All right we begin a new series this morning: I, II, & III John, the
epistles of John for Beginners this is lesson number one. This will be the
introductory lesson in this series, this class is a textual Bible
study class where we're going to be looking at these epistles written by the
Apostle who also wrote the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelations. So
quite productive individual as far as the writing of the New Testament is
concerned. Some people think that these letters don't have the weight
of the gospel or Revelation rather long a long book, but
what they lack in length they make up in substance. He's got a lot to say in a
very short amount of time. John's letters are a tremendous source
of apologetic material meaning the defense of the faith type of material, as
well as information about true Christian living. So let's start our own study by
briefly examining the life of the author the Apostle John himself. We have a
lot of information about John the writer of these epistles from different
parts of the Bible so I you know I've grouped it together,
top ten so here the top ten facts about John if
you wish: he was one of the sons of Zebedee and Salome, I learned about that
in Matthew 27 and Mark 15, he was partners in a fishing business again I
loved the idea that the Bible talks about real people he was a
business guy, he was partners with others in a fishing business with his brother
James and two other brothers Andrew and Peter
and from this connection was drawn into Jesus' circles of disciples. Well guess
what they were fishermen where Jesus lived, how about that, what is that what
are the odds that they might have been drawn into His circle
as early listeners early disciples following at, was it an accident
that Jesus said to Peter put your boat out for a while was He an absolute
stranger to him that just walked up and after he had finished cleaning his nets
for the night and had blanked out hadn't caught any fish he was dead bone
tired and didn't it make any profit was it a stranger that came by and said
let me use your boat I need to preach? Of course not,
it was Jesus it was Him they knew each other.
The graduallity of their drawing after Jesus because they knew Him. John
is the same. He was impetuous, we read John
the Apostle of love always because he talks about
love so much but at the beginning was he the Apostle of love? No, man let's bring
thunder down on those people is wipe them off the face of the earth that
wasn't that was that John. Zealous, impetuous. Jesus even gave him a
nickname him and his brother the sons of thunder. I believe that God
laughs, not just because I read it in some guys devo book I believe God laughs
because we laugh, it's a component of human nature that is so
healthy and so joyous and so wonderful laughter doesn't come from Satan it
comes from God and here's Jesus naming John and his brother,
there they go the sons of thunder, you know rocket man, you know a little
nickname and he called them that because they wanted to destroy some Samaritan
villages that would not receive Jesus, they wouldn't give Him any hospitality.
They were ready to wipe the village out with a thunderbolt, this is the Apostle
of love at the beginning. We find out that John's mother asked
Jesus for choice positions in the kingdom for John and his brother, not
ambitious at all was she? Notice it wasn't the dad that asked for that in
that culture it was the mom that asked for that so I guess the apple didn't
fall too far from the tree did it? He sat next to Jesus after he and Peter
prepared the room where they ate the Last Supper, John 13:23. And we call him
the Apostle of love he preached love a lot of love we'll see that in his
epistles but he refers to himself always as the Apostle that Jesus loved. There
was just something about him that appealed to Jesus' not certainly
divine nature is able to love everyone equally but Jesus' human nature there
were some that he loved somehow he had some sort of connection with and John
was one of those people and he expresses that in a very humble way he was one for
whom the Lord had much affection. We also find out he was first at the tomb along
with Peter, he outran Peter to the tomb but he let Peter go first. And according
to tradition John made Jerusalem his home until the death of Mary, Jesus's
earthly mother, who had been put in his care by the Lord Himself on the cross,
this is your son, this is your mother, that was a way of saying take care of my
mom and Mary lived in Jerusalem with him, John 19:26-27. John later moved to Ephesus
which eventually became the geographic and numeric center of Christianity after
the destruction of Jerusalem. When Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in
70 AD you not only harmed the Jews that were there but the Christians as well
and Paul had established the church in Ephesus, John eventually
move there, and that was his basis of operation in other words Ephesus which
is now in southern Turkey the country called Turkey was the Bible belt of the
Roman Empire at the time, it was the place you went to be trained, to be sent
out into the Empire, not Jerusalem anymore not Antioch, Ephesus that's where
John was and that's where he trained many individuals. Number nine he wrote
his gospel from there, the three epistles and after a period of exile on
the island of Patmos he returned to emphasis he wrote his final work the
book of Revelation. It was from Ephesus that he trained many early church
leaders that you hear about sometimes, people they want some
historical evidence about Christianity not contained in the Bible but written
about by individuals who lived at that time and who wrote about the church at
that time so he was the one who trained many of those what they call early
church leaders or early church "fathers." People like Polycarp and
Papias and Ignatius who would write about John himself and the early church
and whose writings we still have today preserved in historical
records. We need a lot of information about the early church from
these people not inspired writings but they're historians they write about the
time, just like Josephus a Jewish Pharisee who wrote about the times of
Jesus during His life not just about Jesus but about Jewish life
in first century Israel, well in the same way these writers wrote about the church
in the 1st and 2nd century. So John is believed to have lived to a very old age
and died in Ephesus where he lived and worked for many years. So there's a
little bit of background on John the Apostle. John's letter and all of his
letters actually deal with the problem of
gnosticism, a response to gnostic teachings that were creeping in the
church, little background about this, as Gentiles entered the church in other
words non-Jewish culturally non-Jewish people mostly Greeks actually as
Gentiles entered the church in greater numbers they also brought much of their
philosophical baggage with them and that's nothing new people are
assimilated into the church today and they bring their ideas that they had
before into the church sometimes they even bring their ideas about
Christianity, they come into a restorationist church like ours we're
trying to restore biblical Christianity only the Bible is our source
and people come from different denominations and they like that
idea they are drawn to the purity of that idea and they you know
they do Bible things in Bible ways, they confess Christ, they're baptized, they
begin following the Lord among us but they still have ideas that come from
their training back there. Having grown up Catholic and having only
been converted when I was in my 30s early 30s I brought a lot of ideas from
Catholicism into my converted experience as a New Testament Christian
and it took time to kind of wait a minute the Bible didn't say that,
when do you celebrate Mary's feast day and the preacher said
what? You know, Mary, mother of God you know yeah we don't call her that oh okay
when do we celebrate her assumption into heaven? Yeah we don't we don't celebrate
that. Why? Well because it's not in the Bible anywhere, oh I see. Can I come
for communion on Tuesday morning? No. Why? Well according to the New Testament we
we take the communion only on the Lord's Day. Oh, I was a believer I believe that
Jesus was the Son of God, I believed that my sins were forgiven when I was
immersed in the water, I believed all of that but I also believed
a lot of other stuff that had to be
"deprogrammed" over time and just a personal aside my main emotion during that kind
of relearning of my faith was anger I was angry
where did they get all this stuff? I
taught school for the for the Montreal Catholic School Commission, I taught
school I taught catechism and half of what I was teaching was not in
the scriptures. So imagine now in the first century these Greeks
they're converted to Christ but they've got a lot of Greek ideas that they bring
with them and one of these Greek ideas was Gnosticism. Gnosticism was an attempt
by some in the church to fuse together Greek philosophical ideas with Christian
theology to make a Christian religion more palatable to educated Greeks, not
the lower-end Greeks but the educated ones.
Gnosticism said that the spirit was good and all matter was evil and the way to
salvation was by escaping the realm of matter into the realm of the spirit. This
was the Greek idea of duality, two spheres, one is evil: matter, flesh; one is
pure good: spirit. You wanted to be completely in the spirit you had to
escape the flesh to become completely in the spirit. Now the way that they taught
the way to make this escape or transfer was through knowledge, gnosis the Greek
word. Thus comes the term gnostic. Not just knowledge but secret knowledge, not
any knowledge but only the special knowledge held in secret by
guess who: the Gnostic teachers. We got the secret they said we know the secret
we'll share the secret with you. Now you'll ask where's the conflict here?
Well the conflict with the gospel and this teaching came in the form of
questions concerning Jesus' identity, the contradiction for the Gnostics was
the idea that something good, someone of God, someone who was God could live or
could come in the form of matter, of humanity, in other words if the flesh is
evil how could God come in the flesh? That was making their head explode.
So the Gnostics as I say taught that matter was evil and the way to escape
was usually an extreme form of self-denial or in this extreme form of
hedonism, in other words the way to escape was to be extremely worldly
just eat touch taste and do everything you want or be extremely
ascetic touch taste nothing, deny yourself everything. Their
teachings ran from one end to the other. But now Jesus the Divine Son of God
comes in the form of flesh of human matter and He practices neither form of
extremism, He's not a hedonist and He's not an ascetic like John the Baptist
He's neither, He comes eating and drinking. So He was not a self-indulgent
sinner but neither was he like John the Baptist honey and locusts and lived out
in the wilderness; He sat, He ate with people, He went to weddings, He laughed, He
was a man. So one way that the Gnostics resolved this problem was to teach that
the Spirit of Christ only entered Him at baptism and left Him before
He died on the cross, which would make Him at best a kind of a prophet.
The Spirit comes on Him for a time to do the miracles to teach
to do this and to do that and then just before He dies the Spirit leaves Him so
He's born an ordinary man, He receives the empowerment remember our acts he
receives the empowerment of the Spirit for a time in His life and then it
leaves Him, then He dies like an ordinary man; that was one way to
reconcile these two ideas. Another way to resolve their problem was
to say that Jesus wasn't really matter or human He only appeared to be human, in
other words He really was just the Spirit appearing in the form of a man, He
was a ghost an apparition that's all he was. Now you can see some of the problems
that'll come up if somebody starts teaching this in the church, by
teaching these false ideas they were able to preserve their main premise of
total evil of flesh and total goodness of the Spirit and the idea that one did
not affect the other by what it did. That was another idea, whatever they taught
whatever you did in the flesh did not affect your spirit and whatever you did
in your spirit did not affect your flesh, these were two separate duality these
were two separate things so you could eat and drink and be sexually
immoral, you do anything you wanted it didn't affect your spirit or you could
deny everything and it didn't affect your spirit. So in Ephesus a man
named Sorenthis was the leader of this movement and
he claimed to have special mystic experiences as well as exalted knowledge
which would elevate his students, he taught that Jesus was Joseph's physical
son and Jesus had God's Spirit at baptism and then it left him at the
cross as I formerly explained. So John writes three epistles, three letters for
a church that was facing new philosophies that were threatening to conquer
Christianity and its basic doctrine, and what is its basic doctrine: well its
basic doctrine is that Christ was both equally and fully God and man
simultaneously from birth to death. He didn't become the Divine Son of God at
His circumcision eight days he was the Divine Son of God at conception and He
was the Divine Son of God on the cross when He gave up His Spirit. Okay that's
the basic teaching of Christianity, that's the apostolic
teaching against this perversion of the first-century doctrine of Gnosticism. All
right so the first epistle of John is keyed to his personal eyewitness
experiences of the living, breathing Jesus, not a spirit not an apparition.
I think that would be the logical place to start right, these teachers
these Gnostic teachers, who by the way never met Jesus never was in His
presence, they're saying He was a He was a ghost or He only
had part of the Spirit. So what do you think John's going to begin, well he's going to
begin with his personal experiences all right. So like the Gospel of John like
his gospel this letter emphasizes the reality of Jesus but in philosophical
terms in philosophical terms in other words their philosophy people their
philosophers they're not theologians all right. They're trying to bring in a Greek
philosophy and merge it with Christian theology. John is not a philosopher he's
a theologian but he speaks to them with words that philosophers can
understand. So John is fighting a false philosophical system that uses
imagery and concepts to explain itself and to convince other people and so John
responds by presenting the case for an actual living and divine being in
philosophical and in conceptual terms in other words he uses terms like
light and love. okay. That you often wonder why is he always using that why
he's just this you know speaking ordinary language while he's speaking in
philosophical language using philosophical terms, this is why this
epistle uses these ideas light and love all the way through. So John takes these
abstract ideas and he presents them in a practical way so that the readers can
apply the abstract concepts given to them by the real Jesus and apply
them into their everyday lives, in other words he's not just responding to the
false teachers by setting forth correct ideas and teachings about Christianity
he's also ministering to his flock with words of encouragement about and from
their faith. They need to be encouraged because they're getting a little
confused here with these guys. Now the heretics effect on the church
was to cause doubt about Jesus' existence as well as their own
possibility of salvation through Jesus alone, in other words these teachers were
saying you need something more yeah yeah yeah you've got Jesus will tell you who
to this Jesus is, He was a ghost orHe only had the Spirit for a time but
you're missing something you need something more you need the
secret knowledge of the Gnostic teachers. Instead of simply faith in Jesus
expressed in repentance and baptism oh no that wasn't enough that wasn't enough
now you had to have something more you had to have the quote you had to have
the secret knowledge in order to really assure yourself of your salvation.
Well here's the problem with that type of thing, if you latch on to that
type of thinking there's never any end to what you need to feel saved because
every generation is going to come along with some new knowledge some new secret.
When we were studying the book of Acts what was the secret what was the
new thing what was the thing they needed to have circumcision remember the
circumcision party well it's not enough that you're you know you're a Christian
you believe do you repent and you were about and that's not enough you also
need to be circumcised because Jesus wasn't you need to become a
Jew you need to be circumcised then you can be baptized, it's always the same
game, more stuff. So these teachers simply wanted spiritual power over the souls of
the saints. We sometimes can't understand that idea we can understand
somebody who's greedy or somebody who's ruthless who go in and rob a bank or we
can understand somebody who's ruthless for power and will you know rise up
militarily and topple the government because they want to be in
charge, we understand that we see that in our societies in our world
we need to understand there are also people that desire to have power over
the spirit of people they don't care if they're millionaires they don't care if
you know but they they want very badly to be able to have power over others
spiritually that's their evil desire. And this is what was going on here. So with
their teachings they were seducing Christians and others who are
turning to Christianity without their special teaching you couldn't be
saved. Let's face it, if I've got the secret ingredient that gets you saved
what does that make me? Well that makes me very important, it makes me much
more important than you. Why do you think that in restoration churches and
Churches of Christ why do you think the ministers just our ministers? Why do you
think we don't wear robes or long things or we don't
our hats or we don't collars, why do you think none of you ever refer to us as
Reverend or Most Reverend or you for wonder why that is
the only title that I've ever been addressed that is a formal title and
it's usually by black brethren is the title brother when I'm with my friends
or black brethren that I know many of and all parts of the world when
they say this is brother Mike they don't mean I'm a brother in the
Lord they mean I'm a preacher, that's the only title that I've ever
responded to. Anyway but why do you think that is? That we've done away with all of
that in restoration churches? Because it doesn't matter that's why the only thing
that matters is this and everybody's got one of these who's sitting out there and
as I speak you're thumbing through your listening and you're saying yeah okay
he's right about that I like his tie, he's right about oh I'm not sure
about that I think I'm gonna ask him I'm gonna I'm gonna talk to brother Mike, you
said in verse 17 could you clarify that for me I'm only as good as
the study that I put in and everybody here has the equal opportunity both men
and women young and old to challenge or to question or to share what it is that
I've shared with you the only right that I have to teach or that others Marty has
to teach or others who have been given responsibilities teach is because the
elders have appointed us to that task I didn't appoint myself. That is one way
that we guard against people who having special authority, the only local
authority in the church are the elders and the authority that they have is
given to them by God as a group and not as individuals. I'm a little off text
here but the Spirit of this thing was there still lives today we need to
be able to recognize it. So after demonstrating that Jesus was
both man and God, excuse me let me go back here, this technique has been used
throughout history by various false teachers that's where I got off here and
I'm sure Hal will fix that later no he won't fix it later okay, for
example Roman Catholicism who set up a layer of clergy priests bishops Pope's
between God and the believer, I gave you this example a little more
personally here in the Church of Christ just a moment ago, or modern sects Java
witnesses or Mormons or Adventists who insist on adherence to a particular
doctrine or leader in order to be saved, if you don't buy into the Sabbath Day
you can't be a Sabbatarian, if you don't buy into the doctrines of the Jehovah
Witnesses you're not one of them and you can't be saved you've got to buy into
their special doctrine. So cultism always adds a person a doctrine or a ritual to
the gospel in order to make it effective.
Remember that, anytime somebody says oh we need to add this over here. So John as
I was saying so John first epistle emphasizes once and for all that we
receive salvation through Jesus Christ and only through Him and we can be
certain of it. That's going to be his contention here.
So after demonstrating that Jesus was both man and God John will go on to explain
the three ways that we can be certain of our salvation and none of them have
anything to do with secret knowledge or special teachers, it's available for
everybody. So that's what he's going to do if you're saying what is this epistle
going to be about? This epistle is about being certain
of your salvation, that's what this epistle is about okay. So the outline,
give you that, he'll start by talking about the historical Jesus, the Jesus the
real person as seen by John. He's going to talk about the Jesus that I know the
Jesus that I experienced he's gonna start there. The second part of the
epistle, the certainty of salvation chapter 1:5 all the way to
chapter 5:12. And he says you can be certain in three different ways
of your salvation: the first way is by examining if you are walking in the
light or not that's one way to be certain that you are a saved person and
under that first certainty he'll describe or he'll
say you'll recognize the impact of grace on your personal behavior because it'll
motivate you to acknowledge sin without fear. So I'm getting a bit of ahead of
myself here but in that section John there's a rhetorical question that he'll
ask, how do you know? You can be certain that you're saved if you're walking in
the light, and then he'll ask another question
how do you know that you're walking in the light? Well first of all you'll be
able to recognize that you're a sinner and you need Christ without fear,
secondly: the proof of your salvation will be
demonstrated by the way you love the brethren, thirdly: the proof of your
salvation will be seen by the way that you separate yourself from the world not
separate yourself from your own body, and fourthly: the certainty of your
salvation will be recognized in the fact that you're walking in the light and
walking in the light will be demonstrated by the way that you adhere
to the truth. So the first way you can be certain is by examining the four
different ways you walk in the light, the second way that you can be certain
is by how you are abiding in love so he switches
remember I said metaphysical terms philosophical terms so he starts with
light talks about light now he's going to talk about love which he equates to
morality and the treatment of others and so on and so forth. So you can
be certain of your salvation by abiding in love, the ethical proof of love, good
conduct, the social proof of love, good deeds, theological proof of love,
faith in Jesus as God, the emotional proof of love, no fear, no fear and love
of the brethren. Thirdly, a third way you can be certain he'll talk about chapter
5:1-12, certainty by exercising faith not by secret knowledge.
You know you're saved because you're a person who walks by faith you don't need
to be reassured every single day by God that you're okay you know you're okay.
Why? Because he says it right here, every time I doubt a sin in the past is
coming back to haunt me to accuse me that's what Satan does you know he
reaches it back in your life he'll pick something you know or that he knows that
you're vulnerable for because I could be forgiven for a hundred sins but there's
usually one back there that oh man I just I wish I could be absolutely sure I
was okay with that one and Satan goes back to that one he'll pick that one and
he'll throw it at you and it makes no rhyme or reason, intellectually you know
you start asking yourself am I really okay am I really okay? The man the woman
of faith will rely on this here to be sure that they're okay. My own way
November 1977 I said I believe that Jesus is at home God Jim Metter
immerse me in the waters of baptism for the forgiveness of all my sins, I
remember that date and I remember Acts 2:38 where Peter says if you repent if
you believe in Jesus you repent and you're baptized
you'll be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins all of your sins every one
of them even that one there that you know you're not sure of I reassure
myself with the word that's walking by faith. And then in the end his conclusion
conclusion remarks and so on and so forth. So John's gospel told the story of
the transformation and the work of the cross, his gospel did that, his first
epistle encourages his readers to continue believing that knowledge that
they originally received from Christ and the Apostles don't go with this new
knowledge the secret knowledge hang onto the old knowledge that you've got. There
is no secret knowledge the truth has been revealed once and for all and for
everyone to see that Jesus is the Christ and that
everlasting life is through Him and through Him only, that's the truth. So
this kind of knowledge that comes from the gospel it transforms us from lost to
saved, from condemned to forgiven, from sinners to saints, from kingdom of
darkness to kingdom of light, from slavery to freedom slavery to sin, rather
to slavery to freedom, from empty spiritually to filled with the Holy
Spirit, from temporal to eternal, these are all theological philosophical
concepts but they are real concepts that describe what has taken place in us
through us by the power of Jesus Christ the Divine Son of God from birth to
death through a resurrection. So John's writings tell us that we will
one day leave our flesh but we won't leave our flesh through secret knowledge
we'll leave our flesh through faith in Jesus Christ based on the knowledge of
him in the gospel that's how we leave the power of the flesh
and then one day thankfully we will leave this flesh and be equipped with a
new body that will be able to exist in harmony and in the presence of God
Himself. What's the end game of
Christianity? Some people say going to heaven yeah yeah what happens there, no
the end game of Christianity is that we die this fleshly body which is
falling apart anyways is finally released from us and our spirit is now
equipped with a new body a new covering that we're not quite sure what it's like
we know it's like the angels and the reason we need a new body is that we
need to be able to survive and exist in the same sphere where God is.
Moses asked God can I look at your face and God said no you can't because if you
look at me you'll die instantly. My own opinion and it's only an opinion is that
if we were to see the face of God we would see perfection and in seeing
perfection we would see the chasm the the so great difference between Him and
us we would simply shrivel up and die we'd melt look at it that way. And so we
need a new body to be able to be in his presence comfortably joyfully forever.
And the gospel is what brings us eventually to that new body. All right
so reading assignment not a very long one read first John I will go through
the text itself but it's always better for you if you've read it ahead of time
and if there are things that you're thinking about you'll be paying
attention when I finally get them. That's our first lesson in I John, thank you
very much.