Let's open our Bibles today to the first letter of John. First John, as we call it. And I'm going to read to you the verses that I've noted in the notes. It's John chapter 1 verse 1 right through to verse 6 of chapter 2. And I'll begin reading from the Apostle John's writing. And he begins with these words. 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 concerning the word of life, the life was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us that which we have seen which we have heard we declare to you that you also may have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ and these things we write to you that your joy may be full This is the message which we have heard from Him, and declared to you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with Him, or rather we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. My little children, these things I write to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the Righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. Now by this we know that we know Him. if we keep his commandments he who says I know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him but whoever keeps his word truly the love of God is perfected in him by this we know that we are in him he who says he abides in him ought himself also to walk just as he has walked Heavenly Father, we ask that by your Holy Spirit, O Lord, you would attend this meeting, you would guide our thoughts and our words, O Lord, apply them to our hearts, make them pleasing to you, Lord, and edifying to your children, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen. I think the first time I ever heard the Gospel, and I recognized the truth about grace. The idea that grace was something undeserved. But yet it was given to us, and it was given in full. And a pardon for our sins. Not just a pardon for our sins, but eternal fellowship with Jesus Christ and God the Father in eternity. I received the Gospel that day with great praise and contriteness of heart. I remember being overjoyed that I heard the Word of God. And I remember being directed to the Scriptures. I remember falling in love with God's Word. And I think I knew from the moment I heard the Gospel that it wasn't enough for me to simply know it. it would never be enough for me to simply love it and read it in solitude and teach it to my family all those are all blessed privileges that the people of God and we men of God do have as heads of our families but I knew that I would preach this word that it would give me joy that it welled up in my spirit and I wanted to preach it out and I believe I preached the gospel the best I could from the very first time I heard it. And I remember being very zealous and sort of having a reputation about that. Zeal without knowledge. That's how young Christians are. We have great zeal but we don't really know enough to be as edifying to the body of Christ and to the world as we should be. And so the The apostles warn us about putting novices, untrained men, into positions of leadership. But I remember being back there and being on fire, and so I wanted, I knew I lacked the knowledge, so I wanted to gain that knowledge quickly. Because I wanted to preach the Word, but I wanted to do it right. I wanted to do it the way John just did it. He said, we heard it from Jesus Christ Himself with our own ears. We saw Him with our own eyes. And what He told us personally, we declared to you. And I wanted to make sure that what Christ tells us personally in the written Word of God, is the Word of God that I declare to you accurately, as accurately as humanly possible. And I remember from those very early years, I remember one pastor, good old mentor and friend of mine, he said something that really kind of brought me down a little bit. I didn't let it bring me down, and he was certainly not a downer type of person, but he said to me one time, he said, don't worry about your zeal. Don't worry about the zeal without knowledge. Don't worry about that. Your zeal will wear off. He says it does with everyone. Don't worry about the zeal. And I could have practically cried. I remember thinking, I don't want to be an unzealous Christian. I like the zeal part. Can't we just say keep the zeal and gain the necessary knowledge and put them both together? This is what I really wanted. I wanted them both. I didn't just want to be a complacent old Christian who doesn't really believe that miracles happen anymore or doesn't believe that the gospel as God gave it to us is really the only methodology we need to see souls changed for Christ. I wanted to believe all these things. And I believe that's what the Apostle John would have us believe. I think that's the gospel he preached here. I think he wrote to people here. He wrote to Christians. He wrote to people who understood the gospel, but he wanted to drive home a couple of points. Number one, you ever notice when John writes, he always starts with, it's been that way from the beginning. When he started his gospel, he said, in the beginning. And he got the attention, I'm certain, of all the Hebrews who opened to their scriptures and the first three words they read were, in the beginning. The first three words from Genesis, the first three words from John's Gospel. And John goes back to the beginning. He shows continuity. We go all the way back to creation to found our Gospel and truth. to found our gospel in the extant scriptures of the day, which what we call the Old Testament. Guess what the Christians called the Old Testament in the New Testament era? They called the Old Testament the Bible. That's what they called it. They called it the scriptures, the book. That's what they had. And so John says, that which was from the beginning we have heard. He goes all the way back to creation to found his gospel. That which was from the beginning we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes. He's talking once again about the deity of Christ. About the word, the logos in the Greek. the co-creator with God, the Son of God, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory. He says in the Gospel, and in this little letter, He says, that which was from the beginning which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, our hands have handled concerning the Word of Life, the Life was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and declare to you that eternal Life which was with the Father and was manifested to us. That which he heard, he wanted to declare. And that's how I felt when I became a new believer. I wanted to declare the very thing that I read in the word of God that changed my soul and my life and my perspective on everything I saw around me. It even changed my perspective on my own beloved opinions, many of which I had to jettison from my worldview. They no longer fit into the truth as I now knew it. And then we have movements in the church today who would come in and tell us that the way John is telling us to declare the gospel is exactly the wrong way to do it. You cannot simply authoritatively declare anything anymore because we live in a society that doesn't like authority. And you know, I've got to tell you something, I was certainly, well not a creature of what we call the post-modern era, I was a creature of the modern era, but I've got to tell you, there were plenty of us back in the old modern era who didn't like authority either. And I didn't like authority my whole life. And I had that spirit of rebellion come on me when I was a teenager and that thing ran my life and it ran my view and it ran down my view of any natural authority in my life, my own father. other good people and men I should have listened to in my life but I didn't do it because I despised authority until I came to a point in my life when I was totally distraught and spiritually destroyed and then the real authority of God spoke to me through the Word of God and I recognized authority is a good thing if it's a real authority And I found authority finally refreshing. It was refreshing to know that someone knew a truth that we didn't have to change with the changing winds of trends and fashion. And now we have huge movements within the church telling us that's exactly what we should do. Change with every new fashion. Don't declare it authoritatively. Don't declare what you've seen and what you've heard and what you've handled and what you know in your heart is true. Don't declare that. But compromise it. Water it down. Make it more likable. And then I think, why would I do that? I was a hater of authority myself and when the true authority came on me, I loved authority. I recognized legitimate authority in God through Christ. And right on down, I started putting authorities together in my life. God's the perfect authority, but in His wisdom, He has appointed many other authorities in our life. Even though they're imperfect authorities, He has appointed them. Fathers are one such authority. And I suddenly had access to obey the commandment of honoring my Father, that up until that point, I never had access to obey that. I didn't understand That when I was obeying and honoring my Father, I was obeying and honoring my God. And I started to realize that. And I started to realize that God gave authority to men to preach the Gospel. What a valuable thing it is to have the Word of God in our hands! What a valuable thing. We pick up our Bibles like nothing was so used to them. And we forget the centuries of blood that was spilled to preserve it. The centuries of hours of copyists in caves. putting together, not leaving out one iota or jot or tittle to make sure that it came down exactly as the authority intended that it would. Centuries and centuries of sweat and toil to give us this word and because of a new movement I'm supposed to declare something else? Not going to happen. Not going to happen. because the souls of this dead and dying world deserve better in God's sight because God has said so he would have his gospel preached to them not some other gospel so I testified that this passage from one of the four biblical evangelists is perhaps the most refreshing concrete declaration regarding the historical material reality of the deity and humanity of Christ. Why do I say that? We've got to remember something when we're talking about the gospel. Jesus really came in history. He had real flesh and bone and blood as we have. He was a real man. It's verifiably true. And there, and these who knew him and saw him are also verifying he was a real God. He was both. And they're saying both are true. And so, what John's doing is he's testifying of the historical, material reality. And guess what? Your opinion about reality will never, ever change the reality. We've gone too far with our ideas about positive thinking as though our thinking and our thoughts have power to change reality. Well, they have power to change the reality of our attitudes, thank God. But there are certain physical and historical realities that no matter how much you hate authority, you simply must accept. And I'm going to point a few of those out today, hopefully. And so John tells us of the importance of the Word of God, the Logos, the Gospel, the message he came to bring, the bond of fellowship between those who embrace this reality, the reality of the message, the joy that the reality of the message imparts. Don't ever let yourself forget the joy! of the reality of Christ's gospel. It's a joyous thing to know where you'll be. We talked about our departed friend Marion this morning. I've known her for many years. She sat in my living room for many years when Pastor Ken taught Bible study. And I'll tell you right now, I haven't got the single slightest doubt in my heart that Marion isn't staring at the face of God as we speak. It's about assurance. How do you have assurance if you want to break away the authority that gives the assurance? Where's the assurance going to come from? How does a martyr go to the stake and die for Christ rather than cave in to the state or some local authority? How does he find the courage to endure the pain of being burned at the stake if he's not certain that moments later he'll be transported into the bosom of Jesus? It's a concrete, historical, physical Lord that visited this earth that these men touched and handled and ate and drank with. And that's the story they're telling us. And that's the only one I want to tell. I won't tell another story. Make up my own if I start to do that. Well, if I'm going to tell a different story, Rick, why don't I just make up my own? Why am I going to tell a story some other guy wants me to tell? He came to bring the bond of fellowship between those who embrace this reality and the joy that the reality of the message imparts and the love and responsibility of declaring it as true to all who will listen. Remember something. Remember something. Nine times in this short epistle, the Apostle John uses the Greek word phanerou, meaning manifest. He keeps saying it was manifested to us, it was manifested to them. He keeps using the word manifest. It's meaning is to uncover or lay bare or reveal. It's used of physical evidence for a thing claimed and witnessed and evident for all to see. When something has been made manifest, there's no more question as to whether or not it actually is or actually happened. And the gospel has been made manifest in the presence of Christ. So he uses that word. Purposely uses that powerful word. And our gospel is the testimony of those who saw the Christ, those who handled His person, who heard His voice with their own ears, who walked beside Him, who knew His earthly family, who ate and drank with Him, who saw Him die, who saw Him in the resurrected state, and whose mission it became to build His church. and to build it with the one methodology he gave to them, which is to declare with accuracy and authority that the message is true. The message is historically and materially witnessed by many reliable sources. It has been observed by some, that the historical, internal, and external textual evidence that exists concerning the appearance of Christ, the veracity of the gospel narratives, and even the resurrection itself are verifiable with greater certainty by objective investigators by these proofs and ordinary means of verifying any historical fact than is the fact that George Washington was President of the United States. In other words, if we put the two historical realities to the same test, there is more evidence that Jesus rose up as the Gospels say he did, than there is evidence that George Washington was President of the United States or that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris. And yet we have some that don't want us to say it with authority. That I don't understand. So with all of this testimony, and all of this evidence for the claims of Christ in Christianity, there remains a faction in the church today that is intent upon promoting the idea that methodology is a greater tool than apology. Now what do I mean by apology? I use the word apology in the Greek text. Apology to a Greek doesn't mean saying I'm sorry. An apologist is someone who defends his claim. An apology is a defense. The way you present the gospel is apologetic. It's a defense of the gospel. It's not near methodology. So I use apology in the Greek sense of a formal justification or defense of a position to win the world and save the lost. If we can only find that one special way of introducing Christ, that's what methodologists say. Apology isn't enough. John just comes out with an apology. What I mean by that again is a defense. I know our minds want to keep going to John's coming out saying, you know John, I'm really sorry. That's not what an apology is to a Greek. Alright? John comes out with a defense. He's saying we saw him, we handled him, we heard his own voice, we saw the miracles, we ate with him, we drank with him, he gave us a message and that's the message we're giving to you. And a methodologist is always looking for something a little different, a special way of introducing it, that will soften the offense that the gospel declares. See, the gospel is offensive. And why is it? Because it presupposes the idea that we need a Savior. Well, why do we need a Savior? Because we're sinful in the eyes of the only God. Well, who are you to say we're sinful? So, these new methodologists are correct. The gospel is an offense. But you cannot take the offense out of it, is my position, without taking the truth out of it, or some of the truth out of it. And that's the fear. It's better to dare to offend than to dare to water it down so much that it's ineffective, you see. And so if we can only find that one special way, the methodologists, wonders, that one special way of introducing Christ that will take the sting out of the message, that will soften the offense that the gospel declares that every man, woman, and child is on their way and deserving of a fiery and eternal hell. If we can only find that one special marketing technique that will trick the unbeliever into loving Christ and making himself a Christian before he even knows what happened to him. The fewer truths we represent, the greater the number of truths they may accept. Maybe if we validate some common doubts and misconceptions regarding the nature of God. You know, someone can give their idea of God, and we can say, well, you know, He might be like that. But what's the point when we know what He's like? It's declared in His Word authoritatively. Maybe if we accentuate the benefits of discipleship and minimize the cost of discipleship. Maybe if we speak primarily of love and acceptance and not so much of discipline and commandments. You notice how John talked about commandments at the end of this text? Now certainly loving and giving and feeding and doctoring and befriending and listening to perceived needs and sympathizing with feelings and emotions are all things the people of God must be ready to offer the people of the world. We're not questioning any of that. Yet without this authoritative declaration of John's, that same world, which is now well fed, well healed, well befriended and sympathized with, that same world will proceed into eternity without the one essential piece of equipment that could have saved them and that is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior. We want to be careful about only feeding the material needs of our friends and not feeding the greater more eternal needs, the spiritual needs of the world. Remember Christ healed 10 lepers, yet only one returned to praise him. Christ fed 5,000 with bread, but only a few ate of the bread of life. Even if we concede that methodology and marketing have their place, Even when we rightly concede that our good works and charitable deeds reflect the character of our God and His Son, we must yet come to grips with the reality that is all but lost to large segments of our society and sadly large segments of the professing Church. And that is that it is not our ideas about God that save us, it is God Himself. It is not our feelings about His message that makes us new. It's our wholehearted acceptance of it. It's not our association with His people or the programs of the church, but our association with Him that counts. It's not what we like about Him, it is that we've come to love what He loves and to hate what He hates. You know, it ought to be important to us to know what God hates. even though that's a very negative subject, we'll be careful with that one but at some point in our discipleship we ought to come to the place where we understand or seek to find out what God actually hates and then don't do those things why? because we love him and don't want to offend him and he certainly is worthy of our love and particularly from the standpoint that much of the scripture deals with what God hates Idolatry, God hates it, it's all throughout scripture. The idolatry of the Egyptians, God hated that. The idolatry of the Assyrians, that they made their children pass through the fire to Molech, child sacrifice, God hated that. God hates homosexuality as well. He hates it. He destroys it himself. He didn't even send his people to do it. He did it himself. He hates it. We cannot forget that because it's no longer popular to remember it. It's just a fact. God designs us for a purpose. And when we try to redesign ourselves, He gets offended. And so we come to love the things our God loves and hate the things that God hates. So it's not that we confess Him so much. It's that He confessed us to the Father, John says. It's not that we make time for Him or that we ask Him into our hearts or that we make Him a part of our lives. It's that He has made us a part of His life that matters. For He has said, Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God? Believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I'll come again and receive you to Myself. That where I am, you may be also. And where I go, you know, and the way you know. How do you know the way? Because He said, I am the way. So it's a great and joyous thing to declare such a thing, such a wonderful promise. But what good is the promise if we haven't declared a God who's able, with assurance, to deliver on that promise? There's a message from God that's equally important as that message, that's equally true, and ought to be declared with commensurate joy, and that is that He who says, I know Him and does not keep His commandments, is the liar. You know, at least you know where you stand with the Apostle John. It's not up in the air. If he preached what he wrote here to a group of people, there would be those there who would know they are in Christ, and there would be those there who know they're not. And then you have the tools to decide where you want to be. You know, we talk about making decisions for Christ, don't we? Well, how do you make a decision without all the facts? He who says I know him and does not keep his commandments is a liar, John says, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in him. Now remember, if we take those verses alone, it seems like we can look at someone and say, oh that person sinned, they're not in Christ, but we've got to look at it as a whole. And John says, he who says he has no sin is a liar, and the truth is not in him. He says, but when we do sin, recognize it's an offense to our God, confess it as sin, and he's faithful and just to forgive us and purge us from all unrighteousness. And so verse 5 says, this is the message which we've heard from Him and declare to you that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. I remember using this verse one time at the homeless shelter over in Brockton. We used to go in there and Russ was there and we preached the gospel to a room that was a sea of beds. 50 cots, 50 beds in the room and we'd push all the beds aside and the men gather around. It was a men's homeless shelter. They'd all come in and I was preaching the gospel to them one day and one young black man stood up and he was of the opinion that Jesus was black. That he was of his race and that was very important to him. Now personally, I don't really care what color Jesus is or was, but I said to him, he kept interrupting my meeting and I said to him, look, if I find you reversed in the scriptures that tells you that Jesus is not black, will you sit down and we can have the meeting go on? And he said, yes. Father, I'll do that. They always called me Father over there. Everybody was Catholic in that area. And so I read him this verse. This is the message which we have heard from him and declare to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. And I got the same reaction and then he sat down and we had a wonderful meeting. I don't really remember but the man might have got saved that day. When he got over the thing that was bothering him about our white gospel But the point is here that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. There are not good parts and bad parts of our gospel. There's no darkness in the gospel. I remember a minister telling me one time, don't preach the negative side of the truth. The force, you know, that's what I thought of. The dark side, don't tell them the dark side. He even said, yeah, Dan likes to focus on the dark side of the truth. What dark side? There's no darkness at all. I can talk about your sin, I can talk about your salvation, and both are in God and in the light. Because both are true. Why is one dark and one light? I think the gospel is like a marble rye, don't you? I thought of that, I had some this morning. But there are not good parts and bad parts of our gospel. All of it is light and truth and a testament of spiritual reality. We proclaim a gospel that is a historical and material reality. A thing that happened in time. It actually happened. It's wonderful in the spring that we say, oh it's all about resurrection and rebirth with the flowers. And that's a wonderful symbolic thing. But don't let that fool you into the fact that Jesus in his body received his spirit again and rose up after he died. In a material, carnal way. He got up and he walked and he talked again. It's symbolic of many things, but it's not merely symbolic, is it? It's historical. It happened in time. And that's what John is trying to tell us. He wants to make sure we know it isn't a story with a moral at the end of it. It's the reality of what happened. Do with it what you will. God sent a real man here to preach this message. And we loved him. And we beheld his glory, he says. So all of the gospel is light. We proclaim a gospel that is historically and materially true, a thing that happened in time, but which coincided with eternity. We have the Bible record to declare these truths emphatically and the testimony from those same men that all contending messages are false. You've got to remember something about Christianity. It's not inclusive. It is exclusive. If it wasn't exclusive, nobody would ever have been killed for it. In Rome, they didn't kill you for having different religions. They just killed you for saying, all the religions but mine are wrong. That's what they killed you for. Dr. Schaefer always said, they didn't kill the Christians because they believed in Jesus. They killed the Christians because they believed in Jesus alone. No one else. And an 86-year-old polycop, friend of John the Apostle, delightful old man, and the soldiers came to Smyrna and they grabbed polycop and as they were taking him to the stake, they sort of fell in love with the gentle presence of this elderly gentleman who loved the Lord. Wrote a couple of epistles himself. that are still in existence today. And they took old Polycock and they went to him and they loved him so much that they pleaded with him, Polycock, please, please deny Christ so we don't have to kill you. We have orders. We don't want to kill a nice Christian gentleman like yourself. Please say that Jesus is not the only God. And he said, how can I do wrong to a man who has never done any wrong to me? and he proclaimed Jesus as Lord and they stuck him in the oven at 86 years old Paulie Copp went to be with the Lord that he knew would be waiting for him when he got there now we have a Bible that declares these truths and the testimony from those same men that all contending messages are false, all competing ideas are human inventions, all rejections of the gospel are rejections of the only path to eternal life with God, and that all distortions of the message designed to make it more palatable and to minimize ridicule and persecution toward ourselves are evil concessions that reveal that our fear of man is greater than our fear of God. That's why we compromise the message. It's easier that way. Christian life's not easy. It's hard. When we aim at softer truths, it's because we believe our God is... Is it because we believe our God is too harsh? Do we think the way God presented himself is too much for our society? We have to soften his image, become his his publicist, his marketing agent. Listen, Lord, that's enough of that commandment stuff. You know, we really have to get you a better image for this culture. If we're going to sell you to this culture. See, the Lord will not be sold to a culture. And anyone that tries to buy and sell the gospel, our gospel we give to the world free of charge. If you don't like it, don't take it, but it's still what it is. when we omit to treat realities as important, such as the reality of sin and its exceeding sinfulness in the eyes of God. There's a great preacher in the country today, considered the most popular preacher, perhaps of all time, I don't know, but certainly now, and he was interviewed recently. A local magazine show, I saw him on television and he said that it's not his place to talk about sin. He thinks people already know about that. It's his place to give hope. And I thought, what kind of a gospel gives hope? Hope from what? I remember the first time the gospel was presented to me by a friend in high school. He came up to me and he said, are you saved? And I said, saved from what? And he couldn't tell me. He couldn't tell me what I was saved from. If he had, I might have got saved way back then and saved myself a lot of trouble. But he didn't know what to say. It wasn't popular in his gospel to talk about sin and damnation and things that you're saved from. So is our message just too severe? So when we omit such realities as sin and its exceeding sinfulness in the eyes of God, is it because we see ourselves as wiser than God? who speaks blatantly and openly about such things. God speaks openly about these things. When we fear that the message is too insistent upon repentance and calls for changes in our lives and our thoughts and our behaviors and our speech, is it because we believe we're more merciful than God? Who's insistent upon such things and considers repentance and a changed life the fruit of our surrender to Him? When we're embarrassed that political correctness and modern scientific method do not affirm the truths revealed to us, do we alter our gospel to conform to the ways and beliefs that are acceptable in the eyes of man? Or do we stand firm in the message that we have before us that we know is acceptable in the eyes of God? I was reading from Gresham Nation recently who said, we live in a time when science is in conflict with the Word of God. And he said, so much the worse for science. Too bad for science. They must be on the wrong road. He didn't make the modern day presupposition with scientists as our idols, men in white lab coats that bow down to them because they did a study. Studies have shown, right? Studies have shown the mantra of the scientific world today. So much the worse for science, that studies have shown something other than the reality that the Bible teaches. Just remember something friends, there was many centuries where critics of the Bible tried to say that people like the Hittites never existed and some of those old civilizations that the Bible talks about and the people of God conquered in ancient times. They were all discovered and unearthed by archaeologists in the 19th century and they were like, whoops, guess we were wrong. Guess the Bible was right. You know, that happens over and over again. You kind of get tired of the new revelation that somebody like some new Da Vinci code is going to disprove the existing gospel that we have. It's been suggested by some that people in our day respond to information differently and must therefore be approached differently than those in gospel times. We are today, it is said, less responsive to authoritative declarations and more responsive to opinions, suggestions, and possibilities. You know something, I got to tell you, I guess I'm way out of step with the world today. Because when I see a mother in the grocery store with a screaming little child, and she says, now mommy doesn't like when you do that, I'm about ready to rip my hair out. I mean, we were at the ball field recently and that was going on and this child was hitting his mother and hitting his father and they just absolutely couldn't control him. And I was about two seconds away and Daniel held me back and I was going to go over and say, I can help you with this. I have a method of fixing that. Little satanic rebel. It was horrible. She eventually dragged him off. And the grandmother got in on it too. She said, oh, would you like a bottle of water? He threw it down and he stomped it. And you know what she did? She said, well, I'm not going to give you another one. She gave him another one. Now, we don't like authority, but authority has its benefits. Let me ask you if the post-modern emergent church movement has a different approach to all historical and material reality. See, I'm on to something here. They're saying we've got to change our approach to historical material reality as it pertains to Christ. But would they do that across the board? And if they won't do it across the board, maybe they don't really believe in the historical material reality of Christ in the gospel. I suggest to you they don't really believe it. Will they do it across the board? Is there some uniquely postmodern response to gravity, for instance? Well, we learn about gravity differently in our day. Is there a new response to gravity that calls for a refurbishing of our understanding of just what happens to a person who leaps from a tall building on the edge of a cliff? How about velocity? Does the postmodern mind need a softer description of how a human body tends to look after riding in a vehicle, traveling at tremendous speeds, and coming suddenly into contact with a substantial stationary object? How about respiration? You know, I don't like breathing in all that invisible stuff. How do postmodernists feel about having to inhale invisible gases? Constantly. You have to do it just about constantly. How long can you hold your breath? Okay Church, everyone hold your breath. We're going to do an experiment. Now, but how does the postmodernists feel about respiration? Inhaling invisible gases constantly in order to have enough wind to stand or to walk or to breathe out distortions about the gospel and the church and God himself. How much invisible oxygen does it take for you to preach your false gospel? Oxygen is invisible. Yet we cannot live without it. God is invisible as well. And our gospel declares with authority that there is no life apart from him. Such things are difficult at times to detect and define. Yet I rather doubt that the leaders of the emergent church movement will deny any of the essential provable realities about oxygen. Yet they take great pains to entertain doubts and contrary opinions regarding the nature of our God, whose nature and character were proclaimed by Christ himself and those who became his disciples. It's been alleged that because we, God's messengers, are not omniscient and omnipotent ourselves, that we therefore cannot understand of God all there is to understand about him, that we should not presume to say anything concretely or authoritatively about him. In other words, the postmodernist says, wait a minute, you can't say anything authoritative about God because you're not God. He's only revealed himself in part. Even if he revealed himself in whole, how would we ever comprehend it with our finite minds? So we can't say anything about God concretely because we don't know everything about God. And that's the contention that's being made. That's the argument that's being put forth. Now how would such a thing work in some other areas, like structural engineering? That's a discipline that depends on geometric postulates. Now, do you remember your high school or your home school geometry? I remember I took geometry in high school, and they taught me that the three basic building blocks of this whole science, this whole discipline of geometry, are point, line, and plane. But those are undefined terms. Nobody knows what they are. Point, line, and plane. Do you remember any of this? Euclidean geometry is based on point, line, and plane, but these are the undefined terms of geometry. We can never truly locate a point, we can only simulate a location with a dot from a pencil tip, right? And the same is true of line and plane, which are each made up of not many, but an infinite number of points. If I take a pencil and I draw a line across a piece of paper, that line, even though you can see that whole line, right? Theoretically that line goes off for eternity in both directions, but if you can see that whole line, that one line has an infinite amount of points in it. I mean, that's incredible. I can't comprehend that. but I still know how to draw a line and snap a plumb line and build a foundation. I'm not going to stop doing that because I only understand part of it. But certainly it makes a point regarding truth for us today. Should we abandon civil engineering and structural engineering and any other discipline that looks to geometric principles for consistency and reliability? No! We must work within a framework of reality where there are many reliable principles, some we can explain, some we cannot explain, but both have proven helpful for centuries of architects, builders, and planners. and some things are revealed about our God and some are not, yet we persevere in proclaiming as true and reliable those things that have been revealed and tested and witnessed. So how about the area of finance and commerce? Are there realities there that a little doubt will cause some significant change in? Do the postmodern bankers of the world foreclose with finality only on those who have a modernistic approach to life? and would understand such a drastic reality as being bankrupt and homeless? Is homelessness and bankruptcy authority enough to drive home certain truths about finance? Are postmodern homeless people less homeless than their modernistic authoritative counterparts? Are the postmodern poor less poor? The postmodern hungry less hungry? No, these are realities. And regardless of how directly or indirectly we may choose to confront such things, their essential characteristics remain unchanged. So why would they ask us to change the gospel? Not willing to change any other material reality. But you're asking us to change the gospel. I suggest to you that you don't really believe the gospel happened in time and materially. I suggest your faith is flawed. And you ought to re-examine it. The answers to these things I propose are ridiculously obvious, even to those who have very strong views about such things. So in the case of church life and the preaching of the gospel to the world, I can only say that the post-modernist has not grasped the historical, material reality of our Savior in the same way that John the Evangelist has grasped Him. He not only has not seen the Savior, but must foster some deep residing doubts as to whether or not the evangelist has actually seen him either. If the creations of God, such as day and night, gravity and tides, natural disasters do not change with the changing attitudes of society regarding such things, and if the institutions of man, such as financial institutions and the IRS, you know, Pastor Ken used to say, You want God to change the rules, the IRS won't even change the rules for you. Why should God do less? If none of these things are being asked to be changed, then why must the church change the reality under which we operate? We operate in historical material reality as well. There's but one conclusion, and that is that the realities declared by the Word of God are doubtful and offensive in the minds of those who call for a change. They are offended by this truth. They're unwilling to be told anything with authority and with finality. They want a place at the table of God where decisions about how to deal with sin are made and where edicts are handed down as to guilt or innocence. Yet at that table, all the seats are full. There is one God and Father of all. there is one throne upon which he sits he needs no other nor does he seek another to dispense wisdom on matters concerning himself and what he has revealed he has revealed through the life and death of his beloved son and takes great offense when we demand more proof than the wounds of his beloved And finally from verse 7 we read, But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin. The benefits of taking John's testimony at face value are incalculable. There are a body of truths that bind together in a deep and spiritual way all those who have received as reliable the truths of the gospel and the nature of God. In these truths we remain safe in fellowship with one another as redeemed sons and daughters of God and forgiven for all the offenses we've committed due to our natural desires. Our relationship with God is a supernatural thing and may never be totally comprehended by our finite imaginations, yet the full power of our relationship remains, or with Him rather, remains forever a blessing. And we may confidently claim that blessing if we walk in the fear of God and in the light of His statutes. And as to the blood of Christ, we dare never trivialize the suffering and death of our Savior, God's only begotten. And so here the Apostle declares our sin as a concrete reality, our redemption in Christ by blood also a concrete and dependable, historical, material reality. Just as our sins are committed in the flesh, so is our remedy, the carnal, physical death of our Lord committed in the flesh. Apart from this reality, there is no gospel, there is no redemption from sin, there is no church of the living God. Friends, apart from this reality, there is no hope. And we shall close with the great exhortation of Paul the Apostle, who is ever diligent to proclaim with assurance the blessed truths of our gospel. Paul tells us, if we don't depend on the concrete facts of our gospel, friends, there is really no hope. And so he writes, if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty. And your faith is also empty. Yes, and we have found false witnesses of God. Because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ, whom he did not raise up, if in fact the dead do not rise. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen, he says. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. than also those who have fallen asleep in Christ and perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. He is saying Christianity without the physical reality of Christ's death and resurrection is nothing. We are the most pitiable for believing something that is less than what it claims to be. If in this life only we have opened Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. But now Christ is risen from the dead and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. Our Father, we thank you, Lord. for the conviction of these men who brought us the truth as they saw it and heard it in the Savior himself, O Lord. May we receive it. May it be revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. May it edify us and encourage us, Lord. And may it motivate us, O Lord, to love the message, to share the message as it is given, to never dare to add anything to it or take anything away, O Lord, and give us the gifts, O Lord, to make this reality our life's mission. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.