For Old Testament reading, let’s turn to John chapter 1. John 1, reading the first 18 verses. Those of you that are savvy enough, these are the same selections that we read last week and sang last week, because they’re fitting for what we’re doing this morning. John chapter 1, verses 1 to 18. Once more, please give full attention. This is the word of the Lord our God. In the beginning was the word, and the word is with God, and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to bear witness about the light. The true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world. It was in the world and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he had the right to become children of God. who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him and cried out, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. For from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. The word of the Lord. Amen. You may be seated.

Let’s take your scriptures now and turn to 1 John. Continuing on 1 John. 1 John 1, reading the first four verses once more. And before we do that, let’s ask the Lord’s blessing upon the reading and hearing of that Word.

Let’s pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we come again before you. We thank you that you have come to us, and the power of your Spirit has enabled us to praise you and give ourselves to you. We pray now as we seek your face in your Word and seek to listen to the preaching of our Lord Jesus Christ through that Word. We pray that you would send afresh your spirit to us, that we may not merely be tasters, but children who are anxious to feed upon every word that our Heavenly Father says to us. We pray, Lord, for grace, that we may indeed sit under this word, your word. We may listen to your voice, that you allow its penetration to break through into our hearts and our minds as we hear this word from you, and Father, we pray that you would give us grace at this time, help us and be with us, and give grace to the one who speaks that word. We ask this all in Christ’s name, amen.

1 John, chapter one, first four verses, the prologue, if you will, the introduction to John’s first letter. 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 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. So for the reading of God’s word, may He indeed add His blessing upon it at this time.

Well, the study of knowing and knowledge is an interesting discipline. When we talk about knowing, some have defined what that means is as a justified true belief. And ultimately, for the Christian, the warrant or justification for that belief is the Word of God, right? There is no more fundamental warrant or justification than we have in our thought system, in our belief system. And on top of this most basic grounding in knowing, we have a hierarchy in our thinking and in our knowing. And there’s a somewhat familiar analogy about how to think about this in regards to a boat, an oar for a boat, right? We know in our minds, that the oar is straight, right, it’s straight. But when we put it in the water, it looks bent where it meets the water, right, because of the water and the dissipation of light and that and such. We run our hand down upon it, and we feel that it’s straight, right? And so our touch, our sense of touch overrides our seeing, at least in this instance, right? There’s a hierarchy of what we believe. John is testifying to the truth of what he’s seen and touched and heard and looked upon, right? That is Jesus Christ before and after the resurrection. And for John, this is everything, right? This is the foundation. This is the grounding of all of who he is and what he believes in his entire worldview, right? Jesus is everything. That’s the point of John’s writings. Christ is everything. Jesus is that point of passion and proclamation. And his goal in writing is fellowship, right? Fellowship with the Father and the Son and with the apostles through the Holy Spirit, the work of the Spirit. And we see in this passage, as we have looked at the past number of weeks, that the fullness of joy comes in the fellowship with Jesus. The fullness of joy comes in fellowship with Jesus. And that fellowship comes through the proclamation of the resurrected Christ, the proclamation of this resurrected Christ. John 1, 1 to 4 announces the purpose of the letter in very general terms. John says that he and the other apostles have personally experienced this word, that gives eternal life, right? And notice, once more, the very sensory, concrete, experiential language that he uses. He’s heard, he’s seen, he’s touched. They’ve looked upon this God-man in the flesh, Jesus Christ. And we’ll see in a minute that he’s referring to just that, the risen Christ, right? He has heard, seen, touched, looked upon the risen, the resurrected Jesus. He came and died in the flesh and rose from the dead, right, a bodily resurrection. And we can see here as well, we hear echoes to John’s gospel, right, the gospel of John in this prologue to this letter, right, there are echoes here. And as we just heard in John 1, 1 to 18, we have Jesus clearly identified as the incarnate word, the incarnate word, the man, the word come in the flesh. And John’s goal here is to proclaim this life, eternal life, the word of life, so that his readers may have fellowship with us, he says, and so share in the fellowship with God the Father and God the Son. And at first, when we look at this introduction, we might hear John’s word as directed at those, right, evangelistically, right, those who’ve not yet, who aren’t in fellowship or right relationship to God. But John’s aim here is more towards those who are already believers with the goal of helping them to persist and develop further in their faith and to avoid being led astray by people with wrong teaching and a non-Christian way of life. It’s like I said, the similarities between 1 John and the Gospel of John are clear throughout both the Gospel and the letters of John. But 1 John begins kind of, mysteriously, you might say, very much like John’s gospel, right? They’re both very beautiful, but poetic, right? And in John 1, we have this, the gospel, we have this stair-step parallelism, right? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 1 John 1, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of life, In 1 John, it’s not clear right away. He’s talking about a person at all. And this is why I put in the outline, who’s that, right? There’s the language there, that which was from the beginning, right, the phrase in 1 John 1. But just as the prologue of the gospel that we heard in our New Testament reading, it becomes clear, increasingly clear, that the subject is Jesus Christ as we move along. And the same thing happens in the prologue to the gospel as in our text this morning. And in verse 1, we see some translations of the Bible, some English versions. They hide this initial ambiguity, right? It says, that which was from the beginning. And they hide this by the… By stating up front in verse one, the controlling verb of this whole section from verse three, we proclaim, and they bring it forward. Some English translations begin 1 John 1 like this. We proclaim to you, or we declare to you that which was from the beginning. But the English Standard Version and the New American and others make a better decision and leave the original alone. And it’s a better decision because this ambiguity or this delay in giving that verb up front and not giving it up front is intentional, right? It’s intentionally that way, right? And why would that be? By the way, in John’s gospel, as you noticed, we have to wait till verse 17 to find out who John is talking about, and that’s Jesus Christ. But what’s this delay for, right? Why wait till verse 3 to talk about what you’ve been, to explain who you’ve been talking about? Well, the point is that It’s not the proclamation that’s important. It’s the subject of the proclamation, right? They’re proclaiming Jesus. He’s the important thing. But so here we have to wait until verse 3 to see who the that is, the that which, right? And five times in verses 1 to 3, we find that one word referred to again and again that means that or what or which. And our Bibles render it which or that which. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen, which we have looked upon, which we have seen and heard, right? It’s on and on until verse three. And the description of Jesus comes first, and then the verb proclaim is delayed. What is being proclaimed is the important thing or person. What’s being proclaimed, not the proclamation, you see? And so we have this explicit reference to Jesus Christ only at the end of verse three. In the absence of this normal introduction and final greeting in 1 John, which is how letters were normally written in the first century, has led some to believe that 1 John is actually a sermon, right? It’s a sermon meant to be passed around and read in the churches of that area, right? A circular letter, they were called. And this would fit what John says in 1 John 5, 13, about his basic goal in writing. He says, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, that you may know that you have eternal life. On the whole, that’s the purpose of John’s writing, so that believers may know that you have eternal life. And this is the same purpose that John gives In the Gospel of John, right, John 20 says, these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name. Right, and so here John preaches the truth to his reader directly and matter-of-factly, trusting that it will push out falsehood, right, that it will displace and replace false teaching, false belief, error. And the other purpose for writing this letter or sermon is that there were false teachers in that area, pervasive, the area of Ephesus and surrounding. And these men were deceiving God’s people. And we know this because in John’s letter, he lets us know some of the issues that were going on. In chapter 2, Verse 18 and 19, we have a clue to what this is, this internal evidence, if you will. It says this. Children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now many Antichrists have come. Therefore, we know that it is, what, the last hour. That should tell us something about our eschatology, by the way. But going on to verse 19, they went out from us, Who is that? The Antichrist did have come. They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that it might become plain that they all are not of us. And so it seems as though there was a time when these false teachers professed to be Christians. Now they are apostates, teaching disastrous, dangerous false doctrine, false teaching. And again, the specific error that they were teaching, we see this also as we go through the letter, 1 John 2, verse 22, we see this, and who are these false teachers, what were they teaching? He says this, chapter two, verse 22, who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also, you see. So somebody believed and professed that Jesus was the Son of God. The Word made flesh, incarnate, but then had abandoned that belief. And we see in this that Jesus will have no competitors, right? In his word, through John, inscripturated, preserved, handed down to the church throughout the centuries, we have this very clear doctrine. He will have no competitors, right? He will allow no pretend or partial commitments, no half-true beliefs, no contradictory beliefs. True commitment to Christ is all or nothing. John, John used a pretty strong language as we just heard in this letter, right? He is the Antichrist. One who denies that Jesus is the Christ is the Antichrist. And he has neither the Father nor the Son. This is strong language. This isn’t, not a lot of wiggle room there, right? And he speaks of those who now reject Jesus as God manifest in the flesh, as having been seduced by the spirit of the Antichrist. And as we’ll see, when John talks about the Antichrist, it’s likely not the way that many in our day speak about the Antichrist. But core to all of this lies what? It’s these falsehoods that are leading people to embrace false teaching. False teaching, characterized by what? It’s kind of, historically, it was a proto-Gnosticism, right? You may have heard of the Gnostic, the Gnostics. But it was this proto-Gnosticism and Gnosticism. The heresy of Gnosticism wouldn’t really come to full fruition until the second century. But the beginnings of it were there. The seeds were there, even in the first. And what were they? They’re people who believe these things held to a form of dualism, right, a dualism. And this is the belief that the spiritual or the immaterial is good and matter, right, the physical things, are evil. That’s dualism, that’s two-ism. Spirit good, physical is evil. Well, how could you know how this all panned out, right? And there’s the point, right? To be in the know, you need a special teacher to instruct you, right? And this is where the heresy gets its name. Gnosticism comes from the word meaning to know, like prognosticate, right, for instance. And what they meant by knowing was that some kind of secret knowledge was to be had that only faithful, enlightened followers could achieve, right? And they were called the Gnosticoi, those who were enlightened, the knowing ones. And this usually happened how so? Through some kind of religious experience, right? And you can make the connections in your mind to some teachings even in the church throughout history of these kind of things, the special knowledge that comes through some kind of spiritual experience, religious experience that’s hidden and secretive. But so this is the problem, you can you can sense the problem for this kind of view, this dualism. And the problem is that if matter is evil, How could it be that Jesus was God manifest in the flesh? How could God have come incarnate? How could Jesus, God manifest in the flesh, how could God come into a physical body, a flesh and blood, if mature and physical is evil? How could God be in an evil form? This was the thinking of the dualists, the proto-gnostics. And this is the main issue that John is dealing with, because they were denying these very things. And you see this challenge of scriptural belief, of scriptural teaching, of the truth of what happened with a system, worldview system, that’s completely incompatible with it. And so they tried to make this fit. But how could God, they would say, who is pure spirit, ever take himself to a true human nature in the flesh if that flesh is evil? And this explains why John emphasizes this point so emphatically, and he just threw out 1 John, this letter. It’s a challenge to this false belief of dualism. Jesus is manifest in the flesh. The alleged dualism between matter and spirit goes away. It’s destroyed. It can’t be held. It has to be abandoned. This is why John grounds the very truth and essence of Christianity in the fact of the incarnation and proclaims that truth in God’s Word. So Christianity is true because Jesus, God, was made manifest in the flesh. And to deny the incarnation is to embrace the spirit of the antichrist, John tells us. And so the Gnostics, in response to this, taught what? Well, they said, well, okay, Jesus only seemed to come in the flesh. He didn’t really come in the flesh, he just seemed that way. Jesus only appeared to have come in a physical body. And this is that ancient heresy we talked about in the past as well called docetism, right, which just comes from the Greek word that means appeared or seemed. He only seemed to come into the flesh. He really didn’t, because that would have been no good, because, you know, physical’s bad. When John speaks of people denying that Jesus is the Christ, this is the heresy that he’s referring to. And John speaks of those who teach such a thing as antichrist, right? Again, it’s not a soft term. It’s a very stark term. This is very harsh language. Appropriately so. And this is why this heresy is such a threat to Christianity and why John opposes it so forcefully. Again, verse one, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. In his epistle, John not only opens by focusing upon Jesus as the Word of life and God may manifest in the flesh, but he closes with this same sentiment, right? 1 John is bookended with this same idea. Listen to 1 John 5.20, the end of the book, the end of the letter. He says, and we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understandings that we, may know Him who is true, and we are in Him who is true, in His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. So notice the emphasis on knowing there. And we know that the Son has come. He’s given us understanding that we may know Him who is true, right? On and on. And so from the opening words to the closing, John reminds his readers what they already know, what they already know. Despite the challenges of the world, despite the challenges of these false believers, right? These people, true believers, who know the truth, they don’t need a fake, false, enlightened teacher to give them knowledge, secretive knowledge. They know the truth. in the person of Jesus Christ, who is true God and true man, come to earth to save us from our sins, right? So would God come to earth to save us from our sins? That’s the point. Incarnate it. And the ever-present, all-powerful Creator God is the same God who is made manifest in the flesh, in the world, in time, in history. And in the incarnation of Jesus, the transcendent God becomes the imminent God and even dwells among us, right? 1 John 1.14, I’m sorry, John 1.14. And that is most glorious, brothers and sisters. He came to Tabernacle to dwell among us, God himself. We can never give up the reality of either the deity or the humanity of Jesus, right? The deity or the humanity. We must hold to both, because both are true. And if we don’t understand who Jesus is, and we can’t understand what he came to do. We must trust his word to us for our protection for his glory. Failing to do so leaves us open to what? To the lies of the world, the flesh, and the devil, all of which bend towards what? Earning our favor with God by our works, right? Which is contrary to the scriptural teaching. We don’t find salvation through some sort of pursuit of hidden mysteries. That’s why you see these books popular usually around Easter time or Christmas about hidden books of the Bible or the hidden sayings of Jesus. It’s not hidden. It’s out in the open. It’s contradictory to what Scripture is. It’s not hidden. It’s been revealed. It’s been proclaimed. It’s revelation. And so we don’t seek salvation through some hidden mysteries which Jesus came to reveal only to a few enlightened ones. John’s whole point is that salvation comes to us publicly in the world, publicly in the world through the Word who was made manifest, clearly revealed. This is why he emphasizes seeing, hearing, touching the one who gives life in verse 1. And then in verse 2, It says, concerning the word of life, the life was made manifest, and we have seen it and testified to it, and proclaimed to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us. Right? That life, which is a reference to the eternal life that Jesus gives, that comes through faith in him, was made manifest. It was revealed in his earthly ministry. But more than that, John has the resurrected, incarnate Christ in view. John is affirming both the incarnate humanity of Christ and Christ’s bodily resurrection from the dead. In verse 3, we read, “…that which we have seen and heard, and 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.” Christ’s ministry His death and His resurrection are for the purpose of fellowship with Him, right? To bring us into fellowship, those who believe and trust in Him. And this fellowship is a spiritual thing, right? It is with the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. And it’s through the reception of John’s proclamation here of the truth of the gospel, Believers are included into fellowship with other believers who together share in fellowship with the Father and the Son, right? We are the body of Christ, not individually, but as his people. And then verse 4, and we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. Our joy, the hour, is speaking of John and the other apostles, right? Those who have seen these things and touched and looked upon themselves. Our joy may be complete. And so John’s testimony of Christ is a source of joy. And this joy comes both from his testimony about Christ, as well as because of the fellowship that it effectuates. And as we’ve observed, proclamation leads to fellowship with other believers and fellowship with the Father and the Son, verse three. And so the prospect for John and the other apostles of more people coming into this fellowship is a reason for great joy to him. And that, of course, is the so what, right, the so what of the outline. It’s that through the proclamation of the word, of the gospel of Christ, God renews and he gives life. And that necessarily brings us into fellowship with the Lord and with his body, the church. In our lives as those who’ve been forgiven, in our lives of those who’ve been given faith and life in Christ, demands commitment, right, demands commitment. We can’t be apathetic about our Savior. We should not be apathetic about Jesus. We can’t be those who take no stand. God has given you life in Christ. He’s united you to Jesus, and he’s placed you on one side of this spiritual war. Therefore, you’ve taken a stand. But he’s also won that war, and so you can be strong in the battles. The truth matters, brothers and sisters. As much as the world and even our own hearts might want to believe otherwise or waffle or be weak and feeble on the truth. We must not. We must not. We must be strong in the strength of his minds. Facts matter. History matters. God’s word matters. And departure from it is peril. Despite what our culture says, God’s word matters. Jesus, the second person of the Godhead, really came in the flesh. He really was the Messiah and continues to be. He loves his people. He gave them his word and faith and the Holy Spirit to reside in them until they come to their eternal home in glory. He will be with them for all of their lives. But it’s a glorious thing indeed, brothers and sisters. He will have no competitors. He will allow no competing idols or anything else to worship or to satiate us than himself. They must be excised from our lives. Life in him, that means everything. It means everything. And this man, the God-man, Jesus Christ, really came, he really is Messiah, and he really rose from the dead. It’s history, it really happened. John bears witness to these historical facts. He was there, and he saw them. But we have greater hope and greater assurance and evidence, right? Have you thought about that? What is that? It’s the Word of God. It’s John’s proclamation. It’s the Word of God that we have for us and the Spirit residing within us. And the testimony of God’s Word and its veracity is our most basic grounding. It is our worldview. It alone provides the only justification The only ground for belief and thinking and logic and language and reasoning and anything else. God’s Word isn’t a myth or a suggestion. It’s not one of many possible options or ways to God or one option as among many truth systems. It alone provides grounding for rationale. And it tells of the only way of salvation, which is belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. John’s introduction here in this letter affirms the true historicity of Christ’s advent and incarnation in the way of eternal life, which is fellowship with God. And that’s belief in this apostolic testimony, right? It’s trusting what God’s word says. Rejection of this word destroys the only true ground of reason and thinking, and most severely, the only escape from God’s just wrath. Let us always remember, brothers and sisters, our escape from that just wrath, merited for us by our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word come into flesh. And let us trust and embrace this Word of God, always being corrected by it, having our perspective corrected by it, having our lives corrected and drawn back to God’s truth through the Spirit, working through this Word, as He has promised to do so. And may we remember Brothers and sisters, as we go back into a land not our own, a foreign, strange land, a land, as you go as pilgrims in that land, may we remember that we have life because God himself entered into this creation. He lived a perfect life in our place. He died on a real wooden cross in our place, and he rose again for our justification. that we would be seen in the eyes of the Father as He sees the perfection of His own dear Son, Jesus. Oh, what an amazing thing it is to belong to this King and enjoy the comfort of His love. It really happened, brothers and sisters, and it really matters. So rejoice in Christ and the life that He won for you in this life and also in the next. but for sure this life here now as well as we go. And so let’s go, brothers and sisters, as we close and live for Jesus, right? In gratitude and praise and thanksgiving for these very things that he’s given us for all of our life, even into eternity.

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would, that you would help us and forgive us that we are so, often intoxicated by the things of this world, we pray that you would help us, that we would lose our spiritual sensibilities to these things and our allure to these things. And Lord, so often we fail to see the world through the lens of Scripture. And we pray, Father, that you would make us aware of everything with which we come in contact with. Help us to be aware of our interaction in this world, everything that we bring into our hearts, Lord, that we would be careful of the things that we participate in and the things that we see and the things to which we listen. And Lord, recognize that the world is truly a dark place, Lord, that these things matter, that they have an influence and an impact on our hearts and our spirits, Lord, and that we would rather than being conform to the pattern of this world, that we would be conformed to the image of our Savior Christ, and that you would renew our minds, that you would help us to see, Lord, the world as you see the world, and Lord, have us to long for your kingdom to be in glory with you. Or perhaps if only a glimpse of it, Lord, help us to see that as the war rages, but that Jesus Christ has given us victory. We pray, Father, that we would be filled with hope, that you would fill us with hope in the knowledge of the victory of Christ and the reality that death has no hold over us because of Christ’s resurrection, and that the power of sin has been broken because the law can no longer accuse us, that we are no longer under a ministry of death of the law, but rather we can look to Christ, who’s fulfilled the law in every part and in every way, We pray, Father, that indeed you would make us aware of these realities and that we would be equipped and clothed with the gospel of Christ, ready to do battle, which means always looking to that selfsame Jesus, our Savior. Father, we pray for those in this church that you would indeed protect us, increase our faith. Lord, we are so feeble and foolish at times. Lord, help us to know the surety that we are no longer free from the bondage of sin, but free from the guilt of sin, as you have refreshed us and made us new in Christ, Lord, and we pray that as we know these things and that you impart these truths to us more and more, that we would live lives of gratitude, overwhelmed with your love and what you’ve done for us, not as some secondary thought tacked onto the rest of our thinking in our lives, but central to who we are, Lord, this is who we are. Help us to believe. We pray and ask all these things in Christ’s name, amen.