Hi, John Kavakas here welcoming you to our broadcast. In order to grow spiritually, is it enough to have a relationship with the Lord? Do we really need to be around other believers to become spiritually mature? 1 John has the answer to these questions. Join us as we look at 1 John 1 verses 1-4 in a sermon called Life. I'd like you to turn to the book of 1 John. We're going to be in verses 1 through 4 today. that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life, the life was made manifest, and the life was made manifest, and we have seen it and testified to it and proclaimed to it the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us. that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be made complete." The Word of God, brothers and sisters. I want to shout out to the people that are online with us. We appreciate your spending time with us. We appreciate your tuning in. Last month we had over 1,500 downloads from 16 countries. You are part of our ministry. I am going to put my personal email up here. If you have a prayer request or a comment you would like to make, I would love to hear from you. We would just love to hear what your prayer requests are. Thank you for spending time with us. I was doing premarital counseling several years ago, and I just love young couples. Their eyes are big and wide, and they're filled with hope and sometimes expectation. But in the initial meeting, I wanted to sit down, I wanted to get to know them, I wanted to hear testimonies, that sort of thing. And after I heard their statements of faith from each other, I said, so what do you want from this? And the young man said, All I want is her." He went, okay, well, that's nice, but what does that mean? He said, no, no, he goes, this is the relationship, this is the only thing I need is a close relationship with my wife, which I think is a wonderful thing to say, but is it the only thing that we need? Is that it? The idea of how many relationships we need in our lives, We really need two types of relationships. We need two types of relationships. That's what I wanna talk about to you today, the idea of what these two relationships are and how they impact us. So we're starting a new series today. We're gonna be in 1 John. We're gonna do 1, 2, and 3 John. Most biblical scholars believe that 1, 2, and 3 John were written Sometime around the time of the Gospel of John, there's a lot of debate over which one came first. There's a lot of things in the Gospel of John that show up in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. We're not even sure of the same John being the author of all three, but we do know that these books were accepted by the first century church. So sometime around 60 AD or so, And then here's what the situation was the new church is struggling now We've heard this before but the teaching was all over the place by the the latter half of the first century and some of it was not very good and Some of it was just plain false and these false teachers were calling into question some of the very basic Elements of the faith very basic things taught by Jesus Christ to the Apostles So, these false teachers had become itinerant. They were moving through Turkey and Macedonia and Asia Minor, traveling throughout all those regions there. Some folks think that John and Paul were together sending their own emissaries out to combat these false teachers. Then, of course, there were the letters, and we have the letters today. We have them so that we can look at them. And they were permanent records of sound teaching handed down from Jesus Christ to the apostles. They were recorded, distributed throughout Israel, Turkey, Greece, Rome, parts of Northern Africa, other parts of the world. And 1 John is one of these letters. And so it was inspired by the Holy Spirit. written by an apostle or somebody close to them, recognized by the early church, and is in harmony with the other scriptures. Now those are the four criteria that make a book eligible for canonicity. So the series that we're doing is called What's Love Got To Do With It? And I know exactly what you're thinking right now. Okay, but I want you to think about that. What's love got to do with it? And let me show you why I'm calling this series, What's Love Got to Do With It. There are a lot of ways to look at the structure of 1 John. I looked at maybe 10 or 12 commentaries. Everybody's got a different structure. So I figured, you know, some of them are pretty valid, some of them are a little weird. And so I've chosen to approach 1 John as a chiasm. How many of you have heard that word before? This is an Eastern mindset literary device. And the idea is that there are sections of the book that work up to a main point and then work back from that main point, repeating each other on each side of it. And so the idea is that the main point appears somewhere in the middle of the book. And the middle of the book, the main point of 1 John, I believe, comes in chapter 3, verse 14, where John says, we know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. So what's love got to do with it? It has everything to do with it. And the book starts with the first two verses. Watch this, just to give you a little taste of what achaism is. It starts with the first two verses, chapter one. We just read it, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon, touched with our hands concerning the word of life. Life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testified to it, and proclaimed to you the eternal life. which was with the Father and made manifest to us. So, 1 John begins right there, climbs right up to chapter three, verse 14, and then climbs back down from that point and ends where the first letter began, the last verse of 1 John 5, 20. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true, and we are in Him who is true, and in His Son, Jesus Christ, He is the true God and what? Eternal life. That's just a little taste of what a chiasm is. Now, you can go home this afternoon and start breaking all the books down by chiasm and see what you come up with. So along the way, John has a lot to say about false teachers, about the basics of our belief, functions of our belief are and how to live in Christ, how to live in Christ like a believer. And he's going to start out by describing what life is and where it comes from. And so the title of the sermon is life. And so we're going to see life in Christ in two parts of the first paragraph. We'll see John's proclamation in verses one and two, and then we will see John's purpose the purpose he wrote the book for, in verses 3 and 4. So let's take a look at what John's proclamation is. That which was from the beginning. Now, that phrase sounds a little familiar to those of you that are familiar with the Gospel of John. You know, here's more of this coming from John. We're reminded of the opening lines of John's Gospel, where he says, in the beginning was the Word. And so, of course, we know what beginning he's talking about there. He's talking about the beginning of everything, the beginning of time. Yet there's a difference between what John was saying here and what he's saying there. While John's gospel speaks of the beginning of time, John's first letter is talking about another beginning, one which we have heard, he says, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands. Now John is very careful about the words that he's picked here. This beginning is the beginning that John and the disciples experienced first hand. In other words, John was saying, we were there. Okay, there for what? Now, the we that John mentions here is probably the apostles and the other disciples that were traveling along with Jesus Christ, teaching about Jesus in the scriptures. It's an important part of John's message. So what they did, what did they personally experience? What were they there for? It is concerning the word of life. Okay, now we know what John's talking about. His people have experienced firsthand, firsthand how, and we know that he's talking about Jesus Christ. And how do we know that the word of life denotes Jesus Christ? Do we just assume that's what he's talking about? Well, we can go back and take a look at the Old Testament. We could look in Psalm 33, Psalm 107, Psalm 147, and there we see that the word of God is his instrument. or his agent in how he interacts with his creation. The word of God is the instrument with how he interacts with his creation. Now, later on in Paul's writings, we see in his letter to the Colossians, in Colossians 1.15, talking of Jesus Christ, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominion or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. So we have this instrument. with how God interacts with his creation. And then we find out that Jesus is the one that everything's been created in and through, and all things hold together. So we don't have to guess. We don't have to guess who John's talking about here. When he says the word of life, he's talking about Jesus Christ. Now let's go a little bit deeper because he shows us two things, two facets about Jesus Christ. The first one is that Jesus was earthly and he was physical. And we know that because John and his disciples have seen him, have touched him, they've watched him eat meals. They watched him weep. They watched him get tired. They watched him touch other people. They walked with him. They lived with him. They saw him bleed, and they saw him die, and they saw him raise up again. First-hand witnesses. Jesus' humanity was on display for 30-some-odd years. Three of which were under intense, physical, tangible scrutiny by thousands of people. Jesus was real. He was physical. Well, that's a great facet to have in your life, isn't it? There's another facet of Christ. And Jesus wants to share this and make sure that his readers understand this as well. Verse two, the life, Jesus, was made manifest and we have seen it and testified to it and proclaimed to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest in us. Now there's a lot packed in here. We're told, we're moving into the realm of the supernatural. This goes something beyond physical, beyond tangible. And John's relating the things that Jesus taught about himself. He's not making it up. These are the things that Jesus said, all of which were validated when he walked out of that tomb. We just celebrated Easter. Jesus was eternal, eternally with the Father, manifested on earth in the physical body. Oh, man. You know, this is where we get our doctrine of the hypostatic union. That's a big word that really means that Jesus was fully man and fully God. Not just fully man and fully God, but he was both of them all the time, all at once, never shifting, never phasing from one to the other. Never changing at any point. Always man and always God. That'll warp your mind. Think about it over lunch. Try and figure it out. We can't. We have to accept it because it's what Jesus said about himself. We accept it in faith. From the moment Jesus was born into this earth as a baby, he was a man for all eternity. From before time began, he was God. And he never lost any of his godness at any time, never not once losing his humanness at the same time. And he took that godness and that humanness up into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father when He ascended. That's another mind blower. And this will twist you up in knots trying to make sense out of it. It doesn't. But John knows that for his readers, this proclamation is absolutely necessary because these false teachers, these secessionists, I'll explain that in just a second, have been teaching something totally different than the reality that the disciples have witnessed and have been part of. John is making his case. He's saying, guys, we were there. We saw it. We heard the teaching. We're just going to relate to you what he said about himself. And we should probably give a high priority to that because he's the only one who ever came out of the tomb. So John's proclamation is this. Jesus is real. We knew him intimately. He was flesh and blood. And somehow, in a way that we might have some difficulty understanding, he was God as well. And the proclamation is crucial to what John has to say. He's coming against these itinerant false teachers. They're denying that Christ was resurrected. Some of them are saying he's already been resurrected and you missed it. They're denying his divinity. Now listen to me carefully. They're denying his divinity. They were not denying the supernatural aspects of the things that Christ did. You got to dig a little bit deeper on this. They're not denying the signs and wonders, but they were teaching that everyone can do the same things that Jesus did. Oh. They were teaching that Jesus was just showing us all the things that God wants us to do. Now, there's enough truth to that, that it sounds pretty good. Teachings like the resurrection and the divinity missed the point they were saying, and God wants us to do everything that Jesus did. So, they were pretty much teaching, if you start to think about it, a man-centered theology. Not about God or Christ, it's about you and what God wants to do for you. How special you are. I don't know about you, but that's pretty seductive. I want to be special. I want to do all these things. I want to go raise the dead and have somebody go, oh look, John raised the dead. I want glory. Except what does God say? I'm not gonna share my glory with anybody. So do you see how that kind of tickles the ears? How it kind of draws us in? The problem is, none of that is scriptural. None of that idea that, I mean, you can grab a snippet here and a phrase there and go, oh, look, God wants us to do everything Jesus did. He was God. So you can grab little things out of context and go, yes, yes, you know. The Bible, and we've talked about this before, the Bible is God's self-revelation. Brothers and sisters, it's not about us finding ourselves. It's not about us establishing our identity. There's some of that in there. It's not about all the benefits we're going to get in being a believer because we decided that Jesus died on the cross from us. And if you understand that, if you understand that every chapter, every verse in the Bible is some element of God's self-revelation and his plan of redemption for his children, if we understand that, then we understand that these early false teachers are planting the seeds of what came to be known in the second century as Gnosticism. Now, that's another big word. But what it means is special knowledge. Knowledge over and above what the scriptures say. Man-centered, distorted, personalized version of the gospel. So John wants his readers to just embrace the basic concepts of who Jesus is. The only son of God. crucified, dead and buried, rose again on the third day to sit at the right hand of the Father. We know that. There's nothing man-centered about any of that. And if you stop and think about it and bother to read the rest of the scripture, we also find out that Jesus did all this for the glory of God. And the false teachers were elevating the glory of men. John's simple proclamation just knocks the foundations out from underneath any false teaching and brings the focus back to Jesus Christ, which is where our focus should be. Now let's talk about John's purpose, verses three and four. With his proclamation made, John now states his purpose. Why is he writing this? What does he hope to accomplish with this letter? To fully understand what's happening, we have to go back to why John wrote the letter. There's been some bad teaching. And as we're going to see in chapter two, it caused division. Some people have left the church community. Those are the secessionists, the people that left. And apparently after they left, they continued to persuade the folks who stayed. to come and join them. They're traveling through Asia Minor, through Turkey, Macedonia, teaching things like Christ wasn't divine. He was just a man. So all we have to do is act like him. You don't have to believe Jesus was a son of God. You're a son just like he was. And there's enough truth in that that that sounds attractive. You don't have to obey the commandments. That apparently wasn't just a problem back then. You don't have to obey the commandments. You're free. Now, do you see how this is a man-centered gospel and how it elevates men instead of God? So these are the guys that in the second century would become the Gnostics, claiming they had knowledge over and above the scriptures. Drawing folks away from the church and into a very comfortable form of easy believism. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to say anything. All you gotta do is just be. God loves you the way you are. He doesn't expect you to change. He has no expectations of you. And it's causing division in the church. Some people have embraced the elemental teachings that the apostles brought. These people are going, oh, there's more. You know, you're not reading that right. You have to look at it this way. Look at it this way. John wants to maintain the unity of the church and rescue the church from a body of teaching that does nothing more than tickle the ears of other men and women. So he says in verse three, that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also. He makes his proclamation so that fellowship with the church is not broken. He's saying, look, remember, this is what we taught you, so that you may have fellowship with us. In other words, John sees the necessity of a horizontal relationship between the believers and the church, individual believers and the church. And he sees it as vitally important. We have to be in relationship with other believers. He wants them in fellowship with other believers. other people who hold on to sound teaching. And as far as the sound teaching is concerned, John says, and indeed our fellowship is with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ. Sound teaching. So after emphasizing the importance of this horizontal relationship with other believers, John establishes a need for a vertical relationship between the individual believer and Jesus Christ himself. Now, that accomplishes two objectives for John. First, he describes how the church should relate to each other. He's going to get deep into this as we get into 1 John. And how that relationship should bring everybody closer to the Lord. And second, that's a not so subtle reminder that John is just teaching what Jesus taught him. And any teaching that denies what John is teaching actually denies the teachings of Jesus Christ. And John wants his readers to know all this so that, verse 4, we are writing these things so that our joy may be made complete. I love this. John says our. He means all of us. He's not saying, oh, you do this and me and my buddies will be happy with you. He's talking about everybody, all believers. He wants the church's joy to be complete. John is speaking of the joy of sound faith, the joy of knowing Jesus Christ, the joy of being united with him and with each other. And in other words, the joy of an undiluted gospel that constantly points us towards Christ. John's purpose in the letter is to bring joy, peace, and unity, and to refute false teaching that would rob his readers of that joy. That's a big job for such a short book, isn't it? I think he's on a roll though. I think he's on a roll. We've seen these two facets of life in Christ. We've seen John's proclamation in verses one and two. John comes against these false teachers by stating the basis and letting folks know that that's how it came from Jesus Christ. We can discern false teachers in the same manner. I've always got somebody coming up to me with, have you read this book? Boy, this changes everything. You know, the only book that changes everything is the Bible. Okay, so how do we know? How do we tell what a false teacher is? All we really have to do is ask a simple question about the teaching and then listen to it objectively. Does this teaching elevate Christ or does it elevate me? If it's about me, we may have a problem here. It's a simple question, a simple analysis. If it makes me feel good, makes me feel better about myself, listen to me carefully. There's nothing wrong with feeling good about yourself. God loves us, amen? But God loves us. so that we can be his messengers, so that we can be a reflection of his glory here on this earth. He doesn't love us because we're so wonderful. I've had somebody tell me that recently. Oh, you know, I think you're ignoring the fact that God loves me and I am absolutely beautiful. Well, how about that? Because I don't see that anywhere in scripture. What do we do with that? Does it elevate man? Does it elevate man's desires? Let me ask you a couple questions. Did Jesus heal everybody he came into contact with? Go down to the pool of Bethsaida and talk about all the people that were standing there watching the one guy get healed. Did he heal everybody? Did Jesus make everybody rich? Matter of fact, did Jesus make anybody rich? Did he tell folks that the commandments were just legalism, you don't have to listen to them? Did he say he and the Father were not one? Did he claim to be just a good man? Did he say the Old Testament is no longer relevant? Did he ever say what might be true for you would be totally different for someone else? Did he ever say Did he ever say that he did it all for me? Quite a proclamation, isn't it? Look at John's purpose. He writes to bring joy and peace, only the gospel can bring. But he wants his people to see that there may be a difference between what some people call the gospel and what the gospel actually is. Now, he's gonna get into those differences as we get deeper into the letter. For now, John wants his readers to know that we need two relationships in our lives. See, if John were answering that young man that only needed the one relationship, he'd go, you know, that's a good start, because you do need that. But you desperately need the vertical relationship with your Lord as well. You want your marriage to succeed, your focus is gonna have to be on him not on yourself and whether or not that relationship satisfies you. We need two relationships, one with each other, that's why we're called the Body Brothers and Sisters, and one with the Lord. It's really an amazing beginning to the letter, isn't it? Two vital elements in our walk. We need to be in fellowship with the Lord, In order to be in fellowship with the Lord, we need to know who He is and what He said. We need to be in fellowship with each other. One of those relationships, the one with Christ, will save you. The other one will keep you safe and help you grow. And that's what John wants for us. That's what the Lord wants for us. Let's pray. Father, we give you thanks for the clarity of what you teach. Lord, there are details sometimes that we don't fully understand, and we give you glory for that, Father. It drives us to our knees saying the glory of God, but there are some things that are very clear. There are some things that are acutely clear. And Lord, that creation is here for your glory. Oh, and Lord, we get wrapped up in you bringing glory to yourself. As we get saved by your plan of redemption, Father, become your messengers, become your ambassadors to tell people that there's a God in heaven. And yes, he does love. Yes, he does care. It's all for his glory. So we pray that we might honor you, Lord, as we walk in a manner worthy of our calling. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in. We'll be back next week with verse five through chapter two, verse two. Pastor John back here again. If you are blessed by the service, let me ask you to do us a favor. Would you click on the like button below that little thumbs up? If you're listening on Sermon Audio, perhaps you can comment or even share the sermon with someone else. We'd love to hear from you. We're on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter at WBFVA. We're on the World Wide Web at WBFVA.org. Let us know if you'd like us to pray for you. If you'd like to support us financially, you can make donations through our website at wbfva.org. Just click on giving. You'll receive a tax-deductible receipt at the end of the year. Either way, we would love to hear from you or even have you visit us in person one Sunday. We meet at 46 Winchester Street in downtown Warrington, Virginia at 11 o'clock every Sunday morning. And now, may God bless you richly until we gather again.