Well, this has certainly been a difficult week in our country, a rather chaotic week, an unprecedented week in many ways. It's almost hard to remember back to the beginning of the week, but early in the week we saw the foolishness of a secular prayer being offered in Congress that concluded with the ridiculous phrase, amen and a woman. And if that wasn't enough, a few days later, we witnessed deplorable actions of people storming our nation's capital, disrupting the undertakings of Congress. Since then, we've experienced the unprecedented case of a media platform censoring the President of the United States. You put it all together, it's been a wild week. Quite a week, that's for sure. How are we as Christians to respond? Well, as you might imagine, I believe that the series we're about to begin this morning helps us answer that question. It really gives us the foundation for an answer. We're going to work our way through, over the coming months, John's first epistle. Andy Gray taught this epistle fairly recently. I didn't look up exactly when it was. I think maybe with COVID, everything just kind of stops and there's this gap in my brain. So it's probably been a couple of years now, but he taught this and some of you are probably fairly familiar with it if you were in his class. But I want all of us to spend time on this very great short letter that John gave us. The Apostle John, as you likely know, lived longer than any of the other apostles. According to early church tradition, sometime after the years that were recorded in the Book of Acts, after that time frame, John ended up in the region that we now know as Asia Minor. John ended up ministering to the churches that Paul started when he was in his missionary journeys in that region. John's three letters are written. probably to those churches that are running towards the end of his life. Paul has been gone for some time. These churches have likely exchanged leadership a time or two at this point in time. There's been some persecution that has arisen over the course of the years. And most significantly, there's been false doctrines that have come to the forefront. They've begun to infiltrate the churches. And John, as the final apostle who is still alive, he feels a unique responsibility to ensure that the churches have all the doctrinal tools that they need to withstand the pressures as the church is pressed forward into what really will be the second generation of the church. the generation that carries on without apostolic oversight. When I read this letter, to me this feels a little bit like the letter a father might write to his son when he's old in his years and he sees his son making some mistakes, some things that cause concern in his life, things that the father recognizes. In his case, I can kind of imagine like maybe it's because the father made mistakes himself. He can remember some regrets. The father remembers that there were all these years that he invested all of his life in work And he missed so many things in his children's lives as they were growing up. He was away on trips and he missed significant events. And now he sees his son starting to pour himself into work and miss some of those same things. So the father sits down and he writes a letter. There's heartfelt emotion, there's love, there's compassion that's being communicated through this letter because he wants to influence his son to make changes before it's too late. Well, John is not writing out regret. That's not what's motivating him, but John has some of these similar heartfelt emotions that's driving him as he sees the church is going to struggle with things, and he wants to make sure that they feel his heart, that they understand his love, and they hear what he wants to give them that will help them adjust before it's too late. He's clearly writing to a group of people who are known as believers. The cohesion of this group, though, has been undercut by a number of things. As I mentioned, there's some false doctrine to address. There's also simply the pull of various individuals that over the years have left this group. But yet, because of the relationships the people had with these individuals, there's a pull, as they're drawn towards them. And then overall, there's just a general busyness of life. A busyness that has this group of people he's writing to bog down. Things that are distracting them from Christ and the things of Christ. They don't have time for each other. And the result, as John assesses it, is a serious lack of brotherly love between the people he's writing to. In general, the people John is writing to is a lot like us. It's a group very much like us. I believe that this letter is so important for us because in 2021, we're dealing with a lot of the same general issues that John's original recipients faced. We have seen people throughout the years leave this church. And sometimes those relationships still tug at us. Friends that are no longer with us but still give influence. We encounter in our country all kinds of false teachings that conflict with the doctrine of the scripture. But overall, we're just simply busy. We're busy people. Life has us occupied with all kinds of things that drain and sap us, all of which leads to a lack of brotherly love. One of the most frequent complaints I hear internally within our church, when people talk about things that they're unhappy with in our church, one of the most frequent complaints that I hear is the lack of involvement that we have in each other's lives. Sure, we come sit beside each other for an hour or two every Sunday and we ask each other, how's it going? And we give a little small talk back and forth, but that's about it. We rejoice, I rejoice, that we don't have a number of internal conflicts that are dividing our church. I have mentioned before, I feel greatly blessed that our church is united. We don't have conflicts rising up. We're not in conflict, but the lack of conflict is still not the same as the presence of vibrant love. When I look at our church and ask myself what is it that's sapping our love for each other, really the primary answer that I find is distraction. We have six plus days of the week where we're just too busy to spend time with each other. We're doing other things. Distractions that's created by the cares of life, that cause us to lose our focus on the unique source of joy that our Savior offers. As I mentioned this morning, our theme is rejoicing in our Lord. My prayer is that as we go through this series over the coming months, looking at this letter that John wrote, we can be helped to rejoice in our Lord. We can be helped as individuals, and we can be helped as a church family. We can learn to love one another again as we rejoice in our Lord. This morning we're just going to consider the first four verses of John's letter. We'll be taking it fairly slow as we work our way through. These verses are often called John's prologue. This is a letter I've been referring to as an epistle, but John doesn't begin with a normal epistle greeting. In other words, he doesn't give us the address of who he's writing this letter to. We don't really know who exactly he's writing to. Instead, John gives us more something that's like an introduction to a book, a prologue. Let's begin by reading our text together. 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've 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. Four verses, and I want us to look at four things this morning. Four things that I want us to observe from what we just read. First, let's notice the action. The action of the verses. The action, proclamation of a message. Proclamation of a message. You know, to find action in anything that's written, we need to look at the verbs. I recognize that most of you aren't interested this morning in a grammar lesson, but the verb tenses in this paragraph are very interesting. There are several verbs here that point to things that have happened in the past. They point backwards in time. But there are two verbs in these four verses that are present tense. One of the verbs is repeated, so we actually have three present tense verbs if you look at the language, but there's two present tense and that one is repeated. A present tense verb means it's talking about something that's happening right now, right at this point in time. This is the action. This is what is happening. The repeated verb also happens to be the main driving verb for this whole paragraph. It's found in verse 3. That's where we have the driving verb for the paragraph because verse 2 is actually a digression, a parenthetical thought. Now, some of you may see the verbs I'm talking about. My goal wasn't actually to find a chance to give you a lesson in grammar this morning. My goal was to entice you to look down in the text. I was trying to get your eyeballs to look in the text and see if you could figure out what I'm talking about. The main verb, the action of this whole paragraph is the verb we proclaim. We proclaim. It's found there in verse 3 as well as repeated in the digression there in verse 2. We proclaim. The other present tense verb is we testify there in verse 2. And that really means the same thing. We testify, we proclaim. that the reason I'm drawing this out, probably drawing out painfully in some of your minds by now, that the reason I'm drawing out is this is the action of the whole paragraph that introduces the entire letter. The action is the proclamation of a message. We proclaim something, a message. The whole letter can be summarized by that single verb. John is writing a proclamation of a message. Now the word that John uses to communicate this action, what we have there translated as proclaim in the New American Standard, it means to announce something. John is announcing a message. It means to tell someone of something that's happened or to carry someone else's message along. This is what happens when mom sends the younger sibling out to tell the older siblings that it's time for dinner. The younger sibling runs out and says, mom says it's time to come in to eat. He's proclaiming a message, but it's not his message. Frequently, the word that we have translated is also translated as reported. It's a fairly common word that's used is translated a number of times in our English versions as reported. That's because it can be used when an eyewitness sees something and then tells what has happened. They announce what they saw to people who didn't see it. We've all experienced this type of announcement. We may come into the house and say to our spouse, honey, guess what I just saw? Two vehicles in front of me, a vehicle changed lanes and clipped the car in front of me. By God's grace, I just missed being part of an accident. We're announcing what happened. The action of our paragraph this morning is that kind of a proclamation. It's the announcement of a message. Remember, We haven't seen it yet, but I've told you that John is writing to address issues that people are having, people who he cares about greatly, people he's experiencing. So they're experiencing this problem and he's announcing a message that will help them deal with their life. So we can gather that in John's mind, the proclamation of this particular message is the answer for their issues. The action in our text is the proclamation of a message. But what is the message? Well, secondly, the message is the manifestation of deity. This is one of those times where I purposely chose to use more of a complicated way of showing things because this is the language John uses. The manifestation of deity. The message is something that John has personally experienced. Remember I said there were a number of past tense verbs. This is something that John has heard. It's something that he has seen. It's something that he has touched with his own hands. Whatever makes up the message, John has experience with it. And what it is is something John calls the word of life. The Word of Life. It takes that parenthetical expression of verse 2 to kind of unpack what he means by the Word of Life. That's why he throws it in there. But what it is turns out to be really amazing. The Word of Life is the manifestation of deity. Of deity. Verse two is a concise summary that really you could say sums up the whole beginning of John's gospel. If you turn back to John's gospel, the first, I can't remember, I didn't look it up, the 22 verses, something like that, make up a prologue there. Well, John really summarizes in this single verse here when he, in John's gospel, we know the living word, the word that became flesh was Jesus. The Son of God made flesh, became the Son of Man, became the God-man. Here we find in this very short statement, verse two, that again, he's talking about this living word that was manifested to us. In other words, he's pointing to Jesus. The message about Jesus. What he saw, what he heard, what he touched was Jesus. Now he's reporting. In other words, the living word was made known to us, appearing in a way that could be comprehended by John and the other disciples. He's the last of them. But he can remember what he saw, what he heard, what he touched. He should never cease to amaze us that God would reveal himself to us. In Tim's class this morning, I happened to sit in on Tim's online class of Sunday school this morning. Tim was talking about that the God has spoken. He's revealed himself to us. Part of being an image bearer is that we can understand that revelation. It should never cease to amaze us that God has revealed himself to us. God is infinite. In every way, God is set apart from us. He is separate. We, by contrast, are finite in every way. Some of us probably feel more finite than others, but we are all finite. The gap that separates us from God could never be crossed by us. As human beings, we could never apprehend God. We could never apprehend Him were it not for the fact that God made Himself known to us. He manifested Himself. He revealed Himself. Sure, creation itself reveals God. How do we know that? Because God told us that creation reveals Him. If God had not revealed through verbal word that creation manifests himself, all that we would be able to do is what pagans throughout history have done, look at it and come up with a formulation of some sort of imaginary God in our own image of some kind. But God did reveal himself to us. First, through verbal communication by way of prophets. For centuries, he began revealing who he was. But then, most completely, God revealed himself by coming. The second person of the triune Godhead became a man, entered creation. Since Jesus was the Son of God, John reminds us here that he was eternal. The Son of God had eternally been with God the Father. No beginning, just eternal life. But then that eternal life was manifested. It was revealed in a way that could be comprehended by humanity. He appeared in a manner in which John and the other disciples could apprehend him. A person who could be seen, a person who could be heard, a person who could be touched. The message that John says is be proclaimed is that deity has been manifested in a way that humanity can comprehend. God became man. What a message! God became man. The word of life entered human history. God the Son became a person within our space-time continuum. And John was there. The message. The manifestation of deity. That is what is to be proclaimed. That's where the action is at. But why? Why is this the message to proclaim? What is the motivation that John has behind proclaiming this message? Well, really, there's two answers to that question. Two answers in our verses. There's an immediate reason and an ultimate reason that he gives us. First, John gives us the immediate motivation. The immediate motivation, he says, increase fellowship. Increase fellowship. Look at verse three. So that Those words, so that they give us the purpose, the result, the motivation behind things, so that you may have fellowship with us. Why is John proclaiming this message? So that the readers who receive this message, receive this proclamation so that they will have fellowship. In other words, John wants more and more people to know the details He wants more and more people to know about Jesus that the message that that he says creates fellowship Now a couple of years ago on Sunday evenings. We did a series on fellowship and We dealt with this idea of fellowship throughout the New Testament, and I trust that you remember from that that the idea of this word is that we all share something together. We have something in common. It's the idea of a partnership that we have with each other. Partnering together rather than going alone. That's the idea here. In other words, the immediate reason that John gives for proclaiming the message is so that there would be increased fellowship. Fellowship that results in an ongoing proclamation of the incarnate living word. Of course, we know that it's not just the proclamation of the message. Fellowship actually requires a response to that proclamation. John himself will make that clear if the letter goes. We have to believe in the message to be united together with others who believe in the message. That's where the fellowship enters in. John wrote his entire gospel already. So in the time we wrote this, the gospel was several years before he wrote that so that we would know that we have to believe to have this fellowship that he's talking about here. We have to believe that Jesus is the son of God. We have to believe that we are separated from God by our sins. We have to believe that Jesus lived a sinless life and gave himself as a sacrifice on the cross, dying in our place. We have to believe that God will forgive us for our sins when we ask him to accept Jesus as sacrifice in our place. We have to believe to have salvation. We have to believe to have fellowship. Do you believe? That's the question John presents with his own gospel. Do you believe? If not, talk to me today. Let me share with you how you can believe. Increased fellowship is the motivation behind the proclamation of the message. But let's tease this out a little bit further. What does it mean to have fellowship? What does it mean to partner together? Well, John says here that our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. What does that mean? How can we have fellowship with the Father and with His Son? Well, that means that we are in partnership with the work that God the Father and God the Son have already undertaken. The work that they have underway. The work that is wrapped up in this message that's being proclaimed. That's what makes it so exciting when we come together as believers. We're coming together as believers, not simply as friends. Now, I trust that we are friends. I trust that the shared love that we have for our Savior, the love that flows from Him to others, that will create a friendship among us. There should be a love that we have naturally towards each other that results in friendly feelings. We should be the people that are there for each other, that we can lean on when there are situations that come up that are hard. These people around us should be the ones that we celebrate with when circumstances are good. But that's not the fundamental core of our fellowship, just being with each other for enjoyment as friends. Similarly, we're not gathering together because we simply have common interests. Sure, it's nice if we like the same music, or we enjoy the same hobbies, or we root for the same teams, but common interests and common likes, that's not what fellowship is about. The fellowship that John is talking about here is partnering together with each other to jointly work toward the common mission that we have partnering with God the Father and God the Son. It's this message again. We're partnering together for the sake of the proclamation of this message, the message of the cross work of our Savior, Jesus Christ. That's the center centerpiece of what God the father and God the son were accomplishing accomplishing when the son was manifested Why was the son manifested? Well, he was manifested so he could go to the cross He was manifested so that he could provide a means of salvation We are partnered with the father and with the son in their mission a mission of redeeming lost mankind and To increase fellowship means that we draw more and more people to the saving message of Jesus Christ who will then partner with us so this message will continue to go forward in a bigger and bigger way and God's fame will be greater as we joyfully magnify Jesus Christ. I remember when Grace, my wife, was laid off last summer for, she was furloughed during the pandemic for a while. It was odd to think that nurse wouldn't be needed, but that's what she found herself as, that after the hospital volume went down a little bit, she was laid off for several months. And I remember during that time, initially, at least, she struggled to find a purpose for each day because her job was suddenly not part of her regular schedule. Well, as believers, we are not to be like that spiritually. We are not to be purposeless. We have a fellowship, a partnership with each other that has a very specific purpose. We would be working together. We are to be expending our time, our energy, our finances, everything that we have to move our mission forward. Proclaiming the message that will increase the number in fellowship with God the father and his son Jesus Christ through faith The immediate motivation behind our action of proclamation is increased fellowship But John says there's also a second motivation an ultimate motivation the ultimate motivation full joy full joy These things we write so that, there's those words again, so that our joy may be made complete. Now there is some debate and depending on what English version you have on your lap, you may have our joy or your joy. In the end, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference. Since John says in his third letter that his greatest joy is to see his children walking in the truth. So John gives, if it's your joy, if he's talking about others, well, he still gets joy if they understand it. So in the end, like I said, it doesn't make a whole lot of truth, or a whole lot of difference. The point John is making is that fullness of joy comes from seeing others. As John puts in chapter 15 of his own gospel, seeing others abide in Christ. That's where joy comes from. Full joy comes from working alongside others in partnership abiding in Christ. But what does full joy mean? What does it mean to have full joy? Does that mean that we're going to be happy and giddy? Well, I hope not because we all have times where we're not happy and giddy. That's not what joy is at all. Rather, joy is what we've already alluded to. It's a settled contentment. We alluded to it in the sermon. We talked about rejoicing in our Lord always. When Carl mentioned about being independent of circumstances, it's a settled contentment. It's a deep pleasure that brings satisfaction in our lives independent of our circumstances. Last Sunday afternoon in the first afternoon session, I challenged us to be experiencing joy that's independent of our circumstances, that's unaffected by the changing circumstances of life. And that's what John is talking about here. He's saying that we can have joy that is so generously supplied in our lives that nothing can take it away from us, that our joy is full or it's complete. We're filled up. John Piper has made the point for years that the main problem, and I think he's right in this aspect, the main problem that American Christians have is not that we're too busy pursuing our own self-interest. The main problem is that we're pursuing the wrong self-interest. We're too busy settling for lesser interests when we ought to be pursuing the real joy that we can have in life, the greatest joy that we can have. He's not wrong if we really understand what he is saying of the, essentially, paraphrasing John. What he is trying to say is that as Christians, our problem is that we're settling for these lesser joys when God's held out before us the ultimate joy that we ought to be pursuing. Serving Him. Full joy. The ultimate motivation that John holds out in this first paragraph is full or complete joy. Joy that's independent of our circumstances, that cannot be taken away from us by anything. Joy that's found in the truths that he writes in this letter. Truths that are summed up in the message of Jesus Christ. The ultimate motivation for proclaiming the message is full joy. So how can we put this all together? How can we take these four verses and learn something that will allow us to be less stressed, to be less disrupted by the chaotic week that we've just had, and undoubtedly the chaotic weeks that are yet to come? How can we put this together so that we will live as we ought to live? Well, the overall point that we need to learn from these first verses is that full joy comes through proclaiming Christ. Proclaiming Christ. Full joy comes through proclaiming Christ. We should not be afraid to chase after joy. We should set our hearts, our desires, our efforts towards achieving joy in our lives. God has pointed us that direction. He has pointed us towards life that would be filled with joy. Our problem is that we try to discover sources of joy on our own rather than just looking at where God has already pointed us. I'm sure that with Christmas being so recent that at least one of our households experienced a very familiar phenomenon. I haven't talked to people so I don't know who it might be this year, but I'm sure at least in one household this occurred. I'm sure there was a household where there was a young child, a really young child, a toddler who opened a box with a brand new toy and set the toy aside and started playing with the box. Or playing with the paper even. The box might be fun, there's no doubt about it. But we laugh because we know the thing that was in the box, that toy, has been carefully designed, very cleverly designed in many cases, to bring joy, greater joy, to the toddler than this box ever could. We also laugh because we know inevitably there will come a point when the child discovers that the toy can actually do something. The toy can do something really nifty, really cool. And the child will abandon the box and begin playing with the toy because there's greater joy there. It's humorous for us at this point that child missed the greater joy initially. Sadly though, we're so much like children. We're so much like children when it comes to our own pursuit of joy. We settle for playing with the box. We chase after the secondary things that are around us in the world rather than the full joy that God has assured us we can have. The full joy that comes from proclaiming Christ, serving our Savior by sharing the message that our Savior manifested himself in a way that all of us as people can understand. We can understand that He died for our sins. 2021 is still a rather new year. It's only the second week of the year, and already, as I have indicated for this past week, have shown us that this year is full of potential, of being filled with all kinds of turmoil. Forces that are hostile to Christianity are gaining more and more powers. They're becoming more and more open in their flotting of their disdain for Christians and Christian morality. We can be quite sure that it's not going to stop with the closing of a secular prayer with Amen and Ah Woman. It's going to get more and more chaotic as the year goes, without doubt. So let me ask you, with everything going on in our country, with all the things that are going on in our own state where we've been dealing with this pandemic for months, with all the things going on in your own life that only you may know about, what are you going to do this year to pursue full joy? How are you going to respond to the unprecedented events unfolding around you? Are you going to let this be another year where you're distracted by the concerns of life, much as John's readers are distracted? Or are you going to focus on the full joy that God has promised? The joy that comes from proclaiming Christ. Full joy comes through proclaiming Christ. I can assure you that as the chaos in our country becomes greater, There are more and more people around us who need the message of Christ. As the chaos becomes greater, there are more and more people who will listen to the message of Christ. I can also assure you, with the authority of God's word, that proclaiming the message of Christ will bring joy in your life. Let's recognize our fellowship, our partnership that we have with each other and with the father and his son. Let's work together for full joy. Full joy comes through proclaiming Christ. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for these verses that you moved your apostle to write. verses that are encouraging and convicting, that point us in the direction that we need to set our own lives. And Father, I pray that your Spirit now would work within us, that you would cause us to do the self-examination that we need to see where we need to make adjustments, so that we are living our lives in a way that truly reflects the partnership, the fellowship that we have with you through our Savior. Father, may we begin to live and continue to live fervently pursuing the proclamation of our Savior, proclaiming that Jesus Christ has come. He has died. He has risen again. And in him is the forgiveness of sins. Father, may that be our focus. May that be our joy. May Christ be magnified. We pray it in His name. Amen.