Well, very good to see you again this afternoon. And for those of you who may be new today, a word of explanation, because as you see our Bible reading on the order of the day, you may think this is one of the strangest Bible readings that you've ever seen. and the explanation is that over the first three four months of the year in our church we are we're baptizing ourselves into the gospel of john on sunday mornings we are thinking about the gospel of john at our wednesday lunches and we're coming to the end on thursdays of a little series on john himself and we've been thinking overall about the way in which the man whom jesus nicknamed And if you knew there is a prize for you, if you know the nickname that Jesus gave to the Apostle John, no it wasn't the Apostle of Love and it wasn't the beloved disciple, it was the Son of Thunder. And what we're doing is tracing the way in which the Son of Thunder, a man who apparently from time to time was known just to explode a little. how he was transformed into the beloved disciple. And we're reading today in his first letter and various passages there, we'll just read through them. 1 John chapter 1 verses 1 through 4. 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 we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you 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 and we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete and as we read through the rest of the verses you'll notice that that phrase is a very important one here's the reason I'm writing to you Chapter 2. My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. He is the propitiation, that is the sacrifice that takes away sin. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. I'm writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for His name's sake. I'm writing to you, fathers, because you know Him who is from the beginning. I'm writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the Father. I write to you fathers because you know Him who is from the beginning. I write to you young men because you are strong and the Word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one. I write to you not because you do not know the truth but because you know it and because no lie is of the truth. I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you but the anointing that you receive from him abides in you and you have no need that anyone should teach you but as his anointing teaches you about everything and is true and is no lie just as it has taught you abide in him and then finally in chapter 5 verse 13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life and this is the confidence that we have toward him that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us and if we know that he hears us and whatever we ask we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him Many things about the Apostle John that we know are very remarkable among the Apostles. For example, it seems fairly certain that John was the one who lived longest. And we know from the traditions of the early church that when he was a very old man and really scarcely capable of doing anything else, his friends would actually carry him to the church service. And I don't know whether he suffered from asthma and a thousand other things, but he would just raise his hand and say, apparently, little children love one another. And there, in those words that were pregnant with meaning, because of all that he had taught in the gospel, because of all he had said in his letters, the church revered and honoured him. And he's also singular among the apostles for this reason. that he's the only apostle, in fact he's the only person in the New Testament who writes books in our New Testament that belong to different kinds of literature. Other apostles write letters. Peter writes letters, John writes letters, Paul writes letters. Other apostles write Gospels. But John writes Gospel, letters and of course the book of Revelation which is an apocalyptic writing And next Thursday, God willing, we'll take a look at John as the writer of the apocalypse of the book of Revelation. And one of the things that's so interesting, and I hope as you've perhaps been here on Wednesday or Sunday mornings, but particularly on Wednesdays, one of the things that to me is most interesting is that these three different kinds of literature that John writes are the very things that Jesus promised him in the upper room that he would write. Do you remember how Jesus said, now you need to understand that a central reason I'm giving you the Holy Spirit is, first of all, so that you'll be able to remember everything I have taught you. And that, of course, is the Gospel of John. And then he said, I'm giving you the Holy Spirit so that he will lead you to have a sense of what is still to come. And of course, that's the book of Revelation. And then he said, I'm going to send you the Holy Spirit so that he will lead you into all the truth, so that he will help you to understand the gospel, and he'll help you to see, if I can put it this way, how the gospel works in your life. And that's exactly what John is doing in his three letters towards the end of the New Testament, and especially in this, the longest of his letters. It has five chapters, the longest of his letters, that we call the first letter of John. And the fascinating thing about the letters, I suppose we could say, is this, that whereas in the gospel he's simply, as it were, telling us what Jesus had taught, and in the book of Revelation he's just receiving the revelation, there's a sense in which in these letters he's telling us what he thinks for himself. Yes, the Holy Spirit is guiding him, the Holy Spirit is leading him, but here in a very special way, particularly in 1 John, we get an insight into what was going on in John's heart as he sought to care for his fellow Christians, his fellow disciples. And when he writes 1 John, the letter we call 1 John, you notice he tells us several times why he is writing it. It kind of reminds me of my mother. Write a sinker. I'm writing this to you so that, usually to get me something she suspected I wasn't doing, you must do it. You've got to do it now. Always reminding me. Not necessarily telling me things that I didn't know. But you see, people who really care for you will tell you things you do know because they understand that it's not just knowing them that's important. It's working them into your life and having them work out in your life. And so, in a way, John is not telling these dear Christian friends anything that they've never heard before. But do you notice why he says he's writing to them in verse 4 of chapter 1? We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. Isn't that interesting? I'm writing to you so that my joy may be complete. Now, isn't that an echo of something that Jesus had said? In chapter 15, verse 11 of John's Gospel, the reason I've told you these things is so that my joy might be in you and that your joy might be full. And John apparently himself had experienced this. The Lord Jesus' words abiding in him, filling up his joy. And now he wants to pass that on to these other disciples. I think we could put it like this. The mark that John was no longer the son of thunder but the beloved disciple was that he made other disciples beloved to him. The mark that you're a Christian, and this is what John means when he speaks about love in this letter, the mark that you're a Christian is that you have a new love for those who are Christians. You know sometimes I suppose the place where most people hear passages from John's first letter is at weddings, all kinds of weddings. If anyone loves, love is of God. And characteristically that's got very little to do with what John is writing about here. He's not talking about any kind of general love, he's talking about this specific mark that identifies Christian believers that they have a love for their fellow Christians that transcends natural love. That they discover in a very deep sense that the bonds that bind them to their fellow Christians are actually deeper than the bonds that naturally bind them to members of their own family. Now, of course, it's a double blessing and a double bond if members of your own family are Christians, and so you're bound to them by the ties of nature, but you're especially bound to them by the ties of grace. Because it's the ties of grace that change our lives as we are bound to Jesus Christ. And this is what John has discovered. that in a way he has found a quality of love for his fellow Christians because he found a quality of love for himself in the Lord Jesus Christ. And as Jesus has loved him with a special love, and one of the things that we've discovered in our thirsty talks, isn't it, that almost certainly John was the cousin of the Lord Jesus. so that they were bound together by natural ties. He was almost certainly the son of Mary's sister. Remember how we worked that out right at the beginning? And so there were natural bonds, but those natural bonds didn't really mean anything, did they? At the end of the day, unless there was the spiritual bond. Now, What's his concern for these fellow Christians who are now, in a way, his beloved disciples? Well, in these verses that are on the page before us today, you'll notice that John is concerned about three things. The first is this. He wants to encourage his fellow disciples to a life of holiness. Look at chapter 2, verse 1. It's an astonishing statement. My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. Now surely he means something different, doesn't he? He doesn't really mean that. What he means is, I'm writing these things to you because I'd like you to sin a little less. Or he means, I'm writing these things to you so that you do only the little sins. You know, a little gossip, a little backbiting. You do only the little sins, but for any sakes, don't murder anybody. No, he's not saying that. He's saying, I'm writing to you so that you will simply stop sinning in whatever form sin manifests itself in your life. And he understands us, doesn't he? He understands we've all got a kind of league table of sins. There are sins that are embarrassing, there are sins that are public, there are sins that would cause us great shame in our society, and we avoid those sins. But there are all kinds of other sins, and they are not so important, are they? That's right, they're not so important, are they? No, says John, they are an offence to God, they are darkness rather than light. And actually, I think it's only when we feel the full weight of what John is saying here, I'm writing this to you so that you stop sinning, so that you do not sin, that I think it's when you listen to this, or am I just speaking personally? I'm the only person in the room who feels this. It's when I'm told never to sin again, ever. It's like saying you must, the doctor says to you, you've got to stop drinking orange juice. You've got to stop eating cheese. When that's the very, you didn't think about it until he said you've got to stop. And then you realize it's actually the very thing that you want to do. And I think it does work like this, doesn't it? If he had just said, you know, you've got to avoid this particular sin, and if he had given me a list that said, here are four things that you've got to avoid. You've got to avoid this, this, this, and this. I would have found wiggle room. I would have been able to divert what is in my heart that comes out in these particular sins to something else. But it's when he says, no sin is permitted to the Christian believer, that I realize very deeply that sin seems to be kind of woven into the very core of my being. It's almost as though there are layers of it. And when I scrape away a layer and I think, well that's that done and finished with, I discover there's actually another layer underneath. I remember the boy who was with us a few weeks ago that one of our surgeons operated on, I asked him about the surgery. You know there was a great mass here as large as the boy's head. And I think if I've got it right, that was easy. just get rid of that. But then when you get in to the smaller parts, the large lump gone, but then when it's intricately woven in here near the vocal cords, you see, that's what's really difficult to get rid of. And you see why John is saying this. He's saying this, I think, to help us to realize that the Christian life from beginning to end is an ongoing struggle. And that could be very depressing for us. I mean, does it encourage you that John says to you, you are now, from now on, you are never allowed to sin? Well, just a little. No, never. Ever, ever, ever. No Christian is ever allowed to sin. Why? And you see what he goes on to say. He goes on to say two things that are tremendously helpful to us. One, he says, but if you do sin. And you see his thinking, don't sin, but if you do sin. He's not saying, well, Try and make it about 78% of the time. Try and get a B plus in not sinning. He's saying no, no sinning. But I myself recognize that to the end of my days I'm going to fall into sin, and I need, therefore, not to hear this word as a whip with which God lashes me, but an exhortation to live unreservedly for Him, knowing that if I do sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, and He is the One who sacrificed for our sins, so that I'll never fall into despair. On the one hand, no sin is permitted in my life. On the other hand, because I recognise I am a sinner, I need to constantly be going to the Saviour who is the propitiation for our sins. And actually what he says there is perhaps the strongest motivation that I have not to sin. It's because every single sin I sin. caused the Saviour to be crushed. And you see, he's giving us the logic of how the gospel works when I understand that he died for my sin. I don't want that sin for which he died. And so in this marvellous way, you need to think about this and meditate on it. It's so powerful what he's saying to us here. This is a tremendously helpful statement to me. I must deal with all sin in all of its manifestations, or I don't really deal with my sin. I just deal with its outward manifestations. I just deal with the symptoms. I've got to deal with the disease in my heart, he's saying. And even as I often fail to do that, I know that there is a Saviour who will forgive me and He shows me His hands and His feet. And I'm reminded that He was wounded for my transgressions and bruised for my iniquities. And the more I see that, the less I love that sin that lurks in my heart and the more I want to be like my Saviour. So he's writing to them and to us to encourage them in the life of holiness. But second, move on later on chapter 2 verse 21. He's writing to guard them against being deceived. I write to you not because you don't know the truth but because you know it and because no lies are the truth and I'm writing these things to warn you about those who try to deceive you." Now this is interesting, isn't it? He's saying, now you know the truth, but at the same time you need to be on guard against those who will deceive you. You notice this marvellous balance, incidentally. Don't sin, but if you do sin, there is a Saviour. And now he's saying, you know the truth, but make sure that no one deceives you. Make sure that no one deceives you. Now why is that important? That's important because we are actually very easily deceived. And some of the people who are most easily deceived are the people who say, no one ever pulls the wool over my eyes. Because you see, that's the ultimate deception, isn't it? The ultimate deception is believing nobody could ever deceive me. I remember I walked off the plane in, is it Kimpo Airport in Seoul and was met by a little taxi driver who had this stuff and so much, where was I going? So much, so much, so much. I said okay, so much, so much. And as I did the calculation I thought, that's about what it would cost in London. I didn't think it would be so expensive. Well, of course, he very carefully took me past the sign that was there that said, if you're going here, the taxi driver should charge this. And, you know, he was I mean, it was OK, but he was he was charging me an arm and a leg. So I had arranged, I had flown from Seoul, actually I had flown from Seoul to Pusan and I was going to spend the day with missionary friends I hadn't seen for years. The arrangement was I would meet the missionary's wife at a hotel, but she knew the taxi driver, all taxi drivers would know, so I'm pulling out my wand, roll after roll after roll, and suddenly this mild-mannered Scottish girl said to me, what are you doing? paying the taxi man the fare. You're not, she said. She turns to him in the most fluent Korean I'd ever heard from a Scottish girl, berates him, the man was trembling. Well, I did the right thing, I'd done the deal, and I said, I'll probably buy all these six children new pairs of shoes. Now there was, I am, you know, I mean, I might appeal to you to say, do you think there's some intelligence here? I mean, I might have said to myself, this taxi driver probably doesn't have a fraction of the education I've got. But you see, you can know the truth, but not know how to work with the truth, so that it defends you against being deceived. And he's warning them against those who would deceive them. And my dear friends, we can be deceived in so many different ways. Now, what's the remedy? Well, it's just here that we can make a mistake, and people often do. They think the remedy for deception is to become a world-class scholar on deceptions. Well you could do that, you know, you could research every conceivable way in which you could be deceived and not realize that you're actually being deceived in the process. The way to make sure that you will not be deceived, well, how did they used to do it in the banks? Youngster went in to work their way up through the echelons of the banking system and they began life as a banking teller, at least in Scotland, where of course the banking system was invented. One thing Scots are not usually deceived about, you see, the first thing they did was to say Do you think they said, in this room there are 25,000 different forged banknotes and you've got to memorise every single one? No, what they did was give them a pile of new banknotes, genuine banknotes and say, just get used to the feel, the sight, the texture of the real thing. And as you do that, it'll just become almost instinctive with you. Of course, the criminals have become more clever, and the bank people have become more clever, and all the rest of it. It's not so simple nowadays, I don't suppose. And we've got machines, and it's like, you know, you go and they do the computer thing, and you've already done the sum in your brain, and you think, if the girl had just learned arithmetic when she was in school, we wouldn't need all this palaver. I know it's different, but the principle's the same with the Christian faith. The principle is the same with the way in which our hearts sometimes deceive us. It's as the truth sinks into us that we begin to develop kind of spiritual instincts that help us, even if we're not able to explain to somebody, even if we're not able to say, I can tell you exactly what is wrong here, we can see through the deception and know There's something not right here. There's something that makes me uneasy here. I can't quite put my finger on it, but as you grow in understanding, you'll even be able to put your finger on it, but you've grown enough in the truth to be guarded against being deceived. Now, turn on your television set to the religious channels, if you want, and watch and wonder at the level of deception that there is, at the way in which what you see with your eyes closes your ears to what is actually being said and claimed. And how, as has certainly astonished me over more recent years, you will find multitudes of people gathered with huge Bibles on their laps, listening and nodding their heads to what is being said. But if you have any real understanding of what the scriptures teach you, realize there's no connection between what's coming out of the man's mouth and what's actually in the book on the people's laps. You see. And the big Bible is on their knees, but it's not in their minds, so that they're not able to stand back and say, there's something not quite right here. There's something not quite right about this whole performance, about the aura with which... There's something that's not Jesus-like. There's something that draws attention to Him and not draws attention to the Lord Jesus. You see? So he wants to encourage them in a life of holiness. He wants to guard them against being deceived. And then in the third place, chapter 5 verse 13, he wants to encourage them to enjoy the assurance of salvation. These are wonderful words. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God. that you may know that you have eternal life. Now, most of us know John's gospel fairly well, I suppose, and you'll remember how John tells us almost at the end of the gospel that the reason he wrote the gospel was so that we would come to believe in Jesus Christ. And now he's writing the letter, if I can put it this way, he's writing the letter to the very people for whom he wrote the gospel who did come to believe in Jesus Christ and he's saying to them, now I want you, I want you my dear Christian friends to know that you have eternal life. To know that you are destined for heaven. To be sure of your salvation. I remember when I was a youngster overhearing a conversation between two people. They were both in the church, and one made a comment about how they were sure of their salvation, and the other said, how dare you? How dare you have that arrogance at your age to say that you are sure of your salvation? And I remember wondering as a youngster, what's going on here? And now I think I understand. But the first person who said, I'm sure of my salvation, had realized, as John says here, that our salvation, eternal life, is a gift that the Lord Jesus gives to us and it begins now in our hearts. Remember how he says, I know my sheep, my sheep know me, I give them eternal life. It's a gift, it's not something that I earn, but I think the other person was saying, how dare you say that? How arrogant of you, because the other person thought, the only way I can be sure that I have eternal life, the only way I can be sure that I'm going to heaven, is if I've done enough to be sure that I've done enough to get into heaven. And you see the problem with that, don't you? It's that if you think that to be sure that you're getting to heaven, you've got to do enough, how can you be sure you've done enough? How can you be confident that, as the old prayer says, you have left nothing undone? You can't. It's actually spiritually, but also just psychologically, it's just not possible that if our salvation depends on us having done enough, it's just not possible for us to be sure that we have done enough. And of course the truth of the matter is that none of us can do enough. None of us can do enough. And you see, as I think about that person, and although it's a long time since I've heard anybody say that, that person is a kind of type of person. Because for such a person, the Christian life really is a kind of burden. And if they're really in earnest about it, it's a burden of self-improvement. And it's not really a message about Christ and grace and faith and the gift of eternal life. And so John's saying to them, lest they should in any way misunderstand the nature of the gospel, at the end of his letter he's bringing them back to this great anchor that transforms our lives. Salvation, eternal life is a gift. Now why would he write that to people that he thought were already Christians? Because I think he understood that there are many people who become Christians and understand in becoming a Christian, I am being justified by grace, I'm being counted righteous in God's sight by grace. But then they kind of turn on its head as they live the Christian life and they begin to feel that God is saying, you've got to be better, you've got to be better, you've got to be better, you've got to be better. Instead of saying, my child, rest in my grace, enjoy eternal life. But then you remember, just like that woman that we read of, who was caught in adultery, the Lord Jesus said to her at the end, neither do I condemn you. Therefore, go and sin no more. It's not by sinning no more that I earn grace. It's by receiving eternal life, by receiving the grace of God in Jesus Christ that I'm given the power to say, Lord Jesus, I don't want to sin anymore in any shape or form. Cleanse me thoroughly. And when I fail, forgive my sins. And you see, when we understand it that way, we understand why John then goes on to say, and this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. What's he saying? He's saying it's only when this is true of us that we have a sense that the Father loves us, that the Lord Jesus is our Saviour, that the Holy Spirit strengthens us. And we have a quiet confidence in our Christian lives. And that comes out, I think, doesn't it? We have a quiet confidence that our Father hears us because His Son loves us. Well, next time, God willing, we'll think about some of the things John saw in the book of Revelation. Let's pray together. How amazing the gospel is that it calls us to such rigor that the Lord Jesus does not tolerate sin in any size, shape or form. And yet even although we have sinned and do sin, he loves us and pardons us. Preserve us from deception, we pray, especially the way in which we deceive ourselves. Never mind the way in which this world deceives us. And give to each of us, every single one of us, we are bold to pray, such an understanding of eternal life that we will enjoy trusting you, that we will enjoy knowing that you hear us, and that there will be, O Lord, in our lives a kind of relaxation because we do not need to earn our salvation and yet at the same time a glorious determination because we want to live for you without reserve. Bless us then, we pray. Thank you. that through the teaching of the beloved disciple, we can know more and more of what it means for us also to be disciples that Jesus loves. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.