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.
