The Eyewitnesses And Plato

Prayer for Illumination and Foundational Assurance

Thank You, Lord, for Your Word. We pray today that You would meet us in the Word. We pray that You would reveal Yourself to us. We pray that You would encourage us in our relationship with You, in our walk with You, that You would encourage us because we are found not guilty in You.

And we pray that each day we might match up more to what You say we are in Christ. It's in His name we pray this morning, Amen. Well, as you know, or maybe you don't know, we teach a Bible study out in Hardwick on Sunday evening, late afternoon.

That is affectionately known as the Hardwick Theological Seminary. And we are right up there with the big boys. You know, we have TMS, the Master's Seminary. DTS, Dallas Theological Seminary. SES, Southern Evangelical Seminary.

HTS, Hardwick Theological Seminary. So, we've tried to pattern ourselves in such a way as to be highly significant in Hardwick, Massachusetts. Where's that? Okay, I know. Okay. The reason I tell you that is I had to ask them last week or the week before, I said, we must, like the Trump administration, we must have leakers here in this Bible study because repeatedly, when Steve starts something in Sunday school, we either have been there or are going there.

And this time is no exception. Steve has been talking about church history and we've been looking at the Gnostics considerably. And so, as we were looking at church history and the Gnostics in Sunday school, I was beginning 1 John at HTS, all right?

And of course, you cannot understand 1 John or the Gospel of John or the letters of John or the Revelation without understanding what was going on at the time, which involves at least the proto -Gnostics, the beginnings of all of that.

So, I thought, well, I guess we'll just continue with that since that's where we're going in Sunday school. So, if you want to turn to 1 John, we'll go there and then we'll talk a little bit about how that background that we've been looking at applies to that.

We're gonna have to, you're gonna have to have a thumb or a bookmark over in the Gospel of John also today. John chapter one and 1 John chapter one. I have a bookmark here. Nevermind, I won't do that.

The Eyewitness Testimony of the Apostles

Well, here's what we read in 1 John's first letter. And then we'll look at the history a little bit and we'll look at the background, the geography and all of that, which might help us get a handle on what's going on.

John writes, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest, it was made known to us, and we have seen it and testified to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us.

That word manifest is interesting. If we have time this morning, we'll look at it. To us, that which we have 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 are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. Now, I happen to agree with the folks that say this letter of 1 John, in fact, all three letters of John were written after the gospel was written.

So there are a couple of questions, a couple of questions that need to be answered here and looked at if we're to really get what's going on. First of all, all of John's writing is done toward the end of the first century.

We know that because Bethlehem Bible Church is a well-thought church, right? Question is, so what's that all about? And the answer is at the end of the first century, say from AD 90 to 95 or so, at the end of the first century, we have only one apostle left and let us define apostle carefully.

The apostles were the eyewitnesses of the resurrected Lord. Okay, when we look at John chapter 17 and we see the Lord's high priestly prayer so-called, it is about the 11, then it's about all who would believe on the 11 plus Paul.

Paul had not yet believed. And then in the New Testament also, we have Luke who has apostolic authority because he was closely associated with the apostle Paul. The apostles are the go-to for what we know and believe about the Lord, about our salvation, about everything.

If you are not an eyewitness of the resurrected Christ or closely associated as Luke was with Paul, and Paul was an eyewitness of the resurrected Christ, the resurrected Christ knocked him off his donkey, okay?

So that makes him an eyewitness, all right? You have no authority if you are not that. So the apostles are gone, all right? And what's left is what they left us, the word, nothing else, no additions, no emendations, none of that sort of thing.

We're talking about the apostles. Now, John is the last apostle and he is the only apostle that did not die a martyr's death and so by AD 90 or 95, we find him in Ephesus and we find him in what is now Turkey, but was then called Asia.

John in Ephesus and the Churches of Asia Minor

Well, we have called Asia Minor. We find him there exercising authority over the churches of Asia Minor. The action has moved. Beginning in Jerusalem, things went along from Jerusalem for a while and then with the martyrdom of Stephen, the action moved north to Antioch, all right?

And from Antioch, Paul and Barnabas and Silas and all of the first missionaries were sent out from the church at Antioch. The church at Antioch becomes principal, but then the action moves even further north and so by the end of the first century, we have the churches that are in view, the churches of Asia Minor, the same churches that are mentioned in the revelation of the Lord Jesus.

John is there at Ephesus, the only living apostle and he exercises authority over those churches. Now, he does not exercise authority over those churches because he got a pointy hat or something like that, all right?

He exercises authority over those churches because he is the last eyewitness of Jesus. That gives you authority. If you were one who was with him, followed him, was witness to his resurrection and you're the only one left, that gives you authority.

Now, from the time that Jesus died until the end of the first century, we have roughly 50 years, okay? 50, 55 years, something like that. Most of the books of the New Testament, which include the letters of Paul and the letters of Peter and so on, most of those books had been written by probably AD 55 or so, maybe a little bit later, maybe up to 60 and so there's a 30 year gap between the end of the writing of the New Testament until John wrote.

Now, John's writing's really important, isn't it? Would we not want the whole story from the last eyewitness to the Lord? And so as he writes to these churches, and notice he's writing to the churches in Asia.

Great many of those people are Gentiles. That's very important as we consider what he has written here and where that's going. He's not writing to the churches over in Greece and Macedonia and all of that.

He's writing to the churches of Asia. The same churches plus others mentioned in Revelation. So what he talks about here is that which he has, how many senses are mentioned here in the first part of 1 John?

That which we have heard, that which we have seen, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life, the life was made manifest. We heard Him, we saw Him, we touched Him.

I think the only thing that's missing is smell. In other words, the quality of the eyewitness is not I heard from somebody that this is what happened. The quality here of the eyewitness is sensory. All right?

The way he writes is very, very interesting and it really is the first part of John the gospel that gives us some insight into why he writes as he does. Now you all are aware of the fact that the first three gospels are the so-called synoptic gospels, which present Jesus in various roles as king, as servant, as son of man, and so on.

And then we get to the gospel of John and the gospel of John compared to the synoptics is absolutely cosmic. It starts that way. And it is echoed over here in the letter of 1 John. That's why I think it's important to understand that the gospel probably was written before these letters and before the revelation, before John is exiled on the Isle of Patmos.

The Word, Creation, and the Challenge of Gnosticism

So the beginning of John, you know. I'll just read it and then I'm going to come back and visit it and then we'll get back to 1 John itself in a minute. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

You say, what is that all about? But the other gospels start with genealogies and all of that. They're fairly historical. They recount different accounts in the life of the Lord. Not that John doesn't, but John tells us the purpose of his gospel, doesn't he?

This is written that you might believe and believe that Jesus is the Son of God and believing might have life in His name. Over there in chapter 20, all right? But he's writing about something else here too.

What has gone on in the intervening 30 or 40 years between the last of the letters of the New Testament and the time that John writes? And what has gone on, I think, is this. What has gone on is lots of people have come to Christ.

We are in Asia Minor, a lot of Gentiles who are influenced by the Greco-Roman culture of their day. They have come to Christ and they have brought with them to the Lord and to the churches, they have brought with them the baggage of their culture.

And John is addressing that. The other apostles didn't need to address that so much, although we see echoes of it, particularly in Colossians, where Paul addresses himself a bit to what has been called, and you've heard Steve say this in Sunday school, platonic dualism.

And that is the idea, that's the cultural idea that everything that is pure, everything that is good, everything that is like pure purity that cannot be touched by evil, that is spiritual. It is roughly inaccessible to us.

People who are material, everything that is material is essentially evil. We get that. You look around the world and you see that there are all kinds of things that material messes up. Okay, we just had terrible tornadoes in Tennessee.

And of course, that is one of the questions that vexes people and some people use as an excuse to keep from coming to Christ. If God is good and God is all powerful, why do bad things like the tornadoes in Tennessee happen?

It's a good question. It's not an excuse, but it's a good question, all right? And it needs to be answered. Some of the things that John addresses himself to would help answer that question. So these people that were coming to Christ at the end of the first century, as the church was growing and the gospel was spreading around the world, the new believers are bringing with them their cultural baggage.

And their cultural baggage is Platonic dualism. Now that begins to flower and go to seed by the time John is writing these letters. Here's the logic, if it can be called logical. Actually, this is a many-layered fruitcake, all right?

But it is the culture of those people that were coming to Christ. If they, and we call it Platonic dualism because Plato is the guy that first really elucidated this, although he's not the old, the first one.

He's not even the first one. The first one, I think, was a guy named Heraclitus. Take that home with you, you won't forget that, okay? Anyway, the idea that all that is invisible about the world, they realized there was something that was invisible about the world.

That was pure, but what happens in the world because material is associated with it, that's evil. By the way, our third son, Todd, whom many of you know, is a truck driver. One of the guys that drives for the company that he drives with was in a truck stop in Nashville when the tornado hit.

It hit early in the morning, he was in his sleeper. The tornado hit the pilot truck stop, leveled the truck stop, picked up the trucks, and threw them all over the lot. As you know, in truck stops, there are trucks parked, maybe 100 trucks, and some of them that night threw those trucks all over the lot, and that fellow was killed.

They got him out of the truck, but he died later, he died later in the hospital. I said to Todd, I said, well, what do you think that truck weighed? Sitting there, he said, well, it probably weighed something around 90 ,000 pounds.

I went, what? The tornado picked that truck up and threw it 300 feet, along with a lot of the others that were there. And so the question comes, well, you see what material does? What atoms, molecules, and all that stuff in motion?

You see what that does? That's just terrible, terrible, terrible. And then there's us. We are made out of material, and you see what people do? What people do can be very, very bad. So the Platonists had concluded that that which is unseen, that's really good.

That which is seen, all of the material world, essentially, that's bad. And the idea is you're gonna somehow or other live a life worthy of becoming one with the pure purity before it's all said and done.

There's an aspect of it that's a little like Hinduism, but not entirely, okay? So that's what these people bring into the church. Now, where they come to, because they brought their cultural baggage with them into the church, what they come to is this idea.

We say that Jesus is the God-man, right? Don't I read over here in John chapter one, verse 14, the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. Well, guess what? How can God, who is the ultimate in purity and goodness, and who is the ultimate force in the world, how can God lower himself to don evil material?

And so the first heresies were, either Jesus was not a man or Jesus was only a man, but he could not be the God-man. That already was fomenting by the end of the first century. It blossoms into that many-layered fruitcake in the second century after 100 AD.

But the beginnings of it are here, and John addresses himself to that which has come in to the church, because it is questioning whether or not Jesus was man. If Jesus was not a man, he could not, as a man, be the payer of the penalty for the sins of man.

And if he was not God, he would not be the perfect man who would be able to do that. And if he was not God, he would not be able to have control of that situation. Jesus was always in control of the situation.

When he stood before Pilate, and Pilate was saying things like, "'Are you the king of the Jews?' and so on. And he finally drives Pilate to, "'Truth? What is truth?'. Sounds very post-modern, doesn't it?

"'Truth? What is truth? There is no absolute truth, and that is absolutely the truth.'". You know? Okay. All right. When Jesus was standing there before Pilate, I gotta think he was thinking, "'I got him right where I want him.

I got him.'". Okay. And God was saying, "'I got him right where I want him.'". Okay. So the big issue then is, what is the nature of the Lord Jesus? And that is what John is addressing himself to. Now look at that first part of the Gospel of John, where it says, "'In the beginning was the Word.'".

Now the word, you know, the Greek word for that is logos. It is much more than just a spoken word. Okay? It is the whole idea of the big idea, the power, the rationale, all that occurs in the beginning was the Word.

Now let's stop and make note of the fact that you cannot separate God from his Word. Back in Genesis, how does the Bible start? "'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.'". That's kind of the little title.

Okay, now we're gonna talk about how God created the heavens and the earth. "'The Spirit hovered over the water.'". But that, no creation that we read about anyway has happened at that point. The Spirit was hovering over the great deep.

The first thing that we read at verse three in Genesis chapter one is, "'God said, let there be light.'". And literally, light there was. Okay? And so the first action of God, the first thing that is known about God is about his power.

And it's interesting, is it not, that God said, let there be light. He didn't say, let there be stuff. Okay? He said, let there be light. Well, if you don't have stuff, you don't have light. Now all of us know that.

When I taught kids chemistry and physics in high school, what do we teach them? How do you get light? Here's how you get light. You get light this way. You have little excited electrons, which become less excited, and they flop back an energy level in their atom.

And when they do that flop back to a lower energy level, the energy that is lost in the flop is emitted as a photon of light. So God would have passed high school chemistry no sweat because he didn't say, let there be stuff.

He said, let there be light. And that means that all of the stuff had to appear. It was an explosive moment. Some people in science think they've identified that moment. Maybe they have. They call it the big bang.

Okay? In any case, it was an explosive moment and it was a beginning. But here's what's important for us. It was the word of God. By God's word, all of the stuff sprang into being. And you cannot separate, you cannot separate God from his word.

So at the beginning, so John writes here to these Greeks, in the beginning was the word. Well, that's really true. In the beginning was, let there be light. And an enormous amount of power and intelligence and all of that came into that single event and everything sprang into being.

John says, well, here's how that worked out. In the beginning was the word. Now, every Gnostic would go, yeah, okay, we got it. No problem. In the beginning was the word. We know about the word. The word is the pure, purity, the great power.

And you say, what did the Gnostics, how did the Gnostics think the universe or the world came into being? A lot of them were only thinking world. Okay, what did they think about that? Well, what they thought about that was the pure, purity could not even think about creating anything material.

So what he did was he produced a little lesser being and that lesser being was the instrument of creation and guess who some of those Gnostics identified that lesser being as? As Jesus. That's why we find what's written here written.

So the Gnostics would go, in the beginning was the word. Okay, no problem. We understand that. He's the lesser being that created the world. No problem. And the word was with God. Yeah, yeah, no problem.

No problem. God had this lesser being that was the instrument of the creation of the world. Okay, no problem. But here comes the problem. And the word, the logos, was God. Oh no, hair on fire. Okay, how can that be?

How can God who created the world and the instrumentality of the creation of all of this evil material? How could that be God? He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him. And without him was not anything made that was made.

You get it? Here's all of the stuff you Gnostics say could not have been made by God. The word, the instrumentality of the creation was God. He was not only God, he was with God. He is not an emanation from God.

He's not a lesser being than God. He is God. He still hasn't identified him. In him was life. Oh, he is the source of life. And the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not comprehended it, has not overcome it.

Now you notice how John writes in 1 John, this letter comes later. That which was from the beginning which we have heard. Now the gospel has already circulated around Asia Minor through the churches, all right?

So John is writing a review, in effect, that which was from the beginning which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, have looked upon, touched with our hands concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest, okay?

That word manifest is in the Greek word that is translated here, manifest, is a word which doesn't mean it just went boom, and there it was. It is a word which might be best described this way. This is gonna be a little historic for some of you that are younger than I, okay?

I have recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of my 30th birthday, all right? Used to have a thing that they did when they had little boxes with little lenses in the front and they put this stuff in the back called film, all right?

I know that'll be, it's kind of quaint, but that's what they did, all right? And then you take the pictures on the film and then you take them to somebody and they put that in a liquid. And when you look at, and if you've ever done this, I used to do this when I was in high school.

When you have that film or those prints in that liquid, there's nothing there. But then the image begins to, what do we say? What was that word that was used by us? The image begins to develop, okay? And then, that's why we said, I'm gonna go have this film developed, okay?

All right, the image develops and finally you see the full image. That's the word that's used here. When John says the life was made manifest to us, he meant that there was a progression of what we understood about the Lord Jesus from the day he came down on the dock and said to me and my brother, you guys follow me, to the day he took us up on a mountain and pulled back his humanity for an instant.

And we thought for a second we might be incinerated. And we saw his glory. That's what he writes about here. Peter writes about the same thing. He also was on the mountain that day. All right. So in him was life.

The life was the light of men. And it was made manifest, it developed to us. In other words, we had a long time to look at this and to understand who this Jesus was. And when John writes his gospel, why does he write his gospel?

I write this so that you may know that Jesus is the Son of God that came to me, that developed, okay, that was made known to me and developed and that believing that he is the Son of God, you might have life in his name.

Not believing that he was a lesser being, an emanation as the later Gnostics would come to say, a lesser being that somehow or other is responsible for things material. No, he was the Son of God, he is God.

Okay, now, all of a sudden at John chapter one, at verse five, things change. The light shines in the darkness, verse five says, and the darkness has not overcome it. Then at verse six, things change.

There was a man sent from God. Now there's a whole rundown of John the Baptist that goes on. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him.

He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light, the true light. You hear that light, light, light, light, light everywhere here, all right? The true light, which enlightens everyone was coming into the world.

I'm at verse nine of chapter one. Judy tells me, you go to these places and you don't tell them where you're going, all right? That's where I'm going, of chapter one of Gospel of John, all right? He was in the world.

The world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. There it is again to the Gnostics or the Proto -Gnostics. The world was made through the Word and the Word was God. He was not a God. He was not an emanation from God.

He was God. The world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own creation and his own people did not receive him. That's good. ESV's got that good. Not every translation makes the distinction there.

It's an important one. He came to his own creation. Who created everything? The Word, who was God. Now the Word comes to his own creation, but he doesn't just come to his creation. He doesn't come to Walden Pond before Emerson or Thoreau got there, all right?

And sit with the trees meditating, all right? No, he came to people. He came to the people of Israel and it says his own people did not know him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

The Word has still not been identified, all right? Except as God. And then here comes the mind blower at verse 14. And the Word, God, became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his... That's the manifestation.

That's the development of all that John knew. He dwelt among us, and finally we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him and cried out, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me.

A little parenthesis there. And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace, for the law was given through Moses. His grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. And now, to follow up verse 14, comes another mind blower for the Platonic mind.

All right? No one has ever seen God. A Gnostic, a Platonist would go, yeah, yeah, that's right. No one's ever seen God. That's pure purity, don't you know? All right? The only God, referring to the Word, the only God who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known.

The only God who is at the Father's side is Jesus Christ. That's where John is going. And that's where he's going as he recaps over here in 1 John. So, let's go back to 1 John. 1 John disappeared from my mind.

Oh, there it is. Okay. Now, John writes this. All of that, the recap in the beginning of 1 John, talks about being a witness, not only with his eyes, but also with his hands, with his ears, all of that.

Okay? That's the prologue. These people probably have read the Gospel. So, they get the rundown from the Gospel of John. So, now he starts to talk about the reason that he's writing this letter. And this letter is sort of general.

If you get to the second letter and the third letter of John, those are to specific individuals and or churches. All right? But this is sort of to everybody. Remember, John is at Ephesus. He has authority and leadership over the churches.

The life was made manifest. We've seen it, testified to it, and so on. We proclaim this also to you. I'm at verse 3 of 1 John 1. So that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.

Fellowship, Koinonia, and John 17

Immediately, BBC being a well-taught church, immediately, your computer-like minds go back to John chapter 17. Now, the word that is used here for fellowship is a word that was very big in hippie land back in the 70's and the 80's.

All right? I was there. Okay. I was not one of them. Okay. All right. We were on the west coast at that time. I was a youth pastor. We went up and down the coast in buses. And all of that. We went to the beach every week.

Let me tell you what. The beaches of Southern California were filled with flowers and love and kumbaya. I thought at a level which you cannot even imagine at this stage of the game back in the late 60's, the 70's, and that whole decade in there.

Kids wandering up and down the road with flowers in their hair, knowing not where they would go. And so we took, you know, we took some of them with us occasionally. And some things really came out of that, the so-called Jesus movement, which for some was only so-called, but some really became believers out of that deal.

All right? So back in those days, not even sure how I got into all of that. All right? But anyway, back in those days, koinonia was big time. Big, big, big, big. We were having koinonia here. Okay, and what did that mean?

That meant we're sitting on the beach in a circle playing our guitars, singing kumbaya. That was koinonia. That's not what koinonia is. All right? That's nice, but that's not what koinonia is. Notice what John writes.

That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us. The fellowship that's in view here is the fellowship that Jesus talked about in John chapter 17.

I love John chapter 17. You've probably got that by now. Jesus starts out. He starts praying for these 11 guys. All right? James, John, Peter, all that whole gang. Les, Judas, who's already gone out to begin the betrayal of Jesus.

And He prays for them. He prays that they may be one. He prays that they'll be protected and all of that. And then He gets over to verse 20 of chapter 17, and He starts, and it shoots down through 2 ,000 years to right now.

And He says, and I pray for all of those who will believe because of their testimony. You wonder when Jesus looked over here at these 11 guys, He went, their testimony? What Jesus knew was the Holy Spirit was gonna come and make something out of them besides hillbillies, which they were.

All right? What'd they say to Peter on the night he betrayed Jesus? We know you're one of them. We can tell by your accent. You say y 'all, okay? That's from Galilee, okay? No, no, I'm not one of them, y 'all.

Okay? So something was gonna be made out of them. But Jesus said there's gonna be a testimony, and that testimony is gonna shoot down through the ages, and many are gonna believe. That would be the people that John was writing to at the end of the first century here.

Many are gonna believe because of their testimony. But they're gonna bring with them, John discovered by the end of the first century, they're gonna bring their baggage with them out of their culture.

And that's what He addresses with things like in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Okay? Now, what does that have to do with us? All of that. Some of you are probably sitting there thinking, I don't know, this old guy is going on up there.

I have no idea what this has to do with us. When we come to Christ, we bring our cultural baggage with us also. And our cultural baggage basically is modernistic materialism. We were born into it. We were raised in it.

And some of us pursued that educationally. All right? And that is the idea that there is nothing that is really, it's quite the opposite of Gnosticism. The only real reality is the material. All of this so-called spiritual stuff is really just chemical reaction.

That's all it is. And so all we've got going here is the motions of atoms and molecules and the energy transfers between them, and that's basically it. Now, when you examine that, that's a very reductionist kind of thing.

It reduces us to this. We are just animated compost. All right? That's what a lot of people, that's what they intellectualize. That's not what they believe. Had a good friend whose wife came to BBC a hundred years ago when I was here.

All right? He was a good friend. He was a biologist. And he absolutely believed that there's nothing going on here but chemistry. And I would say to him, you go home to your dear wife and you tell her you are a interesting chemical reaction.

Okay? And that's all you are. Do you ever tell her you love her? Yeah, well, it's just chemistry, right? Well, yes. So, well, you go try that with her. Okay? You go try that. You're just nice chemistry, honey.

Okay? And see how far that goes. You will be sleeping on the couch if you try that. All right? So we know that there is much more going on, but the baggage of our culture is we drag in here this modernistic materialism that you say, wait, I thought we were in the postmodern age.

We as the postmoderns have no idea what's going on about anything. Okay? They just think, well, whatever I think, that's the truth and that's the truth, whatever it is. Okay? So they haven't really thought through much of this, some of them.

Okay? On the other hand, some of them have thought about it and it troubles them, but they don't know where to go. You know why they don't know where to go? Because the baggage of our culture tells them repeatedly over and over again, you are nothing but a chemical reaction.