I often feel like a tour guide when I am teaching. I am so glad to have you all ready and willing to travel with Penny and myself each week without a time frame for finishing. It’s really like a leisurely walk or drive, we’ll get there when we get there.
During our break Penny and I and Carolyn and Paula all traveled together up to the Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove for a Seminar by Ann Graham Lotz on teaching called Filling Up to Overflow. We had a great time and really filled out to overflow with the food, the fellowship, the teaching, the laughter, the conviction. We all came back hurting all over. A good kind of hurting. We flew into Knoxville, TN and rented a car to drive the rest of the way to Ashville, NC. We took a long leisurely trip through the Blue Ridge Smokey Mountains because we had caught an early flight and check in was not until late afternoon. I loved the drive. We just took our time and stopped here and there at various overlooks and spots that caught our interest and chatted all along the way as women do. It was wonderful. We all enjoyed taking our time. We enjoyed the long drive and the beautiful scenery. There was no telling when or if we would ever have the opportunity to come this way again together. We enjoyed the moment. Dredged it dry. If someone wanted to stop we stopped. When someone was ready to go, we were all ready to go. It was wonderful being of the same mind. If you have ever traveled with someone who was difficult for an extended period of time you can appreciate these good trip with good friends who are easy to travel with. A good trip is always dependent upon who you travel with. Those who you travel with can really make or break a trip.
We are all about to take a trip together through the book of 1 John and I just have to share with you how excited I am that each and every one of you are here. I look forward to your companionship and I know Penny does too. When one of you can’t make it; and I know there are a few who aren’t able to make this trip with us because of conflicts, it really does decrease our joy. We miss Pat and we miss Maria. We miss Hazel and we miss Jan. I can go on and on about who we miss and who we wish were joining us. Every time something comes up and you can’t make a night. We miss you. We wish you were here so that you could share our joy as we study together. Whenever you come back no matter how long it has been we are so glad to see you. Your presence brings us joy. It really does. I’m glad you are here. I’m glad you made it.
I’m all the time thinking I hate that so and so had to miss tonight or the past few weeks. That is the nature of our fellowship and it’s wonderful. I’m sure you can think of a friend who you wish was here with us right now who would increase your joy if they could be here tonight and be here through this study. Your joy is somewhat incomplete without their sharing your joy. Just thinking of them, you know there is more joy to be had. Our joy is always a bit incomplete apart from sharing things we enjoy with others.
That is the heart of fellowship and that is what the book of 1 John is about. Communion with the Father and the Son Jesus Christ and one another. 1 John is very much about the joy of fellowship that is to be found in a relationship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ that is meant to be shared. It’s such a wonderful rich relationship that our joy is incomplete unless others get to share and enjoy this relationship with 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.” – 1 John 4
Have you ever known someone that you wished others could know? Have you ever said you just have to meet so and so, they are just an interesting, funny, helpful, sweet, intelligent, etc..etc.. etc? Knowing God the Father and Jesus Christ is very much like that or it should be like that in our lives.
Many times when we come close to people and make friends and acquaintances its natural for us to want them meet others in our life who are very important to us, our spouses, our parents, our children, our siblings. It brings us joy for them to share in these relationships with us. How much more so our relationship with God as our Father? We want people not only to meet God the Father, but to share our relationship with Him, to know him as their own Father also through Jesus Christ.
I can remember when I was about 5 years old, I met my biological father for the first time. I can remember being very nervous around him. When I met him for first time, he intimidated me so much that I wouldn’t talk around him. I was extremely quiet anyway. When I became anxious I wouldn’t talk at all. My father and his wife began picking me up on weekends so that I could spend time with them and to get to know them. However, I was so nervous I would not talk the the entire weekend. This repeated until it was arranged for my older sister to accompany me on these weekend visitations to help me adjust. I enjoyed this arrangement. I can remember how her presence made me feel secure and we did this for about a year. However, as time passed, I can remember wishing that my father was her father too. She was four years older than I and she had no relationship with her father. I can remember it was her biggest dream to meet him one day. I felt spoiled by my father’s attention and affection, the clothes they would buy me, the toys, etc. They were always kind to my older sister, but you knew which child was their child, or at least I felt the difference and it made me often feel awkward and guilty the more they showed affection towards me because she was left out. I wanted them to love her too, to buy her clothes and toys also. I wanted my father to be her father. My own joy was incomplete because I could not share it with someone I loved very dearly.
I am so glad that today, I have a Father who I can openly share. This means so much to me. I often feel so spoiled with God’s attention and love towards me which he lavishes on me.
See what kind of love the Father has lavished upon us that we should be called children of God; and so we are. – 1 John 3:1
Sometimes I am afraid of making others jealous because so great is the Father’s goodness towards me. It overwhelms me all the time. All the time. I’m all the time thinking it has to come to an end. It has to. All good things come to an end right? That’s life. Everything is temporary in this world. Yet God’s love is not from this world. I have not found an end to God’s love and grace yet in my life. It continually confounds me and humbles me. There is simply no end to it. I would not have ever believed it and still would not believe it except that I have known it and I enjoy it every day. Every day. I know the love of God through his Son Jesus Christ and I want others to know it too. My joy is incomplete until others share His love and they can share it. I can say to my Father, “Love her too. Love him too. Show him the same kind of love you have showed me. Adopt her. Spoil her like you have spoiled me. Love her too.” I don’t have to enjoy this love alone and you don’t either. It’s my prayer that you will grow in the knowledge of the love of God through this study and that you will grow in the desire for others to know it too because your joy just won’t be complete in keeping it to yourself and enjoying it alone. God’s love is meant to be shared. It’s meant to be poured out lavishly upon others. It’s meant to be what distinguishes us as Christians.
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35)
but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. (John 14:31)
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. ( John 15:9-10)
And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love. (2 John 1:6)
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:30-31)
Our privilege as God’s children is to know and to enjoy God’s lavish love upon us; our calling and responsibility is to grow in and to practice that love towards others. There is enough teaching in this short letter of 1 John to last us a lifetime of practice and to provide us with a lifetime of humility and conviction if we walk and live under its light.
I read a quote over our break that has haunted me. It seems like we are always reading more books and listening to more sermons then we can ever remember. Or at least I am anyway. What if we never heard another book, or heard another sermon.
If you are honest, you have to admit that you know far more than you are presently put into practice. If you never heard another sermon, you would have enough biblical truth to work on applying for the rest of your life. You may feel spiritually satisfied by the fact that you go to church every Sunday, that you have your devotions every day, and that you go to the Bible study every week. But if you’re not applying what you are really reading and hearing, then you are only kidding yourself. You’re forgetting the whole point of looking into God’s word in the first place….Every time you hear the word of God preached, you are training yourself to either obey or disobey God. – Ken Ramey, Expository Listening
In our generation sometimes we get information overload. There are too many books to read. Too many commentaries that it is easy to forget the essential and keep it simple. The letter of 1 John reminds us of what is essential. It reminds us to let what we have heard from the very beginning abide in us. (1 John 2:24) Forget everything else. We don’t need something new but that old message, the one we heard from the beginning that has not changed and does not need to be changed and it’s simply this:
“For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” – 1 John 3:11
We are going to be talking a lot about love, a lot about light and sin, a lot about fellowship, a lot about assurance and self-examination to test our faith. And we are going to see one of the tests revealing the authenticity of our faith is our love for others. A lack of love for fellow believers is a trademark of false teachers, especially when believers don’t agree with their new ideas and opinions. We are going to see that all sin comes down to a failure to love God and others as we should. And we are going to see that apart from God demonstrating what love is to us, we would never know love ourselves and would have no hope of loving others. We are going to see the difference between God’s love and the worlds love.
By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. – 1 John 3:16
I love the book of 1 John because it has spoken so personally to me since I first studied it and it was a quick 8 week scheduled trip. I got so much out of it the first time around and I know there is so much more to be squeezed out of it.
Tonight we are simply doing an overview of the book of 1 John and preparing our hearts to read it. I really need to top calling this a book because this is a letter. It’s one of the epistles. It was written by the apostle John who also wrote the book of Revelation which we just finished.
Authorship
Because of our recent study of the book of Revelation, many of us are already familiar with who John is but for those who are new and for those who were not present I am going to provide a quick overview or review. John was one of the 12 apostles. He was the brother of James. They were sons of Zebedee, and also called the sons of thunder by Christ. John and his brother James were fishermen and worked with their father Zebedee and his servants along the Sea of Galilee. They were mending their nets when Christ called them to come and follow him. shortly after Christ called Simon Peter and His brother Andrew who were also fishermen and probably partners with James & John(Mark 1:19).
John was one of the inner three disciples. These inner three disciples, Peter, James & John had an even more intimate relationship with Christ then the remaining twelve. They would often follow Christ to private places and witness additional miracles. They were present for the Transfiguration, Gethsemane, the raising of Jairus’s 12 year old daughter from the dead. John was the only one of these inner three to write a gospel. The gospel of John is 90% new material. He doesn’t mention many of the same stories the other three gospels mention, instead he adds to them. He offers us a fresh perspective of Christ emphasizing him as our King, Son of God and the great I am. You will see this same emphasis of Christ as Son of God in the book of 1 John.
John is said to have died around 99-100 AD. His brother James was the first of the apostles to die of martyrdom and the only one whose death is recorded by the bible. John was the last apostle to die and the only one to die of natural causes, although it wasn’t from lack of trying. An early church writer records that John did face martyrdom when he was cast into a cauldron of boiling oil. He miraculously survived without injury and was banished to the island of Patmos, where he received the vision from the prophetic book of Revelation. Some scholars believe he wrote the book of Revelation while he was banished on the island and others believe he wrote it after he was allowed to return to Ephesus, what is now modern-day Turkey, once Domitian died who had banished him there. Either way, God still had a special purpose for John to fill and spared his life.
No one knows exactly when the letter of first John was written or who he was writing to. Estimated dates run from 66 all the way up to 99 AD with the most common guesstimate to be around 70AD. No one knows where or who John is writing to. Since he does not identify himself in his letter it is believed that he had no need to identify himself, he was writing to an audience who knew him well and who were very dear to him. He often refers to them as, “Children” and “My little Children”.
It is recorded by many early Christian writers that John lived in Ephesus. It is possible that he wrote this letter from Ephesus and possibly to the church of Ephesus since he ministered there later in life or to a church in Asia Minor since it was this particular area where the Gnostic teaching was strongly connected during this time.
John was writing them to refute the prevalent false teaching of Gnosticism that was prevalent in that time period. Gnosticism is world-view based on the experience of Gnosis. The word “gnosis” means “knowledge”. Gnostics believe that you are saved through special knowledge that you experience. Much of this knowledge is referred to as “knowledge of the heart.” It is hidden and revealed by myths instead of theology which makes its interpretations much more diverse. Although myths by nature are false, Gnostics elevate the higher more profound truth that these myths teach.
To them Jesus Christ was a great teacher who came to reveal knowledge that would save us. They did not believe that Christ was God or that he came in the flesh. They believe that God is unknowable and He is far too perfect and pure to have anything to do with our material world because to Gnostics, matter is evil. Matter holds us in bondage and is what we want to be delivered from.
In his letter, John states his four purposes for writing.
- So that they might share fellowship with them 1:3
- So their joy would be complete 1:4
- So they would not sin 2:1
- So they would know they have eternal life 5:13
Today, we also are surrounded by a lot of false teaching. It’s getting harder and harder to tell the genuine from the imitation. One of the questions we have been discussing and trying to answer in 1 John is “What or Who is a Christian?” It’s more difficult to answer then it seems.
This is what John’s readers would have been asking and what John was trying to teach them. It was a time that was prevalent with false teachers, leaders falling away from the church to teach a different doctrine. They taught that Christ never came in the flesh and that Christians were sinless. Believers both young and old were thrown into confusion unsure of what and who to believe anymore. They still struggled with sin, did this mean they were lost? They doubted their salvation and relationship with God. The weight of the question, how could they be saved and still sin, was tremendously heavy on their hearts. Was there any hope for them? Other respected Christian friends and leaders around them never doubted their salvation. They never seemed to struggle with sin much, not the way they did. Their sleep wasn’t disturbed by it. Their appetite wasn’t ruined by it. Their conscience and hearts weren’t being seared by it. They seemed to have this peace that was outside of their reach. Maybe it was their maturity. Maybe they had or knew something they didn’t. These believers were left wondering what their secret was. Was it something they were missing? What was wrong with them? Had they failed in their Christian faith? Or had God failed? Was the gospel ineffective for them? Maybe it worked for others, just not for them…they would just have to do the best they could and just hope they were good enough in the end. They would live without assurance, without peace, without the joy of knowing for sure. This gospel message, that a man named Jesus Christ died for their sins and rose again from the dead and that they too could have eternal life and forgiveness of sins if they believed and trusted in Him. It almost seemed too easy, too good to be true anyway.. and you know what they say about that…
This was a time not too different from ours, as we struggle with false teachers rising up from within the church and with our own struggle with sin when others seem to have it all together. I know you will find John’s assurance in this book extremely relevant and helpful, for this was the reason why he was writing to them. He was writing to give assurance and peace to those who were saved and to take away the assurance and the false sense of peace from those who were not.
Some of us need our assurance shaken up. We live in a day in age when 80% of regular church attendees are lost. Many are “notional” Christians. Their faith is not hung on Christ and His finished work, but on something else…their own feelings, their own opinions and fanciful ideas on who God is and what He would or would not do based on how they personally see him and would expect Him to act. They worship a safe, ideological God. A god who they made up in their imagination. A god who exists only in their minds. He is not the one true Living God who moves and interacts with His creation and is defined by nobody but Himself. The Living God, who is self-existent apart from us and needs nothing from us but continually seeks to reveal to us how good, how beautiful and how sufficient He is by showering us with His gifts and graces and promising to meet all our needs if we would only seek and trust Him. Many say they know Him, but there is a huge broken gap between what they claim and what they do.
80% is huge. This is worse than the swine flu epidemic when everyone rushed to be vaccinated against it. 80% is serious. On which side are we? Where do we land? It is a life and death question with endless consequences. Are we prepared to honestly seek the truth regardless of what it reveals? Are we self-deceived? If we are, then we must go outside of ourselves for evaluation and we must be humble and willing to listen and accept the results of the test whatever it may be. If we are found to be terminal there is treatment. We can be 100% cured and gain an intimate relationship with God and his Son Jesus Christ and confidence that we know Him. If we are found to be already truly saved, then we will be strengthened by knowing for sure and ridding ourselves of all doubt. We will be checked for weaknesses and can address them to strengthen our knowledge of Him. But if we choose to remain ignorant by burying our heads to the question, or by allowing our pride to raise us above the examination because of its utter ridiculousness and simplicity, then we have no hope. Ignorance kills.
John’s tests and examinations are simple, objective and effective. In a day of age when we love self knowledge quizzes and seeing what they reveal about us; when we are big on yearly self-examinations and preventative measures, I pray we would have the humility and courage to place ourselves under John’s examination and let God’s light shine into our hearts for a spiritual health check-up. No one likes tests and examinations much, especially when they are set to kill our narcissism instead of feeding it. But if we make the claim to be a Christian and that we know God then we must submit ourselves to this examination on a regular basis because it will save our lives and maintain our spiritual health. 2 Cor. 13:5 instructs us:
“Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?”
