The Source of Our Fellowship

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in 1 John this morning. 1 John. You know, every once in a while we’ll hear a story on the news, if you catch it, or catch it in the newspaper, about a person who’s just died, and a lot of times it’ll be somebody who was the last of fill in the blanks.

I remember just a few months ago, within the last few months, I don’t remember the exact time frame, but within just the last few months, the last confirmed person to have been born in the 1800s passed away. Sometimes it’ll be the last survivor of this particular battle of World War II. Sometimes it’ll be the last survivor of this particular historical incident, and anytime I hear those stories, I think about the wisdom that we’ve just lost. I think about the stories that we have just lost when this last person who was eyewitness to these events passed away.

And stories that if they weren’t written down, we’ll never get back. And the insight that we lose when that person goes. And I’m always fascinated by those stories.

I always have been. And over the last few months, as I’ve had free time, as rare as that may be, I have finished writing a book that I’ve been working on for years, putting the stories of the Bible in chronological order. And as I’ve been working on that, one of the stories that I’ve become fascinated by is the story of the Apostle John.

That the Apostle John died toward the end of the first century AD, and he was probably the youngest of the apostles that Jesus called, just based on things that we can piece together from the scriptures and from history. He was probably the youngest, and he was the longest lived. All of the other guys were killed in the, you know, some of them were killed in the 30s AD, not long after Jesus, not long after Jesus ascended to heaven.

Some of them, Paul and Peter, were both killed in the 60s. John lived into the 90s, maybe even as long as AD 100. John was around longer than any of them.

John saw more things than they did, but it occurred to me that when John was still around, when he was writing Revelation, when he was writing the gospel of John, when he was writing his letters, he was the last apostle. He was the last one. Of all the guys that, and the book of Acts describes an apostle as somebody who had been there during Jesus’ ministry, had been an eyewitness to his ministry, even though Paul was an opponent of Jesus at the time, he saw those things, and so God called him an apostle.

John was the last eyewitness that we know of to the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. And so at the time he’s writing, he’s writing to believers late in the first century. He’s writing to a whole new generation or maybe two generations down the road of people who believed in Jesus, but people who didn’t actually get to see it with their eyes. And when he’s writing the letters of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, he’s really writing his advice, his memoirs, his last thoughts to these people.

And as I thought about it in those terms, that when he’s writing, he’s the last eyewitness. What is it that he knows his time is coming soon? What is it that he wants them to remember?

What is important to him that they know going forward as the people who believe in Jesus? What is important for them to know? I became even more fascinated with these letters and looking at it saying, what are the last things that he wanted them to know and wants us to know?

Because last words are important. That’s why they always say so-and-so’s last words were, or their last wishes were, because when somebody’s on their deathbed, and they know their time is short, your priority list gets very short. And if I have one of those experiences one of these days, where I know, you know, I know the end is coming, it could happen like that, but if I know the end is coming, I’m not going to look at my kids and grandkids and say, and don’t forget to buy milk, and don’t forget to take out the, no, the priority list gets very short.

I’m going to dig down deep and think, what are the things that I want them to know? What are the things that are most important as they go forward without me. Well, these are some of the things that were most important to John as the last one, the last of the eyewitnesses, the last of this group of 12 that walked with him every day.

These are the things that John dug down deep and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit said, these are the things you need to know. As you go forward without me, as you go forward without this influence, these are the things that you need to know. And so starting this morning, we’re going to spend a few weeks, several weeks probably knowing me, going through a series on the letters from this last apostle.

What are the things that he wanted them to know and what can we learn from it? And as we start in 1 John chapter 1, we’re going to look at the first four verses this morning. He really talks about fellowship and relationships.

And one of the things that I take from this passage is that relationships matter. He’s talking about our relationship to Jesus Christ and how it matters in terms of our relationship to the Father. Relationships matter.

I learned this years ago when I first graduated college and started looking for a job. Nobody cared what I knew. But who I knew opened all kinds of doors.

Now, unfortunately for me, I didn’t know anybody in the Fortune 500, but I knew enough people that, well, my dad had an employee at the bank who was friends when I was in high school with the grocery store manager, and that’s why I got the interview. And my first job was working at Homeland, and they hired me in part because of the recommendation of somebody they knew. When I got out of college and went, well, when I started before that in college working at an insurance company, it was because they knew my mother.

I’m not saying it’s nepotism. They gave me a chance because of who I knew. Still had to prove myself.

When I went to work for Oklahoma County, I got an interview in the court clerk’s office because my aunt worked for the district attorney. So I quickly learned that this seems to be how the world works. They don’t care what you know.

They care who you know. I think this is one of the first. I think working here is the first job I’ve ever gotten without knowing somebody first. They want to know who you know. Right or wrong, they want to know who you know.

Because relationships are important. Relationships open doors. I know whenever I need help with somebody and they say, I need help with something and somebody says, well, I’ve got a friend that can work on that car for you.

Well, would you call them? Or is it okay if I tell them I know you? Because I don’t want to just call somebody up and say, hey, I heard you can help me with my car.

Or, hey, I heard you know. I want a name, I want a relationship that’s going to help open that door. You’ve all been in that same situation.

Can I tell them that you sent me? Because that relationship opens doors. That’s the same thing that John talks about in these first four verses in part.

He says, starting in verse 1, 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, for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us. That which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you. Okay, that’s a long thought there, where he’s just basically summing up the fact that he is an eyewitness, not just of the gospel, but of the life, of the ministry, the death, the burial, the resurrection, the post-resurrection appearances, and the ascension of Jesus Christ. He said, I saw it all.

That word of life he’s talking about is not some metaphor, although the Bible does use it that way at times, that word of life he’s talking about is exactly the same thing. What Jesus called himself. And when he says, we’ve seen that word man.

And by the way, that’s not a bad thing. Jesus himself said, blessed are those who have not seen but have still believed. But John’s saying, if you want proof, if you want validation, he said, I saw all these things.

The very foundation of our faith. He’s not a myth. He’s not a fairy tale.

He’s not some story out of the sky. He said, I saw the man and walked with him. And he said, that very man that I saw, everything that I saw, everything that the father revealed to us, he said in verse three, that which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you.

He said everything that we’ve seen and heard, everything that we’ve told you, was based on what we saw with our own eyes, based on the man that we knew, that they spent three and a half years with every day. You can think you know somebody pretty well, but when you live with them, it’s a whole new eye-opening experience, right? Amen?

Charlo, you thought you knew me pretty well, didn’t you? And then we got married, and she had to go home with me. Whole new experience.

And what you learn is I’m not quite as put together as I might otherwise appear to be. No, we learn, we can’t hide our character traits and our flaws and all that. We can’t hide who we really are when you live with somebody day in and day out for three and a half years and he’s saying, I did that.

I lived with Jesus. I walked with him. I did ministry with him.

I knew the man. So I know what I’m talking about. And bear witness and show unto you that eternal life, excuse me, wrong verse.

He says, we declare this unto you, verse 3, that ye may also have fellowship with us. He said that we tell you these things so that you can be right there with us. No, they haven’t experienced him firsthand the way that John and Peter and Paul had, but he says you can share in the experiential knowledge of Jesus Christ. I’ve never seen Jesus Christ in physical form on this earth, but I look at the eyewitness accounts, I look at the testimony all throughout the New and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that that’s the man I met when I was five years old.

When I heard his stories and asked him to forgive my sins and the Lord of my life. And it’s not exactly the same as what John was talking about, but I’ve known the man. And today, many in this room can say, I know the man.

With John, it was something special beyond that, though I knew the man because I walked with him on earth. And him telling that story so that they could have fellowship with him is exactly what happened with us. We can have fellowship even with the Apostle John.

We have something in common. We are part of the same family of God, part of the same fellowship of believers, because we all have Jesus Christ in common. He says this man is the basis of our fellowship together.

And he talks about this fellowship and he talks about relationship through this passage, fellowship with each other and fellowship with God. And let me just say before I move on, that Jesus Christ is the most important thing for us to have fellowship based on. We may have other things in common, I can talk to some of you about gardening I can talk to some of you about fishing I can talk to some of you about cars some of you can talk to me about sports and I won’t have a clue what you’re saying we can talk about some things and find some things in common but none of that matters if we don’t have Jesus Christ in common on the contrary we can have a lot of differences and probably do differences in background, differences in income differences in politics, differences in preferences and lifestyle but it doesn’t matter if we have Jesus Christ in common.

He’s the basis of our fellowship. John talks here about the fellowship among us, and it talks about our fellowship with God, and it’s the latter that I want to focus on this morning, our fellowship with God. Because he says, we declare this unto you that you may have fellowship with us.

Then goes on to say in verse 3, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. He says, I’ve told you all of this. We’ve told you everything we know about Jesus so that you could come along with us and have fellowship with the Father and with the Son. So it wasn’t about, hey, come join our movement so we can get bigger.

It wasn’t, hey, come follow us so we can show people how many followers we have. It wasn’t, hey, come follow us so we can be right. It was, hey, come with us so we can have fellowship with the God who made us.

And he says, these things write we unto you that your joy may be full. One thing I love about John, we don’t have to question why he wrote to us. He tells us all throughout his writings, this is why I’m writing unto you.

In chapter 5, which we’ll get to in a few weeks, he says many times, and these things I’ve written to you that you may know, that you may know. John didn’t want faith to be a guessing game. He said, I want you to know what you believe.

So John always tells us why he’s writing, and he says, I’m writing this to you so that you’ll know what Jesus did, so that you can through that have fellowship with God and that your joy may be complete. That your joy may be full. And some translations, some manuscripts say that our joy, and there’s a debate back and forth, did he really say our joy?

Did he say your joy? It doesn’t matter whether he’s saying you or us because they’re all in the same boat together. That’s not a difference that changes the meaning because ultimately they’re having fellowship together and with God and because of that their joy is complete.

And what I take from this, first of all, is that our relationships matter. He’s talking about, you know, we’ve gone to all this trouble. And folks, understand, they didn’t have it easy like we do today.

We think persecution is because they laugh at us on TV. Folks, these people were losing their lives to spread the gospel. They cared about other people enough that they went and told them about the love of Jesus Christ, even knowing that they could lose their lives in the process.

And he says, we’ve done this so that you can have fellowship with us and so that you can be part of this relationship. You can have fellowship with the Father and be part of that relationship and so that your joy may be complete because that relationship that we have with the Father matters. Folks, we were created.

Underscoring this passage is the fact the Bible teaches that we were created for fellowship. If you’re following along with the notes that were handed out to you this morning, that’s your first blank. We were created for fellowship.

You may say, but I don’t like people. I don’t want people coming over to my house. You still crave fellowship with somebody.

Don’t you? We all want to know that somebody loves us, that somebody cares about us. We all want to know that if we were to drop dead tonight, it wouldn’t take seven days for them to find us because the neighbor’s called about the smell.

We all want to know that there’s somebody in our lives who cares about us and has our back. Now, for some of us, it may be a smaller, more tightly knit group of people. I don’t like lots of people.

For some, you may want to have fellowship with everybody in town. But we were created to crave fellowship. God made us as pack animals.

I know we’re not animals. God created us as tribal beings. They told us Thursday that at the hospital, once Charlie is born, they won’t let any of the family come back for an hour or so after he’s there because they want us to bond with him.

And I’m thinking, why is it a problem for us to bond with him? Well, don’t you think that’ll happen anyway? And I’m still scratching.

Charlie’s like, that’s fine if that’s what they want to do. I’m still complaining about it as we leave the hospital. It’s an Indian hospital, and we’re Indians. We’re a tribal people.

Why would you exclude everybody? I would think it’s an event for the whole extended family. Everybody, come on.

We were created. Yeah, call the chief. We were created.

We were created to have fellowship and have relationships and have other people around us. When the Bible describes the fellowship that we were created for, we look at Genesis chapter 1 and 2, and I’m not going to go through it verse by verse. I’m just going to talk about the story.

I’d encourage you to go read it for yourself later. But look sometime at Genesis chapters 1 and 2 if you’re not familiar with us. God created us.

Folks, he didn’t wind up. I’m not a deist and I don’t understand how you can be one. God didn’t create the universe like a watch, wind it up and let it go and leave it alone.

God created the universe and has been intimately involved in human affairs ever since then. God created Adam and had a relationship with him. They knew each other.

The Bible says they walked together. God was in the habit of walking with them in the garden in the cool of the day. I don’t know what that looks like, but that’s what the Bible says happened.

And not only that, God looked at Adam and said, yeah, that’s not good for him to be alone. And as somebody who’s gone to church camp many, many times, I can tell you it is not good for men to be left to their own devices. The rooms get disgusting.

We need women around to give us a reason to clean up and be presentable. So God said he needs somebody else, and God created Eve because there was fellowship. that was missing.

And we crave fellowship because we’re created in the image of God. God didn’t need us for fellowship. God had perfect fellowship in himself as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And we’re created to fellowship because we’re created in the image of God who fellowships. God created us for fellowship with himself and each other. We were created for fellowship with God and each other.

I just realized that I gave you the blank and not all the words for the blank to fill in. But God created us for fellowship with Him, with God, and each other. And I still can hear the voices of the people that I’ve heard say, well, I don’t need anybody.

I don’t need anybody around me. Yeah, you do. And the more you fight it, the more you try to deny it, in my experience, it’s the people who fight the hardest to push everybody away that are hurting the most and most in need of genuine fellowship and genuine love and genuine relationships.

We were created for this fellowship, and fellowship is a source of joy for us, because it’s what we were made to do. We’ve been talking a lot with the kids this week about intended purpose, and I think they grasp what those words mean. We’ve explained it enough.

The scooter has a flat part for your feet. What is that made for? What’s the intended purpose?

To stand on, they say, okay, and it has handles. What’s the intended purpose of that? To hold on to.

Okay, good. We understand what things are for, So it’s not to try to sit on the handlebars and scoot. No, because you’re going to fall and break your head.

That scooter is made to put your hands on the handles and your feet on the flat part and scoot. Chairs are made to sit on. Tables are made to sit things on.

We understand what intended purpose is. Folks, we have an intended purpose, and part of that is to fellowship. And it’s just like most dogs, not mine, but most dogs are happiest when they’re outside doing what they’re supposed to do.

Charles’ dog is happiest when he’s outside chasing birds because he’s a Labrador retriever. That’s what he’s designed for. And he finds joy in that.

My dog is a little, well, my dog’s an anomaly. We won’t go there. Horses seem to be happiest when they’re out in the field running because that’s what they’re made to do.

Cows seem to be happiest when they’re out in the pasture eating grass because that’s what they’re made to do. And in that same line of reasoning, we are made for fellowship. and there’s joy for us in that.

He says, John says, I want you to be part of this fellowship that your joy may be full, that you may be overflowing with joy. And I realize sometimes we don’t find joy in fellowship with one another because we’re human and we’re sinful, and sometimes people can be mean. Sometimes even church people can be mean.

That’s not the way it’s supposed to be, though. God wants us to have fellowship with Him and with each other where there’s joy. That’s what we’re made for.

He says, These things I write to you that your joy may be full. When we have fellowship with God, it should be a joyful experience. He says in Psalm 1611, David describes the joy that he found in just being alone with God.

In just having that relationship with God. And folks, we can find joy just in having a relationship with God. I had a miserable, miserable time in Phoenix.

Y’all know that. I’m not going to tell the stories again. That was horrible.

and yet I called Charla one night and told her a story that I had run out of anything to drink in the hotel room and wasn’t paying the prices at the little pop machine. So I got in the car and drove down to the Circle K on the corner. They had two two liters of Canada Dry for $3 and that’s my drink of choice when it’s not unsweet tea.

So I got those and I called her and I said people in there were looking at me funny. She said well I bet. I said, well, no, the reason was I didn’t realize that I was walking through there singing, rock of ages, clef for me, yeah, out loud.

And I’ve been known to do this from time to time. If you ever hear somebody, I’ve got the joy, joy, joy. In the Seminole Walmart, it’s probably me.

And I don’t know I’m doing it. I’m thinking that’s a sign of having some joy in the Lord, even when I’m in the midst of a really irritating situation. that we can still have joy through our relationship, through our fellowship with the Lord.

Fellowship is a source of joy for us, and it’s supposed to be. But folks, there’s a problem. There’s a problem, and that problem is that sin has destroyed our fellowship.

We were created to have fellowship with God, and as I said in Genesis 1 and 2, we did have fellowship with God until we decided I’m going to do something else. And I know people over the years have said, well, what’s the big deal? They ate some fruit.

Well, it is a big deal. When you look at everything God had done for them, when you look at all that God had made for them and all the joy he had put before them, and God being holy and sinless and perfect and creating us to be those things, and he looked at us and said, you think the Bible is hard to follow now? You think all the rules are hard to do now? That wasn’t the way God intended it.

There was one rule. Don’t eat from that one particular tree. You can have anything else.

And the problem was not that they ate the fruit. The problem was they decided, hmm, I’d rather listen to Satan than listen to God. See, fruit’s not the problem, it’s who you’re siding with.

And your children may eat something you tell them not to and you might think big deal, and it’s probably not a big deal. If your children came home one day though and said, hey, I decided I’d join up with Satan and his team, would that be a big deal to you? See, look at this from God’s perspective. And God being holy and sinless could not coexist with this in the same place.

Could not just let it go. Could not say, oh, it’s all right, baby. You love Satan.

Come on to the house anyway. No, they had a choice to make and they made it. It wasn’t about the fruit.

It was about saying, I would rather follow Satan than follow God. And the problem is that I do that too. Now, I know in my right mind, I don’t want to follow Satan.

But there are moments of temptation where that little voice comes and speaks to me and I know I’m not alone in this room in saying that. Comes and speaks to me and I think, no, I’m not supposed to do that. No, I’m not supposed to.

Oh, okay, that sounds good. And in that moment, I choose up the wrong side. And we’ve all done that and we are all tainted by sin.

And that sin destroys our fellowship with God because God is holy. God is perfect. 1 John later on in this chapter says, if we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth.

He says if we’re in sin and say we have fellowship with God, we’re lying. We can’t do both. We can’t be in sin and be in fellowship with God.

And this morning, if you’ve ever sinned, then where you are is in a situation where your fellowship with God has been broken. You may ask, what’s sin? If you’re new to this whole church thing.

Sin is any time we disobey God. And it can be an action that we do. It can be something God said, do it and we don’t do it.

It can be a thought that’s wrong. It can be an attitude that’s wrong. That’s where I sin the most, honestly, is my attitude.

And I’m not saying, oh, he doesn’t do wrong things. No, attitude is just as bad and sometimes harder to fix. I spend a lot of time asking God to straighten out my attitude.

Folks, that sin separates us from God. And it’s not a matter of, well, if the good outweighs the bad, then I’ll be okay. No, it’s a matter of is there sin?

If the answer is yes, then the fellowship is broken and there’s a penalty incurred. So we have a problem because we were made for fellowship. We were made to find joy in fellowship with our God.

He designed us for that. And yet that fellowship has been taken and broken because of sin. And the problem is compounded by the fact that you and I can’t do a thing to fix it.

It’s compounded by the fact that you and I cannot do a thing to fix it. I cannot get extra credit with God by doing good things. If I do good things, I’m only doing what the law requires.

And you’ll probably get tired of hearing this example, but I love to use it, so I’m going to. That if I broke the law and stood before a judge, and he said, well, you’re going to jail because you broke that law, and I said, well, look at all the other laws I didn’t break. Is it if the good outweighs the bad situation?

No. Do I get extra credit for all the laws I didn’t break, or is that just what was required? It was just what was required.

doesn’t change the fact that I’ve broken the law. All the good we can do, all the going to church, all the given money, it doesn’t change the fact that we’ve sinned. And folks, this passage and most other passages in the Bible, let me rephrase that because that’s unclear.

This passage and the rest of the Bible teach that restored fellowship is only possible through Jesus Christ. Now, when I was about to say most of the Bible teaches that, it’s not that there’s some of the Bible that does not teach that. It’s that there are some passages that are about other things. But the Bible as a whole, not just this passage, they teach that restored fellowship with God is only possible through Jesus Christ. And that’s why he says that we’ve gone to all this trouble in the first couple of verses here.

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. For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life which was manifested, which was with the Father, excuse me, and was manifested unto us. He says that they’ve written this and they’ve declared it so that we can have that fellowship and so that our joy could be full.

He said that has been the reason for all of this. The only reason, he says, that we’ve gone to all this sacrifice and all this trouble and some of us have endured martyrdom to tell you about Jesus Christ is because the only way that you can have that restored fellowship with God is through Jesus Christ. There’s no other way. And I realize that in today’s world that sounds intolerant and it sounds exclusive and it sounds narrow-minded and you know what it is.

But I didn’t say it. People can be mad at me if they want. Really, who you’re mad at is Jesus and the Apostle John.

He said it. I just happened to believe it. There’s no other way.

There’s no other way to be reconciled to God but through Jesus Christ. Folks, I know today that I have a relationship with God. And I know that my sins are forgiven and I know that I’ll be in heaven one day. And I don’t say that with a bit of pride saying that I did anything about it, that God just loves me because I’m good and I behave and I go to church and I’m extra special. None of those things matter.

What mattered was realizing that I had sinned against God and believing that Jesus Christ was the only one who could pay for it. That I could spend eternity in hell if I wanted to, to be punished for my sins, or I could accept the fact that Jesus Christ was punished in my place. The Bible says, therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Folks, we only have peace with God now through Jesus Christ because we started out as the enemies of God through our rebellion.

But the book of Romans says, peace with God is available through Jesus Christ. Not because I came to church. Not because I was good. Not because I gave money.

Not because daddy was a preacher. You heard Benjamin say himself this morning, he had to ask Jesus to forgive his sins. He didn’t cut any ice with God that his daddy’s a preacher.

Folks, it’s the fact that Jesus Christ died for us because he died for every rotten, wicked, sinful thing I’ve ever done. Because He was nailed to the cross and bled and gave up His life for every bad attitude I’ve ever had. For every word I’ve ever said in anger.

Because He paid for all of that and only because He paid for all of that. Today I can have fellowship with God and with Jesus Christ. This morning you need to realize that fellowship with the Father fellowship with the Father depends on a relationship with the Son. God created us for the fellowship and it’s been it’s been messed up it’s been destroyed we want it restored and brought back it’s only possible through Jesus Christ and today your fellowship with the Father depends on a relationship with the Son let me say well God loves everybody yeah God loved everybody enough to send Jesus to die for everybody when John 3.

16 says for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life that word so is often interpreted to mean that much but really it means in this way How did God show how much he loved you? How did God show his love to us? He sent J

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