Fellowship with God

Introduction:

Good morning, good morning, good morning! Typically when I start off messages over at New Life, I always say something along the lines of “another day in the house of The Lord, theres no place we’ed rather be”. That how I usually open up our congregation to that mornings message. I don’t do that because it sounds cool, I do that because I believe it is true. Because there truly is no place we’ed rather be on Sunday. So it is true today! Looking out into the crowd I can see that a majority of you already know who I am. For those of you who don’t know I was once apart of this congregation. This church is the church I was baptized at and when the Lord first saved me this was actually the very first Church I started coming to. I am glad to be back in here this morning, yet this time as a minister. Currently Jeremiah and I have been studying and training with Pastor Love over at New Life Fellowship Church in Waukegan. So while Pastor Lark is on a sabbatical he asked us if we wouldn’t mind filling in. I also just wanted to say that you guys know Pastor Lark and Pastor Lark but i’ve always known him as uncle Lamar. You guys are blessed to have him as your head pastor. Pastor Lark is generous and one of the most forgiving people i’ve ever met. I know that myself and Jeremiah are grateful for the positive influence Pastor Lark has had on our lives.

Now this morning, I want to share with you guys a little bit of what we have been going through at New Life as a Church. As a new minister our lead Pastor, Pastor Love assigned me to due a sermon series on the book of 1 John. Going through this series with our members has been a very joyful thing, we have been blessed by the revelation that God has given us through Johns first epistle. So my aim for this morning is to lead you through what I have been leading New Life through. I pray that as I do we will be challenged, strenghtened and restored into God gospel people.

So if you all could would you guys turn in your Bibles to 1 John chapter 1 this morning we will be discovering verses 1-4. You can say amen once you have gotten there.

1 John 1:1–4 “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.”

May God bless the reading and hearing of his word let us pray!

The first epistle of John you’ll notice isn’t very long a very extensive, however it is very profound in its writings. a quick overview of the book as a whole gives a sense as to why John writes what he writes. The first reason why John writes what he writes is so that believers may have fellowship with God. (Verse 1:1). We will discuss this more in detail in just a little bit. The second reason why John writes the epistle is found in chapter 2 verses 1 when he says he writes so that we may not sin. But if we do sin we have an advocate with God the father who is Jesus. This tells us that John writes to let his audience know that there is indeed a level of holiness when it comes to living out the Christian life. Thirdly John writes in 1 John 5:13 that he writes so that we may know we have eternal life. We see from that John writes to assure his audience that they are indeed in right standing with God. These three reasons for writing tells us that John didn’t write his epistle as an apologetic against false teaching but rather he wrote with pastoral concern for those who were faithfully following Jesus. We see this more down the line when John writes his third epistle and says “I have no greater joy than this: to hear that my children are walking in the truth”. (3 John 1:4). Since John writes with such a pastoral concern the question is why? What was going on that made John have to sit down and write this letter?

Keep in mind that John is what many scholars say over 100 years old when he wrote this letter. Not only that John was one of the last living apostles during this time. John resided in a place city called Ephasis, which is now know as modern day turkey. This was a interesting time for Christianity because the gospel was spreading very rapidly. With the spread of the gospel there came what is considered to be “new ideas”. Its presumed that because there were not many apostles around it made it easier for people to begin to distort the Gospel. What is so kicker here is that this gave rise to a new religion or an early form of something called gnostisicsm. Now I wont dive deep into what they believe or their doctrines. We have google for a reason. But at their called they failed to believe essential truths about Jesus. They heard about Jesus from the spread of the Gospel. But the Jesus they heard wasn’t good enough for them so they broke off and made new ideas about Jesus that were just not true. Because of that they were causing those who really did believe in the true Biblical Jesus to question themselves, and for John that was a big no no. Thats why John wrote in chapter 2 verse 19 that “they went out from us but they did not belong to us, because if they had belonged to us they would have remained with us”. So this was a tricky time period for Christians especially those who around the area of Ephasis where John resided.

according to history books there was a particular incident when John went down to the city of Ephesus to have a bath. John was enjoying his bath and then he looks over his shoulder and sees a man named Cerinthus. Cerinthus was presumed to be the leader of this rise of a new religion. And John seeing that he bathing next to him ran out the bath house shouting “let us fly, lest even the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within”. In case you’re wondering that was a real historical event that happened with the apostle John. it was under that note that John finally had enough so after that John walks back to his place of residency, grabs a cup of coffee, sits down at his desk and begins to pin these write out his epistle.

The Historical reliability of the Gospel.

Thats brings me to my first observation. For any notetaker, you can write this down. My first observation is the historical reliability of the Gospel. John opens his epistle in chapter one verse one with “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have observed and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life”. John straight out of the get go- established himself to be a reliable testimony to the events that actually took place when Jesus walked. John writes as a person who saw with his own eyes the real Jesus. Keep in mind that this is the same John who was apart of the 12 disciples and who also wrote the Gospel of John. The opening of the Gospel of John and the epistle of John is very similar because they both testify about what was from the beginning. And what was from the beginning. If you were to ask most people about this text they could easily tell you that John here refers to Jesus as the one who was from the beginning. Yet John doesn’t establish himself as eyewitness testimony to show his fame or popularity, he does so because he’s testifying about the real Jesus, not ideas about what Jesus must have been like. And that was a problem with the false teachers I mentioned earlier. The didn’t know the real Jesus because they were stuck with ideas about Jesus. John on the other hand could proper testify and say I saw with my very own eyes that Jesus is who he says he is. That what made these false teachers so dangerous is that like our culture today there is no place for divine, absolutle truth anymore. Everyone has there own ideas about God, everyone is accepting of others peoples religions, but when you say one of them is the definitive truth people get upset. Why? Because if I we have no difinitive truth then people are free to come up with as many ideas, bridges and avenues to God as they want and still be able to say “Im right with God”. Yet that is not what John says because Jesus is truth which is why he writes later on in chapter 2 verses 22 that the liar is the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ! So John establishes historical reliability not with ideas about Jesus but with definitive truth that Jesus is Christ.