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The Word of Life | 1 John 1:1-4 (12-3-23: Mark Evans)
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John introduces the book of 1 John in the New Testament and emphasizes the importance of fellowship with God and Jesus Christ. He affirms that Jesus, the Word of Life, was from the beginning and has been seen, heard, and touched by the apostles. John wants his readers to know and experience the same fellowship with Christ that he has. He highlights the significance of Jesus being fully God and fully man, and how this truth is essential for salvation. John uses tactile language to emphasize the reality of Jesus' incarnation and refutes the heresy of Gnosticism. If you have your Bibles, do make your way to the book of 1 John, because we've wrapped up our long series in Ecclesiastes, so it's our privilege now to start a book in the New Testament. And so we'll do that today with this wonderful letter of 1 John, and we'll begin in the first four verses of 1 John chapter 1. And these are the words of life from the very author of life. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest, and we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. The grass withers and the flower fades. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we praise You for Your Word. We just read that You have revealed these things to us so that we might have joy, and not just any joy, but this fulfilled, this complete joy, the joy we know is found only in Jesus Christ. And so we pray that You would once again give us eyes to see, give us ears to hear, to behold Him in His beauty and to be transformed for Your glory. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Amen. You may be seated. Mark Twain once told the story of an old African medicine man who lived on the island of Mauritius. And this medicine man was quite famous because he possessed the cure for a disease that wreaked havoc on the island, particularly upon the children. And so whenever a child fell ill on the island, they would rush him off to this medicine man for the cure, which he, of course, was more than happy to administer. So all was well on the island, except for one problem, and that was that this medicine man refused to share the secret formula of the cure. This formula had been passed down from his grandfather to his father, and now to him, and yet he would not pass it on to the next generation. So you can imagine the great fear on the island was that when he died, the cure would die with him. And we come now to the epistle of John. And in a sense, John is like that old medicine man. At this time, John is one of, if not the last, surviving apostles, one of the few remaining apostles of Christ during the first century. And that meant that when John died, the secret formula, if you will, would die with him, in this case, the very words of life that were passed down to him from his Messiah. Well, those words would go to the grave with John, unless, of course, he shares it with the next generation. And shared it, he has. One of John's favorite expressions is, quote, so that you may know. As if John's greatest joy would be for us to know a little of what he knew, what it was like to have fellowship with Jesus Christ, sit at his feet for his teaching, see his miracles, behold the resurrected Jesus. And that's a little of what we get to look at today as we open this wonderful letter. And so, we'll walk through this in three simple parts. We'll look at the word manifested, secondly, the word proclaimed, and thirdly, the word enjoyed. But all with the main point of fellowship. You can see John tip his hand there in verse 3 when he writes that you, too, may have fellowship with us. That's his aim. And so, let's see how he gets there. Let's jump into verse 1. Now, you'll notice why the introduction to 1 John is often said to be confusing and puzzling. It begins like this, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen. What exactly is this beginning that John speaks of? Kids, you might like this. One commentator said that 1 John begins with such confusion, it feels like we're in a Dr. Seuss book. All right? What is which? Who is we? What does we have to say about which to you? All right? There's no introduction. There's no, hi, here's who I am as the author. No, John just launches us into this backwards beginning. And so, let's ask, well, what is this beginning that John speaks of in verse 1? You might remember, how does John open up John's gospel? That very famous first verse, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John's fond of speaking this way. He wants his hearers to see Christ clearly for who He is, as truly man and truly God. Now, throughout this letter, there are going to be those who do one of those things very well, but they don't hold to both truths equally. Jesus is fully man and fully God. And so, verse 1 is the shorthand way of saying Christ is truly God, co-equal with God, focuses on His pre-existence before all time. Kids, that's just simply a way of saying that there was never a time when the Son of God did not exist. He is eternal. And John goes on to say something even more astounding, and that is that this eternal Word has become flesh. This eternal Word has come down and dwelt among us, tabernacled among us. This eternal Word has become one of us. And you should say, that's impossible. Eternal things cannot become earthly things. But it's this that John wants to show us, for he has seen it with his very own eyes. Notice as verse 1 continues, he says, this Word is that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes. This is strange language. What does John mean by we've seen the Word with our eyes? After all, one of the ways we want assurance is we want to see something with our very own eyes. We want to hear it with our ears. In our parlance, we say, I'll see it when I believe it. But remember, a lot of people saw Jesus with their own eyes during His days upon earth, and yet they did not see Him for who He really was and who He really is as the Son of God. You can think of Thomas, for instance, aka Doubting Thomas, who said in regards to the resurrected Christ, unless I see in His hands the mark of the nails, unless I place my finger into the mark of the nails, unless I place my hand at His side, I will never believe. What happened? Jesus visited Thomas on the eighth day, mind you, and said, Thomas, put your finger here in my side. Put your hand here. Don't disbelieve, but believe. And then what did Thomas say? My Lord and my God. Now, he had seen Jesus many times prior to that, hadn't he? But that was perhaps the first, maybe the fullest time that he had the eyes to see that this Jesus of Nazareth, well, He was not simply a rabbi. He was not just this great teacher, not simply a miracle worker. No, He was God incarnated. And you two might be here this morning, and maybe you know some facts about Jesus. Maybe you know some things about Jesus, but you don't know Him as my Lord and my God. So, John's here to testify to you exactly what he has seen, what he has heard, what he has touched. Now, the Scripture tells us that Jesus was not resurrected as a spirit or a ghost, to put it crassly. All right, He was resurrected with a physical body, as physical as physical gets. It's not as if Thomas reached out to touch the resurrected Christ and His hand kind of passed through His body, as if Jesus was a kind of immaterial, spiritual being just made out of air. No, Jesus was also as man as man gets. All right, there is every reason to think that our Lord would have gotten that dirt under His fingernails, would have gotten dust in His nose, would have had to wash His body off of sweat and grime after a day's work, would have had sore muscles, aches, pains in His body. He was as man as man gets. And so, when Thomas put out his hand to touch the resurrected Christ, it would have this physical, solid feel to it. And friends, the significance of that truth could hardly be overstated. Maybe just take a second, look down real quick at your arms, your legs, your torso, and just confirm that you have a body. Well, no, it is that body that Jesus Christ came to redeem. As Hebrews says, you and I are flesh and blood. And so, Christ took on flesh and blood, right? He became like us in every way except sin in order to save us. Let's just ask a simple question. How important is it to declare the truth of the incarnated Son of God? How high are the stakes here? I kid you not, there was a medieval theologian who once taught that God could have become anything. He could have become a rock. He could have become a stone. He didn't have to become a man. I didn't say he was a good theologian, okay? Well, let's think, how vital is it that God become man? There's an early church creed that says, the unassumed is the unhealed. The unassumed is the unhealed. All it simply means is that whatever Christ did not take on, assume, in His incarnation Christ does not heal. For example, if Christ did not take on human flesh, if Christ did not take on a human body or a human mind, then He does not redeem human flesh, human body, human mind, and so on and so on. Simply put, if Christ was not fully human, then you and I are not fully saved. But the truth that He took on full humanity means full salvation. That Christ as our older brother, like us in every way except sin, means He can save us to the utmost. And this is what John has to teach us, that's why he uses this precise, tactile language in verse 1, saying, we've seen Him with our eyes, touched Him with our hands. Now there's a second reason why John has had such pains to use this physical language of sight, touch, and hearing. Today, for instance, I think people have a harder time believing that Christ was truly God. They might admit, yes, He was a historical person, but not God in the flesh. Well, back then you had also the opposite problem. Many who had a harder time believing that Christ was fully man. Because what's likely in the background here is that John is responding to an early church heresy that was fomenting at this time. That's the heresy called Gnosticism. You've got the spelling of it in your notes. And it's important that we understand Gnosticism because it lurks in the background of 1 John. What is Gnosticism? Well, Gnosticism, it was a broad term for a very popular pagan philosophy that could latch on to Judaism, it could latch on to Christianity like a virus and start to infect it. And Gnosticism can get complex, and so we'll take it slow throughout the letter and we'll add components of it. But for today, just note one of the simplest points of Gnosticism is that matter is inherently evil. Physical things are inherently evil. Physical things are bad. Spiritual things are good. So for example, easy example would be that the human body is bad and corrupt. But the soul, the stuff on the inside, the spiritual part, is good. Kids, you can think of an egg, right? By analogy, you crack an egg and you throw away that outer shell because you want to get to the good stuff on the inside. Well, that's something that a Gnostic would say, yes, exactly, right? The outside stuff, the material stuff is bad, the spiritual stuff is good. That's what really matters. Now, you might be thinking, well, that's a silly idea, a good thing that Gnosticism is dead today. No one would buy this today. But as we learned from Ecclesiastes, there's nothing new under the sun. We have repackaged versions of this in our own day. Just think of all the current debates over gender, human sexuality, you'll often hear this language that my body, the outside of me, is misaligned with the inner self, the real me. We have our own Gnostic dictionary today. You might hear terms like gender dysphoria, right, this idea being there's a disconnect between my body and who I really am on the inside, between my true identity and my physical body. Well, that's something a Gnostic of old could appreciate. They might smile and nod and say, yes, exactly, see, the body is this prison house dragging down our souls. And so back to John's epistle, if you want to see a Gnostic's mind explode, there's no bigger grenade to toss than saying, the Son of God Himself took on, of all things, a human body. That is inconceivable, impossible, outlandish that God would put on human flesh. That's why John's at such pains to use this sensorial language. No, I've seen Him, heard Him, touched Him, felt Him, physically embraced God incarnate with my own hands. That's just as preposterous to them as perhaps when Jesus Himself said, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father. Implication, I am the image of the invisible God. Now John has yet to mention Jesus by name. He's always purposeful on the nouns that he uses. Right? If I call you by your first name or if I say Mr. or Mrs. or if I say you're the mother of your children, those all have a different nuance to it. Well John does that here. See, at the end of verse 1, he doesn't call out Jesus by name. Instead, he says, I write to you concerning the word of life. What is a word of life? We don't think of words as having life, biologically speaking. Words are just words after all. They're not alive. And yet we all know, don't we, that words can either be destructive and discouraging or words can be life-giving. Words can be encouraging. There's this mysterious force to words. As God told Moses, this is no empty word for you. It is your very life. And Christ, of course, is the ultimate life-giving word, the eternal word, the logos as the second person of the Trinity. He has life in himself, eternal life. And so John goes on to say this eternal word did not stay locked up in heaven forever, but verse 2, this life was made manifest, shown, revealed to us. Christianity is utterly unique in that we confess a complete dependence upon God's generosity, God showing himself to man. It is all top-down grace. Man cannot work his way up to God, building a tower of Babel to reach heaven. No grace must come down. No love must come down. And there are some things that when you see them, you must tell of them, right? And we do this even in everyday experience. You see something amazing, your first instinct is, I've got to go share it. You might see a great movie. You might see a great sporting event. You might travel to this wonderful land and you come back and you say, let me tell you and show you my photos. I just can't help myself. Well, that pales in comparison to what John has seen and heard. And so in our second section, you go from this word manifested now to the word testified to. And you see that in verse 2. He says, we've seen it and we testify to it. Maybe just imagine a courtroom setting, this lawyer probing John, John, did anyone else see this word of life that you speak of? John says, oh, yes, there were 10 more than two before long. All 12 are now in the courtroom bragging about what they saw. The Peter says, I got to see this word of life transfigured on the mount. Philip says, big deal. I got to see him turn water into wine. Bartholomew says, so what? I got to see him flip over those tables in the temple during the temple smackdown. And the truth is, the church is built upon this apostolic witness, this testimony. And John is now sharing it for the next generation. Now, testimony has fallen on hard times in our post-enlightenment era, right? We tend to think, well, if it's not proved in the laboratory, if it's not proved in a clinical trial, then it's not proved at all. I caught an interview with a highly educated philosopher. He was arguing with an atheist. And at one point, he started to give his personal testimony of coming to faith in Christ. And he was very careful to say, hey, look, I know this is not a real argument, right? This is just my personal, subjective experience. I know it carries no real weight as far as arguments go. Friends, that is not the New Testament sense of a testimony. A testimony does carry a degree of persuasion, of authority. As the Mosaic law said, if you have two or more witnesses, you've got a credible testimony. And no, folks were just as skeptical back then as they are today. If you walked up to someone and said, hey, I know a man, once dead, who is now raised from the dead, they would not smile and say, oh, sure, that's normal. But the early church was unrelenting in her witness, in her testimony, imitating the great witness himself, Jesus Christ, who said over and over, I have come to bear witness about myself. So they testify. But an even stronger verb comes next, and that is the verb to proclaim that you see in verse 2. Lest you think John is just some kind of dispassionate courtroom witness, he says in verse 2, no, we proclaim it, we herald it, we announce this word of life. If testimony comes from experience, proclamation comes from his commission. You might be familiar with this term, a commissioned officer in the military. That term's got a long history to it, going back to colonial America, even going back to the Roman Empire. That commission was an extension of sovereign power, that this officer is acting on behalf of America or acting on behalf of the Roman Empire. He's got the authority of the emperor backing him. This, of course, is what Christ does for us, isn't it, that he commissioned his disciples to proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. That is quite a commission, right? Imagine you report to your new job, and you ask your boss, boss, what is my territory? Do I cover Dallas? Maybe DFW, maybe North Texas at most, and your boss says, no, think bigger. I need you to cover the entire globe. Your boss will say, how much does this pay again? So if that is the commission, it's a worldwide commission, begs the question, okay, well, how much authority backs this commission? Just hear afresh what the Lord Jesus said, all authority in heaven and on earth is given to me, therefore, go. That is your commission. So you can begin to see why John is so bold. He's this eyewitness. He's seen the Christ. Secondly, he's received this commission of the highest order to proclaim. He's not going out offering helpful advice, tips for a better living. No, he's proclaiming the word of life from the word of life himself. Now that said, I have misspoken, because I have said that John proclaimed, or John bore witness. But notice, he doesn't use the word I, he doesn't use the first person in these verses. You see there, he uses the third person, we have seen, we apostles proclaim, right? This is a community project. This is a team testimony. As Ecclesiastes said, two are better than one. And so we need to ask if they were that bold, and here we are, are we this bold? Are you that bold? As we stand downstream from the apostles, as a commissioned church of the resurrected Christ entering into this apostolic work, it goes without saying that twelve mere mortals would not be able to fulfill this mission alone. That's why you see the mob evangelism take off in the book of Acts. They go out and the word starts to spread from Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth. And the same is true today, and the same is true of us. And so indeed, maybe your job is not preaching sermons on Sunday mornings, but that of course does not mean that you're not preaching all week long with your very lives in your lips. It is this that we are commissioned to do. When 1 Peter is addressing the whole church, he's talking to folks just like you and I. What does he say? He says, you, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of God's own possession, called out of darkness and into His marvelous light in order to proclaim, same verb, proclaim His excellencies. Because the simple truth is, if you are in Christ, then you have seen a great light. If you are in Christ, you have heard a great truth, the greatest truth to testify and to proclaim. There's, of course, a number of ways that we do that. That can certainly mean sharing the gospel with a co-worker at work, living lives of peculiar hospitality and compelling grace, or as John will later say, even the simple way that we love one another bears testimony to King Jesus. Now John goes on to tell us one more thing in this section about Christ. He goes little by little. So we've already heard the word from the beginning. Next verse 2, John says that the Son was with the Father. The Son was with the Father. One of the things we confess is one God, existing as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the doctrine of the Trinity can be heady stuff, right? But we're right to confess one God, existing three persons. What you see here, these three persons don't just exist. They exist in perfect fellowship, a perfect communion of the most abundant of loves. It's a fellowship unlike any other, right? They don't just tolerate each other. They don't just like each other. No, the Father, Son, and the Spirit enjoy boundless, measureless love that we can only begin to imagine. You might remember, of all the things that Jesus prayed, leading up to the cross, he prayed, Father, glorify me with the glory that I had with you before the ages began. We can only imagine how awesome is this Trinitarian fellowship. Now, that said, I think it's rightly said that there is no teaching more basic to Christianity than the Trinity. What radically separates Christianity from nearly, well, from all other religions, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Eastern religions, so on and so forth, would be that we confess one God existing as three persons. But the challenge to the modern church is, so what? It's often said, all this talk of God is triune, it makes no difference, it doesn't change anything, it's not practical, it's not relevant, it really doesn't shape the way that we live and we love. No, it's this doctrine that kind of hangs on the shelf, lives in a library. It's for the nerds and the theologians to argue about, but it doesn't impact my daily life. Well, friends, perish the thought. What we believe about God, for better or for worse, always shapes the way that we live. And you see here, John gives us an intensely practical truth from saying that God is three persons. Because you see, he continues in verse three and he says, I want you to know these things. Why? Because you too could have fellowship with us. That's about as practical as it gets, right? My aim here is fellowship. And if you just ask John, okay, John, well, what kind of fellowship do you have in mind? John says, good question, please allow me to blow your mind. Verse three, he continues and says, indeed, our fellowship, this fellowship that I have in mind is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And I want you, church, to join us. Do you see how much it matters to confess Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? It is this fellowship and no other fellowship that Christians join into. John is just repeating what he heard firsthand from the Lord Jesus. My Father and I are one and I want you to be one. My fellowship is with God and I've come so that you can enjoy that fellowship. And it's the simple truth. We throw on the word fellowship. But if you're going to have fellowship of any kind, it has to be around something. Right? For instance, we had a fellowship meal last week. So we all have this meal in common together. Kids, you might know the book, The Fellowship of the Ring. All the characters have this ring in common. The ring binds them all together. My friends, the New Testament says, your fellowship is with God the Father, through Jesus Christ, by the Spirit. Just this morning, we held a church membership class and also briefly we reviewed some of the many, many reasons to join a local church. In our day, joining a church is at best optional, right? The modern individual believes there's really nothing that he can't get on his own in private that he could get from a local church. Well, just hear John's word. He's saying such a person is forfeiting nothing less than fellowship with the triune God and with His people, communion with the saints and communion with God, for there is no me and God apart from we and God. And so that privilege comes with a great responsibility, doesn't it? We are to therefore be eager to maintain this unity of the Spirit, this bond of peace, being quick to forgive one another, quick to bear with one another, quick to promote the peace and purity of the church, quick to edify and build one another up. Well, should we need more motivation, John gives it to us now in the final verse, this word on joy. Verse 4, he says, we write in order that our joy may be complete. This is why John writes to us. Just imagine, there you are at death's door, this disciple whom Jesus loved, that no greater joy would he have had than to see the next generation enter into what he had seen, what he had heard, what he had touched, the word of life himself. Notice verse 4, he doesn't say, or he says that our joy, not your joy, but that our joy might be complete, probably referring to we the apostles. We apostles fulfill our joy. Every parent knows this, right? A parent's joy is always the greater when their child is following the footsteps of the faith. And the apostle John will so often refer to us as his beloved children, his little children. He wants the joy that the psalmist said of the next generation learning to hope in God. Isn't it true that joy, it's not something that can be learned in isolation? You can't go into your closet and know joy, at least not joy to the fullest. As John himself said in his gospel, just think of the joy of when the bride has the groom. Think of the joy of when the groom has the bride. Think of Christ and his church. That is true joy. Think of Simeon, that old faithful man waiting for the consolation of Israel, then finally getting to alight his eyes upon the infant Jesus, holding up the infant Jesus. Now my eyes have seen light to the Gentiles, revelation for the Jews. Now I can depart in peace. I have the groom. And friends, has it dawned on you yet that by our fellowship, in our fellowship, we provide for one another templates of joy, examples of joy. How to live the Christian life, for instance, if your spouse is terminally ill. How to live the joyful Christian life if you've been laid off from work. How to live the joyful Christian life if you're mocked or marginalized because you are a Christian. How to live the joyful Christian life in the midst of trials and persecutions. How to live the joyful Christian life in the midst of prosperity and abundance. That's where real joy comes from. Out of real fellowship with the triune God and with one another comes real joy. And friends, do you know this joy? This joy that the word of life has come down to be with us, that he has taken on flesh, our flesh, he's become like us in every way except in sin so that we might have fellowship with the Father through Jesus Christ and in the power of the Spirit. Let us pray. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we praise you, Lord, for the word of life has been made manifest, that he has come down to be with us, that he has taken upon our flesh, our blood, in order to save us to the utmost. We're thankful for what your word has said, for what your apostle saw, for what he heard. We're thankful that through faith we are able to see the very same things, to see Christ for who he truly is, that like Thomas, we too can say, my Lord and my God. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
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