When John wrote his epistles toward the end of the first century, the challenge that was facing the church in that day was known as Docetism, which was a denial of the humanity of Jesus. It was a teaching that Jesus was a manifestation of deity but only appeared to be actually human. This heresy was refuted in the Council of Nicaea in 325. But it's intriguing, isn't it, that those who lived nearest to Jesus in history had no problem recognizing his deity? Today, it's the exact opposite. We are much more inclined to hear people acknowledge, well, certainly there must have been a man named Jesus, but the question of his deity is what comes to be challenged. That's known as Arianism, most found in Jehovah's Witnesses in our day. Well, 1 John, as I ask you to turn first of all to the end of the gospel of John, 1 John is a follow-up to the gospel of John. I want us to see that the purpose for John's gospel and the purpose for John's epistles go hand-in-hand. The purpose of John's gospel is found in John chapter 20 and verse 31, but these things have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. The gospel is written to bring you to faith in Jesus Christ so that in Christ you might have life. Now turn to 1 John 5, and there we see the reason why John wrote his epistle of 1 John. And there in verse 13, these things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. So the gospel is written to bring you to faith. so that you might have this life. And the epistle is written to you who have been brought to faith to assure and strengthen you in the life that has been given to you in Jesus Christ. Life is the essential message of the gospel because our primary problem is death. And so it's with that introduction that I ask that you read the first verses of the epistle of John in 1 John 1, our focus this morning on verses one to four. What was from the beginning? What we have heard? what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of life, and the life was manifested. And we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life. which was with the Father and was manifested to us. What we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete. Now we can only take a surface overview of the things that John brings to us. This is the apostle of life and love. And his writings, although simple in terms of vocabulary and grammar, are perhaps the most profound and deep. I've often wondered if I will be able to mature as a Christian and as a preacher to be able to preach the gospel of John. It is so profound, and John's words are so deep, yet simple in their vocabulary. So, let's look first this morning to discover the identity of the Word of Life. Now, as I've already alluded, the gospel of John and the epistles of John go hand-in-hand together. John's gospel opens with the profile of the pre-incarnate Logos, the Word of God, emphasizing the deity of the Word, although in verse 14 he tells us that the Word became flesh. John's epistle, on the other hand, opens with the emphasis on Jesus' humanity, although, of course, as Logos, his deity, is implied as well. And so we ask the question, what or who, rather, is the word of life? The word is that Greek word logos that we are introduced to in the opening verses of John's gospel. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by him apart from him. Nothing came into being that has come into being. We recognize that this is none other than the incarnate word who we know to be Jesus, the Messiah. But notice that this is the word of life, and John's emphasis is upon life more than it is upon Logos in this opening of his epistle. three times in verses 1 to 2, you see the word life. And that is defined in terms of the incarnate word, Jesus Christ, who is the word of life. And not only from John's vantage point at the end of the century, the first century, is John considering the incarnation of the word, as he does in John 1, but he is also thinking about the resurrection and that life, that eternal life that was manifest in the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ as well. We're going to consider the matter of having this word of life manifest, revealed to us in our present age so that with our five senses we meet the revelation of God's life, the Word of Life manifest. But it is a life of the eternal age. It is an eternal life. It is life beyond our empirical world. We are given the revelation so that we can see and hear and touch but it is of a life that is beyond this present realm. Not only the life after death, but the life of God that is transcendent and beyond this present realm. Now, John emphasizes this life, and of course, there is no life apart from the Logos. There's no life apart from the Word. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life in John 14, 6. And He has come to us so that we might have life and might have it more abundantly in John 10.10. He is the Living One, the One who is alive, by whom all things have come into being. He is the One who is the Creator God, from whom, for whom, and to whom are all things. This is divine life. that is revealed to us, supernatural life, life of the age to come. This is the one who says at a funeral, I am the resurrection and the life, the life that overcomes death because of the sacrifice of this life. I lay down my life for my sheep. I lay down my life that I might take it up again, in John 10, 15 to 17. So John presents us with the living one. we know from his gospel. This is none other than the pre-existing, pre-eternal Logos, the Creator God, who has now revealed Himself in the person of His Son, come in the flesh as our Redeemer, to live a life, a life that we cannot live, a life of perfect obedience to the law of God. and yet to give that life for the penalty of the death that we deserve, so that as our Redeemer, He defeats death, and as the resurrected Lord, He then stands before us. And in Revelation 1, verse 17, He says, do not be afraid. I am the first and the last and the living one. I was dead, but behold, I am alive forevermore. This is the word of life. And it's a phrase that we do well to bring all of the Bible's teaching about Christ to bear upon this phrase, the word of life. This includes the incarnation of the Logos. It also includes the life of Jesus of Nazareth, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, his present reign, his return. This is the embodiment of life. in the person of Jesus Christ, the one who says, I was dead, but I am now alive with life forevermore. The identity of the Word of Life. Secondly, this morning, the manifestation of the Word of Life. The manifestation of the Word of Life. Now, John is speaking to us this morning as an eyewitness. And he's going to make reference to empirical reality. And by empirical, I mean those things that you know by virtue of your five senses. And he's going to focus upon how this life was manifested. The word manifest, you see that there in verse two, John uses it twice. He repeats it because it's important. for something to be manifest. The idea behind this word means to make visible, to make obvious, to make it seen, to make it experienced. And it's a word that is associated with God's work of revelation. And that's what John is witnessing to us. He says, I was confronted with revelation. The word of life was manifested to me. I didn't discover him. I didn't deduce him by logical reasoning, and I didn't somehow just mystically intuit him in some nebulous impression of some kind, no. The word of life broke in on me and was manifest to me. Who's the actor here? Who's the subject of this verb? when John says the Word of Life was manifested. Who's doing the action? I hope you're saying God. I hope you're saying God. Because God is the one who alone reveals Himself. Reading an article last month in November in World Magazine entitled Evolution vs. the Bible, The author of the article cites a book, The Language of God, which was written by Francis Collins. He is a theistic evolutionist. He's the founder of BioLogos. It is a very, very well-funded institution that is now producing school curriculum and having that curriculum purchased by Christian schools and colleges across the United States. It's a very well-funded organization. Here's a sentence from The Language of God by Francis Collins. See what you think of this. Science reveals that the universe, our own planet, and life itself are engaged in an evolutionary process. Evolution as the mechanism can be and must be true. Words are important. Vocabulary words are important. So let me read that sentence again and put the emphasis on certain important words. Science reveals that the universe, our own planet, and life itself are engaged in an evolutionary process. Evolution as a mechanism can be and must be True. All of those are theological terms. Science reveals. Is science the proper subject to the verb reveal? Does science reveal? Oh, so I know what he means. You may know what he means. But science is not the perfect subject of the verb reveal. You just got done concluding with me that was manifest requires the subject of the verb to be God. God manifest the word of life. God is the revealer. God reveals. Not science. This is a man who's putting science in the place of God. And when he talks about life itself, whoa, that sounds like what John's talking to me about, the word of life and the emphasis on life. And when he says can be, that verb of being, my God is the one who says I am, the great I am. And when he says it must be, now he's talking to me about ethics, something that must be, something that should be. And then he uses the word true. Now you're going to get John's juices going, because truth is one of the dominant motifs of the first epistle. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Collins is a theistic evolutionist. That means he's a Christian. And he tells us that the Gospels can be accepted because they're the records of eyewitnesses, and they record historical facts and actual events, but not the first chapters of Genesis, because the first chapters of Genesis are like those, quote, other poetic books in the Old Testament. And there is indeed, as we see, John saying to us, I've heard this, I've seen this, I've touched this. There is a place for eyewitness. We need eyewitness. That's the principle of biblical jurisprudence. Let everything be affirmed on the testimony of two or three witnesses. We are given witnesses. But there are things that are revealed to us in the scripture that is not validated by human eyewitnesses because God bears witness to himself. And he communicates to us by revelation the things of which he alone witnessed. For example, the creation of the world. He bears witness to that. The condition of Adam and Eve and Adam's vocation and purpose. the creation of angels, angelic rebellion, the creation, or rather the fall of man into sin and the significance of all of that. All of that is beyond what man bears witness to in and of himself, but it is what God gives witness to us because God manifests, God reveals, God breaks into our lives. with the revelation of the word of life. And John says twice, this was manifest to us. This is the act of revelation. It originates with God. And unless God sent his son, the Logos, into the world as the incarnate Jesus Christ, we wouldn't know him. We would be groping in the darkness. We would be projecting ourselves onto the clouds and making a big God looks like a big me. And John says, no, you need to receive this manifestation. You need to receive the substance of what God reveals as the Word of Life, and have God, by the Scriptures, define that Word of Life. And John says, I'm a witness to that. but this word of life set me apart as an apostle, so that not only do I bear witness of that word, my record and my interpretation of that manifest word is also revelatory." John, as we'll see, wants us to understand the role of the authority of the apostles. in our participation with the Word of Life, which brings us then thirdly to the witnesses of the Word of Life. We've seen the identity of the Word of Life, we've looked at the manifestation of the Word of Life, now the witnesses of the Word of Life. Now the Word of Life, as we see, is God's revelation to us. It does not come as a vision to John, as he speaks of in the book of Revelation. It does not come as a dream. As Nebuchadnezzar's dreams were interpreted by Daniel in the book of Daniel, it does not come by this mysterious prophetic word where we hear the prophet say, and the word of God came to. But what we have before us, brethren, in your mind's eye, what we have before us is a torso, two legs, two arms, and a head. We have the revelation of the incarnate and the resurrected Jesus Christ, the manifestation of the word of life in times past in diverse manners. God spoke in various ways through his prophets, but in these last days, he has spoken now finally and fully through his son, Jesus Christ. And that's what John is referring to when he says, what was from the beginning? He's referring to the beginning of the manifestation of the word of life, which is pointing us to the incarnation, in pointing us to Jesus' earthly ministry. And then verse two, manifest this earthly life. There's a subtle transition, I believe, where John says, oh, and I want you also to embrace the revelation of this embodied truth in its resurrected and glorified state as well. So John says, I'm an eyewitness to this. And I come to you with apostolic authority so that the words and the witness that you receive constitute in themselves the very revelation of God breaking in upon your life. When John says, what was from the beginning, remind you of anything? His gospel begins, in the beginning and of course that reminds us of Genesis 1.1 the way Moses begins in the beginning and with that phrase John is taking us way back because we don't know how else to speak about these things other than creatures of time but before the foundation of the world he's pointing us to the pre-temporal, eternal existence of God, the Son, the Word of God. But in the epistle, he doesn't say, in the beginning, he says, from the beginning. You could translate that, or since it began. What is he pointing to? He's pointing to what we heard earlier in our worship, the coming of John the Baptist, the manifestation, when it all began. John says, I was there. I was there when the Lamb of God went into the waters. I was there from the very beginning, since it all began. I was there to see the Word of Life enfleshed in human revelation. Not only since it began, but brethren, that human revelation of God will be the manifestation of the glory of God for us for all eternity. We will forever worship God with our eyes of faith focused upon the revelation of the embodied Word of Life. He speaks then as one who has experienced this human-to-human communion with the Word of Life, Jesus Christ, both in his incarnate life and in his resurrection life, the body of Christ, both before and after his death and his resurrection. And John is also, I believe, could also be alluding to the glorified Christ whose body he describes for us in 1st chapter of Revelation chapter 1. But notice what he says. I heard he says that twice. I've seen with my eyes, and I've looked at it. He says three times, that emphasis upon seeing. And I've touched with my hands. He does one time. All four of those verbs bring not an idea, not a sentiment, not a notion, but a man. into view, an actual human with actual human existence and substance in space and time. John says, this is empirical reality. Again, what is your five senses? See, hear, touch. He has those three. He leaves out tasting and smelling. but he's underscoring his personal engagement with Jesus. He heard Jesus speak. He heard the intonations of Jesus' voice. We've been studying Jesus' death on the cross, and I've confessed to you, there is no way that I can humanly replicate with my voice the intonation and sound of Jesus when he cried out, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. I'm not going to even try to dramatize that. But John heard him. He heard him. He heard the tones of his voice. He heard the tone of his voice when he said, it is finished. The tone of his voice when he said to Penitent, today you will be with me in paradise. He heard him. He says, I saw him. It's interesting, when you read the Gospels, John seems to put attention upon the little minority sort of things. And he reached out his hand. And he lifted up his eyes. And John says, I remember him. I saw the movement of his hands. I saw the movement of his eyes. And I witnessed him. And then he uses another verb. Not only did I saw him, but I beheld him. And he uses a word there that means I perceived. I perceived. John is an instrument of inspiration, and he is given revelatory understanding of Old Testament prophecy, connecting it to the fulfillment of that prophecy in Jesus Christ. And he says, I saw him. I saw his glory. I saw the fullness of his truth. I touched him. My head lay on his bosom in the Last Supper. I ate with him after he rose from the dead. His hand stretched out and gave me that morsel of fish on the Sea of Galilee." I'm telling you, John says, about the man. I'm telling you about the Son of God. I'm telling you about Theanthropos, the God-man. And I'm not talking about a vision. Yes, I will tell you about the vision when I write Revelation. And I'm not simply telling you about my researching others who had eyewitness accounts like Luke does when he writes us his gospel. John's saying, I heard him, I saw him, I touched him. And each verb that he uses moves us closer and closer to connection with Jesus himself. I heard him, I saw him, and then I wrapped my arms around him. And that's something of the sequence that we follow as we come into union with Jesus Christ. We hear the gospel and my sheep hear my voice. What do they do? They follow me. And the hearing of the voice is the opening of the heart by the Spirit. And those who are regenerated by the Spirit also have their eyes open so that they may see and enter into the kingdom of God. They've been born again, and they hear, and they see, and they follow, and with faith they lay hold of Christ. And He becomes to them the very tangible communication of God's revealed love to them and God's presence to them as they hear Him in His Word, as they see Him illuminated by the Word of God, as they experience His presence with them in the gift and person of the Holy Spirit. And so John says, these are the things of which we testify. These, in verse four, we write. We write, we testify. He says we are to proclaim these things in verse three. We've seen we proclaiming these things. What's he doing? He's confronting you with supreme apostolic authority. He's confronting you with what is called the apostolic plural, the we. He writes in verse four, the things that we write. Yet in verse one, he says, I write. He is taking his place personally among the band of the authority of the apostles to speak with the authority that confronts us. with the very voice of Christ authorized through his apostles, so that we too, when we hear this word, we're to hear the very voice of Christ summoning us to faith, summoning us to act accordingly. Notice in 1 John 4, verse 5 and verse 6, they are from the world. Therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. He who knows God listens to us. He who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Who are you listening to? John says there's two voices. Essentially, they're trying to get your ear. The voice of the world and the voice of the apostles who speak on behalf of Jesus Christ. And John is telling us here, we are giving this announcement to you. We are giving this declaration to you. We're giving this testimony to you. And you cannot trivialize this. You cannot think this does not matter to me because this is a testimony of authorized witness-bearing, it is relevant to the courtroom of God, and you have a date in that courtroom. And the judge of all creation is going to hold you accountable for the witness that you've been given, for the testimony that you've heard. You can't say, I didn't know. No, you can't say that. You do know. You've been given the witness. You've been given the testimony, and you're responsible now to answer the question in the theater of your own conscience and before God in his courtroom, who is telling me the truth? John or all the others? And John says, who are you listening to? Where does your ear go? Where does your heart go? What voices are you submitting to? What words, what words, what words give definition and define who you are and how you live and that for which you hope? I'm talking about the word of life. What word are you embracing? John speaks to us about this eternal life. He speaks as a testimonial who gives to us this witness. It is that eternal life with the Father and His Son. It is the true life. Some of us have been taught the curious little word, inclusio. Can I show you John's inclusio? Look at 1 John 5, verses 11 and 12. And the testimony is this. There is testimony that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life. He who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. You see what he says? He says, I'm going to begin by telling you about the Word of Life. When it gets done, he says, have you heard what I told you about the Word of Life? Because I want you to live. I want you to live. This is a life that is given, not of this age. It's not the life that you got by your natural birth. It's not the life that you obtain by your money or by your status or prestige or any achievements. It is the life of God. It is the life that comes through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. It is not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And it is evidenced, brethren, by a living faith. It is evidenced by a working and loving obedience of faith to Jesus Christ. And this is the life that comes from the Father, and it is communicated to us in the person of the Son, and revealed to us by the person of the Holy Spirit, who communicates this life to us through the ministry of the Word of God. It is that which gives to us life, manifest in faith and love and hope, as the Holy Spirit makes Jesus Himself present to us, so that we hear the Shepherd's voice as we open up His Word. We do not see Him, who has been made for a little while lower than the angels, namely Jesus, but we hear Him, and in a sense we do see Him. Paul says, I pray that the eyes of your heart will be enlightened, And though you have not seen him, you love him. And though you do not see him now, but believe in him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, writes Peter in 1 Peter 1.8. So we've seen something of the identity, something of the manifestation of this word of life. And we've considered who it is that is the witness of this word of life and the significance of that witness. What is the purpose, fourthly, of this witness? Well, there are two, as we look at our text, there are two so that's, two purposes. You see them in verse three and verse four. So that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that, our joy may be made complete. There's two purposes. The first concerns fellowship, and John wants you to hear fellowship. Did you hear fellowship? It's twice. He wants to emphasize the fellowship, and then the other purpose is that our joy would be complete. In other words, John says, my purpose for writing this is so that you have joyful fellowship. fellowship with us as apostles, fellowship with the Father and His Son, and a completed eternal joy. He's talking, you see, first of all, about fellowship. We're incapacitated in regard to this matter. We alluded to it in Sunday school class this morning. We're crippled in our capacity to really appreciate this word koinonia, this word fellowship. It's an intimacy of heart. It's an intimacy of persons. It's an intimacy of purpose, and the apostles by their spokesman John standing before us this morning and saying, would you please be friends with us? In a personal, heartfelt partnership with the apostles. Now they're not here presently, but their Holy Spirit inspired words are. And John is speaking to us and saying, I want you to embrace my personal friendship as you read this letter that I've written. And I want you to trust me with what I'm saying. I've seen, I've heard, I've touched, and I'm authorized as the divine spokesman of this Word of Life. In a certain sense, from our vantage point at this point in redemptive history, we don't get to Jesus except we receive the testimony of His apostles. We have to hear and receive the personal witness of John and Peter and Paul. and the other apostles, Luke, as we've been studying in our morning worship service. And we are embraced in this fellowship with the apostles, and we receive that word, which is not their word, but that word that comes to us from the Father in Christ Jesus. So our fellowship, secondly, is with the Father and His Son. Now, our experience of conversion is different. Our experience of conversion is we first come to have fellowship with the Son, and then in the Son we are given the revelation of the Father. Here, John puts it the other way, and he says, no, your fellowship is with the Father and with His Son. John puts the fellowship of the Father first. It's similar to what Jesus says in John 6, verse 44, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the prophets, and they shall all be taught of God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me." You a Christian? It's because you came to Christ. Why? The Father. The Father called you. The Father, by His Spirit, enabled you. and you have fellowship with the Father, and then likewise also with the Son. All things have been handed over to be by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son is willing to reveal Him. In John chapter 17, this is the answer to John's prayers in Psalm 17, 23. Love them even as you loved me. And then in verse 26, I have made your name known to them and will make it known so that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them. Those words never fail to astonish me. You want to be loved? Don't you ever think, I wish somebody just loved me for who I am? Please. Jesus says, the Father will love you with the very love that he has for me. He'll love you as though you were his son. That's what John is saying. I want you to come into this fellowship with us as apostles, because we communicate to you the revelation of the word of life, and in fellowship with this gospel, you are brought into fellowship with the Father and with the Son. And the prayer of Jesus is being answered, that you will be loved with the love that the Father has for the Son. Now brethren, we need to be careful, because that does not mean that we become part of the Godhead. Our salvation does not turn God into a quadrinity. Father, Son, Spirit, and me. We're always creatures. Always creatures. But Jesus is telling us that we are embraced into a realm of communion and intimacy and love. which is given to us in union with the God-man Jesus Christ himself. We might say to ourselves, okay, okay, I don't want to become a quadrinity, but John just talked about the Father and the Son. Where's the Holy Spirit in all of this? Well, the Holy Spirit is present by virtue of our ability to see the glory of God revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is transparent to the Son, and when we see the Son, we see the Father, and we have all things in Christ Jesus. It's by the Holy Spirit that we hear the voice of the shepherd. It's by the Holy Spirit that we see the glory of God in the face of Christ, and by the Spirit that we see and enter into the kingdom of God. If you have faith in Jesus, it is because the Holy Spirit has been at work in, is at work in you. And so John tells us, have fellowship with us. Have fellowship, have fellowship with Christ. He's inviting us into the friendship of the family of God and into friendship with Christ. This is the one whose head lay on his bosom. This is the voice of faith. Abraham, the friend of God. Moses, who spoke to the Lord face to face as a man speaks to his friend. Jesus, who says, you are my friends, if you do what I command you. Friends delight in each other. Friends share mutual interests and affection and spend time with each other. They listen to each other. They speak to each other. They work in partnership together for the same things and for the same purposes. And we're described in the scripture with this language of personal fellowship and intimacy. We become the friends of Christ. We become his brothers. We are children of God. And these are the things that are designed to spur fellowship with one another, because the Christian life is not designed to be lived in isolation and alone. We are to walk in fellowship one with another. In 1 John 4, verse 20 and 21, if someone says, I love God, and he hates his brother, he's a liar. For the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this is the commandment we have from him, that the one who loves God should also love his brother. We cannot say, I love Jesus, and then have no vital fellowship with the people of God in this church. because our love for Christ is displayed by our relationships to one another who bear his name. Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting those people? Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Our treatment of one another, our treatment of those who bear the name of Christ, will be seen as the evidence of our esteem and value of Jesus on that day of judgment when he'll say, as you treated even the least of these, my brethren, so also you treated me. Friends of God, So that means that when I pick up my scriptures, the voice of my dear friend is speaking to me. And I have an invitation to enter into the embrace of his love and his fellowship. And I have a truth that is being revealed to me. And there is the one who stands before me and says, come. Give me your attention. Give me your affection. Give me your allegiance. I'll be your faithful friend, your faithful, loving friend. Which brings us to the final purpose for why these things are written, and that is so that our joy may be made complete in verse four. Our joy. It's the same as he says, our fellowship. I mean, this isn't like a college return. No, it's not. It's not, and it's not like a military band of brothers either. This is a unique kind of fellowship. It's the fellowship that is of the apostles, and it is the fellowship and the joy that is given in Christ Jesus. It's interesting that Paul emphasizes the place of faith in the life of the Christian. Peter emphasizes the place of hope in the life of Christian, and John, life and love in the life of Christian, and all of it together is communicated for our experience of joy in Christ Jesus. Now, we can't define this word the way the world defines the word joy. How many of us this weekend will hear joy to the world? How is that word being defined? The joy that John speaks of is not the product and the causes of the enjoyments of this life. The world can only give us the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. This is not the surge of emotional giddiness. You know that feeling when you come down on Christmas morning and you see, that's my present? And you get all giddy and emotional. This is not what we're talking about. And it's not some sort of mystical ecstasy. Although there are dimensions of this joy which is experiencing the love of Christ which cannot be comprehended. But it's a joy that is defined by Jesus Christ. It is a Holy Spirit-generated joy. It's the realization of being loved by Christ as He is revealed to us in the gospel, that my life Not only in this age, but for eternity is being sustained and preserved. And I am pressing on toward the one who says to me, Lo, I am with you, even to the end of the age. And I respond and say to him, Even so, come, come, Lord Jesus. It's the joy of a good conscience. of having forgiveness of sin. It's the joy that sustains us through sorrow and disappointment and pain, through the onslaught of evil and injustice and the unfaithfulness of so-called friends. It is that subterranean current that is untouched by men, untouched by circumstances, and it is connected to the vitality of that stream that flows from the throne of God. It is the joy of the age to come. It is Jesus' joy, the joy of which we read in John chapter 15 and verse 11. These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full, of which he prays in chapter 17 and verse 13. But now I come to you, speaking to his father, and these things I speak in the world so that they may have my joy made full in themselves. John says, that's why I'm writing. I don't want the joy of merely the Christmas season to rest upon you. I want the joy of Christ to rest upon you. I want the joy of the triumph of His gospel to rest upon you. I want that joy that is made complete. Can this joy be made full? He says, I'm writing so that this joy will be made full. You say, really? Can this joy be made full? What's the answer? Yes. No. Yes. Yes, it can be made full. Otherwise, why is he writing? He's telling us that's why he's writing. So there must be, in some sense, the completion of our joy that is the product of his writing. But yet, no, in the sense that the completion of all that is promised to us is given in the resurrection and the consummation in glory. And yet, yes, because already I can taste of that joy. You will make known to me that in the path of life, thy presence is the fullness of joy. In thy right hand, there are pleasures forever." There is a joy. There is that joy that is full, that joy that is complete, again, as we live in the fellowship that is ours, in the love that the Father has revealed for us in the person of Jesus Christ. This is the joy. This is the fellowship. This is the life. for which John, of which John writes, and which is the revelation of God to us in this Christmas season. What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the Word of Life, and the life was manifest, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us. What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete." as we experience another Christmas holiday. I pray the Holy Spirit will give to us a deeper experience of joyful fellowship with Christ, the incarnate word who is himself the way, the truth, and the life, the resurrected Lord who is himself the manifestation of resurrection life, and that we will experience the embrace of the love of God that is defined by the gospel of God, and that the Father would teach us to love, by putting our faith in Jesus Christ, by putting our feet on the path of obedience, and by entering into sacrificial service-like relationships one to another so that we might experience communicating the love of God and receiving the love of God and together triumphing in this love and life over this present age with its darkness and death. that we will learn to rejoice now and forevermore in this, the Word of Life. Amen.