In our text today, we're going to be discussing three aspects, and it'll take me a little time to get there, of fellowship. But if we could read 1 John 1, verse 1 to start with. 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. As I go to scripture, and just about any book of the Bible that we go to, There is an issue that each author is addressing with his audience. And generally, it's with heresy. Sometimes it's to answer a question. For Matthew, in his gospel, he's addressing a Jewish crowd. That's why he presents a genealogy of Jesus to present to the Jews that Christ is their King. He is their Messiah. In Galatians, we read that Paul, is addressing what's called a Judaizing heresy. And then here in 1 John, he's addressing what is called an early Gnostic problem. And this has always been since the church has been born. She has been accosted by false teachers that have come to destroy the church by adulterating the purity of the gospel message. We first encounter this in Acts 15, where the church leadership convenes to discuss the inclusion of Gentiles without the need of circumcision. Then again, the Apostle Paul confronts this issue in the letter to the Galatian church. which they were bewitched by submitting to those who would enslave them back again to the law and not continue in the freedom of the gospel. When he says, I'm surprised that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another, but there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be occurs the greek word is anathema as the strongest language uh... one could put on another today we would have uh... certain phrase for that but i'm not to repeat that up here uh... peter also tells simon who was baptized but wanted to buy the gift of the holy spirit so he could lay hands on new converts so they could receive the gift of the holy spirit basically says to him May you and your money perish together. You're still in your sins You need to repent and pray to God that he does give you repentance. So with the purity of the gospel message There has been a jealousy for the people of God, especially the Apostles and true teachers to to guard it with vigor and We go back to Acts 20, 25. I read when Paul's departing Ephesus and he's going to Jerusalem. And he knows that chains and bonds and persecutions await him. And he says, and now behold, I know that all of you, among whom I went about preaching the kingdom, will no longer see my face. Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God. Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. I know that after my departure wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock, and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore, be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears." So three years is What we have these days is about the time to get one's MDiv, so graduate school. So Paul was their graduate instructor for three years, night and day, instructing the people on the correct doctrines and the correct purposes of Christ. Now John echoes those things. when he addresses this church. And he says, he's addressing several heretical points that false brothers, false teachers are making. And it was generally speaking, the heresy of Gnosticism was growing in Christendom by the time he wrote, which is probably some dispute, about 70 AD. I kind of agree. The New Testament was written by then. Others say around 90 AD. And according to early tradition, John hurriedly left the public bath in Ephesus, because the leader or the progenitor of this Gnostic heresy was named Cyrinthus. And the tradition is when he heard that he was in the bath, the public bath, he left. Irenaeus, in his letter against heresies, writes, there are those who heard from him, Polycarp, who was John's first disciple, That John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, perceiving Serentis within, rushed out of the bathhouse without bathing, crying out, let us fly, lest even the bathhouse fall down, because Serentis, the enemy of the truth, is within. He, Serentis, built the notion that matter is inherently evil. And this is why John was saying Christ was manifest in the flesh. We see in Genesis that when God made the worlds, he declared it good. Now we have Greek philosophy penetrating and permeating the church and its doctrines. That the material was inherently evil. He distinguished between an immaterial divine Christ spirit and a human Jesus with a physical body. And said the Christ spirit came on the human jesus right after his baptism and left just before the crucifixion this is why john stresses that it was the one person jesus christ who began his public manifestation by being baptized and finish it by being crucified by saying this is the one who came by water and blood jesus christ not with water only but with the water and with the blood. That is, Jesus really died as well as entered his ministry by water baptism. The water also refers to the water that flowed from or with the blood from Jesus' pure side and proved the reality of his death. Another group that came with the Gnostics were called the Docetics. And they went on the premise, as well, that Jesus only appeared, and that's what the word means, or seemed to be human, thus avoiding the humanity of Jesus Christ, because they, too, believed that the material world was evil. So the first heresy that the church is combating against is the humanity of Christ. And I think we, in our confession, we dealt with both those heresies. One group, early on, denying the humanity of jesus and the other group is divinity and we still have those things here with us today as pastor steve mentions quite a bit that uh... heresies are like asteroids they have their orbits they come around every so often that they're dressed in a different garb I'm giving you a little historical background about the specifics of what John is writing in the first century, and so kind of expand and focus our detail. But also, sometimes we don't really need to go through the detail, know the history, because it's explained pretty well today, too, because these heresies and wrong thoughts are addressed as well today as they were in the first century. John also encourages believers that the conduct of Christians is not predominantly sinful. When he does sin, he temporarily denies the new nature. This is not to say he ceases to be Christian, but ceases to act like a Christian. And the reason I'm saying this, the Gnostics prided themselves on their Christian freedom. to do anything they please, including freedom to sin. And again, the heresy of that comes around today in certain Christian circles. Paul addresses it in Romans. What's he say? He describes the grace of God that comes through Christ. We're no longer under the law anymore, but we're under the grace. So then he says, so you're going to say, let us sin that grace may abound. And he says, no, no, no. How can you, who have been born of God, Okay, died to sin and risen again with Christ. How can you go on sinning? That's not who you are. That's not who we are. And as Christians, born again, filled with the Spirit, does not mean that we don't need instruction from God to continually remind us. Peter says, I know I've said this to you guys before. I'm saying it to you again. Okay, be on the alert. This is how you are to live. And Paul addresses that too. John again says, I know you know these things. I'm giving you an old commandment, which is not really old. You've heard this before, to love your neighbor as yourself and to love one another as Christ loved us. We get more into that later. So they had a philosophy of licentiousness. The grace of God covers all things. We can live the way they want. And as Peter says, Paul does write hard things, but people twist his scriptures, twist his writings as they do other scriptures, so they can have a pretext or an excuse to go on and do what they want. Avoid those guys. Don't even eat with them, OK? So in our first few verses John addresses so that they are saying that they have fellowship with God But we're living in moral lives John being a chosen vessel of Christ who witnessed the things as he said here We we saw him we beheld him we touched him. We saw these things for several years That Jesus said from the from the beginning. He says with authority that they lie when they say they have fellowship with God and walk in darkness And he equates walking with darkness as several things. They lie when they say through the book, we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness. Or they say, we have no sin. That is, they have no nature or inclination to sin. That their souls aren't tainted by sin. So they can do and think what they want. They are self-deceived. or if they say they don't sin at all, that they don't practice or even do sin. I know there is a... I don't know if it was in the Nazarene movement that the second baptism of the Holy Spirit and people are saying, we don't sin anymore. We make mistakes or whatever. And John says, no, that's heresy. He says to us, I write that you may not sin, but when you do, it's going to be expected. We have an advocate. with the father who is faithful and just to forgive us our sins when we confess our sins to him and that's a promise we can always take as we walk moment by moment with the lord he says they also lie when they say i know him but don't keep his commandments that is the one who says he knows God but does not love his brother or he loves the world rather than the things of God those who don't continue with us and John says they were made manifest because they did not remain but they left us they deny that Jesus is the Christ or their life livelihood is one of which they practice sin John also gives the reasons why he writes, and there are several of them. I had mentioned earlier, I write these things that you do not sin. I write these things in our focus here, that I write these things that your fellowship be with us, because ours is with the triune God. I also write these things because our fellowship was with Him, that your joy, our joy may be full, may be made complete. I write these things because you know the truth, that Jesus is the Christ. I write these things because you know those who are trying to deceive you. So you need to abide in Him. Abide in Christ. Remain. When Jesus in John 16 says, I am the true vine, you are the branches. Abide in me. Don't be cut off or separated, but abide in me. For without me, you can do nothing. And I write these things and He gives assurances that you may know you have eternal life. And he gives assurances to the believers and against the Gnostic heresies. By this we know him if we keep his commands and his commands are not burdensome. By this we know we are children of God when we love one another. By this we know we have passed from life to death that we love the brothers. By this we know we are the truth, because He has given us His Spirit, who testifies with our spirit that we are children of God. In Romans, Paul says, when we cry out, Abba, Father, we are testifying that we are of the children of God. We don't need to look beyond that. By this we know that love is perfected, that we have an abiding love. By this we know the Spirit of God, He that confesses that Jesus has come in the flesh. One who denies that Jesus has come in the flesh has denied God. By this we know those who believe in the name of Jesus, that we may know that we have eternal life. And finally, the assurance we have by this we know that you may have confidence in Him. If we ask anything, according to His will, He hears us. And we have the petitions that we ask, Jesus says that in John 16 in the upper room. So John here is just echoing things that he's been preaching for 30, 40 years, and which he had heard from Jesus in the beginning. And in his introduction, he says, through this letter, this is our message, God is light. And in him there is no darkness, no not at all. This is also our message that you love one another. Love is the element that binds people together, binds Christians together. And when Christ says that we ought to love one another as I have loved you, I always wonder, why is that? Why do we have the commands to do certain things? And Peter says, be ye holy for God is holy, for the Lord is holy. I always look to John 1.1, that in the beginning the word, that Christ the Son was with God. And since we're made in the image of God, We are to reflect that relationship. That's a, I guess, 21st century term. Biblical word is fellowship. Okay, a close bond. In John 17, Christ prays that The love that the Father has for Him and He has for the Father also is with the Christians, the believers whom God had given Him. So, again, in all aspects of institutions, we have a social hierarchy within the Trinity that the Son is the Son to the Father by relationship. I had some Jehovah's Witness come by a few weeks ago, and they said, He's the Son because God created Him. I said, no, it's by relationship. The son has always been with the father. That's why God is called the everlasting father, because he always had an everlasting son. And when Jesus says, glorify me with the glory that I had with you from the beginning, okay? Glorify me with that. In Isaiah, God says, I don't share my glory with anyone. It's with the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Have this communion. And he said, let us make man in our image. We, in a sense, have an extended family in some manner. that God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in a sense, are family as well. And in John 17, Christ includes the believers with them. I in you, you in me, they in us, we all belong together as one. For John 4, 6 through 11, We are of God. He who knows God hears us. He who is not of God does not hear us. There's another sign. How do you know a person is in the Christian family? Are they listening to the properly preached word of God that is delivered here? Here is the primary source material of the scripture. We have thousands of manuscripts. There's really no need to debate the reliability of what we hear. John, if he was standing up here preaching this, it'd be the same thing as his. You have the word already. When Jesus was given the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and the rich man died and looked up, and he's saying, well, let me go back to my family and tell them not to come here. And Abraham says, hey, they have Moses and the prophets. Let him hear them. He says, no, no, no. They'll hear. They'll listen. Someone comes back from the dead. I mean, no, no, no. If they don't hear Moses and the prophets, they won't listen if someone came back from the dead. Because God's spirit communicates with our spirit his word. And that is sufficient and necessary to enliven our spirits to believe. And God has put that and entrusted that with believers whom his spirit has filled. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. Now some people would stop there and say that's the only attribute God has, but God's love is holy. He has a holy love, and so it's defined and limited. Others will use this again as a pretext to do whatever they want in the name of love, and it has nothing to do with Christian love. In this, the love of God was manifested toward us. And again, he's opposing the idea that Christ was just the spirit, that God has sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him. And this is love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the covering or propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. And I have a few minutes left here. That is a limitation of God's love. When I was in college, and I think one of the great reasons I stayed up at Cal Poly because of the fellowship I had with other believers up there at the university. I was in athletics and I asked the Lord, it doesn't look like I'll be playing football next year. I set it up so I could play ball and run track somewhere. So nine months later, I'm here working out at what was CMC, at Claremont Men's College. A former coach was there and he says, Gordon, come on over. I could set you up and get you in here. I'll get the track coach and you can work, you know, you can do. It didn't hit me till maybe a few years later that that was my answer to prayer. And I thought about that and it was, you know, the pulls were too strong for me to stay here. I loved, and it hit me, the fellowship I had with other believers up there was such a strong pull. I didn't want to leave those friends, those Christian friends I had that we would witness out on campus. out in the town, the community now and then. We'd come in and fellowship and sing together, pray together, whether it was a weekly thing or in the dorms, it was just all over the place. And it's gone now. We keep in touch here and there, my old roommate and I, but those things covered us. from, I was a social science major, covered us from the heresies I was getting from my prox. I had a couple prox who were believers, but a lot of them were Marxist, liberal guys, and they just couldn't help all the time injecting their anti-Christian slogans in. I think it was kind of, it was a couch trip for them. They were getting their therapy from being raised perhaps predominantly Catholic and having that doctor on the weight of your shoulders, so everybody is bad now, all Christians. But we could communicate that, and that was a big Christ among us. Christ is in us, so we share. Christ's love and word with each other, that is Christ being in the midst of us in that way. Because the fellowship he has, he has shared it with us because he has indwelled us with his spirit. So we do have, when we fellowship together in the name of the Lord, we have that heaven on earth experience already. I'm guilty of this. Haven't been to all the Wednesday prayer meetings that have been for several years and other things get in the way, but when I leave there, Wednesday night prayer meetings in here, there's a whole different sense I left with than what I came with. And I'm sure that's true for everybody here, especially on Sunday mornings, and you come to Sunday evening services, ready to go into the next day, feeling the Lord is in our presence. To echo some more things biblically, I heard a sermon years ago about part of this fellowship and Boaz, the story of Boaz, how he went out amongst his gatherers, his workers in the field. And he says, hey, guys, the Lord be with you. And they said back to him, the Lord be with you. And I said, you know, where do we get that in our employment office, that your boss actually greets you that way? True, they were in a theocracy, and they had that Jewish brotherlyhood kinsmanship. But still, for someone to walking with God, as Enoch walked with God, and he was not for God, took him. So Boaz, man of the Spirit, addressing his employees that way. travel around to different schools. I go to one school in the morning first and there's Christian people there. One guy who's always there, he's kind of a disciplinary guy. Keeps all the 13, 14 year olds in check and he relates very well with them. Very energetic garden. How are you blessings to you man say blessings to you? It's good You just slap each other's hands and and it's in the morning and I leave when I come back to he's he's I think he's younger than me and he has like five grandkids anyway, he's just fully Energized and it's contagious. You just feel the Lord's in your presence was on Sunday money through the week We need that exhortation from other believers to lift us up in an outside world and I think part of that too is when Jesus says the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed to plant grows and it spreads this Talking about the kingdom of God spreading, you know through the earth and that's the way we push back The darkness is pushed back the Sun as the Sun rises the Sun rays over the horizon and the rays of Push back the darkness and the morning star arises. And I think Peter says that too. Let the day spring rise as the morning dawns in your hearts. Also talking about let the word be richly implanted in you that you may grow in the graces and knowledge of Christ. So we have fellowship with each other when we commune with each other, when we worship with each other, when we speak to one another, another way of that fellowship. And I know the pastors here have led a lifetime of exemplary lives. And so you would think, When a believer goes astray and it's brought to their attention, there's like, you know, as if someone can't relate to someone tripping and falling. And we all have. But the leadership here and amongst other Christians, it's heart-wrenching when you see that. heart falls in the pit of your stomach and what are you to do? And it's with trepidation and all that and gentleness as Galatians 6.1, you know, restore a brother, pray for them, as I think Joseph was called a righteous man because he didn't want to expose Mary for what everybody thought she did. But she didn't. So we bear one another's burdens. We forgive each other. We watch out for each other. Not just pray, as James says. Don't just pray and say, be warm, be filled. But help, you know, with the needs that the brother needs right there, whether it's physical food or encouragement, whatever they need. Another moment in college, Helen met my college roommate a few times. I had a, it's at the end of finals, and I just finished morning finals. And I had a paper to deliver by noon in another class. And it was to be about 9, 10 pages of three questions in this one class. And I finished it up. I always had to borrow a roommate, some other guy's typewriter. I didn't use computers in those days where I could edit and all that real fast, but I had That one question, the final was typed up. The other one, the rough draft was done, and I had to do the other one. So when I came back from that morning final, my roommate was typing my rough draft for the second question for me. Okay, and he did a lot of things like that for me and Helen doesn't need to hear all the stories But I just by meeting him you could see this was you know a true genuine believer And I was able I got all three of them done with about 15 minutes to spare went back and slept for about four hours but you know those things stick with you when we see commercials on TV here and there when someone does a Kind thing for somebody someone sees that someone sees and it's just kind of spread. So here we are exhorted. We have these Old Testament tributes to the Saints who have done things for us, but Here the scriptures love one another as I have loved you Christ brought the truth. He often had to say, hey guys, stop arguing. What are you guys fighting about? Who's the greatest? Well, let me tell you who the greatest is. There's this little kid over here. And this is the greatest, the one who, you know. So you speak the truth in kindness to each other. And we have fellowship, you know, inside of God and bringing up the things of God. And that binds us together as one, gives us assurance that we're in the body of Christ. Our hearts liven up. We don't need to look for other doctrines and other ways to know, I made a confession of Christ here before I got baptized or I've been here. No, it's in the Word of God that gives us all that encouragement. The Spirit fills our hearts. So we encourage, we have fellowship together, and we partake that the Lord died for us, rose again, he is in heaven, he is seated at the right hand of God the Father, he makes intercession for us daily, and no better feeling or assurances we can have than knowing that that work of Christ continues in our lives. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, again, we thank you for the word that your Holy Spirit gives us understanding and comforts us. And we thank you that you built us up in your word and the things that we need to be aware of. We are sheep in the midst of wolves, wolves in sheep's clothing. So we ask your spirit to guide and protect us, our minds, and may they always be stayed on the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's his name we pray, amen.