#2: John’s Letter

I. We’ve been looking at what the apostle John has to say about the Christmas story in his writings.
A. Last week we looked at John’s gospel. Today we will be looking at John’s first epistle.
II. The unveiling — 1John 1:1–3 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— 2 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— 3 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.
A. We saw that in the early verses of John’s gospel, he picks up on Genesis 1. Now in the first verses of his first epistle, he picks up on the early verses of John 1.
1. “That which was from the beginning” is picking up on “In the beginning was...”
2. “concerning the word of life” is picking up on “the word... In Him was life...”
3. “which was with the Father” is picking up on “the word was with God.”
B. Last week we talked about the greatest miracle, the miracle of the Son of God becoming a man.
1. Today we see that this was not done in secret. It was done in full public display. It was witnessed over and over again by person after person and crowd after crowd. Thousands of people saw Him and heard Him and witnessed His miracles. Over 500 people saw Him after His resurrection (1Cor.15:6).
2. Even the people who were against Him, the people who didn’t want to believe in Him, the people who hated Him, even they never once claimed that He didn’t actually do miracles.
C. Even a quick read of 1John 1:1-3 reveals a considerable amount of repetition. In the Bible, repetition is usually for emphasis: “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...the life was made manifest, and we have seen it...the eternal life...was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard.”
1. Heard: 2x
2. Seen: 4x
3. Touched: 1x
4. Made manifest: 2x
5. In three verses John says nine times that Jesus made Himself discernible by human senses.
6. Jesus did not operate in secret!
D. What does "made manifest" mean?
1. Made so that all could see him
2. To show
3. To reveal
4. To appear
5. To display
6. To disclose
7. To make clear
8. The idea here is like when a monument or statue is publically unveiled. That’s what happened when Jesus was born (and even more so when He was baptized).
III. In the gospels of Matthew and Luke we read about the story of this unveiling.
A. Shepherds:
1. Luke 2:15 When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”
a. The distinction between making known and making manifest
B. Simeon:
1. Luke 2:26 And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.
2. Luke 2:26–30 And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. 27 And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus... 28 he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, 29 “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; 30 for my eyes have seen your salvation.”
C. The magi saw Him (Matt.2:11).
D. And there are many stories in the gospels of times when people saw Him and heard Him and touched Him.
1. Those who heard him: Luke 4:22 “All were ...wondering at the gracious words which were falling from His lips.”
2. Those who touched him
a. The bleeding woman who touched His garment
b. The blind man He healed by rubbing mud in his eyes
c. Picking up the children in His arms
d. John’s head on His chest (John 13:25, 21:20)
e. Thomas: See the scars! Touch them. (John 20:27)
IV. So what? What does this mean to us? He’s not with us like this anymore. It’s great that the apostles heard him with their own ears and saw Him with their own eyes and touched Him with their own hands. But we never did that. Why is their experience such a big deal to us?
A. We are the ones who receive their testimony.
1. As John says, “the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, ... so that you too may have fellowship with us” (2-3)
2. He does NOT say, “You should have seen it!” or “I’m sorry you missed it!” like we would say to one another if we saw an amazing sunset or a fantastic concert.
3. Rather, he says to us, we proclaim it to you so you can have what we have, so you can enjoy what we enjoy.
4. In Matt.17:16-17 Jesus said, “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”
a. Now think about this question: Did this “blessedness” apply only to the disciples and not to us?
b. Jesus refers to two groups here:
(1) those He’s speaking to (His disciples): “your eyes,” “your ears”
(2) the “prophets and righteous people” of old, who lived before Christ. He’s not talking about those blind to the things of God.
c. We fit into a third category, don’t we?, namely those who live after the apostles, who don’t see Him ourselves but only hear the testimony of those who do see.
d. So, is our category “blessed” like those who got to see Jesus, or are we more like the prophets and righteous people who lived in OT days longing to see Him, but who never did?
5. Well, to answer this question, we need to ask another: What is the glory of seeing?
a. The glory of seeing, here, is not the thrill, it’s not the experience itself.
b. The glory of seeing is knowing for sure that it’s true, knowing for certain that it has happened.
c. But there’s another way of knowing for sure. It is hearing from those who saw firsthand.
d. Some of things we know, we know by our own observation. But much of what we know, we know by the testimony of others who observed. Otherwise, how would we know about George Washington?
e. Think about something you would love to see happen in your lifetime.
(1) In the movie, Separate But Equal, which is about the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, there is a scene where two men are driving down the road and hear about the decision on the radio. This is something they had hoped for and prayed for and worked for, and now it has happened. You know what they did? They pulled over on the side of the road, got out of the car, got down on their knees and thanked God.
(2) So, think of something that would so wonderful that you would react in similar fashion if it happened: perhaps a cure for cancer, a cure for Alzheimer’s, overturning of Roe v. Wade.
(3) Now let me ask you a question: Do you need to see it yourself or do you need to hear from those who really know? Does it really matter that you weren’t in the courtroom or the laboratory? The great thing is not the experience of seeing it, but the knowledge that it has happened.
f. The same is true about Jesus’ coming: the people weren’t so much thankful that they got to see it as they were thankful that it happened.
6. This answers the question about whether we’re in the “blessed” group of Matt.17 or not. We are indeed among the blessed! In fact, I would suggest that the category we fit in is one of higher blessing than even those who saw Him with their own eyes! I say this because of John 20:29 where Jesus said, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
B. Now how do the witnesses proclaim it to us?
1. Through their word, their testimony: We’ve seen it. Now we declare it to you!
2. This is one of many passages in the NT on the importance of apostolic witnesses. E.g. Acts 1:3 “He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.”
3. The apostles were the ones specially chosen to bear witness to the reality of Christ and declare it to the world.
4. This is what the NT is! It is the apostolic witness to Jesus. (That’s one of the reasons it was so important that the NT books had to be apostolic.)
5. We all believe in the general reliability of sense-perception. If this were not the case, we’d never drive a car, or take a walk or a shower, or anything else.
a. But we also know that there are times when sense-perception fails. People think they see something which isn’t really there, or they think they hear something which was really something else.
b. And so, when it comes to important matters, one instance of sense perception is not enough. For instance, the Bible insists on two or three witnesses to convict a person of a capital crime (Deut.17:6).
6. And in something as important as the revelation of the Savior from God, God gives us much more than just two or three witnesses. He gives us twelve — and more! (There are a good number of other testimonies included in the NT apart from the apostles. E.g. the gospel of Mark, which was apostle-approved but written by John Mark, not an apostle but an eyewitness of Jesus.)
a. How many false religions have been started as a result of the false perceptions of a man or a few men? And they go off and spread the news and the whole lot of them is cast into ruin.
b. This is not the case with Christianity. It is not based on what a few folks think they saw happen at a certain time. It is based on the testimony of thousands of witnesses, seeing hundreds of different miracles and signs, friends as well as enemies, over many hundreds of years of time. It is not a matter of appearances, it is a matter of indisputable observation.
7. What Jesus said and did was not in secret to a couple of devotees. Jesus was on full display.
a. “I have spoken openly to the world. I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret.” – John 18:20
b. “This has not been done in a corner” (Acts 26:26).
C. He gives plenty of evidence, but not as much as people who resist Him demand.
1. Jesus refused to do miracles when those who had seen some asked for more (Matt.16:4).
2. And remember Luke 16:29, 31 where Jesus has Abraham saying to the man who claimed that his brothers would believe if he were sent back from the dead to warn them, “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them... 31 If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”
3. Have you ever had an argument with someone where the person is obviously not going to back down no matter how much evidence you bring up? He keeps throwing out argument after argument, it doesn’t matter how irrational or nonsensical they are, he’s never going to back down, he’s never going to give in? He’s not trying to get to the truth, he’s just trying to argue. And he will keep claiming that you haven’t proven your point no matter how much you have proven it.
4. God doesn’t keep giving more evidence to people like that. He doesn’t cast His pearls before swine (Matt.7:6).
D. God could have made Him apparent only in a spiritual way, like John the Baptist. John saw Jesus, of course, but not beore he leapt in the womb. God must have made Him sense spiritually that Jesus was near that day when Mary came to visit.
1. But God went to great lengths to reveal Himself even to non-believers, to prove Himself according to human categories.
V. What’s the point of all this? To what end is all this revealing and proclaiming taking us?
A. “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.”
B. Jesus was with the Father. Now He has come to be with us, so that we can be with Him and with the Father, and with one another.
C. We have been welcomed to participate in the fellowship of the Trinity!