Joy from the Word of Life

Good morning. The scripture today will be 1

John 1, 1 through 4. So if you would stand with me for the reading of God's word.

1 John 1, that which was from the beginning, which we've heard, which we've seen with our eyes, which we've looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life, the life was made manifest and we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the father and was made manifest to us.

That which we've seen and heard we proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us and indeed our fellowship is with the father and with his son,

Jesus Christ. And we're writing these things so that our joy may be complete. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for the opportunity we have to study your words today.

We pray that you help us to learn great things from your scriptures, to love you more dearly and follow you more closely.

In your son's name I pray, amen. Thank you, you may be seated. The housing market crash of 07 was the worst housing crash in US history.

It was one of the primary factors which caused our country to enter a deep recession.

For many the financial consequences were pretty catastrophic. When I think about that situation that two different people come to mind.

So Robert, he came to counseling during the midst of the financial crisis. He was in his late 50s.

He had around $500 ,000 saved for retirement. He had a nice house, long -term stable employment.

Shortly after the collapse he found himself unemployed. He was unable to find work. He suspected it was due to his age.

But he had an upside down mortgage at that point which put him on negative $600 ,000 on the wrong side of successful.

He lost his life savings, he lost his house, he lost his cars. Financially speaking he was back to square one.

When he came to counseling I met very few people who were more depressed than he was.

I mean he was a picture of despair. He would spend most of the counseling basically just sitting there weeping in his hands.

It was really difficult to get anything out of him more than just a few words. And he had basically lost all motivation to live at that point.

I met Tommy a few years later while helping a mutual friend build a deck. Tommy was one of the most joyful guys that I've ever met in my life.

If you've met someone like this I'm sure that you understand the kind of person I'm talking about although they are somewhat rare.

But Tommy was the kind of guy who just made you feel happy, right? So he was the kind of guy who was constantly giving thanks to the

Lord for everything that was happening in his life. It was somewhat infectious, somewhat contagious. He was the kind of guy who would mention all the sorts of things that we're typically tempted to take for granted about.

But then he would give thanks to the Lord for those things. I actually after getting to know Tommy I left giving thanks to the

Lord for getting to meet Tommy. He was a good example. My brother a few days later he found out that I had met

Tommy and he asked me what I thought about him and I said that yeah, he's real thankful. You could definitely tell that Tommy was a

Christian just by the nature of his disposition and everything else. But my brother responded to me basically saying did you know that he used to be a millionaire?

And I had no idea that Tommy used to be a man of means. He said yeah, he owned a construction company and he had lost it all during the financial collapse.

He lost his construction company, he lost his house, he lost everything and at that point in his life he was basically just doing odd jobs to survive.

Now you would have never thought that meeting Tommy but that was the situation.

Now I bring up these two stories because they are examples of two men who faced the same situation exactly, right?

Same exact situation, went through the same exact trial. They were actually roughly the same age.

I mean they're both very, very similar. Yet there was one fundamental difference between the two and that is going to be the subject of our text today.

However, before you get to that it is important to say a few words about this book that we're going to be looking in.

First John really is, if you were to ask me what's my favorite book of the Bible, I would say First John is my favorite book of the

Bible. And part of that's just because it was the first book I seriously studied as a Christian and spent any time trying to understand.

And part of it's that, but part of it is that I kind of identify with John who wrote this letter.

I seem to have a similar manner of thinking, similar way of viewing the world. You know

John, he's the beloved disciple. He's an old man at the point that he's writing this book. He's 90 years old plus, probably in exile.

It's a very simple book in a lot of ways. So First John is a book that has a very limited vocabulary.

So if you read through it, the same kind of words are going to show up over and over and over again. There's not really, there's not many big words in the book.

I mean perhaps propitiation is the only really significant theological term that you're gonna find there that's longer than a few syllables.

But there's not a whole lot of big words, but it's very simple in a lot of ways, very profound.

There's a lot of metaphors in there, like God is light, like light and darkness, love and hate, a lot of black and white language.

Like truth versus lies, you're either born of God or you're born of the devil. You're keeping

God's commandments versus practicing lawlessness. So it's a book that's a joy to read in a lot of ways.

It's a book that, it's a book that John writes as a spiritual father to his children.

It's a book that's written from the perspective of a life that was well lived, that is passing on the things that he's learned.

So you see in First John two, my little children, I'm writing you these things so you may not sin.

I'm writing to you little children because your sins are forgiven. I'm writing to you young men. I'm writing to you fathers.

He's addressing his spiritual children in this book. And so it's somewhat of a family letter and uncharacteristic of this is a letter, like most of the letters you're gonna find in the

New Testament, it's a letter without a greeting. He just kind of gets right into it. And if you read First John, it should remind you a lot of the

Gospel of John because it has a lot of similar themes there that are doing something slightly different.

You know, the Gospel of John is written primarily in order that we may believe that Jesus is the

Christ, the Son of God, but then we have a lot of different purpose statements in this book. The primary one is in First John 5, 13, which says that he's writing these things to those who believe in Jesus, that they may know that they have eternal life.

So it's a book designed, among other things, to give assurance, whereas the Gospel of John is written in order to produce, in order that people might believe in that way.

Now, when you read it, it does have a little bit of a strange beginning, doesn't it? So you read through it, that which is from the beginning, which we've heard, which we've seen with our eyes, which we've looked upon, we've touched with our hands concerning the word of life.

Like, he goes on and on with these descriptions. I mean, grammatically, what's happening here is he spends a lot of time describing the direct object before he gets to the subject and the main verb.

So if you imagine, like, the way synopses typically work, we may say something like John hit the ball, right?

So John would be the subject, the verb is hit, and then the ball would be the direct object. Well, with this kind of thing, what you have is you have, he goes on and on and on about the ball, and then you don't even know who the

John is or who the hitting part is. And so the natural question you're supposed to ask when you're reading this is, like, what is that, right?

So he keeps on saying that, which is from the beginning, which we've seen, which we've heard, which we've looked upon, we've touched with our hands.

Like, what is that, right? So as you go through it, it begins to come alive when you realize that that refers to Jesus.

So as you read it, what you're supposed to do once you decode it a little bit is say that Jesus was from the beginning, you know, we've heard him, we've seen him with our eyes, we've looked upon him, we've touched him with our hands.

Like, he is the word of life, right? And his life was made manifest, we've seen it, we've testified to it, and proclaim to you that this eternal life of Jesus, who was with the

Father, was made manifest to us. This is an intro that's about Jesus, and it's very descriptive about him.

And so this, like, Jesus is this word, is this word which is capable of being heard, and seen, and touched, and proclaimed.

So Jesus is the subject here that we're gonna be talking about today. Now, as I said, you think about this book, there are many purpose statements in this book.

For someone who loves studying the Bible, this is a great thing. You know, you're often wondering why they wrote what they wrote, and this is the book that has a bunch of them.

As I said, the primary point is to assure people, give people who have eternal life assurance, but then in this section we see that, verse four, that we were writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

And the word joy there is the word plerao, which essentially means to bring to completion that which is already begun.

So this isn't really a book that's designed to produce joy, it's a book that's designed to take that joy and bring it to completion.

So there's a joy that comes from being a Christian that is going to be made complete by the things that we're saying here today.

And as we're going through it, just by way of explaining what we're gonna be doing, we're gonna understand this letter as, this introduction of this letter as providing

Christians six reasons for joy, okay? So as we walk through the passage, we're gonna be thinking about these six reasons for joy from 1

John 1. Now the first reason why believers should have joy on the basis of this letter is because the word of life is an eternal message, okay?

You see that when you see the opening of the book. It says, that which was from the beginning. Jesus is this word of life who was from the beginning with the

Father. And this message, this message which brings life and brings joy, this message is an eternal message, meaning it's an unchanging message of joy.

I think about happiness. Most people think about happiness as a fleeting emotion that happens.

Like it just kind of comes and goes, right? So like you can't, most people don't understand their emotions as things that they can help.

So you think about happiness, happiness seems to come and go. And typically happiness, the way we think about it, is grounded in positive and favorable circumstances.

And so when something happens which you like, then you're gonna respond to that with happiness. And most of the time when we're tempted to think about joy, we're tempted to think about joy in that kind of way as this happiness which comes and goes.

But the problem here is just to say that there is a kind of joy, there is a kind of happiness which should be grounded in the person and work of Christ.

And Jesus, like this message of life that we're gonna be talking about in the passage, he is an eternal message.

Like Jesus Christ, in Hebrews 13, it says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forevermore.

Like our happiness, our joy as Christians isn't fundamentally grounded in the circumstances and the situations that we're gonna face.

I mean, I gave you two examples, same kind of individuals who faced a significant trial in their life.

One had joy because it was grounded in something unchanging. The other didn't have joy because their happiness was totally wrapped up into the things that are here and now, right?

So when the trials and tribulations of the world come, like one man's happiness was grounded in something that was eternal, and the other one's joy and thankfulness and happiness was grounded in something that wasn't.

So when you think about reason for joy, one of our fundamental reasons for joy is that the word of life is an eternal message.

Jesus had a plan before the foundation of the world to redeem a people and to make them his treasured possession.

Like there's an eternal gospel that existed before time. Like Jesus has a plan to redeem you, a plan to forgive you your sins, to reconcile you to the

Father himself. God has predestined the people to be his treasured possession before the foundation of the world, and nothing can happen to them in this life that's going to cause them to be insecure in their relationship with him.

Like he has reserved an inheritance, undefiled, kept in heaven for us if we are his people.

And that is an unchanging message of hope and joy that we should experience as Christians.

To the extent to which our hope and our joy is grounded in the kind of situations you might find, you may come and go, but God's message of joy really is grounded in the eternal work of Jesus Christ on our behalf.

So the first reason is the word of life is an eternal message. And the second is the word of life is a message of life.

So which we've seen, the text says which we've seen, or which we've heard, which we've seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and in touch with our hands concerning the word of life,

Jesus is the word of life. By referring to Jesus as the word of life, we are enabled to see a fundamental truth about the very nature of Jesus.

John 11, 25, Jesus says to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.

John 10, 10, the thief only comes to kill and to steal and to destroy, but I came that they may have life and they may have it abundantly.

Before salvation, we are dead in our trespasses of sin in which we once walked following the course of the world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is at work in the sons of disobedience, fulfilling the desires of our flesh and our mind, but God, being rich in his mercy because of the great love with which he loved to us, he made us alive when we were dead, for by grace you've been saved through faith and that salvation, that faith, that grace is not your own doing, it's a gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast.

God, Jesus is a message of life to us and that's a message that doesn't change.

You understand, there's an unchanging message of life. It's just to say that before becoming a

Christian, you are a slave to sin. Your will is captured in bondage to sin.

You can't, like the carnal mind is at enmity with God, it cannot please God, right? Before becoming a

Christian, you are bound to the slavery and the chains of sin and Jesus has come to set you free from that slavery, to fundamentally change the nature of your life, to do for you what you can't do, to produce in you certain desires that you're unable to simply will.

Before becoming a Christian, I couldn't will myself to love the Lord, I couldn't will myself to care about his purposes, to care about his plans, but God has come in order to give us life and not death.

The wages of sin is death. That's the message of the Bible. It's that God creates man, he puts man in a garden in order to work and to keep it.

He gives man one command and man is unable to fulfill that one command.

The result of that, the penalty for that is sin, death, condemnation. Okay, you live in a world right now that bears the marks of this fundamental curse.

So sin promises life and hope, but in the end it brings death. The way of the transgressor is hard.

You see the world that you live in, you see like there's something wrong with it. There's something wrong with the world that we're living in.

It's a fallen world, there's a problem, there's a fundamental problem introduced with it, but Jesus has come and he's come as a message of life.

Like this is a hopeful message. Like most people who come to counseling, they come like Robert that I mentioned before, without hope, with nothing to look forward to.

All they see is condemnation, all they see is death. They're in situations they don't know a way out of it, but Jesus has come as a message of life.

Six reasons believers should have joy. The word of life is an eternal message. Word of life is a message of life.

The word of life was third made manifest in history in the person of Jesus Christ, okay?

So notice what it says in verse two. The life was made manifest. So this message of life was made manifest.

Jesus came to earth to do what you couldn't do, to live the life that you couldn't live.

To those who dwelt in darkness, a light has appeared. So to those who dwelt in darkness in the shadow of death, this light has appeared.

Jesus came to do for us fundamentally what we can't do.

I mean, I can't even, I don't know about you, I can't even go a few hours without sinning. I probably can't even go a few minutes without sinning if I were honest with myself and not trying to fudge the numbers to make myself look better than what

I actually am. So much of my internal thought life is not centered on the things that should be centered.

I don't know how to prioritize my time the way I need to prioritize my time.

I don't know how to be the parent that God's called me to be. I don't know how to be the husband that God has called me to be.

I can read the Bible, I can read the scriptures, I can devote myself to these things, but if the Lord would count iniquity, none of us could stand.

We are woefully inadequate in almost every way that you can possibly imagine.

Like even our best deeds of righteousness are filthy rags before the Lord. We have all fallen short of the glory of God.

There's nothing we can do fundamentally to reconcile ourself to Him. Even our best works on our best days are filled with motives that are often off.

So much of my life, I look at my life and so much of my life is living to purposes beyond the glory of God.

I wish that I could live every moment to the glory of God, but that's simply not the reality of what actually happens.

When you wake up in the morning, you wake up in your morning thinking about yourself for the most part, like that's the way that life works.

Like if you imagine yourself at an airport, and you know the moving sidewalks on the airport,

Vivian had some trouble this time when we were getting at the airport trying to walk on those without falling, but imagine yourself like standing on one of those things backwards, and that's the way sin actually works in your heart and life meaning like if you just go on autopilot, your autopilot, it's not gonna take you and make you more sanctified.

Like it's gonna take you backwards, do you understand what I'm saying? So like you wake up in the morning, you think about yourself, like the things that you need.

The Bible says that no one like hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it. I mean I wake up in the morning, the first thing

I think about is like hey, I wanna shower, I wanna brush my teeth, I wanna take care of my basic needs, I wanna eat. You know, you wake up in the morning, that's the way life works, you think about yourself, and if you go on autopilot, that can be how your day goes.

Like you think about all the things that you wanna do, think about your plans, think about your purpose. Like you know, maybe you're a responsible person and you actually do things that are worthwhile.

But even so, like most of us, like we're trying to carve out time for ourself to finally get rid of all of our responsibilities and then get to yourself, but like the issue is that, here's the thing,

Jesus came to earth, and I mean I don't know that you've ever, you've really reflected on this, but like Jesus didn't waste a moment.

Jesus did all things according to the will of the Father. Jesus faced all the bodily experiences of trials that you're going to face in this life, he faced all of those things without sin.

I mean he was a perfect child from start to finish, he was perhaps the only child, or he was the only child in the history of the world that you could imagine were in every single encounter that he has ever been in, where there was any kind of conflict, it was always other people who were in the wrong.

I mean can you imagine trying to parent someone like that? Where the child is always right and you're always wrong.

You know this, that Jesus came to live a life that I couldn't live, and if I trust my faith in his sacrifice on the cross,

God will look at me and he will see his righteousness attributed to me as a free gift, you understand?

Like God's not looking at me and saying, hey you need to do better, you need to try harder so that you can earn favor with me.

When God looks at me he sees Christ's righteousness given to me as a free gift.

I'm a death row inmate, I'm an individual who has a debt that I couldn't possibly pay.

You know maybe some of you in here have student loan debts that you wonder how you're ever gonna pay, but imagine someone comes along and just wipes those things clean, but that's the way the gospel actually is.

Jesus came, he lived a perfect life, he lived a life that I couldn't live. He came fulfilling the law, doing for me what

I couldn't do, being the better Adam than our first Adam, and we find hope and joy in our faith and trust in him.

So the word of life was made manifest in history in the person of Christ. Fourth, the word of life was verified by the eyewitness testimony of the apostles and proclaimed to the church, okay?

What does the text say? It says that which was from the beginning, which we've heard and seen, like this isn't like the language of my personal experience, like I'm not supposed to see myself in here and like think this is talking about me, no, this is like historical language that you're supposed to be looking at, so that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, who is the we?

It's the apostles, it's those who have seen Jesus. Notice what they say, we have heard him, right?

So we've heard this word of life, Jesus, we've heard him. We have seen him with our eyes. Not only have we, like we've seen him with our eyes, we've looked upon him, right?

Why would it, it seems redundant, doesn't it, to say we've seen him, we've looked upon him? Like the issue is like not just I saw the guy once, right?

It's not like I saw a celebrity at the store briefly, you know, some kind of moment or something like that, and went along with my day, like the issue is they've heard him, they've seen him with their eyes, they've looked upon him for long periods of time, they walked with him for three years, you understand?

That's what they're saying, we've looked upon him and have touched with our hands. Like this is like Jesus asking

Thomas to put his fingers in the nail marks in his hand, like we have touched him, we know that he was real.

Part of this letter is a letter written to combat like a proto -form of Gnosticism where they believe that Jesus just appeared to have come in the flesh, something along those lines, they say, no, we've actually seen him, we've heard him, we've touched him with our hands, we know that he was real, that he came, that he's risen from the dead.

We are testifying to this reality, right? So notice, we have seen it, the life was made manifest, we've seen it, we testify to it, the life was made manifest, we've seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you, so they're proclaiming this message to you.

So Jesus has come, Jesus who was with the father, this word of life who was eternally with the father has come and manifested himself in history, we've seen this message of life, we've looked upon it, we've touched this message of life and now we're like, this is the language of eyewitness testimony, right, in a courtroom, we're verifying it and we're proclaiming this message to you, you know, our faith is based on the historical witness of others, we have not seen, heard, looked upon and touched

Jesus in the way that is being described in this passage, but our great hope is that one day we will see him, right?

So 1 John 3 ,2, beloved, we are God's children now and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is and everyone who has this hope in themselves purifies himself just as he is pure.

So our faith is based on this eternal, our faith is based on this historical witness of the apostles which is written down in a record for us.

Now, I mean, I know that like many people are tempted to take this for granted, thinking that the key to belief in God is going to be found in not just having to rely on the personal testimony of other people.

I've known many atheists who will look at me and say, you know, if God is real, why doesn't he just show himself to me?

You know, if he would show himself to me that I would believe him, but then you read through the scriptures and one of the things you realize is over and over and over again,

Jesus came to earth, the Messiah came to earth, the perfect man came to earth.

He did notable miracles throughout the history of his time on earth and the

Pharisees and the Sadducees, the scribes, they knew that he was doing miracles. Like the Bible will tell you repeatedly, they understood that a notable miracle was done.

They saw the signs, but like sin is deceitful and sin is hardening and their response to seeing him do miracles that we can't even understand.

I mean, these aren't the fake miracles like leg lengthening tricks or things like that. These are real miracles that they saw and they responded to those by wanting to put him to death, right?

The issue is that faith comes, the Bible says that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

You look at the scriptures and you see that scriptures are a message of life to us. First Peter will tell us that scripture is more reliable than our experience even.

God has given you a word that he uses to produce faith inside of you and this word is more trustworthy than your experience that comes and goes, like your limited perspective about individual events.

I mean, I don't know how many times I've had conversations with people, particularly when there's disagreement about the nature of the content where it becomes very difficult to remember the things that happened just a few minutes before with any kind of accuracy.

But here's the thing, like Peter, when he looked at his life, he saw Jesus transfigured on the cross. He says, you have a testimony more sure in the word which is written to you which you would do well to pay attention to because it's a light that's shining in a dark place.

This message, like this word of life was proclaimed to us by the testimony and the eyewitness of the apostles and God uses this message to produce faith within us.

So faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. So the word of life, six reasons for joy.

One, the word of life's eternal message. Two, the word of life is a message of life. Three, the word of life was made manifest in history in the person of Christ.

Four, the word of life was verified by the eyewitness testimony of the apostles and proclaimed to church.

Five, the word of life is a message of eternal life.

Okay? So notice what it says. In verse two, it says, life was made manifest.

We've seen it and testified to you and proclaimed to you the eternal life which was with the Father and made manifest to us.

You know, most people when they think about eternal life, they think of eternal life as their experience of living in heaven after they die or something along those lines.

That's what you think of when you think, you're tempted to think of what eternal life means. So for many people, you know, that's, maybe they have a retirement home vision of eternal life where you go up into heaven and, you know, spend all day long playing shuffleboard or something like that or fishing, you know, or something along those lines.

But like in their minds, that's what eternal life is. It's like that, like the experience of the afterlife or something along those lines.

But that's not what God, like the Bible means when it uses this word. Do you understand? When the

Bible uses the word eternal life, it's not talking about that. So John 17 three says, and this is eternal life, right?

That they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

Like if you wanna, like it doesn't get any more clear than that. Meaning like there's times where you wonder, like what do these terms mean in the

Bible? That is a passage right there that tells you what eternal life means when it's used in the Bible. This is eternal life, right?

This is, they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you've sent. The word of life is a message of eternal life.

What is eternal life? That we may know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent, brothers and sisters, if you want to have joy in your life, like the way to have joy is not in some sort, like pursuit of some kind of techniques or something along those lines.

Like the issue is that there is joy to be found in the knowledge of God and the knowledge of Jesus.

Psalm 16 11 says, you have made known to me the path of life, doesn't that sound like what we're talking about today?

In your presence there is the fullness of joy at your right hand, our pleasures, every more.

If you want joy in your life, there is no greater joy to be found than to be found in the possession of eternal life.

And what is that? That we may know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. The hunger of the

Christian should be a deep abiding hunger to know who Jesus is. And that's a hunger that's never gonna be satisfied.

You know why you should be looking forward to heaven? It's not so that you can play shuffleboard. The thing to be looking forward to in heaven is the fact that you finally get to see your blessed hope, like the object, like the thing that your soul craves of knowing

God that finally is gonna be able to be fulfilled. You can see the person who made you, died on the cross for you.

Like there is great joy to be found in the knowledge of God. And I'm not talking about abstract theology, as fun as that can be, sometimes

I'm talking about like actually knowing the person and work and the character of God.

There is nothing that's going to make you more stable in this life than knowing the person and work and character of God, like understanding who he is.

If you wanna be stable in the Christian life, there's no way to be stable apart from knowing who God is and knowing about his character, knowing about his plans and his purposes and his great promises.

Like stability in life is not found in taking medications, gonna turn you into a zombie.

Like the issue is you wanna be stable, you need to know God because he's the same, like he's an eternal message that does not change.

And he's given to us in his word, these very precious and great promises about who he is and what he has done for us.

And those things, like it doesn't matter what happens in your life, those things can't be taken away, right? There's nothing that anyone can do to you in this life, there's no situation that God can put you in or take away from you that's gonna fundamentally change the nature of who he is and the nature of his promises.

There is satisfaction to be found in this word of life which is a message of eternal life.

Finally, the word of life brings reconciliation.

That which we've seen and heard, we proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us and indeed our fellowship is with the

Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. We think about what fellowship here is in this passage.

Fellowship is close association, the word koinonia, close association involving mutual interest and sharing.

Christians should have a fellowship with each other that is thicker than blood.

Think about the nature of our life, you think about the nature of these purposes.

There's something that Jesus has done for us, there's something God has done for us which should bind us together, that fundamentally sets the course and the agenda of our life which influences the nature of our affections, the things that we care about.

I mean, so many Christians today are so worldly to the point where all of their affections are wrapped up in their common interest, they're wrapped up in their entertainment, like there's no sure sign of an immature

Christian in the sea and a Christian whose loves, like their affection, their heart seems to be so tied up into the trivial, the entertainment, like the here and the now.

I mean, as you come to know the Lord, there should be what is produced in you is a desire to know him more and more and more.

The things of this earth will grow strangely dim when you seek God, you understand his purposes, you understand why he's put you here, what his plan is for us, and the valuable thing for the

Christian is that we are all recipient of a salvation that we could never earn and that we could never merit.

So when you think about the nature of what this passage is saying, it's pretty interesting when you think about it. John says that what we see in her, we proclaim to you so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed, our fellowship is with the

Father and with the Son, Jesus Christ. It talks about two kinds of fellowship here. It talks about the fellowship that should happen with believers among each other, but then that fellowship is based on a more fundamental fellowship, which involves the restored relationship between man and his maker.

So in Adam and Eve, eight of the three of the knowledge of good and evil, like before, they were walking and talking with God in the cool of the day.

Afterwards, they're cast out of Eden, the text says, away from the presence of the Lord, meaning fellowship with God, between God and man was disrupted.

It was disrupted to such an extent that their path back to the garden was blocked by an angel with a flaming sword.

So they're cast out of Egypt, out of Eden, away from God's presence, and their fellowship was disrupted.

That's what sin does for us. Immediately after they eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they're hiding from each other, and they're hiding from God, because their fellowship has been fundamentally disrupted.

But then after we believe in Christ, what happens is that we are adopted into God's family, so we're the recipients of an inheritance, we're now joint heirs with Christ.

So the issue is our fellowship with God is restored, but then that also puts us into fellowship with one another.

There's no secret to harmonious relationships in life that bypasses the basic nature of our fundamental theological problem.

We are enemies of God, we are objects of his wrath, we need to be restored into his family, we need to be adopted into his family, and then in doing so, we all become members of a family with one another, and that's what the church has described.

Now, often, when you think about the kind of person like I'm mentioning at the outset,

I mentioned two people, I mentioned Robert, and I mentioned Tommy. Tommy had joy, and his joy was founded fundamentally in the nature of his changed relationship with God, so his circumstance went down, but those were events that led him to like embracing the salvation that was accomplished for us in Jesus Christ, and then that brought about for him, it brought about a restored relationship between him and his maker, and restored relationship with him and other people.

On the other hand, I mentioned Robert, and you think about Robert, he went through the same kind of trial, but then he turned inward, right?

So he turned inward, all he could think about was himself, and his loss, and his circumstances, and his situations, and the things that he couldn't control, his world revolved around him.

But notice what this language says, notice what the language of this passage says, in verse four it says, we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

Why would their joy be complete in writing these things? Because who are they proclaiming to them? They're proclaiming this word of life, this eternal message, this eternal message of life and hope to their readers in order that they may have fellowship with them,

I mean so much of our life is so self -focused, and lacking in joy, because we forget these basic fundamental realities, but God hasn't designed us just to be like individual

Christians, like just pursuing your own relationship with God and nature somewhere, like here's the issue,

God has saved you, he's brought you out of the domain of darkness and into the realm of marvelous light, he's given you this message of life and hope so that you could be like the apostles and share that message with others.

And so much of our, like I was saying, so much of our life is just filled with despair and joylessness and hopelessness, because we've lost the fundamental nature of why we're even here, right?

We're here to proclaim who God is to other people, there should be nothing that's more joy -producing in our heart than when we see our brothers and sisters walking in the truth, when we see new believers being added to our number, because like that's why you're here, right?

I mean some of the most depressed people I've known in my life have just been some of the most self -focused, self -absorbed people, their life from start to finish revolves around them, and you're not meant to, like the point is you're not meant to live that way, right?

There is a message of life that God has given to us, there's a message of hope, like these are words of life and hope and joy, they're life and hope and joy because of what

God has done for us, and what he's done for us, he's not only restored our relationship with him, but he's also given us a family to care about and to build up together in love.

My prayer for us today is that we will look at these words that God has given to us as a reminder about the fundamental nature of why we're here, what

Jesus has done for us, so that all of our joy in the process may be complete as we're reflecting on these things and living these things out.

Lord, we thank you for the opportunity that we have to reflect on this eternal message today.

We thank you for what Jesus has done for us, for coming to earth to do for us what we could never do.

We thank you for the restored fellowship that you have won, where we're restored to you, restored to brothers and sisters here today.

Thank you for Jesus, and help us to be people who remember these things and find our pleasure in you.