Open—Don Rule
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We've seen #19.
19th of the 5th.
And heavenly love abiding don't change. My heart shall be here. Save is such confiding. For nothing changes here. His wisdom ever walked waking His sight is never damned. He knows the way he take it. And I walk with him.
Alright.
This morning.
In my heart I had occasion to speak to the Apostle John.
He wasn't.
Thinking about me, I don't think this morning.
But I think you'll understand the sense.
And I in my heart, I literally said out loud, thank you John. I'd like to share the reason why I thank John this morning with the desire that you too will share with me in your heart and say thank you John. And further than that, maybe sooner than we think.
We'll be able to say it to John face to face, so turn with me.
To the John's first letter.
Which we call first John.
And we refer to it as chapter one.
John had a purpose in writing this letter.
And.
I consider that he was writing the letter to some people, but it included me. So that's the first thing I want to say. If you want to get something out of it, you have to as well say thank you, John, for writing to me.
He writes with a purpose. It's good when you're writing or communicating with people to have some reason for doing it, and he states his reason in verse 4.
He says these things I write unto you.
Why?
Let your joy may be full. Very simple, isn't it? There's somebody that's writing a letter.
And if we make it personal, writing a letter to me and writing a letter to you, and John says I'm writing to you because I want you to have joy and I want that joy to be full.
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So if you want joy and you want fullness of joy.
John here has something to say to you this afternoon, as he had to say to me this morning and this afternoon as well.
So he begins his letter in 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 our hands have handled. Of the word of life.
You know, if you're going to write to somebody something, it's good to know what you're talking about.
It's not something you by hearsay, it's not something that somebody else necessarily is passed on to you, but the things that are important most often are things that we have personally experienced and know.
And John is saying I'm going to write to you about something that I know about.
By personal experience.
He's referring in verse one to his personal experience of knowing the Lord Jesus as he was here on earth.
And John had the immense privilege of spending 3 1/2 years.
With the Lord Jesus.
And getting to know him.
To observe him.
To see his life face to face, day-to-day. And now John saying to those us to whom he writes, he said, I want to share something of what I've learned from that time I had with.
The word of life, the Lord Jesus.
For he says, verse two, that life was manifested, and we've seen it and bear witness, and show unto you what that life, that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us.
We all know that our Lord Jesus Christ was unique.
And John got to know him.
Perhaps the first time he saw him in John's eyes he was looking at a man like you and I look at each other, and I very much doubt that at instantly, although it happened with others. He looked at him. He spent some time with him.
The Lord Jesus came down after a while one day when John was.
Of his daily occupation as a fisherman. And he says to John, now you, you come. And he had that privilege of leaving his occupation as a fisherman along with his brother, and going to spend full time day by day, wherever the Lord Jesus was, he was.
John was traveling with him.
And so here.
He had learned something incredibly important about the man.
Not simply as a man, but then later on, he decided as he looked at him.
This is the Messiah.
This is the one that in our Old Testament, while he didn't call it Old Testament but in our scriptures.
That God promised to come.
And re establish for us our place that we lost.
A long time ago.
In the days of our ancestors we lost it but here he's coming and and our scriptures promised him to re establish for us.
Our Kingdom that we've lost.
And so John, as he got to know him, saw him as Messiah.
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And in fact.
He spent 3 1/2 years with him and after 3 1/2 years, he learned a lot.
But he still had more to learn because 3 1/2 years later, he's still looking for him as Messiah. The very night before Jesus died, John and Peter are having a little conversation as to which of them was going to be greatest.
When the Messiah set up the Kingdom.
Even though they've been with him day by day, listen to what he did, watch him perform miracles and so on. Which of course to them confirmed he was the Messiah and that he was going to do what had been promised and set up the Kingdom.
And here when we hear this letter.
John is.
Says AD 90 approximately when this letter was written and the Lord Jesus had been dead almost.
On the cross, he had died almost 60 years before, 50 some years before, and the Kingdom wasn't there.
But John now knew him in a far better way. He knew him not as a man that.
Was only Messiah.
But now he knew him as Son of God.
He knew him not in the time sense of the word, only as Messiah had to do with time, and in fact it had a duration. There wasn't going to last the Millennium, so-called indefinitely. But now he knew something better. He knew something that was going to last forever, that was eternal.
And he saw in this person that which transcended time.
And brought him into things that are eternal.
I think I can speak for John when he says I want your joy to be full and say to you it won't be full in your life this afternoon. And this is fullness here is not talking only about future, it's talking about this day.
For each one of us, we can have fullness of joy now, even as we look forward to a greater joy in the future. But he's saying, I think.
If you want to have it, you're going to have to see it from a not the perspective simply of time. What you're going to have to see what goes beyond time and lasts. Peter, who got it, like John got it, got the message the night before the Lord Jesus died. John's talking about who's going to be great in the Kingdom.
But you know, I happen to read it the sporting as well. In second Peter the last of his.
Letters.
Peter's got it.
And I think he had fullness of joy when he wrote it.
In his, as we would say, second Peter chapter 3.
He says the Lord's told me that shortly I'm going to have to put off this Tabernacle, or in our language, I'm going to die.
And had John seen the Kingdom? No, he saw something better. He says I'm going to have to die. And then a few sentences later he talks about the everlasting Kingdom.
He'd gotten like John had into that which transcends time and takes him into eternity, and he says that Kingdom.
Now that I'm looking for is better than that. He didn't put aside that there would be a millennial. There will be, but he said, now I know what it is to talk about the everlasting Kingdom, a Kingdom that has no end and that will last forever.
So he says.
That eternal life which was with the Father, it was a life that the Lord Jesus had in eternity past as we call it, before time existed. He always had it in truth in his gospel John says in the beginning was because the Lord Jesus had no beginning like you and I all have had a beginning.
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We didn't exist. Nobody in this room existed.
100 years ago.
But you, everybody in this room now exists, and you're going to exist forever.
You now belong to eternity in that sense. If you're the Lords, you're going to have an eternal joy with Him. If you die in your sins, you're going to spend an eternity of misery and separation from God. But here, he says.
Verse 3.
I'm sharing.
What I've seen, what I've learned with you for a reason, and in verse three states the reason.
That you ye also.
You can join me.
I have it, I'm enjoying it, and I'm writing to you so that you can have it and enjoy it too. Fellowship with us.
We'll stop right there. You know when something is important to you.
You like to share it?
We're all that way. You probably, since you've been here even and seeing someone that you hadn't seen for quite a while, you shared something very likely that you've enjoyed or that was important to you in your life. And so you wanted to pass it on and you wanted the other person to know about it.
And so you share it. Fellowship means to have commonness, common interest, common thoughts. I share something that's important to me, hoping that you will enjoy it and share it with me. And that's fellowship.
Commonness of thought and commonness of feeling too, that you can enter in and someone can understand and feel.
And enjoy the same thing that you feel and know and enjoy.
And.
John saying to us.
I want you to enter in and enjoy what I'm enjoying, what he was enjoying when he wrote this letter.
He says what truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
Have you been enjoying it today?
Have you today?
Shared thoughts and feelings that are common to the thoughts and feelings of God the Father and the Lord Jesus.
John did. He knew he did.
And he wanted those to whom he write, wrote and writes to have the same.
Is there joy?
In looking at things.
That the father enjoys.
That the son enjoys with the father.
We know, if we go back to Proverbs chapter 8, that the Father and the Son enjoyed this fellowship before the world was ever created.
And the sun further could say my delights worth the sons of men hadn't been created when he said that.
But he could say to the father, father.
Knowing the purposes of God. Knowing that God.
Is going to create us.
And doesn't it doesn't bring joy to think that?
God created me.
So that I could have fellowship with him.
Does that not bring a little joy to the heart?
A reason I exist is because God created me.
To enable me to have fellowship with him and his joy and his son here, John says I want to have fellowship with us.
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Doesn't it produce some of the joy that we want, the fullness of joy, to think the Father in eternity found such pleasure in His Son that he could say, Don, when I create you, I'm creating you because I'm going to share you with myself in the enjoyment I have in my son.
Is that not a reason to be happy?
Incredible reason to find joy.
That that God purposed us.
Yes, we live this afternoon in time, but God purposed us for a fellowship that's going to be eternal. It'll have no end.
And it will have no sin in it either at that point in time. I can't talk outside at that point in time. You know, we're we're so connected with time that we little have even a vocabulary that enables us to talk about things from their eternal perspective.
Our fellowship will be No, our fellowship is.
This is not, we're not talking about something that we have to wait, as we would say, till the rapture or something in the future that's been promised to us. This was something that John was experiencing when he wrote his letter. It's something for us to be experiencing in our daily lives as we go through it, and that is to share.
With the Father and the Son in those things that are upon their hearts today.
Upon their thoughts today, and that includes the painful side as well as the happy side of things. God is not unaware of all the pain and suffering going on in the world this afternoon, and yet He would have us share with Him in His perspective of it.
And how he sees it.
So let's go on to verse 5.
This, then, is the message that we heard of him.
And declare unto you So John's going to pass on something he learned from the Lord Jesus.
In his time with him and he said he told us this, and so I'm going to pass on to you what the Lord Jesus said to me, he said.
If we this is the message that we heard him say and declare to you that God is light.
And in him is no darkness at all.
God.
Is not like man. By contrast, the Bible teaches us that man's darkness.
And God is light.
Man loves darkness. Why? Because his deeds are evil, and so he chooses darkness.
Most robberies were committed at night. More crime is committed at night than during the day because it's harder to detect and stop. And so men love darkness. If you're going to do something is wrong and you know it's wrong.
You just prefer nobody saw it.
That's the way we are.
When things aren't.
And our hearts aren't the way they should be. We will choose the darkness with the wrong idea, but nonetheless the natural idea that if nobody sees it, then nobody is going to know and nobody's going to be harmed, and nobody this and nobody that.
But John says, I want to tell you that God is light now. He's just said, I want you to have fellowship with God. And so he says.
In the next verse, if we say we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth.
We'll see multiple cases here, probably won't notice all of them, but John draws a contrast when he's talking to us or writing to us between if I say and if I do.
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You know, it's pretty easy to say stuff.
Sometimes though, the doing doesn't match the same and so I might say if I say I'm having fellowship with God.
But I'm walking in the darkness.
John says.
You aren't having fellowship with God. That's not true. You may say it.
But it's really a lie. Whether you're aware it's a lie or not, It's a lie because.
God doesn't have darkness, and so commonness with God can only be had if there is commonness.
You can't have fellowship unless you have common thoughts. Then if it's darkness, God doesn't have any common thoughts with darkness.
Everything with God is going to be open.
And out in the light, and consistent with him in his holy character.
You want to be happy.
The only way you can have fullness of joy that John's talking about is in the light.
You can't mix it, you know.
Many times life tends to be a mixture, kind of like twilight, and God works with us in that regard.
But while he works with us and he loves us and he deals with us when we're walking inconsistently, we can't do it and have fellowship. We're missing the fellowship with him in that regard.
So he says, not if we say in verse six, but in verse seven if we walk.
If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with the other, and so.
John wants us to enjoy and he writes to us so that we would have that fellowship that comes from walking together in light.
But God knows what we are, and so he makes an important statement.
Sometimes we immediately maybe you're sitting there sort of thinking well, but boy, I sin so often.
How can I have fellowship with God the way I walk sometimes I know I do things, I lose my temper, I have bad thoughts. I this, I that.
And I know it's not what God wants. I know it's not in the light. So what hope do I have? It's all right for somebody else, but not for me. And so it says here to help us understand the end of verse 7. The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.
John is telling us that that work that the Lord Jesus did at the cost of himself.
At this expense of his life, at the suffering he did on the cross, in the giving up of his life's blood and that lifeblood when shed had all the value of the suffering on the cross that had preceded it. He says God takes that and makes you clean in his sight in a way.
That never changes.
It's once it's done, it's fixed, it's forever. And you need to appreciate that and enjoy that or you'll forever be worried about trying to have fellowship with God because you're looking at yourself and.
The last sin you committed.
That is a hindrance to your enjoyment of it. But the basis of your fellowship is not walking. It's what the work of the Lord Jesus did. So you have to be free from thinking that the basis and the foundation on which you can have joy with God is you.
It's not. It's what the Lord Jesus and God did. And love for you is the foundation of having fellowship with God.
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So he establishes that in verse 7.
Then he says in verse 8 and to the end of the chapter and try to finish up fairly quickly. He says if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. Well, here's one thing.
It's a potential hindrance in a person to think, oh OK, now that I've been rushed by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and made clean in God's sight.
I'm good. There's no sin in me anymore. I do it right. And he says if we think that way or we say it, we're deceiving ourselves.
I'll just make this practical comment.
If you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, you'll spend the rest of your time on this earth.
Learning two things. One is to learn to know the Lord Jesus Christ.
Better than the other one is you'll spend the rest of your life knowing yourself better.
The one honors Him and is a blessing to your soul. The other one humbles you and will make you more eternally appreciate the greatness of what He has done and is doing for your blessing. And so, when the children of Israel started their 40 years of life in the wilderness, he told him right at the beginning.
As it were, you know you're going to spend 40 years and you're going to be taught what's in your heart.
And it's going to humble you. I'm going to test you, I'm going to humble you, but it's for your blessing. And so that's part of the path of life. And here John comments, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. Verse nine, if we confess our sins, these faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This is.
A encouraging statement, really.
I'm clean forever in the eye of God by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Does that mean now I have a fellowship with God? That can't be.
Broken.
Well, the basis of it can't be broken.
But if I sin, God has no fellowship with that, and I lose the enjoyment and a fellowship with my Father and his Son. And so there is a practical process that goes on in life. And so it says, do you, have you admitted it? Have you acknowledged it?
Are you trying to pretend that you didn't do it?
Or that it didn't matter? No, he says. You have to confess it.
And if someone else beside yourself and the Lord know it and are part of it, then you have to acknowledge it to them as well.
It's a humbling thing, but he says. But I will forgive it.
In the practical, my ways with you and I will work with you in you so that you don't just keep doing it the rest of your life. I'll cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
It's practical, but it's a present thing.
Then he says, if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in US.
It's important here, and John is saying and having a relationship with the Father to know that we not only have the problem of sinning, doing things wrong, but there's a reason why we do it, because we were born with Adam's fallen nature in US, and so we have a sinful nature in US. And if we deny that.
Or think it's gone. We're deceiving ourselves.
And the Word of God is not in us. Let's finish with just a word or two in chapter 3.
John, Chapter 3.
And we'll read verses two and three. Beloved. Now, are we the sons of God?
And it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him.
For we shall see him as he is.
I look forward to that someday when I see you in heaven.
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I don't think I can say it to you necessarily this afternoon.
But when I see you in heaven, I will be able to come up to you and say, John, Mary, Bob, Bobby, you're just like Christ.
That's your destiny, that's your future.
You're going to be just like him.
In every detail.
In every action of your heart it will be like him, because he's given you his life, and that sinful nature that's in you will be left behind at the time when he takes you to be with himself. And so it says, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
The next verse. Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. The Lord Jesus is pure.
Perfect in every way and what is said here is this is your future and if you really.
Are wanting it.
You're going to be serious about today.
Because the desire of your heart is not to wait.
But don't you want to wake up tomorrow more like him than you were today?
I hope you do that each day of your life. You want to get to know him better and have more fellowship with him so that there's no darkness or anything in you that's hindering his sharing with you what he's enjoying. And he says every man that hath this hope in him, that is, of being like him as he is pure, will purify himself that is.
Life serious business and it's important for us to.
Take it seriously in our relationship with the Lord Jesus and not just Oh well, I've done it before I got I lost my temper a little bit or I wanted something that I lusted after something I wasn't to have or in our Romans 13. We're going to come up be content with such things as you have and I say, Oh well, I wasn't very content. I had to have that.
I thought, boy, if I can only have that thing, you know, I'd be real happy I I got to have that car.
I got to have that new appliance or I have to have this or that, and then you have to say, oops, I'm not like him, am I?
Did the Lord Jesus ever say I have to have?
Is that ever part of his daily life? Oh, if only I had this or that, I could be happy.
Not even thinkable and yet he says you want to be like him.
Be serious about it and you can have now a fullness of joy that this is the only way.