.
The very nature of the spiritual life that God gives us, eternal, and the very source of that life, God Himself, forbids us ever thinking that a saved person can ever be lost or that a person who has a relationship with God today, can lose that relationship with God tomorrow.
If you have ever bought anything expensive, such as a new car or television or a washer and dryer, you know there are five words that can make you weep, scream, faint, shake, collapse and even consider suicide. Do you know what those words are? The warranty has run out.
When you establish a relationship to God it is put under divine warranty and His warranty never runs out. That is why Jesus goes on to say in verse 28, "And they will never perish." (John 10:28, NASB)
I know you don't know the Greek language (and you don't need to), but in the Greek language in which the New Testament was written, there are actually four words for the word "never." One word means "not at all". The next word means "place, time or purpose." The next word means "male or female." The last word means "perpetually and eternally." When you put all these words together, what Jesus really said was this, "And I give unto them eternal life and they shall not at all in any place at any time for any purpose whether they are male or female perpetually and eternally ever perish."
When you come to God by faith and receive His forgiveness for your sins, surrender your life to Him and let Him establish His relationship to you, it is a permanent relationship.
III. I Can Know I Have A Protected Relationship With God
I know that those of us who already have a relationship with God or those of us who might like to have one would love to believe that our relationship with God is permanent, but how do we really know it? What or who can make a relationship like that permanent? It is one thing to be safe. It is another thing to be secure.
I read a fascinating article about the Olympic Games that were just held in Athens last year and the extraordinary measures that were taken to secure the Olympic Games from terrorist attacks. Olympic planners spent $850 million dollars and sent 100,000 forces as part of a high-tech protection plan to keep the city secure.
The country even took the unprecedented step of asking NATO for assistance. They had a blimp, helicopters and AWAC radar planes patrolling the skies. They had a police officer for every 10 meters in the center of Athens and magnetometers that were cranked up to detect a pen-knife in a briefcase and packs of bomb-sniffing dogs. They had a $350 million dollar state of the art nerve center linking 105 sub-command stations using sonar devices, motion sensitive forces and 1400 cameras to analyze everything from traffic flow to air currents. They even had "echo-location" devices to scan for suicide swimmers in the port and $18 million dollars worth of mechanical sniffers for nuclear, biological and chemical bombs.
Yet, with all of these extraordinary measures, Dave Tubbs, who was project manager for the Securities Applications International Corporation, which headed up the security of Athens said, "Anything is a target - the bell tolls for everyone." [[3]]
Put simply, there simply could not be and would not be any guarantees that Athens could be kept secure. On the other hand, we have a God given guarantee that once we have a relationship with God, it is a protected relationship that no one can break. Listen to what Jesus goes on to say in verses 28 and 29, "No one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand." (John 10:28-29, NASB) Jesus tells us that we are actually in a double-grip. We have a double wall of security. We are in the Son's grip and the Son's grip is in the Father's grip.
Too many people think that their relationship with God and the security of that relationship is based on their holding on to God, but it is really based on His holding on to you. Do you know what that means? That means your relationship is just as secure as God himself is.
That is why Jesus ends by saying these words, "My Father, who has given them to Me is greater than all." (John 10:29, NASB) We already know the Bible says that salvation is God's gift to us. Did you know that once you receive that salvation you become a gift of God to His Son? Once God gives His Son anything, He never takes it back.
Listen to these two verses put together. "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day." (John 6:37, 39, NASB)
Now we get to the bottom line about God, a relationship to God, our knowledge of God and life itself. Even though a biblical world view tells me that there is truth and that all truth is God's truth and that I can know both God and truth, the truth of the matter is I can only know this by faith. It is faith that makes an informed decision based on the overwhelming evidence of the truth of His word.
If we had 100% of the answers to 100% of our questions, we would never need faith. Hear this next statement. We don't have to know everything to know some things for certain. We know what we need to know. God has given us exactly what we need to know and based on what God has given us and what we can know, we can follow Jesus Christ and have 100% confidence that our eternity is going to be spent with Him in heaven.
That is why as we engage in "The War of the Worlds" the truth about evolution, creation, evil, war, heaven and hell must come from God's Word which is eternal truth that never changes.
If you are one of those people who wrestle with doubts, let me tell you a story that I hope will encourage you. It is about a man who went out to California when he was thirty years old. He was a wonderful person, had a strong faith in God and he wanted more than anything for God to do something great in his life. He had a friend named Chuck who went to a liberal seminary and he started raising questions about God and about the Bible. He started telling his friend that you can't trust the Bible. You can't really know God. You can't really know you have a relationship with God - it is impossible. It really shook his friend up.
He had another friend, who was a strong student of God's word and she kept saying to him, "What Chuck is telling you is not true. Here is the evidence. There are reasons why you can trust this Bible. This does record God's Word and this word says you can know God in a personal way." This man went on to say that he was just in agony living in a valley of doubt, being pulled one way and then another.
One day he went for a walk and all of a sudden he got on his knees and simply said, "God, I don't know everything and I don't have to know everything, but based on all the evidence I have seen that tells me that this Bible is your word, I am going to accept it as such. I am going to base my life on it. I am going to live the way it says I ought to live and I am going to believe based on your word that I have a relationship with You that will last for all eternity."
That man was Billy Graham. He said from that time until this very day, there has been a lot of things that he has doubted, but he has never doubted his relationship with God.
This is where "The War of the Worlds" will be decided. This book is truth. This book says that once you have a relationship with God, that relationship can never be broken.
[1] Cited by Andy Stanley, How Good Is Good Enough, p.14
[2] Cited by John Blanchard, What Ever Happened To Hell?, p. 268
[3] "Anything Is A Target," Newsweek, March 22, 2004, p. 48