The Word of Life (1 John 1.1-4)

Introduction

Today, we’re starting a series that will take us through to the beginning of March (with a short break for Christmas) and we’re going to be going through the First Letter of John.

Before we get into the letter itself, I want to explore a bit who this John was because it helps us understand where he’s coming from in this letter. The Gospels say quite a lot about him but I want to just mention two things.

Fiery Temperament

John and his brother James were partners in a fishing business based on the Sea of Galilee. When he first met Jesus, he was young, hot tempered, arrogant, loud, direct and impulsive. We’d call him passionate or perhaps intense.

When Jesus called John to follow him in Matthew 4, he was sitting in a boat washing all the seaweed out of his fishing net and it says he immediately left the boat and his father and went. John is an all or nothing kind of guy. He can’t be bothered with all that “thinking it through” stuff.

Jesus nicknamed him (and his brother James) sons of thunder. That’s because they both had a tendency to fly off the handle. Luke 9 tells of a time when Jesus and the Twelve are travelling from Galilee to Judea; that’s north to south about 60 miles.

In Jesus’ day to get from one province to the other you had to go through an area in the middle, called Samaria where Jews were not welcome. It was a bit like with the Jews and Palestinians today. They both saw each other as the neighbours from hell.

So they’re in this Samaritan village and they get a predictably frosty reception. John (and his brother James who is just a bad) see this, instantly snap, and say, “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven and destroy these people?”

With John it’s always the nuclear option first. He’s a loose cannon. John is not the guy you want anywhere near your pastoral care team… He is intolerant and prejudiced and unloving.

And look at the arrogance; “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven?” "We’ll take care of this scum. Leave the smiting to us, Lord." And of course, Jesus sharply rebukes them both.

But that’s John. He can't help himself. This is who he is.

Think of the people you know, think of yourself... there are two ends of the temperament spectrum. American preacher Mark Driscoll calls it dimmer switch and on/off switch. 

At one end, you get dimmer switch people. They wear sensible shoes and carefully read the instructions before assembling plat pack furniture. They see two sides of every argument. They are cautious, balanced, nuanced and reasonable.

At the other end of the spectrum, you find on/off switch people. There are just two options; on or off. All or nothing. They don’t do nuance. There’s just black or white. On/off switch people, if they’re not boycotting an event, are all in.

Which end of the spectrum are you at? Dimmer switch or on/off switch? John is your classic, textbook on/off switch man.

And now, at the time this letter is written, decades after he first met Jesus, John is still an on/off switch. All through his letter he writes in stark and ultimate contrasts; if you’ve read 1 John you’ve probably have noticed this.

There is no middle road for John between love and hatred, light and darkness, truth and lies, Christ and Antichrist, God as Father or the devil as father, being in the world or being of it.

But what you also notice in this letter is that John is no longer a hot headed, opinionated youth. He's a mild-mannered, benign and kindly old grandfather figure who is always going on about friendship, loving one another, and all the way through he calls his fellow believers “little children,” or “my dear friends.”

His basic makeup is the same, he’s still that on/off switch; he’ll never do finesse or diplomacy. But John’s personality is now reoriented, refocused. What changed in John’s life? I’ll tell you; it’s a lifetime of knowing Jesus.

When John first met Jesus, he was a rough diamond. But Jesus chose him to be one of the twelve. That’s because when Jesus calls you, he doesn’t just look at what you are. He looks deeper and sees what you can become, with a touch of grace, and a measure of faith, and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

God takes you as you come. But by the time he’s finished with you, you might look very different to how you started - you probably will. But it will be his work. God took me on as the train wreck that I once was. That’s grace. 

But being a Christian is not self-help. His goal, from the start, was to shape me - and us - into the best version of us we can be. That’s mercy.

Deep Friendship

So that’s the first thing I wanted to say. Here’s the second: …of all the people living on the face of the earth, who would you call your best friend? Don’t say Jesus. It’s a great answer, it’s the best answer, but I mean apart from Jesus.

Some of us would think of a spouse, or a sibling, or an old school friend, or maybe a parent or even grandparent, perhaps a colleague…

Who would you pick out as your closest companion, the one above all others who knows you best, who puts up with you the most and who sticks with you the longest? 

People say that dogs are man’s best friend. They’re not mine. I find the physical enthusiasm of dogs towards me just a little bit overwhelming. Dogs do not respect my personal space, they give me unwanted hugs, uninvited dribble and unwelcome paw marks on my clothes. 

But dogs are legendary for being loyal and faithful aren’t they? They want to be with you, they whimper when you leave them, they give you the sad, sorrowful eyes when you feel down, they just love you to death. 

Dogs have nothing bad to say about you, ever. It has even been said that dogs love their owners so much they start to look like them. Someone wrote a prayer once; “Lord, make me the kind of person my dog thinks I am.”

Anyway, of the twelve disciples, there was an inner circle of three; John was in it. Of the three, one was closest to Jesus; that was John. John was the best friend Jesus had on earth.

It is said that Mark’s Gospel tells you what Jesus did. Matthew and Luke’s tell you what he said. But John’s Gospel tells you who he is. It’s the deepest, most personal, most insightful Gospel of the four and it can only have been written by someone who knew Jesus inside and out.

At the last supper, John’s head was leaning against Jesus’ chest. He literally heard and felt the Lord’s beating heart. He was the closest to Jesus. 

When Jesus was dying, John was the only one of the twelve to be there. Jesus saw his mother in bits, traumatised by what she was witnessing and he told John to look after her when he was gone. 

John was one of those who buried the body at sunset. John was the first of the twelve to the tomb on Easter Sunday.

Nobody knew Jesus as well, as personally, as perceptively or as closely as John did.

I have dozens of books on my shelf about Jesus. Here are a few of them here... This is just a tiny selection of all the books in the world about Jesus. No historical figure has had as many books written about him or her than Jesus of Nazareth. You visit the British Library or go on Amazon and you’ll find many thousands of books about Jesus. Do they all say the same thing? No!

This one here by Marcus Borg rejects the virgin birth, asserts that Jesus’ death was not God’s will, opposes the belief that Christ died sacrificially in our place, denies the bodily resurrection, and dismisses much of the Gospels as metaphorical fiction. 

For Marcus Borg, Jesus was just a Jewish mystic and revolutionary who challenged the oppressive political and military powers of his day.

I was asked to review this book for Christianity magazine in 2015. I panned it so mercilessly that they said to me, “No one’s going to buy this book after that review,” so they declined to publish it! They still paid me £25 for my trouble though.

But here’s the thing. If we want to study something we go to a school. Who would you trust most to tell you about a historical figure? Some ivory tower academic 20 centuries after the event? Or an eye witness who also happens to be that person’s best friend and closest companion? 

In John’s day you didn’t go to a school to learn, you went to a teacher, a rabbi, and you learned by doing life with him. The author of this letter spent three years in Jesus Christ University and graduated with honours

That Which Was from the Beginning…

Now let’s get into the letter itself. It’s just a short passage so I’ll read it again, but I’m going to read it in the Message paraphrase because John has a quite abstract way of saying what he wants to say and people sometimes struggle to bring these conceptual statements in line with their practical experience. 

The Message is quite good at putting it in language we’re more familiar with.

From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in - we heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we’re telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: the infinite Life of God himself took shape before us. We saw it, we heard it, and now we’re telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. Our motive for writing is simply this: We want you to enjoy this, too. Your joy will double our joy!

I think the key phrase comes at the end of v1; the Word of Life. John reflects on a lifetime of knowing Jesus and this how he sums him up. It’s an abstract sort of title, the word of life, but here’s what it means:

Just as God created the entire physical universe with a word; “let there be light,” Jesus too is like a word spoken by God that brings about spiritual life.

This letter was, we think, written in the 90’s of the first century. John is now an old man. He’s the last surviving apostle. The church has now been through pain and persecution and purifying. Most Christians are now second generation. Few were actually there when Jesus walked the earth.

And now, some are starting to wander off and listen to new and strange, mystical, religious ideas. They won’t deliver. It’s snake oil. But John remembers the authentic Jesus like it was yesterday and he wants every Christian to know and experience the real thing.

So, in case anyone is thinking to themselves, “Why should we listen to you?” John starts by saying, “Look, I was there. I was out all night in my fishing boat and didn’t catch a single minnow. But I heard his voice. 

And when he said to throw the net out the other side, I was one of the guys who helped to haul in the nets bulging with the biggest catch I had seen in my entire career. I counted the fish. 

I remember the unique way he looked into my eyes. As if to say, “That’s how you catch fish, mate.”

I actually touched him. I hugged him. I remember when he told the story of the Prodigal Son. It was electric. I watched him raise a dead girl to life. I saw the sweat on his brow as we walked on hot dusty roads. 

I held in my hands the bread and fishes that he multiplied. I’ve been there, done that and got the T-shirt personally signed, authenticated and framed. It all actually happened. I can remember it like yesterday.

In the Greek the verb “to see” is horan and it just means to physically view something. John uses it here in v1 (“that which we have seen with our eyes”).

But there’s another word that we sometimes translate as “see” (it does here in v2) but the Greek word is a different one; it’s théasthai. “We have seen it and testify to it.” This word means more than looking at something. It means to gaze or to stare at someone or something until you perceive and grasp of the significance of it.

That’s what John means here; I didn’t just look at him. I really saw him and when I saw him, I saw everything.

What do the following things have in common?

·         backpacking around the world

·         taking drugs

·         doing extreme sports

·         sleeping with multiple partners

·         drinking in excess

·         partying hard

Some of those things are legitimate, others aren’t. But people do them all for the same reason. They want life. “You only live once!” we say. Life is short.

It really is short. Not only that, as you get older it speeds up. People often get towards the end and say, “Where did all the years go?” But we usually want it to go on longer.

That’s because there’s an echo of eternity in us. We just know it deep down. Life in Eden was never meant to be brief. There’s a faint yearning in your soul and mine for eternity. John says here, “There’s something inside of all of us that points to Jesus and is only fully satisfied in knowing him.

When you discover real love, true love, you want to keep it forever. That is my story. That was the overwhelming emotion the day I encountered Jesus. I said to myself, “I’m not sure I fully understand all this, but I know it’s what I have always been looking for and I want to keep it forever.”

Actually, I learned afterwards that this was only the beginning of the journey. There’s so much more. I’ve had some high highs and some low lows as a Christian but Jesus has been faithful through every one of them.

The apologist and evangelist Ravi Zacharias wrote a book for disenchanted churchgoers called Has Christianity Failed You? He wrote it to address the complaint he kept hearing from people that the church had let them down.

Sadly, that is sometimes true; the church does fail people, ministers and members alike can get it all wrong. Love the church, commit to the church, but don’t put your faith in it. If you put your faith in the church you will almost certainly at some point be disappointed.

Not with Jesus though. Jesus fails nobody. Never mind the church; look at Christ and tell me what you find wrong with him. One good look at Jesus is enough to put everything else and everyone else in the shade.

“I am the life” he said. Not a life. Not a way of life. Not a lifestyle. The life. The real deal. If you want life in technicolor and 3-D and surround sound, you have to come to Jesus to get it.

Ending – the Joy of Fellowship

Let's wrap this up. You know what it’s like when you see a great film, or hear a great song, or watch a great match or taste a new food and you are so glad you did, you want someone else you love to experience it too? And when they do and they love it as well it makes you even happier? That’s what John is talking about here in v3-4.

John calls it ‘fellowship.’ It’s like friendship but ‘friendship’ is too shallow a word. The word he uses is a word that was used to describe the bond shared by conjoined twins.

John says in v3 “I’m telling you about what I saw and heard that changed my life so you can experience it too. And when you do, our friendship, our bond our fellowship with one another and with Father God will make me – and you – just so happy. It'll just be complete joy.

Martin Luther tasted that when his heart was warmed and revived by the Word of Life. “I would not give up one moment of [it]” he said, “for all the joys and riches of the world, even if they lasted for thousands and thousands of years.”

Let’s pray...

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 1 December 2019