1 John

Introduction

I want to admit something to you guys. Sometimes you come up with a plan and an approach and it doesn’t work like you hoped. In that moment, you can either continue to pursue and bang your head against the wall or you can change directions. I have felt over this could be the case. I have been praying over this and feel that our messages need a shift in direction and method. Here is what I want to do.

First, each week I am going to post a short video like this either previewing the week with background information or teaching an important element of for daily Christian growth. There may be points where I address different things that are happening in our world and how we as the church can/should react.

The Second thing we are going to do is a verse by verse reading of 1 John. Some of the concepts that John discusses here are topics that we have already discussed, such as love. I believe this will give us a continued path. With Ray finishing up the study on Moses, this will give us an opportunity to flow from one week to the next without changing directions. This will be the direction going forward.

Now for this weeks background. There are important things to know when you read any book. These things give you insight into how to interpret the book you are reading. For today’s discussion, we are going to look at the author, the recipients and the purpose. These three things will help us understand the book of 1 John. To illustrate this I want to first look at a book you might have read, The Cat in the Hat, by Dr. Seuss.

Dr. Seuss of course is not his real name. Theodore Seuss Geisel is the real name of Dr. Seuss. In college, Theodore studied writing and wrote for the school paper. That is until he got in trouble. In order to keep writing he started using Seuss as the author and the school didn’t catch on. As an adult Seuss became a great children’s writer and cartoon drawer. But after his first big children’s book, WWII started and he was called into service for his country. After the war, he returned to writing children’s books.

The next question is the audience. Dr. Seuss’ audience was children. In 1954 Life magazine wrote an article on child reading problems because books were boring. Seuss and a man by the name of Spaulding worked together to come up with 250 words that 1st graders should be able to read. With this information we can see that the audience for the Cat in the Hat was 1st graders.

The purpose for writing this book was to help first graders to learn to read. This information now allows us to understand who wrote the book, to who and why. Now when we read the Cat and the Hat we can understand that “I like to read, Oh yes I do, I like to read, I’ll read with you” was written as a fun means to help children learn to read.

Let’s now take a look at the book we are going to start reading, 1 John. The first question we ask is who is the author. Who do you think wrote it.

If you said John, you would be correct. But John who and what makes this John someone we can trust to write a book of the bible. I know a lot of people named John. Do you know any one named John? Did Faith and Grace’s dad write it? Did you know that there are 5 people in the bible named John. There was John the Baptist, John - Peter the apostle’s dad, John Mark - who wrote the book of Mark, There was John the Apostle and then a Jewish ruler named John. I am sure they weren’t the only guys named John.

How do we know which John wrote our book? Today, when we don’t receive letters per say. Mom and dad get bills. but we have all received a birthday card. Maybe in the mail or maybe they handed it to you. On the envelope we find two things, the person who the card is for and the person who sent the card. That’s helpful. In an email or text we know that we are the person it was sent to and there is a name attached who sent it. In bible times, senders and recipients were known by the address in the first few lines.

However, unlike other letters John didn’t write his name in it or who he was writing too. So now we must do some investigating. The book of 1 John is assumed to be written around 90 A.D. toward the end of John’s life. This timing will be important too. This excludes some of the other Johns as they were dead. John the Baptist, Peter’s dad and John Mark, and the Jewish ruler were no longer living. Hard to write a book if your dead. That leaves the Apostle John. But there is other evidence. The early church fathers from the 2nd century also attribute this book to John the Apostle. Why does what they say matter? Because they actually knew John. He was really old and they were young, but they knew each other.

So who is John? We know that this John was a disciple of Jesus. He learned from Jesus himself. Not only did Jesus teach him but the we read in the Gospels that Jesus loved and trusted John. Jesus trusted John so much that before he died he said, Hey John, take care of my ma. Okay, it didn’t quite sound like that. In John’s gospel testimony he recounts the resurrection: John 19:26-27

John 19:26–27 ESV

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.

John’s relationship with Jesus gives us the ability to trust in his teaching.

The next question is who John was writing too. John doesn’t exactly say. Typically in a letter the writer says, Hey Bob. Then we know the letter was written to Bob. When John does address the audience he uses general terms such as Children, Beloved, fathers, or young men. This tells us that this is not written to a specific person, rather a group of people. But what group. Again, we look at the Early church fathers and the areas where it is believed for John’s ministry. This brings us to churches in the region of Asia Minor as the area John was writing too.

Asia Minor is not China or India or further east. Asia Minor was a region that is now occupied by the country of Turkey. It is an area where many churches were established by Paul and John. This was not an area filled with Jewish roots, though some Jews lived int he region. The area was occupied by Rome at the time and was an important region for land travel. As a result, there were both Gentiles and Jews who lived in this region. From reading Paul’s letters we find that this constantly caused conflict within the church. 20 years after Paul there was still problems.

The last question to look at is the purpose of the letter. We will go into a little more detail on this Sunday. Today, I want you to look at the timeline. This is 20 years after the death of many of the apostles. There had been great persuction of the church by the Romans around 66-70 A.D. Paul and Peter were killed. Jews and Christians had be dispersed throughout the known world. Satan had begun bringing in false teachings to confuse and disrupt the church. Now John is compelled to write his account in the Gospel of John and these letters to the churches because there were divides starting to occur over the Gospel. This letter was written to reaffirm and correct the interpretation of the Gospel, Bringing it back to what Jesus taught to John and the disciples.