Our Community | What Our Eyes Have Seen

Today, we are beginning a new series called, “Our Community,” through the book of 1 John.

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I drink coffee everyday. 99 out of every 100 coffees that I drink, I drink them black. Not just because that’s how you should do it :), but because that’s how I like it. I like my coffee strong, mean, and down to business.

But that 1 out of every hundred, I like to pamper myself and order a grande Caramel latte with nonfat milk, whip, and Caramel drizzle over the top.

Hmm! Mouthwatering. It’s like a vacation in my mouth. Everything about it means rest and relaxation.

Would anybody like a sip? It’s fresh and hot.

The other day, while I was sipping on my black coffee in one of my favorite local cafes, I sat and watched over a few moments dozens of people hurriedly walking in and out, ordering their specialty drinks, bustling about their day, and I thought to myself: this is an analogy for our faith.

Throughout our lives, we encounter seasons when we move in and out of faith in the same way that we move in and out of our favorite cafes, ordering up whatever characteristic of God that we want in our spiritual lattes.

I’ll take a double shot of Holy Spirit energy, with two pumps of grace, and a whip of forgiveness.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?! I’d drink it. These are, in fact, right and true characteristics of God. And it sips well so long as this spiritual latte fits your circumstances. Yet, as soon as our circumstances change, our spiritual latte no longer satisfies. In fact, neither does the cafe!

Who changed? Did God change? Or did we change?

If this has ever described you - it certainly has for me and my past - then you are in good company with the very community to whom the Apostle John wrote more than 1900 years ago, asking the same questions then as we are right now:

What makes our community distinct from other religions?

What is the foundation for our belief?

What are the fibers that bind us together?

What is the mission of our community?

These are the questions that we are seeking to answer, as we make our way through this new series, ‘Our Community’ on 1 John.

Though the author of 1 John does not identify himself, most scholars unanimously agree that the same apostle who wrote the Gospel of John also wrote first, second, and third John - which are called the Johannine Epistles - as well as the Book of Revelation.

In fact, much of John’s first letter in particular, builds upon the major themes from his Gospel:

Who am I?

Where do I come from?

What is my purpose?

Is there a God?

How do I relate to other human beings?

What is and good and evil, right and wrong?

These are human questions that have arisen from every generation across every geographical region since the beginning of human thought.

John wrote his first letter around 100 AD to the church located in the region of Ephesus. He was probably in his early 80s, and wrote about 65 years or so after Jesus’s resurrection and the beginning of the early church movement.

Ephesus was a city very similar to Miami. It was a wealthy port city, prominent in politics, with a plurality of religions present in the culture.

During the time in which John wrote his first letter, the church faced a few key issues in particular, and as I list them, ask yourself this question: do these issues resonate at all with anything that you may be experiencing in your relationships, in our city, and the country, or in your part of the world? Here are some of the issues that John addressed in his first letter:

1. Some had abandoned their faith, altogether.

2. Some had found the idea of God entering into human form impossible to believe.

3. Some claimed to believe in God... and Jesus as the Son of God, but their behaviors contradicted the teachings of Jesus.

4. Some believers considered themselves superior to other believers, so they abandoned the church altogether in order to keep themselves ‘pure’ and set apart.

5. But some truly believed and longed to see the kingdom of God come in our world as it is in heaven.

Do any of these sound familiar to you?

Of course, they do!

This is the human experience of our faith. Everyone falls into one of these 5 categories.

This past April 2018, the Pew Research Center, released their findings of a major study on the ever shifting spiritual trends in America. Their research concluded that 80% of Americans say “Yes, I believe in God or a ‘Higher Power.’ And of the 20% who said, “No, I do not believe in God” 9% still say, “But I do believe in some kind of ‘Higher Power.’

Thus, 89% of Americans, as of Spring 2018, acknowledge the belief in God or a Higher Power, with 56% of those who believe in God, as described in the Bible.

These are astonishing statistics. A lot of people believe in God or some idea about God.

Yet, what these 89% believe about God or a Higher Power is the real question.

It’s one thing to believe in God, but What do you actually believe about God?

Is God angry?

Is God absent?

Is God close?

Is God loving?

Is God distant?

Does God even exist?

What matters equally to someone who believes in God is what they believe about God.

John’s letter is about what we believe.

John’s letters are the story of us. They are the story of ‘our community,’ and God is still speaking to churches everywhere through these letters, so let’s hear what God wants to say to us, beginning in chapter 1, verse 1:

1. ‘Weproclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life.

2. This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us.

3. We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

4. We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.

1 John 1:1-4

For those of you who are familiar with John’s Gospel, you will hear echoes of it in the opening sentences of his first letter, but you will also hear some differences, as well. John’s first letter is a compliment to his Gospel, not a copy of it, and different from his Gospel, his letter offers real life, practical wisdom for the Church.

In his introduction, he only addresses two themes that he then unpacks for the rest of his letter: The reality of the incarnation and its importance for fellowship.

In the opening of his Gospel, John defined the incarnation by saying, “The Word became human and made his home among us.” John 1:14.

Doesn’t that feel so personal? The word didn’t just become human and give us a lecture. No, in the person of Jesus, God made his home here with us.

The incarnation is absolutely necessary to the Christian faith. It is the foundation upon which every other teaching builds.

God incarnated human life, assumed flesh and bone, and dwelt among us in our world in a real time and real place.

Jesus’ full humanity and full divinity are both absolutely necessary for our salvation, which we will discuss further next week in chapter 2.

Yet, quite honestly, this is one of the most difficult teachings for our finite human minds to grasp. It was then, and it still is now. To think that an infinite God could become a finite human being and live in our world is a total mind boggle.

One of the central issues that many believers faced then (and still face today) is leaning more toward the divine side of Jesus’ life rather than keeping both his humanity and his divinity together.

In the introduction to his letter, John overly emphasized the importance of his experiences with Jesus. In fact, in the original language, John broke of all of the standard Greek grammar rules that he typically followed in order to press the point further, literally saying:

“1 What was from the beginning;

what we have heard;

what we have seen with our eyes;

what we beheld and our hands touched

—concerning the word of life—

Meaning the very human being who God assumed in the flesh lived and breathed and walked our world in order to give us life through his life.

The incarnate God led a real life ministry on earth… offered himself as a real life sacrifice on the cross... and three days later, miraculously showed us his real life resurrection into eternal life.

John can’t overstate enough how real God became!

(2 and the life appeared

and we have seen and testify, and announce to you the eternal life which was with the Fatherand was revealed to us);

3 What we have seen and heard

In a few short passages, John offered 9 statements in total, each testifying to the real life presence of Jesus Christ in order to qualify the only verb that John employed in his first 3 verses of his letter, one unbroken sentence in the Greek, saying:

We proclaim also to you.

John 1:1-3, literal translation from Greek into English.

What John wanted to proclaim was what he had experienced, and what John had experienced was a tangible, sensory observation of the resurrected Messiah.

Without a true resurrection, there would be no victory over death and subsequently no power in Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross to satisfy the penalty of our sin.

During John’s day, many thought the resurrection was fantasy. Many people still do. Still others couldn’t believe that a holy God could ever enter into our broken world. Many people believe that today, too.

But John is proclaiming that not only did God enter into our world, but John saw the living God and touched the living God and heard the living God.

According to John, God’s gift of salvation from our sin into eternal life wasn’t the result of some mystical experience given to one man alone in the woods somewhere. Neither was it dropped down to us from the sky. And nor does it affect only one part of our being.

One of the reasons why John overly emphasizes the incarnation was to create a counter argument to the teachings of Greek philosophy and instruct that God’s salvation applies to the whole person.

The Greek philosopher, Plato, taught that God must stay distanced from creation in order to preserve his holiness, so God didn’t care what you did with your body. God was only concerned with your spirit.

Well, you can imagine how Greek society received that philosophy.

People used their bodies for whatever purpose and pleasure they wanted. Indulgence became a signifier of wealth. Pleasure became a worthy pursuit, even among believers in the early church.

John’s insistence upon the incarnation, however, completely counters Platonic philosophy and argued for a new way. How could God not care about what human beings do with their bodies when God entered into our world in a human body and sacrificed himself upon a very real cross so that we may receive eternal life.

God’s salvation means more than just life after death. God’s salvation means new life today, as God’s Spirit renews our mind and cleanses us from all of our unrighteousness. Yes, our bodies are finite and dying a little more every day. Yes, we’re not fully restored until we stand in glory with our Creator, but our transformation into Christ’s likeness begins here and now, together, in your real body.

Therefore, God cares about how you use your bodies. Your thoughts, your words, and your actions all bear witness to Christ at work in you here and now.

The Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the church in Rome about 30 years before John’s first letter, saying:

Dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Romans 12:1

Your bodies matter for how you work, what you think, and ultimately, how you love. Your spirit is not disembodied from your life. All of you works together.

Your mind for rationality and reason.

Your soul for feeling and emotions.

Your body for strength and work.

Your spirit for life and consciousness.

Your mind, soul, body, and spirit unite together as one for your work, worship, and love, and God cares about how you use your entire body toward that end, together.

Thus why the incarnation matters personally, but it also matters communially.

John gives a right understanding of the incarnation “so thatyou also may have fellowship with us” (v. 3a). This is the purpose of John’s writing. The Greek word translated “fellowship” is koinonia, which means to ‘share something in common.’

Christian community is not merely an association of people who only share common sympathies for a cause. Christian community is not an association of people who only share the same political thought. Christian community is not even an association of people who only share the same theological convictions.

Christian community is the common living of people who have a shared experience with Jesus Christ. They talk about this experience, they urge each other to grow more deeply into this experience, and they strive to build a shared life together founded upon the transformation of this experience.

Christian community is unlike any other kind of shared life experience in the world, because Christian community is also fellowship “with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ” (v. 3b). This adds one more dimension to the meaning of ‘koinonia’ fellowship. Christian community is living and experiencing our lives with the Father and with the Son, together.

Christian community is triangular: my life in fellowship with Christ, your life in fellowship with Christ, and my life in fellowship with yours.

In John’s Gospel, he recorded Jesus’ final prayer before his betrayal, saying: 'HolyFather, you have given me your name; now protect them by the power of your name so that they will be united just as we are. ' John 17:11

Our fellowship with the Father and the Son together in the Holy Spirit is the substance that binds the church together into one united community, which allows us to “fullyshare our joy” (1 John 1:4) with one another and the world.

This is profound. There is no other community like this in the world, and it is transformational. Thus why a total stranger who may not even yet believe in God can walk into a healthy, faithful church and immediately experience a connectedness to others that they have not before experienced in other settings.

The reason is the incarnation. The entire framework of ‘our community’ is built upon a right understanding and belief in the incarnation: “The Word became human and made his home among us.” John 1:14.

This is the bedrock of our community.

It is the foundation of our family home.

Whenever the incarnation is absent, then this community is an impossibility.

John continues, saying:

This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you:

God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth.

But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.

If we claim we have no sin,

Which culturally speaking then and now was an acceptable teaching among believers. Who really wants to acknowledge their own sin, right? But John says that every time we deny our sin...

we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.

If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.'

1 John 1:5-10

When we place our trust in Jesus, not only does a unique fellowship begin to arise among believers, but equally as astonishing, God also begins to cleanse us from the inside out and ignite our lives with the very same light and resurrection power with which God entered into our world and ignited his Son, Jesus Christ, to give us eternal life!

Whenever we walk in God’s light together, whenever we love one another, whenever we confess our sins to God, whenever we do the work of Jesus beside each other, whenever we have fellowship with one another and become bonded together in unity, then as a church, we will become an unstoppable force for good in the world.

Then, the sum of the church will not only become greater than its parts, but the sum of the church will become the real, tangible presence of Jesus in our city.

Only then will our mission become Christ’s mission, and as the community of the redeemed, as ones who have been forgiven, as ones being healed, as ones being restored, you will become the image bearers of God’s light.

[[[Turn to lit candle]]]

On a dark night, the human eye can perceive a candle flicker 1.6 miles away, according to one MIT study. How amazing!

If that candle flicker represents Jesus, then when we let our lives become ignited by God’s light, together, we as the church can light up our city and help others: find their place of refuge… grow in their confident hope of salvation… and discover their own joy of fellowship with God and one another.

God’s light is pure, hard, revealing, and guiding. And those who walk in this light discover that their lives have become knit together by God’s forgiveness and redemption. To walk in this light is humbling. It’s not easy. Sometimes it’s downright painful, especially in a world that often rejects God’s light.

Sometimes healing is painful. Let me encourage you, please, to resist the urge to oppose it. Indeed, inviting God’s Spirit to heal you from past sin and pain and provide you with the courage to forgive is hard. Sometimes, it may even seem easier to just cope with your pain and ignore it altogether. Sometimes, it may even feel easier to call your pain a friend than to apply healing balm on it.

Yet, friends, in the same way that John opened his letter testifying to what he had experienced, then let me be one more who also testifies to what I have experienced, which is this: applying healing balm is painful, yes. It is vulnerable. I have been humbled. Yet, I wouldn’t trade my health for any amount of temporary comfort from simply coping with my sin and pain. Eventually sin destroys, but God is faithful just to forgive us of our sins, and his Spirit can restore your heart and soul back to health. God did with me when I had done nothing to deserve it.

Only God’s light is healing… only God’s light is renewing… and wow is only God’s light invigorating!

May God’s Spirit give us courage to love well and remain united together no matter what the cost, alongside of other healthy, faithful churches in our city, so that together we may experience the fullness of “our community” for the sake of the world in Jesus Christ’s name!

Would you pray with me?

1.Slides build on each other:

1. Some had abandoned their faith, altogether.

2. Some had found the idea of God entering into human form impossible to believe.

3. Some claimed to believe in God and Jesus as the Son of God, but their behaviors contradicted the teachings of Jesus.

4. Some believers considered themselves superior to other believers, so they abandoned the church altogether in order to keep themselves ‘pure’ and set apart.

5. But some truly believed and longed to see the kingdom of God come in our world as it is in heaven.

2. 80% of Americans said “Yes, I believe in God or a ‘Higher Power.’ Of the 20% who said: “No, I do not believe in God,” 9% said: “But I do believe in some kind of ‘Higher Power.’

56% of those who believe in God, as described in the Bible.

3. What matters equally to someone who believes in God is what they believe about God.

4. John’s letters are the story of us

5. 1. ‘We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life.

2. This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us.

3. We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.

4. We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.

1 John 1:1-4

6. The reality of the incarnation and its importance for salvation.

7. The Word became human and made his home among us. John 1:14.

8. “1 What was from the beginning;

what we have heard;

what we have seen with our eyes;

what we beheldand our hands touched

—concerning the word of life—

9. (2 and the life appeared and we have seen and testify, and announce to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was revealed to us);

3 What we have seen and heard

10. We proclaim also to you.

4. We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.

John 1:1-4, literal translation from Greek into English.

11. Dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Romans 12:1

12. so that you also may have fellowship with us” (v. 3a).

Koinonia means to ‘share something in common.’

13. with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ” (v. 3b)

14. Holy Father, you have given me your name; now protect them by the power of your name so that they will be united just as we are. ' John 17:11

15. fully share our joy” (1 John 1:4)

16. “The Word became human and made his home among us.” John 1:14.

17. 5. This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.

6. So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth.

7. But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.

8. If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth.

9. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.

10. If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.'

1 John 1:5-10