For the sake of clarity, let me insert, this isn't where the message is, but let me insert that even we rather traditional dispensationalists believe that church saints are kingdom citizens, that our efforts are directed toward the kingdom. And as a matter of fact, we even recognize that in the very last verse, the book of Acts, the apostle Paul is still preaching the kingdom. So I've got a problem with kingdom, brother. We are living in an age when it has become popular amongst scholars to distinguish the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith. The Jesus of history, they say, is the man who actually lived in Palestine at the beginning of the first century. Whereas, the Christ of faith is an imaginary figure who, over a process of some generations, was invented by the Christian community, by the church, and who was subsequently superimposed upon the Jesus of history. This bifurcation between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith has become the driving mechanism for most gospel scholarship, or at least synoptic scholarship, of the present day. The most popular activity of the last 150 years in terms of New Testament synoptic scholarship has been the so-called quest of the historical Jesus. And the point of that quest has been to try to sort out in the pages of the synoptic Gospels where we have supposedly remnants of the historical Jesus preserved in the text as opposed to the Christ of faith who has been superimposed upon the historical Jesus. And over the decades there has been a debate that has gone back and forth between scholars who think that we can find something about the historical Jesus in the pages of the Synoptic Gospels versus scholars who think it's impossible to sort it all out and therefore we simply make a sort of leap of faith recognizing that the Jesus who is in the Gospels and the Christ who is in the Gospels is completely inaccessible to us historically, but nevertheless we use him as a defining point for religious categories. The first, excuse me, the second point of view, the leap of faith point of view, has been represented, for example, by Rudolf Bultmann. The opposite point of view is represented more recently, for example, by the Jesus Seminar. They keep making headlines, even to the irritation of other liberal scholars, because the results of their studies are so radical and their methodology is so quirky. Even the scholarly community doesn't think they deserve a hearing, and yet they keep making headlines. passing judgments on which portions of the New Testament should be recognized as historical Jesus, which portions of the New Testament need to be recognized as Christ of faith. And, of course, the Jesus Seminar has now added to their canon the Gospel of Thomas. So we have the four canonical Gospels plus the Gospel of Thomas, and they are reasoning about the historical Jesus from all of that source material, but they are not alone. About five years ago, before his death, Peter Jennings produced a television special, two hours in length, about the historical Jesus. PBS has produced an entire series entitled, From Jesus to Christ, which they pretend details this process of how the church invented the Christ and superimposed him upon the historical Jesus. And of course, most recently, Dan Brown in the pages of the Da Vinci Code, has traded upon this theory that the Christ whom we worship was invented somewhere later on in church history, he would say, at the Council of Nicaea under the influence of Constantine. Christ was invented, the deity of Christ was made up. at the Council of Nicaea by Constantine. The New Testament was created out of whole cloth, he would say, in order to support that theory. But nobody before then really believed it. There are, of course, many Gospels outside the canon of Scripture. I mentioned a moment ago the Gospel of Thomas. We could add an innumerable list of extra-canonical writings, the Infancy Gospels, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Truth, as well as the Apocryphon or Secret Writing of Peter, and a number of other documents that purport to tell us about the historical Jesus. Most recently, the Gospel of Judas has been in the news. And scholars are terribly excited. What will we learn about the historical Jesus from the Gospel of Judas? The answer is, we've known about the Gospel of Judas for centuries. Irenaeus wrote about it in the second century. He told us what it said. There is no new information coming out here. It doesn't contribute anything that we didn't already know, and certainly doesn't tell us anything about Jesus or Christ. You see, the Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic gospel. And Gnosticism of the 2nd century nicely corresponds to the scholarship of the 21st century, because the Gnostics of the 2nd century also distinguished Jesus from Christ. Christ, they said, was a divine being. Jesus was a human being, or perhaps not even a human being. Perhaps Jesus was merely a phantom. But on their view, Jesus was not the Christ. And in order to understand what God is doing, we needed some extra help. Some secret truth. In response to the Gnostics of his day. And equally relevantly, in response to the liberal critics of our day. the Apostle John penned his first epistle. I'm going to ask you to look with me at the opening verses of that epistle this morning, because the Apostle John intends to answer for us the question, can we trust Jesus Christ? And you'll notice, I put the names together. It's not simply, can we trust Jesus, who may not be the Christ. It's not simply, can we trust the Christ, who may not be Jesus. Can we trust Jesus Christ? One and the same person. In the canonical Gospels, Jesus Christ is presented as the Son of God. and as the Son of Man, as the Messiah, as the Savior, and as the I Am. The Jesus Christ of the canonical Gospels, which are the earliest Gospels, the Jesus Christ of the canonical Gospels is God in flesh. He is eternal Jehovah who has added to His deity a complete human nature and who, by virtue of His work on the cross, has secured the salvation of all those who will trust in Him. He has borne their sins in His body on the tree. And He has been made righteousness to them by His life of perfect keeping of the law. The question is, this record of a Jesus Christ who is God, Man, who is Savior, is this record trustworthy? Is this record reliable? In answer to that question, John writes these words, 1 John 1, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of life, parenthesis, for the life was manifested. and we have seen it and bear witness and show unto you that eternal life which was with the father and was manifested to us in parenthesis that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you that you also may have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with the father and with his son Jesus Christ These things write we unto you, that your joy may be full." The Gospel of Judas presents Jesus Christ as the Christ Spirit, a divine being who inhabits the body of Jesus, a human being. And in order to return to the realm of Barbello from whence he comes, the Christ Spirit must be set free from the human Jesus. And in order for him to be set free from the human Jesus, the human Jesus must die. And so, Jesus says to Judas, in effect, you'll be the one who kills me and sets me free." Jesus orders the betrayal as a way of being freed from the corrupt human body that he inhabited. That was a vision of Jesus Christ which was already prevalent at the time that John wrote these words. It is not the vision that we find in the Bible. The question is, who can we trust? To whom shall we turn to learn who Jesus Christ is? Can we trust what the Bible teaches us about Jesus Christ? How do we know? John answers that question in four ways. How can we know who Jesus really was? John's first answer is this. He says, what we have heard is still ringing in our ears. John is speaking now of the company of the apostles and those who traveled with them, who had the opportunity actually to hear the teachings of Jesus Christ. And he's using the perfect tense here. He's not saying simply that we heard at some point in the past, but that the results of our hearing are continuing with us now. What we heard him say, it is still ringing in our ears. John is emphasizing the importance of eyewitnesses and earwitnesses to the life and ministry and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He's saying if you want to know the truth, look to the people who traveled with him. Look to the people who knew him. Look to the people he taught. We heard him and what we heard is still ringing in our ears. These are men who heard the Lord Jesus during His very early ministry when He first began to announce the Kingdom of God. Probably the first thing they heard Him say was, repent, for the Kingdom is at hand. These are men who heard Him utter the words, I will be thou whole. They heard him say, Thy sins be forgiven thee. They heard the utterance, Talitha kumi. They heard him denounce the scribes and the Pharisees as hypocrites. They were in the boat when He said, Peace, be still. And they not only heard the words, they heard the absolute silence which instantly descended upon the stormy sea. These are men who heard Him say, Lazarus, come forth! They heard Him cry out from the cross. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" And they heard him in the last moment of his earthly life before his death cry out with a loud voice, Tetelestai! It is finished. These are men. who heard the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ. They heard Him when He taught that the fundamental problem that human beings face is their sin. They heard Him when He taught that hell is real and that people go there. They heard Him when He taught that He Himself was the only way to God. They heard Him when He foretold that He would die for them as a sacrifice. They didn't want to believe it, but they heard it. And they could never forget it. And they heard Him when He told them that He would rise again. They didn't believe it, but they heard it. And they never forgot it afterwards. And when He had risen again, They heard Him, at least two of them did, on the road to Emmaus, open the Scriptures and explain how the Christ had to suffer, had to die, had to rise again, and their hearts burned within them. And what they heard 60 years later, when John writes these words, what they heard was still ringing in John's ears. I don't know if we have anyone here who is old enough to remember December 7, 1941. But if you're old enough to remember that date, You will remember exactly where you were when you heard that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. You will never forget hearing that announcement. Some of us can remember a day in the early 1960s when we heard that the President of the United States had fallen to an assassin's bullet. I don't remember Pearl Harbor Day. I may look that old, but I'm not. But I remember sitting in a second grade classroom in Forrest Elementary School when Mrs. Millars, the principal, came into the room with tears in her eyes and said, turn on the radio. The president has been shot. There are some things you just don't forget. So it was with the apostles. John is saying, we heard him. And what we heard is still ringing in our ears. By the way, have you ever experimented with a speaking tube? They have them on ships, or at least they used to. One of my foster brothers and I discovered the technology of speaking tubes when we were about 10 years old and playing with a garden hose. We discovered that you can put one end up to your ear and the other one could speak in the end of it very softly, and you'd hear at the other end. What he was saying, you could go around corners, you didn't have to be looking at each other. You got the echoes, you got the sound through the speaking tube. May I make this suggestion? We do not simply have to take John's word for what he heard. Because in the scriptures we have been given a kind of speaking tube, one end of which is in the first century, and the other end of which is available to us. And if we will open the pages of this book, if we will read about the glories of the Messiah in Matthew, and the humiliation of the servant in Mark, and the perfection of the Son of Man in Luke, and the marvelous incarnation of the Son of God in John, His words will come ringing into our ears across all those centuries. It's not just a matter of taking someone else's word for it. The Bible itself will bear witness in our spirits. This is true. This is true. This is His voice. John says, we know that Jesus Christ is for real, because what He said is still ringing in our ears. And not only that, says John, what we saw is burned into our mind's eye. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, perfect tense, and it still rings in our ears. Which we have seen with our eyes, again, perfect tense. It is burned into our mind's eye. John, I'm sure, had in his mind's eye the vision, the image, the picture of a man in a bed being let down through a hole in the roof. Who would ever forget that? John had in his mind's eye the image, the picture, of Jesus in the ship just offshore teaching the multitudes who lined the hillside. John would have had in his mind's eye the image of the entire herd of swine tumbling down into the Sea of Galilee after Jesus cast out the demons from the Gadarene demoniac. Who could ever forget it? John would have had in his mind's eye the beauty and the glory of the transfigured Savior on the Mount. John could still have seen in his mind's eye the Lord Jesus on the little donkey coming through the gates into the city of Jerusalem He could have seen in his mind's eye the people strewing the way with their garments and with palm fronds and crying out, Hosanna! Save us! He could still have seen. In fact, of all the disciples, John is the only one who could have seen in his mind's eye the blessed Lord Jesus Christ. silhouetted and stretched upon the cross because only John stood at the cross. John could still see in his mind's eye the empty tomb. He could still see in his mind's eye the Savior standing by the shore of the sea. He and all of his fellow apostles could see in their mind's eye the Lord Jesus at the conclusion of a conversation that seemed to be like any other conversation suddenly begin to ascend from the earth. Watching Him. Watching Him. Until a cloud receives Him out of their sight. And still watching. Until an angel says, why are you fellows still gawking at the sky? John saw these things, and what he saw he never forgot. And as it were, the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Gospels are to us like a telescope. Through the testimony of John and of Peter and of Matthew and of others, we can gaze through the centuries And in our mind's eye, we can see these same things. How do we know that Jesus Christ is for real? John says, we apostles are eyewitnesses. We've heard him and what we've heard rings in our ears. We've seen him and what we've seen is burned into our mind's eye. John goes on. He says, not only which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, he adds, which we have looked upon. You see, there's a difference in this text between looking and seeing. The word to look here is a word that means to gaze upon. It's a word that is used of jewelers examining gemstones, looking for flaws in the gemstones. I suppose nowadays a jeweler would do it with a little magnifying glass. And he would investigate to see whether the gem is flawed in any way. That's what the apostles had the opportunity to do with the Lord Jesus Christ. We don't know exactly how long they traveled with the Lord Jesus. From the Gospel accounts, we know that it had to be at least somewhat over three years. What we don't know is whether there are any gaps in the Gospels that would allow a longer time. By the way, do you realize, if you read the Church Father Irenaeus, he thinks that the Lord Jesus was past 50 years old when he was crucified. Could it be? Well, there's nothing in the Bible that would prevent it being the case. We don't know how long, but it was a minimum of, let's say, three and a half years. For three and a half years, at least, they had the opportunity to put Jesus Christ under the microscope. Wherever he went, they traveled with him. They saw Him when He ate. They saw Him when He slept. They saw Him when He prayed. They saw Him when He rejoiced and when He grieved and when He was angry. They saw Him under every human condition. They saw Him when He was betrayed and they saw Him when He was embraced. They saw Him in every way that it was possible to see Him. And they put Him to the test. They examined him to determine whether or not he was genuine. By the way, John shifts the tense of the verb here. It's no longer a perfect tense. He's using an aorist, which has, in this context, the effect of thrusting the bare fact forward, almost as if this is something John would expect us not to believe. You mean, John, you had the opportunity to examine him? To put him under the microscope? To inspect him minutely, John is telling us, believe it or not, that's exactly what we did. If there had been any failing, if there had been any flaw, they would have known it. If he were anything less than he claimed to be, they would have detected it. But John says, we gazed upon him. We looked upon him. and we found no flaw. The New Testament comes to us as an investigator's report from men who had the opportunity to examine the facts first hand. It comes to us from men who were not credulous These were men who were not afraid to disbelieve. You remember Thomas? After the resurrection, Thomas is not with the ten when the Lord Jesus appears unto them. And Thomas says, unless I see him, unless I put my fingers in the nail prints in his hands, unless I put my hand in the wound in his side, I will not believe. To paraphrase Thomas, fool me once, it's your fault. Fool me twice, it's my fault. He was not going to believe. But he did. They investigated. They inspected. They put him under the microscope. And they found out what he was worth. And what they discovered is that he was exactly who he claimed to be. God. In flesh. Messiah. Savior. So John says we know that Jesus Christ is for real. We heard Him and what we've heard still rings in our ears. We saw Him and what we've seen is burned into our mind's eye. We have gazed upon Him. Put Him under the microscope. We've inspected Him. And finally John says, our hands handled him. You realize this is something no Gnostic could ever admit. To say that our hands handled the word of life, Gnostics believed that all matter was evil and the human body in particular was a thing of evil. It was unthinkable to them. that the divine Son of God could become a human being and have a real human body. But that's exactly what the Bible teaches. In fact, it's absolutely crucial to our faith. Because the righteousness of Christ, which is imputed to us when we believe, is not His divine holiness which He had from all eternity. It's His human righteousness which He earned as a human being by keeping the law. If we have a Jesus Christ who is not fully human, then we do not have a Savior. But John says, and this is so in your face to the Gnostics. John says, our hands handled Him. Think of it. That the eternal God would add to His deity such a nature as would permit Him to be handled by His creatures. Think of Mary holding the infant Jesus to her breast. What an astonishing thing! Think of the woman wending her way through the crowd, coming up behind him just to reach out and to brush the hem of his garment. What an amazing thing. Think of Peter, who has just stepped out of the boat and discovers that walking on water is not all it's cracked up to be. And he begins to go under the waves and he cries out for help. And the Savior stretches out his hand and catches him. Do you think Peter ever forgot that touch? Think of the woman who was a sinner, weeping upon his feet and wiping them with her own hair. Even Simon the Pharisee could not believe that he would allow himself to be handled in that way. But he did. Think of those who took the body down from the cross. How must it have felt to carry that sagging corpse and to prepare it for burial? And then think of Mary Magdalene, Easter Sunday morning, clinging to his feet. When he says, Mary, don't touch me, that's our King James translation. That's a bit under-translated. It's not that she had just reached out and tapped him and he was saying, no, don't do that. No, she had a hold of him. She had grasped him. She was not going to let him go again. And finally he says, Mary, stop clinging to me. I still have to ascend to my father. You think she ever forgot that clutch? I talked a moment ago about Thomas. Not doubting Thomas, unbelieving Thomas, determined not to believe. I will not believe until I can put my finger in the nail print in his hand, until I can thrust my hand into the spear wound in his side. So a week later, Jesus appears and singles out Thomas, and what he says is in the imperative mood. These are commands. Thomas, Reach out your finger. Put it into my hand. Thomas, stretch out your hand. Thrust it into my side. Do you suppose Thomas disobeyed? Of course not. The Lord gives you a command under circumstances like that. You are going to obey. Thomas must have put his finger into the nail print. Thomas must have put his hand into the spear wound. I wonder what he felt in there. Something none of the rest of us have ever felt. But I'll guarantee you that Thomas never forgot. How do we know that Jesus Christ is for real? We have in the pages of Scripture the solemn testimony, the sworn word of those who heard Him and His words were ringing in their ears. of those who saw Him and what they saw was burned into their mind's eye, of those who had the opportunity to inspect Him, to look upon Him, to gaze upon Him, to examine Him in the most minute detail, of those whose hands handled Him. They knew who He was. And because of their testimony, so can we. Jesus Christ is for real. In Jesus Christ, God has become a human being. To His eternal, divine nature, He has added a human nature, and yet He is one and only one person. As the God-Man, He lived upon this earth a righteous life under the law, fulfilling its precepts. He went to the cross and became our substitute. He died for our sins. He was made to be sin for us who knew no sin in order that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. He bare our sins in His own body on the tree. And when He had died in our place, suffering the wrath of God, He arose again in power and in glory, in victory over sin and death and the devil. And He showed Himself to His followers. And after He had disclosed Himself to them and taught them and encouraged them and promised them the Spirit, He ascended into heaven where He lives now, interceding for us as our great High Priest. And when He had ascended, He sent forth the Holy Spirit and shed Him abroad upon us. And through the Holy Spirit, His presence is mediated to us. He is in this place today through the Holy Spirit of God. And this same Jesus, just as He went up, is going to come again. And we will be with Him forever. Jesus Christ is for real. We have not only the testimony of those who saw Him, we have the Word that mediates His presence to us. When we read the pages of this book, we are not simply gaining information about Jesus Christ, we are meeting Him in person. He lives in this book. just as He lives in our hearts and lives and even our bodies when we receive Him as Savior and His Spirit indwells us. If you've never trusted Him, today is the day. Jesus Christ is for real. He has paid for your sins. He has suffered upon the cross in order to satisfy the just demands that your sins have called forth from God's holiness. He has earned righteousness for your sake. If you will believe upon Him, you will find that He has forgiven your sins, and that He has credited you with His righteousness, and that He will give you His salvation as a free gift. John says that this truth of the reality of Jesus Christ has to be announced because it's through this truth that we have fellowship, first, with other believers, secondly, with God the Father, and thirdly, with the Son, Jesus Christ, when we believe we are brought into union with God and with Christ and with one another. And he says it is through this message that our joy becomes full. We cannot be joyful while sin dominates our lives, but Jesus Christ has suffered and died and risen again to take away that sin. He will do it if you will trust Him. If you will trust Him, you will find that your debt has been canceled, that your guilt has been discharged, that His righteousness has been credited to you. You say, why should I? How do I know that I can trust Him? The answer is very simple. We know that Jesus Christ is for real. We have the testimony of those who walked with him, and we have the experience of having met him in our own hearts and lives. If you're a believer, take courage, take joy in the Lord Jesus, and don't worry about what those liberals are saying because they can't change the truth. Jesus Christ is for real. Our Father, we praise you for the reality of your Son and for the certainty with which the truth comes to us. We ask that if there is an individual here today who has never trusted upon Christ as Savior, that you would work in that heart so powerfully that they will no longer resist, but that they will turn to him and joyfully and freely receive him according to your grace and effectual call. And our Father, for those of us who have been redeemed and we have been united to Christ by the Holy Spirit, we claim this promise this morning that through this announcement comes fullness of joy. Grant that we may leave this house today rejoicing in Jesus our Savior. because He is real. And we pray it in His name. Amen. Today we have seen our Savior. There's no better way that we can close our meeting today than singing hymn number 128, Hallelujah, What a Savior. Stand together, please, as we sing. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light ♪ And he comes a glorious day ♪ ♪ All his hands come home to play ♪ ♪ And the music shall be the same ♪ ♪ Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ We do not preach a maybe gospel. It is real. Dr. Bader has invited sinners. That invitation comes from Christ. You're here today and you know nothing of the reality of this Christ that has been preached this morning. We invite you on the authority of the Christ that was preached. that you come to Him. We're here as your servants for Christ's sake. I'm here. Dr. Cairns is here. Mr. Brame is here. Dr. Bowder is here. Any one of us would be happy to show you from this book how you can come to that living Savior. But let all of us rejoice in the reality of what we believe. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we do offer our praise for the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, this has been a morning of remembrance first around the table, and now in our worship together to the preached word. The Spirit of God has set forth our Savior before us. I would ask, Lord, that you would indeed open our eyes, that you would open our hearts, that those of us who have seen Him by faith who profess Him as our Lord and our Savior would have the confidence, would have the boldness, would have the assurance day by day to live in the power and the reality of our blessed Lord. We do commit, Lord, those that may be here today still with eyes that are unable to see that the Spirit of God might come, remove those scales, unstop those deaf ears, that they might hear and might see the beauty of that One that so many of us here today adore. Receive our thanks, Lord. Apply Your Word according to Your purpose to every heart. May the Word of God not return unto you void. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.