 Alright. Good morning to all of you who are here. Pastor John, could you pray for us? If you can open with prayer, then we will get started. Sure. Let's pray. Father, we want to thank you for this time. Thank you for bringing us together in your presence. As we are beginning our class today, we ask, Lord, that you would speak to us. Let your voice be heard in our ears and help us to follow you, help us to understand, comprehend and to apply all the things that we learned today, Lord. We submit this time of learning into your mighty hands. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you. So, we had a long break because last Wednesday we could not have our class. But before that, we were able to finish the Gospel of John. So, now we will be getting into the three epistels of John. So, today we would be covering the first two chapters of the first epistle. So, first John, the first two chapters is what we would look at. Now, if last week had not been a mandatory government holiday, we could have had a proper introduction to the epistels and looked at a lot of details. Now, that was not possible. So, I will just give a very brief introduction to the epistels and we will get into the first chapter of first John. Just to talk about authorship, when we were looking at the Gospel of John, the reason that we were able to conclude that John the disciple was the author is because of what those early church historians recorded. There were people like Ireneus and others who acknowledged and said that this Gospel was written by the disciple of Jesus. So, based on that, we were able to conclude that the Gospel of John was written by the disciple John. Now, when it comes to these epistels, again, John does not mention himself by name. If you were to look at this first epistle of John, which we would be studying today, there are no words of introduction at all. The writer does not introduce himself and say, I John would like to present these details to you or nothing of the kind. There's no greetings, nothing. And then when you look at the second and the third letters, again, over there, the writer just addresses himself as the elder. He doesn't say which elder, he doesn't give his name. So, again, we depend on Ireneus and all these other ancient church historians to give us that detail. So, Ireneus of Lyons, he says that first and second letters were written by John the disciple. Similarly, you have Eusebius. He says that the second and third letters are written by John the disciple. So, based on this, we assume that the elder who is being mentioned in the second and third epistels of John must be John the disciple himself. Now, of course, he would have been a little older when writing these epistels because these were written after the Gospel, after the Gospel of John was written. Now, the main goal in writing these epistels is to correct the wrong teachings that are beginning to come into the young early church. If you see in the Gospel of John, where John's main concern was the persecution which the new believers are facing and he wanted to assure them that Jesus is the living God. He is the Son of God, the promised Messiah and therefore in spite of the persecution which the believers are facing at the hands of the Jewish leaders, they must remain strong. So, he writes to urge the new believers to stay strong, to affirm to them that this Jesus is indeed the Divine Son of God and so he wants to urge them to remain firm in the faith even if it means being removed from the synagogues, even if it means social ostracization. So, those were the main things on his heart when he was writing the Gospel of John. Here, when we come to the epistels, now the church has taken shape to an extent. Now, you have a larger group of people who are now gathering in different house churches. So, the church is kind of established. The Christians have gained some level of social recognition. They do have some level of status now in society. So, things are not as bad as it was for those early believers who faced great persecution at the hands of their Jewish relatives and families and leaders and all of that. So, things have now stabilized a bit and now into this more or less stable atmosphere, you have the wolves creeping in. The wolves who are pretending to be sheep are bringing in wrong doctrines and now Satan is using a new strategy of trying to destroy this early church which is taking shape. So, now it becomes very important for John and the other writers to warn the believers of the dangers which lie and to keep them on the straight path to reaffirm again and again the correct doctrine which was taught when they first shared the Gospel to these believers so that these believers are not led astray. So, that is why we see a difference between the introduction that John gives in the Gospel of John and the introduction that he gives over here in the first Epistle of John. If you remember when we did the Gospel of John and we all in fact know the first verse by heart, you know, if we could have someone read out the first three verses of the Gospel of John, we will compare that with the introduction that we see here. So, if we could start with Gospel of John, the first chapter, if we could please have someone read out the first three verses. John 1-3. So, if you are logged in and please if you could have your Bible with you and if you could open it to the Gospel of John and read out the first three verses. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him and without Him nothing was made that was made. So, here the main concern of John was to establish that this Jesus who is being presented to the readers as the Messiah, he is not just somebody who was born the other day. This was Jesus who was the Word who was with God in the very beginning and he was not just the Word who was with God. He was God. So, His divinity and His eternal nature are established right at the beginning of the Gospel of John. And John assures His readers and tells them He was with God in the beginning and in fact through Him all things were made. Without Him nothing was made that has been made. So, John establishes the fact that this Jesus He is an eternal Messiah and He urges His readers to place their faith in this Jesus in spite of the persecution that they are facing. Now here in 1 John the emphasis is on sticking on, holding on to the correct teaching, the correct doctrine. So now let's look at the introduction that is given over here in 1 John. So, if we could have someone read out 1 John chapter 1, the first 4 verses, 1 to 4. That which was on the beginning which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled concerning the Word of life. The life was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and declared to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us. That which we have seen and heard we declare to you and you may also have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full. Amen. So here the emphasis is on holding on to the correct teaching that has been taught at the time of the, you know, when the people accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. So the emphasis over here is on the Word of life, the teaching, the teaching of life which has been given. This teaching is not just words. This teaching is actually a person, you know. So in the Gospel of John, you had Jesus being presented as the Word in the sense he's the Word that created everything and therefore the believers must place their faith in him. Here in 1 John, the emphasis is on the Word of life as in the teachings of Jesus. So these are not just teachings being given by Jesus. He himself is the Word of life. So here this Gospel which has been presented is a living, breathing Gospel in the sense they touched this Word of life. They walked with him. They spoke to him. They interacted with him. So the Word of life over here is presented as a teaching but also as the person who embodies these teachings because even when Jesus was walking on the earth with these disciples, he didn't just simply teach them a set of principles. He literally lived out those principles in the way he interacted with them, you know, in the kind of values that he presented in the actions and steps that he took, the way he served, the way he healed, the way he delivered. All these things were declaring in action what the good news is, what the Gospel is. So he literally was the Gospel in action. So the Gospel was not just a philosophy that was being taught. The Gospel was something which was literally being lived out. And these disciples who were walking with Jesus they literally touched this Gospel. They heard him. They felt his compassion. So in the Gospel of John, the emphasis is on who Jesus is and here in 1 John, the emphasis on who the Word is. So in John's Gospel, we looked at who Jesus is that he is divine, that he is the Messiah, that he is the one who has been sent by the Father. Here, the emphasis is on who the Word is. The Word is not just a bunch of teachings. He is literally a person who is living out everything that he proclaimed and declared. So in that sense, the Gospel that we are sharing today also needs to be embodied in us, the followers of Jesus. The same way Jesus didn't just simply teach but he literally lived and acted out what he was saying, we too are expected as followers of Jesus today to literally embody and act out what we are declaring. So it is not enough to simply talk about the love of Jesus and what he did for us on the cross. In our lives, in our actions, we need to actually live out that love. We need to show people that this is what the love of Christ feels like. This is what it looks like in action. So just as Jesus embodied the Word and lived it out, we too are expected today to embody this Gospel message and reveal it in action to people. An example that just comes to my mind is probably about six months ago that I was having a conversation with someone and she was talking about how when she moved into a new MNC and began to work over there, people kind of looked down upon her because her background was not from a very economically strong background and they kind of looked down upon her and so she talked about how one person used to speak to her very mockingly in a very condescending manner and she just lived out her Christian faith in that office, lived the way Christ would live. And gradually about after a year, she says regarding this particular person who used to speak to her in a mocking way, he began to treat her with respect. In fact, when he had any prayer request regarding his family and the situations that he was going through, he would come to her and say, please, could you pray for my family for what we are going through right now? So he began to respect her and in fact, when she was leaving the organization, he came to her and he said, I'm so sorry that you are leaving but I'll always remember the stand that you took and the things that you shared. I will always remember that. Now we do not know whether he has accepted the Lord or not after that but she didn't just simply share the gospel in words, she lived it out and that is what made an impression upon this particular person in that office. So like Jesus, it is not enough for us to simply share the teaching. We need to live it out. We need to present it in the way we interact, in the values that we have, in the stand that we take regarding important things. All that shows that this is what we believe in and this is who our Lord and Master is and he is the only one who can save and give us eternal life. So it literally shows the people in action, who is the living God, who can be their saviour, who is the only person who can lead them to the Father and make it possible for them to enter into Heaven. So in 1 John 1, the emphasis is on who the Word is. The Word is a person and the Word literally shows us what God is like and what God values as correct and righteous and it leads us to walk along the right path. Now in verse 2, this is what John continues to say regarding this Word. He says, the life appeared, we have seen it and testified to it and we proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and has appeared to us. So this eternal life again is not a philosophy. The Greeks were coming up with all these philosophies and ideologies. So eternal life is not a philosophy, it's not an ideology. It is a person who actually lived with the Father. Now this is a concept that we are already familiar with because we looked at it earlier in John chapter 17 verse 3 when Jesus gives His definition of eternal life and He says, what is eternal life? Eternal life is to, He is doing His intercessory prayer over there and this is what He says to the Father. This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Eternal life is not an ideology, eternal life is a person. It literally is God the Father and Jesus Christ. So eternal life is the relationship which we have with this person, this divine person who is literally eternal life. So here the same thing is being presented to us where John says to his readers, we proclaim to you the eternal life. We are not proclaim to you an ideology, we are proclaim to you this little word of life who actually used to live with the Father and who has now appeared to us. So now when He appeared to us, we got to touch Him, we got to see Him, we got to listen to Him and now we are passing on those things to you. So even as the young church is being attracted away by all these fancy new teachings which are coming up, John wants to draw them back to the living word, the word who is not just a teaching, but who literally is a person and a person who has been with God which means that he has access to the Father and he can actually take the people who place their faith in Him to the Father, to Heaven. So John is establishing right here in this preface that you need to maintain, continue to have a fellowship with this word of life and so which is why in verses 3 and 4, he goes on to say, I am writing this epistle to you, we proclaim to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son because if these believers are going to now go after those new teachings which are coming in, they would be having fellowship with those people, the ones who are preaching false doctrines. Their fellowship would be with those people and with those people alone because you see those people are not in a relationship with the Father and with the Son. On the other hand, John says, if you stick with the true church, if you stick with us, you will not only be having fellowship with us because you are having fellowship with us, you will automatically be having fellowship with the Father and with the Son as well and then your joy will be complete. So he establishes this fact right in the preface. So the first four verses are what we call the preface. If you remember in the Gospel of John, that first section was called the prologue. I mean that's just terms which the commentaries use. So that is called the prologue. Here the first four verses are called the preface to the rest of the letter. So just to look at a few more aspects that we observe in these verses three and four. In verse three, when John is declaring that our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, the word that he uses over here for the Son is a Greek word, weos, H-U-I-O-S. All right? Now this is something which John is very careful to do in the Gospel of John and also here in the Epistels. Whenever he's talking about the Son of God, Jesus Christ, he is very careful to always use this particular Greek word H-U-I-O-S, no, weos. On the other hand, when he's talking about the sons of God as in the believers, the children of God, you know, over there, he uses a different word, teknon, T-E-K-N-O-N. Now John does this almost throughout the Gospel of John and these Epistels where he uses one particular word for the Son of God, Jesus and a different word for the sons of God, the believers. Probably because he is catering to believers who may be led away into wrong doctrines. So he is maybe concerned that, you know, if these believers are being referred to as sons of God, then they would start attaching divinity to themselves and going into all kinds of wrong doctrines. So John is very, very careful to observe this distinction. He always refers to the Son Jesus Christ as weos and he refers to the other believers, the sons of God as teknon. On the other hand, we don't see Paul doing that. So, you know, in no way are we to think that this word weos is in some way superior to the word teknon. Both of them are referring to sons. Both of them are referring to children. The term can be used, you know, as synonyms. So one word is not superior to the other, which is what Paul does. So the assumption is that maybe John used to prevent any false doctrines coming in where believers start saying, oh, we are sons of God, we are divine, or you know, go into any such wrong doctrines because if you look in Romans 8.14 and in a whole bunch of other places where Paul is writing, he very freely uses this word weos even for the believers. So Romans 8.14 specifically, it says those who are led by the spirit are the weos of God. They are the children of God. So weos is in no way superior, more divine word or anything like that. It's just that John likes to maintain this distinction in his gospel and his epistels. Now, coming to another aspect, very specifically in verse 3, John says, you know, we are proclaiming these truths to you about this word of life, this embodiment of the gospel. The reason that we are proclaiming this is so that you may have fellowship with us, he says, because if these believers were to fellowship with the other people, the other section, the ones who are, you know, preaching wrong doctrines, it's not just a matter of holding on to wrong, holding on to an alternate belief, it will lead to a whole bunch of other things because when you say fellowship, you're not just thinking about thought patterns. It literally affects your very perspective of life. It literally affects the choices that you would be making tomorrow. It literally affects you know, the way you approach people and the way you treat them, the way you prioritize wealth and money and status. It affects everything. Your entire world view gets affected. So he is saying, if you're fellowshiping with us, you're going to be doing the things which please the father and the son. So you will be, you know, in fellowship with the father and the son. Your perspective of life, your world view will be in line with the living God. So, you know, in that way, you will be moving in the right direction. On the other hand, this fellowship with the world would be a highly dangerous thing. You know, not fellowship with the world but fellowship with the ones who are teaching wrong doctrines. Fellowship with them would be very dangerous because then your entire perspective will start going in a different direction. Then you'll start making choices which are based on the wrong perspective. And then your priorities would change. You would maybe start becoming more worldly. You would no longer be sensitive regarding sin. So all of those things could happen. And so he urges the believers to stay in true fellowship with the true believers and thereby stay in fellowship with the father and with the son. Okay, so just to very briefly touch upon the main dangers which this young church was facing. There are three main wrong doctrines which are talked about. You know, you might have heard about this term, the Gnostics G-N-O-S-T-I-C-S This they talk about Gnosticism which was creeping into the early church and commentaries talk about how John was very very concerned about this. So that word Gnosticism and the people who follow Gnosticism are called the Gnostics. The G is silent. So even though the word is G-N-O-S-I-S maybe we don't pronounce the G. That word gnosis G-N-O-S-I-S basically means knowledge. That's just your Greek word for knowledge. And different kinds of Gnosticism started to creep in. So there were mainly three types of Gnosticism which were mainly prevalent at that time which could threaten the church. The first type of Gnostics were somebody called the Dositists D-O-C-E-T-I-S-T-S Dositism was one belief system. Now these are people who said that Jesus was not really fully human. He appeared to be human but actually he was not completely normal, a normal ordinary human like others. Rather they say he was like the angel of the Lord of the Old Testament. He would appear in human form to people but he would not actually be human the way we are human. We have human limitations we can't fly in the air, we can't go without food and water. So what these Dositists were saying is that yes Jesus appeared human but he was not fully human the way we are human. He was more like an angel who took on the appearance of a human but was not limited in the way humans are. The second category of wrong teaching that was coming in was something called the Serentianism C-E-R-I-N T-H-I-A-N-I-S-M So the Serentians were people who went to the other extreme. While the Dositists were saying that you know Jesus was not fully human. The Serentians on the other hand were of the belief that Jesus was totally and fully human with no divinity. So what they believed was that Jesus was born as a normal human being to Mary and Joseph. He had human parents. Both his father and mother were human so he was biologically born as a human. But at the time of baptism the Spirit of Christ descended upon him and took position of him. So he temporarily became divine. And then when he was hanging on the cross the Spirit of Christ left him and went away and he came back to his human state. He again became just merely human. So they on the other hand these Serentians are attacking the very work of atonement which Jesus did on the cross. Because if it's just a human being who was hanging on that cross he would be human just like us. He would just be sinful like us. How on earth can a sinful human being atone for our sins? They are literally taking away the very core of the gospel by you know promoting this wrong doctrine. So they say that on the cross when Jesus was hanging over there the Spirit of Christ leaves him and he comes back to his normal human state. So it is a human who died on that cross. It is a human who paid the price which actually has no you know which just takes away the entire gospel message all together. And then you had this other what we call as the Gnostics proper. The ones who believed in all this secret knowledge and all of that. So these Gnostics they believed that not everyone is you know chosen by God. There are some to whom he comes and he gives them the special secret mystic knowledge. It's a special gnosis G-N-O-S-I-S. It's a special secret mystic knowledge which he imparts to certain Christians. They are the chosen ones. All the other believers are not really true believers is what they say. The problem with all these three types of Gnostics is that they were influenced by the Greeks who believe that matter is impure. You know all matter is impure. So if something has to be pure it has to be in a spirit form. Anything that is flesh or matter is automatically impure and only what is spirit what is abstract only that can be pure. So that was the Greek belief system and these Gnostics were influenced by that. So why were the Gnostics saying oh no Jesus was not fully human because that would mean that Jesus actually had a human body like all of us and according to them the human flesh is impure. But actually the truth is that the human flesh is neutral. I mean it's just the carrier the container in which we live. Paul when he uses that word S-A-R-X uses it in his epistels in three different senses he is talking about the container the fleshly container inside which we all live that's neutral. It's neither sinful or bad in any way. It's just matter it's just material. And then he uses that word S-A-R-X in the sense of sinful nature now that is corrupt. So whenever uses the word flesh in that sense then he's referring to the sinful nature and not just the human container made up of flesh. So these people these Gnostics they went to the extreme of believing that just the normal human flesh is automatically impure. So how can Jesus be completely human? So which means oh no no no maybe he just simply assumed the shape of a human but he was not fully human is you know is what the Gnostics were saying in the same way the Serentians they were they could not accept the fact that a person of flesh can actually be divine. So they came up with the theory that the spirit of Christ must have descended upon him and take position of him for a little while during that time he was kind of divine even though he was living in a fleshly body but temporarily because of the spirit of Christ which came into him he became divine temporarily is what they said in the same with the Gnostics they completely rejected all ideas of you know Jesus being of coming in the flesh and they said you know Jesus was just a divine being and he imparts secret mystic superior knowledge to some chosen few and only they will make it into heaven. So these were all doctrines which were denying the fact that Jesus came in the flesh was born as a human that he lived as a human was thirsty was hungry was you know walked about the and you know was allowed people to touch him to interact with him they deny the the aspect of Jesus literally being in the flesh among us and so they deny the fact that he literally died the way humans you know human flesh dies so they don't believe in an actual death and an actual burial they're denying those facts and so because they're denying all of that they're also automatically denying the resurrection where Jesus now is resurrected from the dead and he assumes a resurrected body they're denying all of this so basically they're just denying the power of the gospel altogether because the power of the gospel lies in this that he became fully human human flesh he became like us to be our representative and ask our representative in the flesh he hung on that cross and took our sins upon him he paid the atonement for us and having paid the price he died and then because sin could have no control over him he rose up victorious and he assumed a resurrected body for all of this you need to accept the fact that Jesus came in the flesh it's like very vital it's central to the entire gospel message and these wrong doctrines were trying to take away this important vital truth which is why John wishes to emphasize these facts so he tries to appeal to these believers he tries to say to them you know take a look at those people look at their attitude to you know to the different things which we believe in their attitude to sin their attitude to fellowship with believers their attitude towards God himself you know test their attitudes and next he says test their actions their obedience are they living in obedience so he puts forward these two tests and he says by using these two tests you can determine whether these people are really true followers of Jesus or not so in now 1st John chapter 1 verse 5 onwards all the way up to chapter 2 verse 2 he talks about these different attitudes which a true believer will have anyone who does not have these true attitudes is actually a fake Christian he is not a real Christian so in 1st John chapter 1 verse 5 all the way up to 2 2 he is putting forward this test whereby you can assess whether a person is a genuine believer or not he says test their attitude towards sin test their attitude towards other believers test their different attitudes and then in the next portion he says test and see what their actions are like are they living in obedience or are they not living in obedience so let's look at the 1st portion so if we can have someone read out for us verses 5 up to verse 7 1st John chapter 1 verses 5 to 7 please this is the message which we have heard from him and declare to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all if we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness we lie and do not practice the truth but if we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin yeah many things over here to be looked at he he says in verse 6 yes in verse 6 if we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness we lie and do not live out the truth so you cannot live in dark you cannot walk in darkness you cannot walk in sin and continue to say that you have fellowship with the living God which is what these followers of the wrong doctrine were doing they were claiming to have fellowship with the living God but they were walking in darkness they were walking in sin moreover another thing which they were doing is that without walking in the light they were claiming to have fellowship with believers ok so verse 7 John says if we walk in the light as he is in the light then we have fellowship with one another but these people they don't want to have fellowship with us they are saying that they are superior they have access to some secret knowledge they say that they have revelations which are not which have not been given to the ordinary believer and so they do not wish to have fellowship with the rest of the true church they are separating themselves as some kind of exclusivist group who are superior to the rest so they are claiming to walk in the light but they are not living in fellowship with the others so that itself proves that they are actually not walking in the light because if they were walking in the light as he is in the light then they would be willing to have fellowship with the body of Christ so another thing that comes out over here it talks about how the blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin if we are truly genuinely walking in the light anyone walking in the light they will on a daily basis undergo a sanctification process they will not just continue living in sin and feel no guilt and not even feel convicted so genuine believers are ones who will on a daily basis keep getting sanctified because of the blood of Jesus now that's actually yeah I think these are important facts alright so let's take the time to look at this I mean we are kind of running out of time but it's so important that we need to grasp these things so a person who is genuinely walking in the light he will be getting sanctified on a daily basis he will be getting purified from all sin on a daily basis because the Lord is making him the God the Father is working in his life to confirm him to the image of Jesus Christ okay so that's happening on a daily basis the word walk you know walking in the light and that word purify purifies us from all sin both of them are in the present tense present continuous so the person who is walking is also getting purified on a daily basis it's a continuous process that is taking place everyday and it is happening through the blood of Jesus now over here that word blood of Jesus literally means the finished work of the cross in the New Testament in most of the places where it talks about the blood of Jesus it's not talking about that literal liquid blood it is talking about the finished work of the cross you know it's like a shorthand phrase instead of giving that long lengthy sentence saying you know on the cross he hung for us and was crucified and he took our sins upon himself and then having made the atonement he was raised from the debt so instead of saying that entire thing they will just use a small term blood of Jesus the blood of Jesus basically is talking about the entire process that Jesus went through for our atonement it represents that entire finished work of the cross for instance when you look in Revelation chapter 12 verses 10 to 12 especially verse 11 Revelation chapter 12 verse 11 where it says they triumphed over him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of the testimony so that word over there blood of the lamb it's talking about that entire crucifixion process that Jesus went through that atonement that work of atonement which he did on our behalf so there it's not just talking about the liquid blood it's actually talking about the entire work of atonement which Jesus did on the cross for us so how did these believers triumph they triumphed over him by this finished work of the cross which the lamb did for them and they testified to it where they opened their mouth and they testified and said yes this is what Jesus did for us on the cross and therefore these are the choices which we are going to make and this is how we are going to follow him so this term blood of Jesus refers to the entire work of that was done on the cross by Jesus for us so the thing is I mean we have believers who kind of use this term blood of Jesus in a very superficial manner they say ok I'm going to apply the blood of Jesus to my house I'm going to apply the blood of Jesus to my car I'm going to apply the blood of Jesus to my children it almost makes it like one of those pagan rituals which people do they talk about holy water and then they go around sprinkling that holy water on different objects and their assumption is that if they sprinkle that holy water on different objects somehow that object gets protected and preserved and Jesus is not like that it's not some kind of talisman it's not some kind of magic substance that will make things right now a young believer who has not yet learnt the teachings of the Bible very well if they are doing that it's alright I mean the Lord who is looking at them looks at the faith in their heart and the Lord say see in their own way this person they are trusting me the faith in what I did on the cross so it's acceptable it's fine but I think as we continue to grow in the Lord we need to understand that this blood of Jesus is not like some kind of a holy water it's the entire it's what Jesus did on the cross for us it's that finished work you know it talks about so many the blood of Jesus that finished work of the cross is actually the victory which we now have over sin we have to live as slaves of sin it represents the healing which we now have it represents the status which we now possess where we are seated in the heavenlies with Christ this blood of the spirit work of Christ it represents the spiritual inheritance which is now ours that is what this blood of Jesus represents so if you just simply say I'm going to apply the blood of Jesus to my children at a very basic level if you are a very young believer the Lord maybe you know will just accept it at face value and protect you but as you grow in the Lord you need to understand that what you are actually saying is the finished work of the cross I'm applying that to my children therefore I'm going to claim that they will know how no harm will come to them if they fall ill I will claim what Jesus did on the cross and I will see to it that they receive their healing so you speak the finished work of the cross the greatest that they have in Christ the covenant in which they are now part of you know your children are part of because of the faith which they have placed in Christ you don't just simply say I'm applying the blood of Jesus it's not like some holy water which has you know somehow shielded them so because these believers in Revelation chapter 12 verse 11 how did they triumph they didn't just go around applying the blood of the Lamb here and there they understood what the blood of the Lamb represented the finished work which it represented and with their mouth they testified about it and they claimed it and because they did it then the evil one could have no hold over them because they have understood what the blood of the Lamb represents and they are claiming it by the word of their testimony and the evil one has no longer any hold over them that is how victory comes it doesn't come to just by using the blood of Jesus like a holy water that would be a very superficial level of belief you know so when we talk about the blood of the Lamb we understand that it's something which is sanctifying us on a daily basis it is something which is enabling us to have a deeper walk with God enjoy the spiritual inheritance that we are meant to have it is something this finished work of the cross it is something which enables us to no longer live as helpless slaves of sin but to live in victory so we need to understand this term blood of Jesus in this greater sense you know it's a shorthand term which the New Testament writers used to represent the entire finished work of the cross which Jesus has done on our behalf that's just something that I wanted to get across to all of us so when we come back from the break you know we'll continue so yeah thank you