1 John 1 - Introduction to the Epistle
Tom Shrader begins a study of 1 John by explaining the historical context of Gnostic heresy that threatened the early church through subtle deception rather than direct persecution. He identifies five core Gnostic beliefs that mirror modern challenges to biblical Christianity, emphasizing that John wrote to provide freedom from despair, guilt, deception, and insecurity. The teaching establishes 1 John as highly relevant for contemporary believers facing similar attacks on biblical truth.
“A half-truth is a half-lie.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: 1 John
Recorded: January 05, 1989
Duration: 40 min
Themes: deception, truth, freedom, discernment, heresy, persecution, despair, security, questioning faith, facing false teachers, new believer, doubting christian, seminary student, pastor, struggling with guilt, young adult
Scripture: 1 John 1, Luke 1:1-4, Acts 1:1, Acts 1:8, Acts 20:27-31, 1 John 1:4, 1 John 2:1, 1 John 2:26, 1 John 5:13, Romans 1:22, Genesis 2, Genesis 3, Genesis 4
Theological Themes: gnosticism, biblical authority, false teaching, apologetics, doctrinal purity, spiritual warfare, christology, biblical inerrancy
Full Transcript
If you missed part of the study last year, studying the gospel of Luke, we looked at it and very honestly, it sounds like a long time, but we really moved quickly over a lot of it, some of it not so quickly. But when it came time to pick a book to begin now for this year, I was a little puzzled and I picked a book that I want you to see why and I want you to see where we're going with the book.
So let me put it in context for you. Turn to Luke, the book that we just finished in the first chapter, and let's refresh for ourselves why Luke wrote the book.
Luke's Purpose: Establishing Exact Truth
Here's what Luke said. He said, "Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an accurate account of the things accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses of the servants of the Word"—and the Word is capitalized, speaking of the person of Christ—"have handed them down to us, it is fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus, so that you might know the exact truth about the things you've been taught."
That's why Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke. If you really look at the four Gospels, essentially that's the reason all four Gospels were written. In this particular case, Luke wrote to this guy named Theophilus. Theophilus was a friend of his, probably somebody that he had shared things with, and they had gone back and forth, but he said, "I'm going to write them down for you so you've got a record." He said, "When we're apart, you can open it up, and you're going to have available to you the very thoughts that we've gone back and forth about."
I want you to know, look at the careful phrasing in verse four. He said, "I want you to know the exact truth." I want it to be very, very precise. Luke was a doctor, a medical doctor, and we said an art buff, probably a sculptor, and a history buff. If he were around today, he's the kind of guy that would be either a surgeon or a comptroller or one of these guys. I met a guy the other day, he said, "You know what a comptroller is?" And I said, "No." He said, "That's a guy that doesn't have enough personality to be an accountant." And I said, "Well, that's pretty accurate." But those of you that are comptrollers, we apologize for that.
So he would be one of these guys. He wanted to know it. And when he said exact truth, he meant exact truth. We studied the gospel; Luke was precise.
Luke's Volume Two: The Book of Acts
Now what a lot of people don't realize is that Luke wrote volume two to this thing. Turn over to the right through the gospel of John to the book of Acts. Acts chapter one and verse one, just to the right through John's gospel and into the book of Acts. And we discover something else. We discover volume two.
"The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day He was taken up after He had, by the Holy Spirit, given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen." He said, in a nutshell, here's what volume one was. It was the life of Christ. I started at His birth. I actually started before His birth, to the time He ascended into heaven.
And we spent the last three or four weeks really focusing on the fact that Christ indeed did die on the cross, and indeed was risen, and He was risen bodily. And he says to Theophilus, "I wrote volume one so you'd know that."
But he said, "I want to tell you something now, and here's what's happened." He said, "I wrote up to that point." Look at verse eight. These are the last words of Christ as He ascends into heaven. He said, "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, even the remotest part of the earth."
That's what the book of Acts is about. Book of Acts was written about 60 AD, and it was designed to be volume two to Theophilus. He said, "Here's what happened originally, but here's what's happened in the 30 years that have transpired since then."
The Story of the Early Church
Obviously doctrine, all Scripture's doctrine, but it's really a history book. It's a book of how the early church expanded. It moved all over the world. It records, the book of Acts, the struggles of the early church, how Peter and John rose to positions of authority in terms of being able to teach, and how thousands of people came to Christ. These guys were more effective than any evangelist around.
And then all of a sudden in Acts chapter 7, we see one of the martyrs of the early church. Stephen is killed. Acts chapter 9, Paul, he's minding his own business. He's just on the way to Damascus. All he wants to do is round up the Christians, women and men there, and take them back to Jerusalem so they can persecute them.
And he's knocked off his horse. We say that literally. We don't know that he was on a horse. He's knocked to the ground, and he's blinded, and he sees Christ, and he comes to Christ, and Paul becomes probably the most influential person in history all the way through till today. And that's, in a nutshell, the book of Acts. Acts records for us volume 2 of what Luke wanted.
Moving to 1 John
But we're not studying Acts. I'm smarter than that. We're going all the way to the back of the book, and you'll see this because I want you to see the context, all the way to the back of the book to a little book called 1 John.
1 John, now this is all the way almost to the end of the Bible. You can start at the book of Revelation and move left, and you'll hit a little book called Jude and 2 John, and you'll get 1 John. 1 John is the book we're going to study for the next few months.
The reason I do that introduction that way is I want you to see who John's writing to and why he's writing. I need to be real honest with you at this point, and that is to tell you I'm not much for introductions, and especially in this environment because probably most of you aren't that interested in the history of it all. You're saying, "Give me the facts and let's let it go. What difference does it make today?"
What difference does it make to me today? Well, I want you to see that we need to set the stage for 1 John, and you will see that we have picked out a book that could be written to you today sitting right here in this room right now.
John writes in about 90 AD. I give you the dates so you get a sense of what's gone on. Christ, plus or minus 30 AD, is crucified. Luke gives us the next 30 years of history of the church in the book of Acts. And then John comes along in 90 AD and writes this book, 1 John.
John also wrote the Gospel of John—Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. He also wrote 2 John and 3 John, and John is the guy who wrote the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. At this point in time, John is probably the only apostle that is living when he writes this book. I want you to see that John fills in that 30-year gap from the end of the book of Acts to this point.
John's Response to 60 Years of Church History
So John writes a book totally in response to those 30 years. John writes a book that's dealing at this point with an organization, the church, that's been up and running now for about 60 years. It's had its growing pains, but it's fairly established. At this point, it's relatively a given fact that the church is going to exist for at least some point in time.
The temple of Jerusalem has been destroyed. A lot has gone on, and most of the things that Christ said have come to fruition. Even the casual observer can look at them and say, obviously, this Christ knew something and His followers are going to stand in there. But now John writes a book in response to his times.
The Change from Frontal Attack to Subtle Deception
Get a hold of this. In the book of Acts, early on, when the church is established and begins to expand, the attack that it experienced was a frontal attack. It was a direct open attack. They didn't like you. They took you out to the edge of town, thumped you over the head, and that was the end of it. And they thought that by doing that, they could suppress the church.
They attacked the Lord Jesus Christ and killed Him. They took the disciples, and all of the disciples—Judas goes and kills himself, the other ten that are dead at this point that John writes, the other ten have all been martyred, tradition tells us, and now John is all by himself. But all of a sudden, John sees an attack that scares him because the frontal attack, I can get ready for. See, I can see it coming, so I'm prepared for it.
The Punch You Don't See Coming
I don't know how many of you remember, most of you guys are going to remember, the second Ali-Liston fight up in Lewiston, Maine. It was the one that went about 60 seconds. And I remember, at the time, watching it, and all the controversy, and that Liston took a dive, and then there were assassins in the crowd, and Liston knew about it, so Liston got out of there, and I'm sure Sonny wasn't above any of that, but there's a guy by the name of Jose Torres who at the time was a light heavyweight champion of the world.
And Torres is sitting at ringside. You're wondering what this has to do with 1 John. You're going to see it in a minute. It's going to come together so beautifully, you're going to say, isn't that incredible?
So they're sitting there, and Torres writes an account of what happened. He said, there was no dive. He said, here's what happened. Ali was positioned, and he was hitting him. And he's jabbing, and he's jabbing. And he said, then he threw a punch that traveled about 18 inches. It wasn't a particularly hard punch, but he said, here's the key: Liston never saw it.
And he said, as a boxer, I can take a pretty good blow. If I see it coming, something happens chemically in my body, and I'm set. He said, I've been hit with some great shots, and they really don't bother me. The ones that have really hit me the best are the ones that all of a sudden they hit me, I don't know where it came from. He said, it dropped Liston completely through his equilibrium. It didn't hurt him like other punches that he'd been hit with, but he said he never saw it coming.
John's Warning About the Unseen Attack
That's the context that John writes. John writes to the Christian church and says, watch out, there's a punch being thrown at you that you don't even see coming, that's incredibly devastating, that will take you right to the mat. He said, those guys that are charging with the swords and the knives, and they're going to thump you, don't worry about them. They'll get you and it'll be over with. But he said, this other thing is far more dangerous.
Let me read to you from the book of Acts in the 20th chapter. Paul saw this same thing. Acts chapter 20 and verse 27, Paul calls together the elders of the church of Ephesus. This is, in his mind, the last time he's going to see these men. And we've said before, that's always important context. If you and I are getting together for what one of us perceives to be the last time, or maybe both of us, we're going to say some things, we're going to clear the deck, we're going to come right from the heart.
If I know that today is the last time I'm going to see some of you, and you're on your way out of here, maybe you're moving out of town, or maybe you're in the hospital and you're very sick, I'm going to deliver a message. And if I'm you, I'm going to deliver a message to you that's going to be right to the heart of the issue. Well, that's where Paul is in this church at Ephesus.
Paul's Final Warning to the Ephesian Elders
Last time he thinks he's going to see them, here's what he says: "I did not shrink from declaring the whole purpose of God. Be on your guard for all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God, which He purchased with His own blood." He said, I gave you the whole truth. He's got the elders together and he said, I always told you the truth. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. I didn't pick out this because you'd like to hear this and exclude that because you didn't want to hear it. He said, I gave you the whole truth.
But he said, I want you to watch out. "I know after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing
the flock. And from among your own selves, men will rise speaking perverse things to draw the disciples away. Therefore, be on the alert, remembering night and day for a period of three years, I did not cease to admonish you with tears."
Paul says this: watch out. Watch out from within. Watch out for that punch that you're not going to see because there's a punch coming that will bring this church at Ephesus right to the ground. He puts it in context and says, "Here's what it is. It's when you start messing around with the Word of God. It's when I start giving you a half-truth." Men, always remember that a half-truth is a half-lie.
John writes probably 40 to 45 years after Paul speaks to the church at Ephesus, and he says exactly the same thing. John writes to this church, and let me be more specific, John writes to you and to me, and he said, "I want you to watch out." Especially in this day and age because the attack on the church is not as direct as it used to be. They're not going to drag you out when you go into church this Sunday and martyr you, by and large. But there's a subtle attack. There are subtle pressures. There are society pressures that attack the very core of the things you believe.
The Recipients and Context of John's Letter
I want to show you who John wrote this letter to, which was the church, and why he wrote the letter. There was a lot of heresy that was popping up at this time. There was a group called the Gnostics. Let me spell it for you in case you're a note-taker: G-N-O-S-T-I-C. Gnostic. Gnostic meant literally "to know" or "to learn."
Here's how we know the word. We know the word with the little letter A in front of it. It's "agnostic." It's somebody who says "I don't know. I don't know about God. I don't have enough evidence." Man, let me be real candid with you: I don't believe in agnostics. They don't exist. That's what Jesus said. He said you're either for Me or against Me.
If you're here today and you are an agnostic, you don't know, you think you know, understand you're not an agnostic. You're an atheist. You either believe or you don't believe. That's what John's going to do. He's going to do something real neat. He's going to come in and he's going to take away all the middle ground. He's going to make it an either-or situation. He's going to say, "You think there's a spiritual Switzerland? You think there's a place you can go and claim neutrality before God? No, there isn't."
The Five Gnostic Beliefs
The Gnostics were a group that were around in this day and age that John wrote to. The reason I belabor this, guys, and I really ask you to hang with me, the reason I belabor this is because the Gnostics are the guys you're going to meet when you go to the office today. Here are the five basic things that the Gnostics believed. John writes in response to them.
Here's the first one: they believed that knowledge was superior to virtue. They believed knowledge was the highest and best. These guys had a problem. They knew that the body and the spirit were different. They knew that in this difference between the spirit and the body, in this dualism, that the spirit in their mind was all important, the body wasn't important at all.
When you think like that, you're going to result in behavior one of two ways. You're going to become a guy that becomes very determined to discipline the body. You've seen him. You've seen him at certain times when they show those people in Tehran going down the street and they're flogging themselves. You read about Gandhi, how he'd sleep with his wife and nieces. He would sleep with them as a sign of determination, never touching them physically, not having sex with them and all this to get control of his body because he thought his body was bad and his mind was good.
So you're either going to do that or you're going to do what the Gnostics did. They said, "Well, the spirit or the mind is important. The body is not. So it's yahoo time for the body. It's immaterial. It doesn't matter." So knowledge was superior to virtue.
Knowledge vs. Behavior in Modern Times
Men, that's the very thing that we campaign against in here every week. If you don't think this is relevant 2,000 years later, then you haven't been listening in here. Because we campaign against point one of what the Gnostics believed every day. We say virtue or behavior is incredibly important, and it's as important as knowledge.
A guy gave me a tape the other day. It opened with a commencement address at Pepperdine University, 1984. The speaker said this: "Greed is good. Greed is really good. And there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with it if it drives you. Nothing wrong if it motivates you. Nothing wrong if you run your business this way or your life this way." Interesting to note that the man who delivered the address was a guy by the name of Ivan Boesky. And he was wrong.
Knowledge is very, very important. But behavior is equally important. It doesn't do you any good to know something if you're not going to act on it. I can't tell you how many people I've met in the last week that said, "Boy, I just knew. I knew Notre Dame was going to kill them. I don't know why I didn't bet on it." Well, if you knew it, it doesn't do you any good to know it if you're not going to respond to it. I'm not encouraging gambling; I'm using it as an illustration.
You've got to know something, but then you've got to respond to it. Virtue is important. Behavior is important. We're here for a very specific reason: to give you what Jesus Christ is, what He says, and what difference it makes today. If you grab hold of who He is and you grab hold of what He says, but it doesn't make any difference to you today, then we're wasting our time and you're wasting your time. The Gnostics said knowledge is important and it's superior to virtue, and that's absolutely wrong. John's going to say, "Look, it makes all the difference how you behave."
Here's the second thing they believe: they believed in the non-literal sense
of Scripture. They believed that the non-literal sense of Scripture is correct and Scripture can only be understood by a select few. These guys were intellectual snobs. These guys really thought they were something.
Romans 1:22 is one of my favorite verses. It says, "Professing to be wise, they became fools." These guys are really smart. These are the elite of this day. They'd be on Jeopardy today.
The Modern Intellectual Elite
Have you ever noticed anything about Jeopardy? I love to watch Jeopardy. Here they come introducing today's contestants. Now we introduce the six categories: Letters or words that contain two Qs, Athletic endeavors in the 1650s, Women in Romania, and the Bible.
Here are the intellectual giants, and you watch that board because I can tell you how it's going to go. "I'll take letters with double Qs for $500" before "I'll take that Bible thing for a hundred." You watch that Bible category. If it's church history it's different because these people know history—that's a bunch of facts. They got that down. But if it's Bible, they can't touch it.
Now everything's gone and Alex Trebek is panicking because there's two minutes left. "I guess we're going to have to do this Bible category. I'll take Bible for a hundred." "What's the daily double?" "Oh, I'll wager $25 and I'm in trouble here." Then the question will be "What's the first book of the Bible?" "Oh, a trick question! This is unfair. Who produces this thing anyway?"
These guys are the smart elite guys. They know nothing. They don't know anything. If perhaps they get the answer right, they could not explain to you what it means in a million years. That's a generalization, but it's pretty accurate.
The Gnostic Influence Today
These Gnostics were snobs and they believed in the non-literal translation of the Bible. This is important and we belabor it because I want you to know that that's around today.
Here's an article from December 14th, Phoenix Gazette. "Although it's known as the good book, the Bible is full of contradictions and certainly is not infallible." That's the teaching of C. Edwin Daniel, Grace United Methodist pastor. Daniel says the Bible is full of contradictions because it was written not by God but by men long ago in a society different than ours. "I give God more credit. If God would have written the Bible, He'd only have one gospel, not four. Some of the works of the Bible are divinely inspired, some are not. That's where the contradictions come about."
This is dangerous because he's teaching this twice a year to classes you can go and take. Here's one of his graduates, Ellen McGuire, age 35, who attended these sessions: "I understand now there's mistakes in the Bible. These are stories written to get a point across. I've never heard anybody speak like this." Daniel concludes the most important instruction he can give about studying the Bible is for people to be aware that the book was never meant to be taken literally.
He would have made a Gnostic. The Bible is God's Word in my mind, cover to cover. Edwin Daniel has a problem: some of these books are literal, he said, and some aren't. Which ones are? Why?
Taking Scripture Literally
This is God's book cover to cover, and we believe it literally. Does that mean you take the Bible literally? Absolutely, where it's meant to be taken literally. You also have to understand it's literature. When Jesus Christ said "I'm a door," I don't walk up to Him and think—people didn't then either—"Where's the knob?" We have to take it literally where it's clearly historical and clearly meant to be taken literally, and understand it as literature as well.
The Gnostics didn't buy that. They had another little thing that they slid in there. They said you just can't figure it out on your own—you need to go to somebody. A friend of mine went to see Edwin Daniel when he was going to church there and he had some questions. This guy didn't know a lot and he was not being antagonistic. Here was the man's response: "I've got two PhDs. How many you have? You go get two and then you come and talk to me." There's a pastor's heart. There's a guy that's really concerned about his flock.
The Third Gnostic Belief
Here's the third thing the Gnostics believed. There's a tendency right now to check out—it's introduction, we're not in the verses yet—but this is really an important point because you're going to see that this Gnostic that is affecting John is the same guy thinking like the one across the desk from you.
Here's the third thing they said: Evil in the world means that God's not the only creator. What that means is there's evil and we don't know how to explain it. I cannot tell you where evil came from. I don't know where evil came from. But I can tell you that one of the things that has a lot to do with evil is what we call the S-word: sin.
If you've got an Old Testament, you rip out Genesis chapter 3, you read Genesis chapter 2, and then you go to Genesis chapter 4, and you're going to go, "There must have been something in that third chapter." Genesis chapter 2 ends with Adam and Eve in the garden. They're naked, nobody's pointing and laughing, everybody's happy, they're having a good time. Genesis chapter
Genesis 4 opens with murder and strife and hatred. Well, Genesis chapter 3 - sin comes into the world. But the Gnostics said in all their wisdom, "Look, there's evil. Somebody had to have created it. Therefore there must be a co-creator besides God." John's going to deal with that and say no, the world was not created by people other than God.
Here's the fourth thing they believed: that the incarnation was incredible - in other words, not to be believed - because deity cannot unite itself with anything material such as the body. See, they didn't buy the incarnation of Christ. They didn't know what Christ was, but He wasn't God come in the flesh. That's why John's going to start out by saying, "Oh, He was God come in the flesh." They said they don't know, because remember now, they believe the body's bad. So they're going to say nothing good is going to dwell in this body.
The Importance of the Virgin Birth
Now it's important to know that the Lord Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man. There was a thing that we call the virgin birth. I'll never forget one night sitting in the Student Union in 1971 back in school. We had a Dutch theologian in, and this guy was dazzling us all. We had our coffee and cigarettes. I didn't like the smell of cigarettes - I thought they were obnoxious - so I smoked cigars because I didn't think they were offensive. So here they are now, these wimps with their cigarettes and their coffee, and me with my cigar and my coffee, and this Dutch theologian and his cigarette, except he held it funny.
He said, "This virgin birth - let me ask you, what's important? The virgin or the birth?" He said, "You're all wrong on your focus. Your focus is on the product of the birth, not on the virgin." We all said, "Wow, look how this guy just cut right to the - he's a smart guy." What I found out is he's dumb. See, the virgin is the important part of the birth, because if Jesus Christ was born, bred, conceived by a man just like you and me, He's got a problem. He's got sin. But somehow Mary became pregnant with Jesus by the Holy Spirit. That's what Luke taught us.
I'm going, "Yeah, yeah, that's a little hard for me, Mary. I don't buy that. It's Him." I get great comfort in knowing that the first person to question the virgin birth was who? Mary. The Holy Spirit came upon her, and the angel said, "You're going to be pregnant." Mary said, "How can that be?" She said, "I'm no biologist, but I know something. There's no way I can be pregnant because I've never even been around a guy. I've never even kissed a guy, but I certainly haven't had intercourse with a guy." No, she was pregnant because the Holy Spirit miraculously fertilized one of her eggs, and this baby was born God-man.
Anybody comes and they want to take Jesus and they want to ding away at that deity, they want to say, "Yeah, He was godlike but not God" - you're right at the core of all Christianity.
The Fifth Gnostic Belief
Here was the fifth thing the Gnostics believed, and it's the last thing they believed: there was no resurrection of the flesh. Well, they obviously have not heard our tapes from the last three weeks, because we went out of our way to point out that Jesus Christ rose bodily from the dead.
Guys, I belabor those five points not to bore you to death at all. I belabor those five points so that you can understand when we look at this book, we're not looking at a book that was geared to an audience 2,000 years ago, totally irrelevant today. I would venture to say if we stood out here in this lobby and we started pulling people in and we started asking them questions about Christianity and about some basic beliefs of Christianity, we went over the course of the day, here these five things coming right back at us. See, nothing's changed. When John writes this book to these people 1,800 years ago, it's a book that we can take out today and it makes all sense today.
The Search for Freedom
These people were in bondage. Have you heard that word lately? "We just want to be free." That's what my generation lived for. Our whole movement was to be free. We just wanted to be free, and I was right there with them. We didn't want to have any of the restrictions of anything. We wanted to prove we were individuals, and the way we proved it is we all looked alike and dressed alike and smelled alike and we all did the same thing. To prove you're individual doesn't make much sense now, but it did then.
And guys, that's what you're facing in the world. Very honestly, can I be honest? That must be what some of you are thinking right now. Thank God that you're here. I really believe people don't come to this stuff by accident. You're here because God put you here. John said, "I want to give you freedom - real freedom."
John's Four Freedoms
Then we close with this and end up doing the whole day on introduction, but that's okay. John said, "There's four things I want to give you freedom from." I want you to see it. First John chapter 1 verse 4: "These things we write so that our joy may be complete." He said, "I want to give you, first of all, freedom from despair."
You know, this world's kind of a rotten place. Have you noticed that? There are F-14s shooting down MIGs, and there are people shooting people. We're going to bury that Winslow Sheriff posse guy today that was just shot when he stopped the car. The world's not a really nice place, even at Christmas time. I really love the Lord Jesus Christ, and believe Him, and I try to be obedient to Him. But I got to tell you, there are nights when I watch Brokaw, and I just - I can't watch Rather, and I don't watch Donaldson - where I'm so depressed when I watch that. Just saying, "What's going on? What kind of world is this?"
John said, "It's a bad world, but I don't want you to be filled with despair. I want you to be filled with joy. I want you to be filled with hope, because we know where we're going. We know how this whole thing turns out." He said, "Here's another thing you need freedom from. Chapter 2, verse 1: My
Children, I'm writing these things to you, and if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He said, I want you to have freedom from guilt.
You don't need to see hands on this, but how many of you sin? Sometimes I can sin, and my mind gets a little goofy, and I'll say, "You're a Bible teacher, and you're sinning like this. Who are you anyway?" And I know the answer to that: nobody. You can get so down on yourself, and so riddled with guilt, that you're almost incapacitated.
I don't know who figures these things out, but the stats that I came across in the last month or so said 70 to 90 percent of the mental problems in the world, in our country, could be eliminated if we could eliminate guilt. Fifty percent of the people in hospitals, they say, could go home tomorrow if we could get rid of the guilt in their life. Their guilt has produced either something that they think is physical, or in fact something physical.
Freedom from Guilt Through God's Forgiveness
You want some freedom from guilt? Here's one of my favorite things to do in here, and if it embarrasses you, don't participate. But just out of curiosity, and we do it six times a year, I think: How many of you came to Christ after you were 25? Because they've been ridden hard, hung up wet, and they can tell you a lot of stories.
But I'll tell you, you come to Christ, and I still think about those things. I was thinking about one of them driving over here this morning, about what a derelict I was, and there's no question about it. But I got to tell you, I don't lay awake at night figuring it out. I just thank God that He's God, and He's forgiven me, and He's cleansed me from that. John said, I'm going to give you some freedom. It's freedom from guilt.
Freedom from Deception Through God's Word
Here's the third freedom. It's also in the second chapter. I think it's one of the heart issues of what he's writing about. Chapter 2, verse 26: "These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you." He said, I want to give you freedom from deception. I don't want you to end up down in South America drinking Kool-Aid with Jim Jones.
And here's how you know that. When Jim comes to you with something, you go, "Jim, really interesting. Now, here's what you say, and here's what the Bible says. Now, who am I supposed to believe, Jim? You or the Bible?"
One of the most effective things I've ever seen is when somebody will take up a faith—let's not call it a cult, let's just call it a belief that's out there. Maybe it's what we recognize as a cult. Maybe it's somebody that says they're Christian, and we'll put down what their teaching says and what the Bible says. And if there's a contradiction, man, where do we go? Right here.
See, I need to know this book. That's why we study it. We don't study it because we don't have anything else to do. We study it because I need to know the truth so when something false comes along, I won't be deceived. I won't be waddling along, giving my life and my faith and my money to somebody that's out there in left field.
Freedom from Insecurity Through Knowing You Have Eternal Life
Here's the fourth freedom. It's freedom from insecurity. Chapter 5, verse 13. John closes the book, and we close with this. He said, "These things I've written to you who believe in the Son of God, in the name of the Son of God, in order that you might know that you have eternal life." Look at the word He uses in the very next verse: "And this is the confidence which we have before Him."
He said, I don't want you to be going through life guessing. I don't want you to be scratching your head. And here's the question that most of you have heard so many times that it means almost nothing to you anymore: If you drove out today, and as you pulled out onto Indian Bend Road, and a cement truck was turning into this place to help fix it up and bring in some concrete—it wasn't a shot, but it turned out to be—and as they turn the cement truck, the cement truck falls over on your car and crushes it. Where will you spend eternity?
Other than in that car, because we'll probably never get you out. But where will you spend eternity? Where's your soul? Where will you spend eternity? And if your answer is, "Well, I hope, I think," John said, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not writing this so you hope. I'm not writing this so you think. I'm writing this so you know.
Confidence in God, Not in Ourselves
Well, the big guy upstairs—let me tell you something. There's not a big guy upstairs. There's a holy righteous God who's now upset that you called Him the big guy. He said, I want you to know that there's a holy God and a day that shall stand before Him. But I want you to do it with confidence, not arrogance, but confidence. Confidence in yourself? No. See, all my confidence lies in Him. I base my life on the fact that I can believe God. He says, if I come to Him in repentance and faith...
A guy stopped me—and we're going just a second longer—a guy stopped me coming out of Tucson yesterday, out of the meeting, and he said, "I need to talk to you. I've given my life to Christ, I've prayed the prayer, I know that I have, I've repented, my life is beginning to change, but I don't feel secure about it." I said, "Wait a minute, why not?"
See, God says, you do that and you've got eternal life. Not that you're going to go undo it, but He said, your salvation, your gift of eternal life, doesn't come from you, it comes from Him. So when I say I'm insecure, you know what I'm really saying? I'm saying, "God, I don't really believe You." And He's saying, "I want you to know that you can believe Me. I want you to have confidence. I want you to be confident, not confidently assured in myself, but confidently assured in My Lord."
John's Purpose for the Church
John writes a book, 1 John, to a society, to a church, and that's what this is right here. It's church, not like you think of church—it's the body of believers—to you individually. He writes to you and he says, "Look, there's a world out there that's going to try to deceive you, and you may feel guilty, and you may want to..."
He said, "Don't do that. Here's how I want you to know the truth. Watch out, because you can take the left hook that you see, but that little short punch that you don't see, it will knock you flat."
John writes a book to you and to me. Men, you face a world filled with Gnostics. I don't know what they call themselves, but they're like Gnostics. You want the battle, you want a weapon, you want to be able to fight them, you want to be able to know how you can stand firm. That's what John's going to tell us in the next few weeks as we study this book.
An Invitation to Join Us
Let me remind you, I think it's a great time to invite people in the office, great time at home, wherever it might be, to encourage people to come as we start a new book. We start next week, right here, seven o'clock.
Let's pray.
Father, thank You that we can know the truth and the truth will set us free, real freedom. Thank You for Your word that it's absolutely true, cover to cover. Thank You that Your Son became flesh and He lived among us, He dwelt in us. Father, we thank You for that.
Help us understand that what we know must determine how we behave and God don't ever let us separate those two. Father, more than anything else, we thank You for Your Son who rose from the dead, a first fruit, a picture of what will happen to each and every one of us at some point in time.
God, I thank You as we start a new year for each and every man that's here. Father, thank You for their commitment. We just pray that You take this year and You cause us individually to grow and as a group to grow. Lord, don't ever let us leave here unchanged. Not moved by the words, but moved by Your Holy Spirit. Father, thank You so much.
Again, we pray for Joe and his family. Father, we ask You again to help us see the reality that we're all in Joe's position someday. Father, help us be ready for that. As we know Your Son, Jesus Christ, as we give our life to Him, as we repent from our sin, as we turn from our ways and turn to Him and to You. Father, thank You for Jesus. And it's in His name we pray. Amen.
See you next week.