"What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life— 2 and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us— 3 what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. 4 These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete."
It is not an accident that there is so much confusion in true Christianity and the person of Jesus Christ.
If you were to ask people today, "Who is Jesus Christ?" Some would assuredly say, that He is the Son of God, however, they would be hard pressed to explain what that means. Others might say He is the founder of Christianity. Satan moved in to cause confusion, even before the first century church was sixty years old.
He is no less active today in stirring up confusion, and he's showing no signs of letting up. False teachers keeping working their way into Christian circles, with their blatant lies and deviations from the faith. Modern philosophy and psychology has introduced many errors, including their doctrine of self-esteem and loving yourself. And, I won't even get into the prosperity gospel that has become so prominent today.
True Christianity is Jesus Christ; revealed, experienced, and proclaimed with joy!
Let us pray
Heavenly Father,
Father, we are thankful again for Your Word. What a tremendous joy it is to know Your love. Thank You for the righteousness imputed to us which was Christ’s. Lord, we want to be the people of the truth and faithful to that truth. We want to be able to discern the false teachers, who attack Christ and the reality of sinfulness. Our hearts rejoice because we’re able to be in fellowship, guide us and teach us by Your Spirit.
Lord, we know that some here with us today, who don’t know what it is to be in fellowship with, who don't know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, who don't know what it is to feel Your love. Lord, we pray that You would touch their hearts, that today would be that glorious day that they might come into fellowship with You.
May it be for Your glory and for Christ's sake
It is in His precious name we ask and pray
Amen
Today's Message: The Word Of Life
Many people today waste priceless years on empty searches for peace and happiness, only to come up disappointed. There are no substitutes for Jesus Christ! Our message is about the true revelation of God in the incarnate Word, in the true revelation
of God in the written Word. The Word of life embodies Christ and the
gospel of Christ. God’s revelation in Christ and God’s revelation concerning Christ. They are inseparable.
Christ paid the ultimate sacrifice for us, with His own life, because it is God’s desire that we would become His children. As we have discussed many times that the true Church of Christ is one body. And, like the human body, no member of the body of Christ exists apart from the rest of the body.In other words, we are all members one of another, and no one member can escape his or her responsibility toward all the other members. The health of the body, is dependent upon on the faithful ministering of all of the members to one another. We are a unit. A package deal.
From a positional standpoint, having all been placed into the body by the same Spirit, and that one same Spirit dwells within all of us, all being redeemed and all being children of God, we are one body by virtue of salvation.
As we have discussed several time before, there are two kinds of unity; positional unity and practical unity. Though we are one in position, we are not one in practice. Practical unity or what we are in practice in the body is manifest by two things. One is service, and the other one is fellowship. Service, is the ministering of our spiritual gifts to one another. And, fellowship is the sharing our love with each other. As you might imagine, both of these are very important.
As I said, positionally, we are one. But that is no guarantee that we are all one in practice. I really don’t need to tell that, all one needs to do is look around at all the various denominations, the little cliques of people. Everywhere you look, all you see today is fractioning. Even to those outside the church, it's more than obvious, that practically, we’re not one.
In John 17, when Jesus prayed "Father, I pray that they may be one," He was not praying for our positional oneness, because that was accomplished at salvation. He was praying that we would be one in practice, that we would conduct ourselves as one. It was and still is, important to Christ, that we would all be one in practice, not just in position.
We are so blessed that the Apostle John’s wrote this wonderful letter, to remind us that the greatest reality the world possesses is divine truth. When we think of the Apostle John, we tend conjure up these images of someone who is rather meek, who’s maybe almost effeminate because this is
the way he has been depicted in many of the medieval paintings. John is frequently depicted as leaning on Jesus’ shoulder, looking up with a dove-eyed stare, into the face of Christ.
In many ways, he is quite the opposite of the way he is depicted, he was very outgoing, highly emotional, and somewhat demanding. In fact, his writing is very direct and bold; dogmatic and very authoritative. John is very black and white. Committed to absolutes.
John is also known to us because of his proximity to Jesus Christ in the gospel accounts, he’s one of three in the inner circle, Peter, James and John.
In this day and age, when Christian thinking is tolerant, accepting, all inclusive, compromising, and convictionless, I believe that this is the prefect time for John's powerful message. John is the perfect writer to confront the laxity in the church, the shallowness among the professed
people of God, and the lack of conviction about what is really true and
what is not.
Today, we embark on a new journey into a magnificent book about the Word of life, I John chapter 1. Without wasting any time, John immediately gets right to the point. There is no identification of the author, no opening greetings, and no introductory statements. Just straightforward and jumps right to the issue. It’s very much unlike the letters of Paul, Peter and even James for that matter.
At the time that he writes, it’s the last decade of the first century,
he is the last apostle alive who still has a vital, vibrant ministry of
preaching and teaching, and leading the church.
Open with me your Bibles to I John chapter 1, verses one through four. I invite you to follow along with me as I read to set the text in our minds, as we prepare our hearts for what the Spirit of God has to to say to us. Listen for the voice of our Lord. I John 1:1-4.
"What
was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our
eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the
Word of Life—and
the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to
you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to
us—what
we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may
have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father,
and with His Son Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete."
In verse 1 he writes, "What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life."
The word touched is the Greek verb "psēlapháō," which means to handle, and implies to personally investigate. It is, by the way, the same word that Jesus used after His resurrection, when He appeared to the disciples in Luke 24:39.
"See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have."
John is then saying, that Jesus Christ was revealed and that He was
historically validated by the apostles in all of these objective ways,
both before and after the resurrection. He tells us he is writing from an eyewitness account. He is saying, "I am writing this from personal experience. I have heard it. I have seen it. I have touched it with my own hands. Three times he affirms that this is firsthand eyewitness truth concerning the Word of life. The Word of life that was once with the Father, the Word of life which
was incarnate, the Word of life which brought eternal life.
This is a very important starting point. This is important because the churches to whom he writes in Asia Minor have been subjected to error. John knows he has a responsibility to confront that error with the truth. Nothing is as important as divine truth. Because the Word of God alone provides eternal life. That said, the greatest threat in the world then, is anything that is contrary to that truth.
Any idea that is raised up against the Word of God by men or Satan.
We are engaged, then, in a war. A spiritual war between the truth and error. A spiritual war that rages on today as it has since Genesis 3, when Satan told Eve that God did not say something that God did, in fact, say. It is therefore, the responsibility of the servant of God to proclaim that truth and to point out any error which threatens that truth.
After the saving work of Christ on earth was done and He had ascended back into
heaven at the end of the first third of that century, He sent the Spirit
of God, the Holy Spirit, we would like to believe that the church would have stayed doctrinally pure and behaviorally pure, but it didn’t. And so, the work of the Holy Spirit was to inspire the apostles to speak the truth, to teach the truth, and write down those things concerning Himself, which were recorded in the New Testament, which is the life of Jesus Christ and the ministry of Jesus Christ and the
redemption of Jesus Christ and the full explanation of its meaning.
They were given the responsibility to preach the Word in season and out of season and to reprove and rebuke anyone who attacked that Word, and they were to tell all of those who proclaimed that truth of that same responsibility. It was just fifty or sixty years after the first century church was established, the truth was under a massive assault.
The first primary assault on the truth came from Jewish legalism, which the Apostle Paul was battling in writing the book of Romans and writing the book of Galatians. It was battled in the Jerusalem Council through the book of Acts, in which Paul would go into Jewish synagogues and confront their damning legalism and point people to the grace and salvation in Jesus Christ and Him alone. This is the great truth that inspired Paul to shed the light in his own heart, which he wrote about in Philippians chapter 3 when he saw the glory of the truth of salvation in Christ alone.
It was there he said "But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead."
In verse 2, he goes on to say "And the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us."
The word manifest is the Greek verb "phaneróō," which means to illuminate, to make visible, to make clear. In verse 1, the emphasis is on the humanity of Jesus Christ as He came in the flesh. And, in verse 2, John’s focus then, shifts to Jesus Christ as the one who both embodies and imparts Eternal Life.
Therefore, the message of Jesus Christ is not only about knowledge, it is also about life.
Therefore, the message of Jesus Christ is not only about knowledge, it is also about life.
You need to understand, that the false teachers were emphasizing having secret knowledge. While it is certainly true, that proper knowledge is
vital, you cannot believe the gospel without first knowing certain facts. The gospel message is about spiritually dead sinners being raised to new life in Jesus Christ. Nicodemus, who was a ruler of the Jews, an esteemed teacher of the Jews had knowledge, yet, before he met in with Jesus in John 3:1-16, he did not understand that he needed new life through the new birth. He didn't understand the concept of needing to be "born again." The gospel then, is not just a matter of knowing and assenting to the facts
about Jesus Christ, although it certainly does include that. It’s also a matter of
Christ raising you from spiritual death to life.
In Ephesians 2, the Apostle Paul told the Ephesians in verses 1-5, "And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)."
The Eternal Life, the Word of Life, then, was none other than that Eternal Life who was with the Father and was manifested to us, through the Son had to descend to earth to bring us that life. The Apostles had Jesus Christ revealed to them and manifested to them in a spiritual way as "the life, the eternal one." That is to say, that God revealed to them that He is "the Christ, the Son of the living God."
In Luke chapter 10, "At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him."
In John 5:26-29, Jesus said "For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself; and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment."
I wish we had more time to go through all the passages in which Jesus referred to this Life, but I’ll have to leave that for to you to do on your own. But the conclusion is that he who doesn’t have the Son of God doesn’t have the life. John's testimony is a wonderful testimony that Jesus is the divine life in human flesh. Our experience of Jesus Christ, then, must be based on the biblical revelation of Him. The Apostles knew Christ individually, however, they also shared together in the experience. True Christianity is Jesus Christ personally experienced. This is the spiritual manifestation of Jesus Christ.
Verse 3, "What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ."
Here John talks about the proclaimed Word of Life. The responsibility to bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life. If you're going to be a witness, a firsthand testimony, you first have to have experienced something. John is then saying, "I have seen and bear witness and I proclaim to you that Christ is the eternal life which was manifested to us." It is the truth, the revelation which I personally experienced which I’m called to proclaim.
Fellowship is the Greek word "koinōnía," which literally means to share in common, a partnership, a community. John wants his readers to have the same glorious knowledge that he and the other Apostles had.You will remember, the people to whom he wrote were living in Asia Minor, they had never personally seen Jesus. Because Jesus never went there. There is nothing recorded in the Scriptures to indicate that anyone in the churches there had ever met Jesus Christ. They wouldn’t have heard, seen and handled the Word of Life. So, John is to be the eyewitness to proclaim to them that truth.
John is credible witness, because it is known by everyone that he is the same John who was with Jesus. Christ manifested Himself to the Apostles to qualify them as firsthand eyewitnesses, so they could proclaim the gospel to others. You and I cannot be apostles in a real sense, but we do have the apostles’ eyewitness account. I'd like you to notice, that John does not mention the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, which is a characteristic expression in the Pauline Epistles, because the false teachers against whom he is writing make him
concentrate on the Son, whom their heresy dishonored, and the Father
whom they thereby forfeited. True Christianity is a personal experience rooted in revelation and realized in relationship with God and with other believers.
As a footnote, if you’ve been a Christian for a while, you should know and enjoy fellowship with God better than before. This two-dimensional fellowship should always be deepening in both directions.True Christianity is an experience of fellowship with God and with His people. You cannot be a growing Christian, while being in isolation from other Christians. We need one another in order to grow spiritually.
That's why the author of Hebrews wrote in chapter 10 verses 23- 25, "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near."
All of the books of the New Testament written by Apostles or those who
were directly associated with the Apostles to give us the apostolic eyewitness
accounts. Matthew wrote it down; Mark wrote it down; Luke wrote it down, and John wrote it down. Peter and Paul wrote it down. Whenever someone attacks the Scriptural accounts, they attack the honesty and the integrity not only of God the Holy Spirit but of the eyewitnesses of the Apostles.They did not begin the church because they were a bunch of religious fanatics who were seeking to promote themselves, they were proclaiming the message of the gospel under orders from Jesus Christ Himself.
In verse 4, John says "These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete."
The Apostle wrote, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit the words that God wanted
us to receive. Through these writings, which we know today as our New Testament, so that we can enter
into the same fellowship with God that they themselves enjoyed! By this point, John was the only surviving Apostle. How was his joy made complete? Because we cannot glorify God properly unless we enjoy Him thoroughly and completely. John knew that if those who would read these letters, would not be carried away by the false teachers, but would continue in the truth, he was a happy man. Beloved, this joy is not to be regarded as some sort of luxury, but rather as a spiritual necessity, essential in the lives of every believer.
In Closing..
You know, there are many people today, who believe in a Jesus who is a product of their own imagination and they have developed an
emotional experience that they call being born again. However, when their
problems are not all magically or instantaneously solved, or they go through difficult
trials, they conclude "Oh, that Jesus didn’t work for me." And, they quickly turn back to the world.
The problem is, they didn’t believe in the Jesus that has been revealed to us by the Apostles themselves, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. Therefore, their experience was not that of true fellowship with God and with others who genuinely know God. And, unfortunately, any witness about their "supposed conversion" is lost when they abandon the faith, as if they never experienced Christianity at all.
True Christianity is a personal experience with the real Jesus Christ, the One revealed throughout the pages of Scripture, not the one people conjure up in their minds. When you claim to know Jesus, make sure you've got the real deal!
May it be so..
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen
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