The Truth About Jesus

Introduction

Today we are starting a new sermon series called True Christianity, Walking in the Light. This is a study in the letter of 1st John.

Now, you know if I say there is a True Christianity, that implies that there is a false Christianity or a counterfeit Christianity, right?

In other words, there are people who claim to be Christians and they are not. There are groups of people who claim to be a church and they are not.

The question is, can you or would you be able to spot the difference?

*Pull out two 20 dollar bills*

Differences:

• Type of paper

• Watermark

• Security thread.

• Hologram

• Microprinting

Now the better a person is at counterfeiting, the harder it is for you to tell the difference. The very best counterfeiters never get caught. In fact, you could be walking around right now with some fake money in your pocket and not even know it. Est. $70-200 million counterfeit bills in circulation at any given moment. Its so hard to tell the difference.

Christianity is much the same way. And trying to tell whether another person is really a Christian or not, is not the point in this series. The true point is, I want you to know whether you are really a Christian or not.

So today we are going to start this series with a sermon I’ve entitled the Truth About Jesus and we will start at the beginning of 1st John. Now this is not the gospel of John, this is further back in your bibles. This is about three or four books back from Revelation.

So if you have your bibles, turn there. If you don’t the words will be on the screen and I have loaded notes into your app.

Main Text

1 John 1:1–4 ESV

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.

Context

First let me give you a little context on this important book of the bible. First, this is a letter written to multiple churches. It was a circular letter, meant to be read at all the different churches in a region, so you don’t see it written to anyone person in particular.

This letter has been attributed to the Apostle John, but his name is not found anywhere in this letter. In fact, we would say it this way. He sent a letter, but he didn’t sign it. It’s anonymous is another way of looking at it. 2nd and 3rd John is written by a person who calls himself the elder.

Because of the other Scriptures we have, namely the gospel of John and the Book of Revelation it’s believed that it was written by the Apostle John because of both its style, form and content.

This is the first letter written by the apostle John, but this was likely not the first Scripture he had written. He likely wrote his gospel first and then possibly the Book of Revelation and finally, these three letters, written all around the same time. This first letter is circular for all churches, the second letter was likely written to a particular church and the final letter was written to a man named Gaius likely at that church.

This means John spent most of his life thinking about the things Jesus said and did before he decided to sit down and write these things out. So this letter is a product of over 40 years of meditating on what God had done. That’s why John’s books read so much different than the other gospels and the other letters.

They aren’t linear in thought. They repeat themes. In this letter he camps on the themes of - Fellowship, Light/Dark, Love and Discernment. We are going to hit a couple of those today and we will keep coming back to them throughout this series.

All three of these letters are very short and deal with one overarching problem faced in the early church and that was a false teaching that was rising into prominence at that time, which was that Jesus was God, but he wasn’t a man.

Now to us that sounds crazy. In the modern world, we have a harder time believing in God at all, whereas they had a harder time believing God put on flesh and dwelt among us.

The Incarnation Was Scandalous

Now I thought this was a good place to build upon what I talked about at Christmas, the incarnation. The incarnation was scandalous. We think of it as old hat, but the fact that God would become man was laughable in the days of the early church, it was much easier to think of man becoming God than God becoming man.

This is the aim of this letter, and John takes the first verse to make a point of squashing this false teaching that Jesus was God but not a man.

Now part of this roots back into what is known as Gnosticism, which says that only spiritual things are important, not material things. Now I’m not talking about materialism like we struggle with at Christmas, we are talking about matter. Matter as in solid stuff. Flesh and blood. That sort of thing.

Many gnostics believed that Jesus couldn’t have been flesh and blood because bodies are bad and spirits are good. That’s the simplistic way of explaining it anyway.

Here’s what we believe as Christians, this is the truth about Jesus:

Jesus Is Fully God

As Trinitarian, bible-believing Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ was fully God. He was 100% God. He is the second person of the Trinity. He has all the attributes of God, meaning he is all-powerful, he is Holy, he is eternal and so on.

We believe that Jesus Christ is God. He wasn’t a man who became God, he was always God from the beginning, meaning our beginning, not his. He has existed for eternity and will exist for eternity. He has no beginning and no end.

The second thing we believe is this…

Jesus Is Fully Man

This is the aim of this letter by John. He starts this letter with discussing his senses in regards to the Word of Life, which we know to mean Jesus.

He says what we have heard, seen, looked upon and touched. These are all ways that John is trying to portray to his readers that Jesus wasn’t just a spirit, but an actual flesh and blood man.

“You could touch him,” John is essentially saying. You could hear him with your own ears, you could see him, he was a real man. He had flesh. He wasn’t a spirit, he wasn’t a ghost, he had flesh.

We believe that Jesus Christ was both fully God and fully man. This is what the Bible teaches. Now, it’s hard for us to wrap our finite minds around this, but its true regardless of how hard it is to understand.

And if you don’t believe this, you are simply not a Christian. Jews do not believe this. Muslims do not believe this. Buddhists do not believe this.

Now, I need you to understand one more thing on this before we move on in this passage. Jesus was fully God and Fully Man and he is this forever. He wasn’t just man while he was here. He is fully man forevermore. He didn’t lose his manliness in the ascension.

Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man in one person, and will be so forever.

Wayne Grudem

The reason this is important is because John is going to link this in verse 3 to fellowship. And what he is saying essentially is this:

This is the truth of who Jesus Christ is and if you don’t believe that, you are don’t have fellowship with us or with God.

That’s why this is important. Because its truth. Truth is important. If you don’t believe the truth, you are believing a lie.

And We have to know what the truth is, because…

The Truth Is Meant To Be Proclaimed

John says in verse two, that this Word of Life was proclaimed to you and its eternal life that comes from the Father and was made manifest to us.

I want to look at verse two more closely and as we do, I want to discuss this idea of how we discern the truth. This is a hot button topic in Christianity and let me tell you some people have this way wrong.

Here’s what I mean. There is a niche on the internet right now called discernment bloggers or discernment ministries and they make a living doing what they call discernment. Some of them do a fairly decent job of trying to spot false teaching, but others are simply comparing knowledge to knowledge. In other words, they aren’t really trying to introduce you to Christ, they are trying to win you to their denomination.

They will call someone a false teacher because that person isn’t a calvinist or a lutheran or whatever their pet theology is and because you don’t know what Lutherans actually believe, you see a video and think, “oh that sounds right” and are none the wiser.

In other words, they make truth into something relative without realizing it. John is teaching discernment in an entirely different way. He is saying truth isn’t about knowledge, Truth is a person. Let’s look and see. Let’s read that verse in its entirety.

1 John 1:2 “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—”

How We Discern The Truth (v.2)

The Life was made manifest.

He starts by saying the life - He’s talking about the Word of Life. This is Jesus, the message of truth. The truth.

The life was made manifest. It was revealed. Truth reveals itself. It is apparent because it is a person. Jesus is truth and apart from Him there is no truth.

One of the keys to discernment is time. We wait and see. Which is why the next thing John says is…we have seen it…

We have seen it.

Greek word - Horah - Means to stare at or to discern. John’s letter is truly about discernment. It’s about living in a world with two different beliefs. The truth and the lie. The genuine thing and the counterfeit. We live in this same world today. We have to discern the truth.

Throughout his letter, the apostle will tell us ways to discern whether the difference between the truth and the lie. Today, I just want to focus on the idea that we look for it. He says we have seen it. That means his eyes were open. He was looking. You need to be looking.

If you have made up your mind about something, you will never see the truth. Discernment means we are looking for the truth. We are looking to Jesus. We are looking to the Holy Spirit to reveal truth to us.

Once we have discerned the truth. Or to put it another way, once we have met Him. We have a job. We are to…

We testify to it.

Testifying to it is not the same as proclaiming it. Testifying to it is sharing with others how the Truth has changed your life. It’s testifying to your experience with Jesus.

The greek word here is the word from where we get martyr. You are a witness to it. If you know the truth, you need to be ready to die to it in front of the entire world. That’s the idea. We testify to the truth. It’s so real to us, no one can take it away from us.

Most of us are scared to do this because sharing our testimony requires us to be more transparent than what most of us are comfortable with. Dear church, God is looking for bold men and women who will testify to what he has done for them. He is looking for you to share with others how Jesus has changed your life.

We proclaim it to you.

Proclamation is different than testimony. In proclamation we are proclaiming or announcing to you that eternal life is available.

Testifying is a verbalization of what God has done in me, proclamation is the verbalization of what God can do in you.

I testify to truth received and I proclaim truth available.

The apostle John tells us why this is important. He tells us why we should proclaim truth to others.

Fellowship Is The Goal

We find this truth in verse 3.

1 John 1:3 “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.”

SO THAT you may have fellowship.

Fellowship is the goal.

Now, this isn’t just some church word. Depending on the church you have had a Fellowship Hall, aka a lunchroom. You may have had a Fellowship Meal, aka lunch. But in a sense, that almost cheapens the word here.

The Greek word used is Kiononia, which means a participation. It’s a word that implies intimacy. If the bible says a husband and wife enjoyed kiononia, it’s not talking about a meal in the fellowship hall.

John says that Jesus was proclaimed to us, the report of who he was, what they had seen and touched with their hands, the message of life, so that we would have fellowship.

God wants you to be in a fellowship of believers and most importantly in fellowship with him. We get into fellowship with him by repenting of our sin and believing in Him. Putting our full trust in him. This is the goal.

From the very beginning, the goal is to bring creatures into fellowship (koinōnia) with God and each other that is as close as humanly possible to that communion between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

Michael Horton

We were created for fellowship because we were made in his image and God has perfect fellowship between the three persons of the trinity. He exists in community and so should we.

Now some believe that its only important for you to have fellowship with God, but that’s not what John says here. He says that the truth was proclaimed to you so that you would have fellowship with us. By this he means members of Christ’s body.

If you are not in a church, in a fellowship, you are missing a vital part of God’s plan for your life. I see people get this wrong so often. They do not build their life around the fellowship of believers, but they pray, they read their bible. They love Jesus. They just don’t participate in the body.

Kiononia means to participate. It’s a joining. It’s about becoming intimately connected to other believers. And if you aren’t doing this, its a sign that there is something broken inside of your own heart.

As we experience koinonia with the Father and the Son, we draw closer to each other and enjoy fellowship (koinonia) with one another.

R. Kent Hughes

As we draw closer to God, we should be drawing closer to his body. Period. It is both, not one or the other.

Application

Now, I want to end with a little bit of application. What is the one thing that I want you to know today?

I want you to know the Truth. Jesus Christ, was fully God and fully man. He died for you and was raised on the third day. He purchased your freedom on the cross with his blood. Your sins are forgiven because of what He has done.

What do I want you to do today?

I want you to testify to this truth and proclaim it to others.

I want you to spend time in fellowship with both Jesus and his body. If you don’t know Him, I want you to know Him today. I want you praying to him. I want you reading your bible.

If you aren’t in a church body regularly, I want you to be a part of this one. I want you to join a home group. I want you to come to our emotionally healthy study. I want you to come to our bible college. I want you plugged into what God is doing in his body.

I want you serving. Serve Jesus’ body. Serve in the kids ministry. Serve in the food ministry.

John ends this opening section of his letter in verse 4 by telling us what his intent in writing this letter is…its to make our joy complete. Listen, it would complete my joy if you would respond to this message today.

Conclusion

I listed out a ton of next steps because everyone in this room is in a different place. We are going to close with a song today and if you want to respond to any of those things, I will be up front to pray with you, talk with you, give you information about homegroups, whatever you need.

Let’s stand and sing.