Understanding Assurance of Salvation through 1 John

Hello and welcome to the Middletown Baptist Church Podcast, where we are proclaiming the truth to the world.

My name is Pastor Josh, and I want to thank you for listening to this podcast.

I hope that this podcast can be a blessing to you and strengthen you in the word of God.

Now, come along.

Let's look into the Bible and see what God has for us here today.

All right, so we are going to be starting a new series here this summer.

It's probably not going to last the whole summer, but it's going to take up a good portion of our summer, and that's going to be here in First John.

So if you have your Bibles, turn there with me to the book of First John.

If you want to know where First John is, find Second John and turn back a couple pages.

Sorry, couldn't help it.

It's towards the end of the New Testament.

Yep, we have the so.

So just for everyone's clarity, you've got the Gospel of John, and then you've got the first, second, and Third John, which comes later.

And so I know that sometimes you'll hear in church someone referencing John, and they say, which one?

Usually if someone just says John, they're talking about the Gospel of John.

And then usually people will preface their statements to first, second, third John, or 1, 2, 3, John.

So just to clarify that this is first John, not the Gospel of John, and what we're going to be studying here in this whole book is really, it can boil down to one thought, and it's a real relationship with Christ.

A real relationship with Christ.

Don't raise your hand, but probably if you have been saved for any amount of time, either yourself or you know of someone that has struggled with assurance of salvation.

Now, what is assurance of salvation?

Assurance of salvation is having the confidence that you are saved.

There is another theological term that we will mention through this study, and that is what's called eternal security.

Eternal security is the fact that when we are saved, we are secured in Christ as a believer in Christ, to know that we have salvation and know that we cannot lose that salvation.

And so that's a theological fact that isn't affected by my belief at all.

It's affected by the fact that that's the truth of the word of God.

But there is something called assurance of salvation that can waver in the life of a believer.

And so one of the passages of Scripture that I take people to when it comes to having complete confidence in their relationship with Christ and having that assurance of their salvation is First John.

And so that's not the only way that we can study one John, but that is a perspective that we can take about the assurance of salv.

But also it tells us what type of relationship that we have with the Lord when we come to him in faith.

And so that's what we're going to be talking about in this series, a real relationship with the Lord.

So look there with me in First John, chapter one, verse one.

And we're going to go very slowly through this study.

We're going to just tonight talk about these four verses.

Now, we will have some cross references and we will talk about a few different places in Scripture that align with what's being taught here.

But we're going to look at these first four verses and we're going to see what John is really basically introducing with this whole book of the Bible.

And so he says in verse one, that which was from the beginning.

Now we need to stop there.

What is he talking about?

Is he talking about the beginning of this earth?

No, he's not talking about that.

He's going back further than that.

And he's going to be referencing a person here.

And so I think that it would be good for us to understand some of the parallels in Scripture that can help us know who he's talking about.

And so if you have your Bibles and you're able to turn to other places, go with me.

We could go to Genesis 1:1 in the beginning and, and the fellow that we're going to be talking about was there at creation, but this is talking about before that.

And so go to the Gospel of John and look at the Gospel of John, chapter one, verse one.

Now, same human author, same inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

And so we see that these two passages of Scripture are tied together.

And so by reading John chapter one, we're going to understand who John is talking about in chapter one of first John.

And so look at John chapter one with me.

And we're going to read just the first section here.

It'll, it'll suffice.

Once we start reading this, you'll, you'll understand.

It says in verse one in the beginning.

Sound familiar?

He's talking about that which was from the beginning.

In the beginning was the Word.

Now let's pause right there.

Some of you that have been in church a long time might know who he's referencing here, but we want to be clear about the fact that, hey, there's different people with different backgrounds and you might not know who he's talking about.

So who is the word Jesus, right?

The, the Greek word here is Lagos.

And, and so what we're talking about here is not just the Word as the Word of God in the concept of the Bible.

In John chapter one, he's talking about Jesus here.

He says in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

And so what we can see here is that there's a lot, there's a lot of theology packed into verse one.

And I can sit here and analyze this verse all day.

We won't for the sake of time.

But some things that you need to glean from this verse in John 1:1 is that Jesus is God.

He's not just there with God.

He's not just a creation of God.

It does say at the end of that verse, and the Word was God.

So it's important to understand that, because we take many passages of Scripture that teach on the Trinity, but this is one of the passages that speaks to the relationship between God the Father and God the Son, and how they are distinct, but yet at the same time God.

And that's a deep concept to think about.

But what we can see here is, yes, Jesus was with God, so he's distinct from God the Father.

And so there are.

There are a lot of false teachings out there that, that Jesus and God are the same person and they take different forms at different times.

That's a heresy.

We see that Jesus and God the Father interact.

And so there's many cases in the New Testament which speaks of that, specifically Jesus's baptism.

And obviously Jesus right before he goes to the cross in the garden.

But yet at the same time, there were people that taught, yes, Jesus, God the Son and God the Father, they're different, but one is above the other.

And actually Jesus is a creation of God, therefore he is not God himself.

But what we can see here in verse one of John chapter one is that he was with God and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

And so this speaks of Jesus's interaction at creation as the Creator.

And so we could take this all the way Back to Genesis 1, right in the beginning, before the beginning, there was Jesus, and Jesus is the Creator.

He's.

And so what we can see, another aspect of this is Jesus's eternality.

Jesus did not start his life in Bethlehem, there in the manger.

That was his incarnation.

That was Jesus manifested in the flesh.

But Jesus is eternal.

He always has been and he always will be.

And so we see that there in this passage.

And then verse 4.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.

And he goes on to talk about how John the Baptist was the one that was the professing Jesus Christ before he comes.

And then, of course, there's a very famous verse there in verse 14.

And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

And so take John chapter one in mind when we come back to First John, chapter one.

Obviously, John here is referring to Jesus and how an individual can come to know the Word.

And so that's what we're talking about here.

When he says that which was from the beginning.

And so he's referencing Jesus here.

He's referencing the person and work of Jesus Christ and the relationship that we can have with Jesus.

And we're going to see that he introduces people into knowing that they can have that relationship with Christ.

So essentially, that's what we're finding ourselves here in the first few verses.

So he says that which was from the beginning, which we have heard.

Now, John is speaking here in a personal way.

He's saying as.

As an apostle, as a follower of Christ, we have heard him, we have heard his teachings.

And then he says, which we have seen with our eyes.

They've witnessed his work, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled.

And so John is writing about Jesus, referencing the beginning.

And.

And this indicates that the one that he's referencing, this eternal being, this God that he is emphasizing here, he says, this is the one that we have experience with our own senses.

The idea is this.

The eternal God of the universe was experienced through Jesus Christ.

And John was able to see him, hear him, feel him, understand him.

And so that's the idea is he says, I know Jesus.

I've experienced Jesus.

This is the interaction that I had with him.

Here's the proof that he is real.

He came to earth.

John 1:14.

The word became flesh and dwelt among us.

So Jesus came to earth.

John and others experience him in.

In their life.

And so the idea here is that this one that he is bringing up, this one that he is introducing here, is one who can be experienced and known and have a personal relationship with.

And I think that's important for us to understand when it comes to teaching about Jesus, is that Jesus isn't just this entity that's far away and distant.

He is someone that we can experience, that we can know and that we can interact with in our lives.

And so John is emphasizing this, this personal relationship with Christ.

And so that's something to, to recognize here.

And so what, what is the implication that he's referring to here?

The implication was that John's words have weight.

They have the eyewitness account.

What basically John is saying is that don't take my word for it, there's others that have experienced Jesus.

And so he's not speaking of a tradition.

He's not speaking of a myth.

He's not speaking of something that has been passed down from generation to generation for thousands and thousands of years.

Jesus was.

No, he says Jesus was experienced by us.

And so he ends verse one with this phrase.

He says of the word of life.

And so John identifies Jesus as the word of life.

This is that same reference to John, chapter one, when he refers to him as the Word Lagos.

And there's a whole study that we could do with that.

But ultimately it's a reference to Jesus's deity.

It's a reference to Jesus all powerful nature, his all powerful, no limitations, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence.

He's referencing that verse 2.

For the life was manifested, and we have seen it and bear witness and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us.

And so he says, hey, this life, the life of Jesus was manifested among us.

And so Jesus is, he's.

He's trying to prove that Jesus was physically real.

Now why would he want to do that?

None of us, maybe that are in this room might understand the context or maybe you do.

But the reason why he's making such an effort here in chapter one to prove that Jesus was real was because that there was this belief system called Gnosticism at the time.

And essentially it was teaching that Jesus wasn't something tangible that was actually there.

It was, it was something else.

And there were some different schisms that were happening, some different groups that had different philosophies of this.

But what John is essentially trying to expose is this Jesus, yes, is 100% God, but yes, he's also 100% man.

He's trying to teach the complete understanding of who Jesus is.

And so he's explaining that Jesus is the word of life.

He's explaining that he can be experienced.

He's explaining that not only did Jesus come and preach the message of the truth, but also he preached the message of a personal relationship with him.

And so he says, hey, we want to show you that.

We want you to experience that.

And so in calling Jesus the source of eternal life, John is probably going back and remembering the things that were told to him of Jesus, right?

Jesus explained, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

And so he says, I'm the resurrection and the life.

And so John is recounting the teachings that Jesus himself had given to him.

And so Jesus is saying, I'm eternal.

I'm God, I'm the way to salvation.

And that's what John is recounting here when it comes to knowing Jesus as a personal savior.

And he references again the relationship with the Father.

Then we get to verse number three, which I think is important to understand, because this is.

Now he's talking about the theology of who Jesus is.

So he's trying to paint the picture of the complete understanding of who Jesus is and what he did.

But then he's going to take it from the concept of the broad picture of who Jesus is.

And now he's going to give an invitation to the reader for a relationship with Christ.

And so it's one thing to talk about who Jesus is.

It's another thing to invite other people into that relationship.

And so a lot of times what happens is when we talk about the word theology, we think that it's something distant or it's something that's only found in a classroom.

But really, theology should apply to every aspect of our life.

It should apply to our lives as a witness for Christ.

So my theology.

So what I believe about God, what I trust in the truth of God, knowing Him, that affects the way that I interact with others.

So if I truly believe that Jesus is who he says he is, I'm going to treat other people differently.

I'm going to be more passionate about sharing him.

And so what we see here is that John's theology about Jesus drove him to tell others about Jesus.

And I think that's important for us to understand that theology isn't just this dry thing that we look at and we go, yeah, that's for those theologians.

But all I need to know is that Jesus loves me.

You do need to know that Jesus loves you.

And that's part of theology, right?

Knowing the true love of Christ.

But there's so much more to know about God.

But it's not just about knowing it intellectually, but then it's taking it from the intellectual side of things and applying it to our hearts and applying it to our lives.

And so this is I think the transition from John saying, this is who I'm talking about to now you can know him as well.

Verse.

Verse number three.

He says, that which we have seen and heard.

He says, so the things that I've seen and the things that I've heard, He's given a testimony of his experience with who Jesus is.

He.

He says, we declare.

Declare we unto you.

So he says, I want to declare to you what I know about Jesus.

I want to declare to you what I have experienced about Jesus.

And.

And I think it's important for us to do that in our own lives.

It's.

It's important for us to share with people what we believe about Jesus.

It's important for us to explain to people what Jesus has done for us.

You'll hear me say this over and over again.

Of the best tools for evangelism is telling people your testimony, telling people who Jesus is and what he has done for you.

It's a very simple thing.

All of us should be able to recount that.

And sometimes it's hard to get enough passion and desire and boldness to tell people that.

But really, it's not something that we're doing in the concept of going down and memorizing every passage of Scripture and being able to preach a sermon with three points.

No, it's just telling people what Jesus has done for us.

And so he says, we want to declare this unto you.

And so the purpose of John's declaration about Jesus's eternality is a physical nature.

The fact that he's the Word of life is to basically explain to people how they can know him completely.

It's not about just showing that he knows a lot about Jesus.

It's about bringing people to the truth.

And he says, hey, you can enjoy this fellowship as well.

He says that ye also may have fellowship with us.

He says, we want you to experience what we have experienced.

We want you to have that same fellowship, and not just fellowship with other believers, but ultimately fellowship with the Lord.

And so that's a.

Basically, the first four verses here is just a great outline to how to share the Gospel.

Number one.

To think the right things about who Jesus is according to his word, to recognize all those aspects of his deity, his humanity, his eternality, his holiness, all of these things about what the Bible teaches us about Jesus and then his work.

And then take that and say, you know what?

I want to share that with others.

We want you to taste of that grace.

No, the truth is that we are called to witness.

It's not an Optional thing as Christians.

But sometimes we can share our faith almost begrudgingly, Almost like, well, we're forced to share our face.

So I gotta do this.

But how much more effective could we be for the cause of the gospel when we are excited and looking for opportunities to tell people about Jesus and his love for us?

I think that so many times we do what we do without joy and excitement.

And so he's going to address that here in a few moments.

He says here, hey, we want you to have fellowship with us.

And truly our fellowship is with.

And so he says here, this is where a true relationship is found.

Fellowship is with the Father and with his son, Jesus Christ.

And so he doesn't say, hey, join our church and have fellowship with us, and then you can find a relationship with God.

He says, no, it all starts.

Everything in the Christian life starts with a relationship with God.

Everything else follows that.

Change, service, desire, love, all these things.

They fall after understanding who God is and what he has done for us.

And so the idea of fellowship here is really what I believe is one of the most important ideas in this letter, because it's talking about the fellowship that we have with God that affects the fellowship that we have with others.

The Greek word is koinonia, and we emphasize that here at our church on fifth Sundays.

But the idea of fellowship is this.

I fellowship with the Lord and experience that relationship.

And that relationship that I have with him will then manifest itself in loving others.

And John is going to get to that here in this very book.

He basically says, in so many words, if you love God, you will love others.

If you don't love others, the love of God is not in you.

You don't understand the love of God if you can't love others.

And what happens sometimes in our humanity is we say, well, you know, I love God, but I can't stand other believers.

I can't stand people around me.

You know, I've heard people even say, and, you know, kind of a running joke, the church would be a great place if there wasn't all the problems with the people.

But the truth is, that's really what it's all about.

That is the church.

And so what we have to do is we have to grow in our koinonia, our fellowship with God, so that we can grow in our koinonia fellowship with those around us.

And so what we see here and what we see throughout scripture is that God is always more concerned with the motivation behind our action.

He's concerned at the heart of the issue.

And he says, you got to know this fellowship, you got to know this fellowship with God so that you can have the right fellowship with everyone else in your life.

And maybe you've heard me say this before, but if I want to be a better husband, I need to be a better Christ follower.

And that better husband will fall in line if I want to be a better co worker.

For me to be a better coworker, the best coworker that I can be in Christ, it means to be a better Christ follower.

Because the more that I mirror Christ in my life, the more I'm able to exemplify the values that he has called us to live in our life.

And so this idea of fellowship speaks of a, one commentator said this, a living, breathing, sharing, loving relationship with Christ and with other people around us, as hard as it might be, as difficult as it might be.

And so I believe this is one of the greatest statements that we can find in all of Scripture because it basically tells us this.

All of what we have and the riches of our salvation are found in a fellowship with God.

It's a real relationship.

So, for example, if someone's struggling with assurance of salvation, let's think about some of the reasons why they struggle with assurance of salvation.

I, I, I've heard people say, well, you know what?

I don't know if I said the right words when I got saved.

I don't know if I said the right words.

Truth is, is that at the end of the day, it's not about the right words to say.

It's about, do you have fellowship with God?

Do you have faith with him?

Are you walking with him?

And, and that's the idea that I think that we have to go to in our lives is that if I could lose my salvation, I would.

And so therefore don't get stressed in what I have done.

Get, get focused on the belief that I have in Christ.

If, if we look at the, the true, like, for example, I've said this before and some of you have heard me say this.

If someone comes up to me and says, you know, I don't think you're really married to your wife.

And I'm going to look at them and I'm going to say, you're crazy, because I know that I am.

Why do you know that you are?

Because I am.

And I've been there and I was at the wedding and I walk with her every single day.

I know that I'm married, you know, and, and so you see how silly it is when we talk about concepts like that.

But then we have so many Christians that say, well, I'm not sure if I'm saved.

Well, there's a lot of factors that go into that.

And, and the truth of the matter is, is that if someone is struggling with that, go through the book of First John and say, is this something that is my.

Is characterized in my life?

Do I have a real fellowship with God?

Do I have a real relationship with him?

Or is it just, well, I've always gone to church, so I must be a Christian.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Not right now, but maybe later.

But if you go through this and you see what he's talking about when it comes to salvation, he never once says, well, have you gone to church your whole life?

Doesn't say that.

So the mark of a believer is not attendance.

Now, is attendance something that we should do?

Of course, but that's not what saves us.

And so he says, here it is, that fellowship with him that ultimately is the fellowship that's manifested in our life.

I'll use this analogy.

A lot of times people will say, I'm, I'm a good Christian because I read my Bible, I pray, and I go to church.

That me, that makes me a good Christian.

But then what if I told you, you know what, I'm the.

I'm a good baseball player.

I go out and I practice every single day.

I, I go and I hit the ball.

I go practice my throwing.

I do all that well, how did, how did you do in your game?

Well, I struck out every single time I went up to bat.

I missed every ball.

That was to me, am I a good baseball player?

No.

Right.

Because the proof is not in the disciplines.

The proof is in the product.

Right.

And so there's a lot of people that say, I'm a great Christian, I read my Bible, I pray, and I go to church.

Well, did you exemplify the fruit of the spirit?

Love, joy, peace.

Right.

All of that list.

And so what we're seeing here is that we can do all these things to try to manufacture Christ likeness, but at the end of the day, it's the heart of the matter.

And so the true test is not, hey, I read my Bible this morning.

I hope that you read your Bible, and that is a great help.

But how many of us know that reading my Bible does not necessarily equate for me following Christ?

Someone can read their Bible and go, that's great.

Now let me go live my life in the spirit.

Or someone could read the Bible and say, that's Great.

I'm going to go live my life in the flesh, and therefore, I'm not going to exemplify anything that the scripture says.

And so what I'm cautioning on is this.

Sometimes what we gauge people's relationship with God is.

Is through, hey, do you do all your spiritual disciplines?

But at the end of the day, it's the true question is, are you in fellowship with Him?

Because if you're in fellowship with him, all of those spiritual disciplines will fall in line, and that'll be the natural thing to do.

I could buy my wife flowers every day.

I could.

I could take her to all of her favorite restaurants, but at the end of the day, show no love.

Now, if I'm walking with her in love, I'm going to do all those things that demonstrate my love.

But sometimes what we can do is we can try to start from the end and try to work our way back to the core.

And what it has to be is that true fellowship with Christ.

And so this is the idea of coining, not talking to somebody.

I don't know how my relationship is with them.

I'm not walking in step with them.

I'm not sharing life with them.

And so therefore, there's going to be a lot of uncertainty in my relationship with them.

Let's go back again to, like, a relationship between a husband and wife.

Someone walks up to me and they say, how.

How's your relationship with Alicia going?

And I go, I think it's going pretty good.

Okay, when's the last time you talked to her?

I haven't talked to her in, like, a couple years.

But my assumption would be that everything's okay.

Okay, when's the last time you spent time with her?

I just don't spend time with her.

Okay.

And then at the end, I might say, well, you know what?

Maybe.

Maybe the relationship isn't as good as I thought it was.

You see, the.

I want to call it the foolishness of that.

It's the same thing sometimes as Christians, there's a lot of Christians that aren't walking in fellowship with the Lord.

And then there's a lot of reasons for uncertainty.

Well, I don't know if God really does love me.

I don't really know if he really did save me.

I really don't know if His Word is applied to my life.

Because you know what?

I'm struggling with this.

I'm struggling with knowing that where is God in all of this?

And I think that a lot of times what happens is that we're walking out of stride with fellowship with Him.

And so it's so much more than just saying something, getting part of a church and then saying, okay, everything must be okay.

There is a challenge here to walk in stride and fellowship with the Lord.

Now, that's not what saves us.

What saves us is faith.

But what I'm saying is, is that what he's about to explain here in a few moments is that sometimes we can have a relationship with Christ and then we abandon the, the truth of his word and we lose our joy.

And so he says, I want you to understand this fellowship so that you can have true joy.

And so this, this simple statement here means that one can have a relationship with God.

And, and so for a lot of people that were reading John's letter, this was confusing for them.

They, they didn't really understand the concept of having a personal relationship with God.

And there's a lot of people in our society today that don't understand that.

Like, go into a church with religion and say, you can know God and be personally in a relationship with Him.

They're going to say what?

Because that's a foreign concept to someone who is trusting in other things for their salvation.

And so this kind of relationship that John is describing here is only possible because of who Jesus is and what he has done for us.

John 14:6.

I am the way, the truth, and the light.

And so the only reason that we can know God is because of who Jesus is.

That's what John is saying, you want to find God, find Jesus.

If you want to know God in a personal way, know Jesus.

And that's what he's explaining here to these people that were confused about knowing God.

And so it has more to do with just knowing someone intellectually.

Like, I know a lot of people, but I don't have fellowship with them.

And so when we have fellowship with Jesus, we will become more like Him.

It'll be more of a relationship that is, is not just I know of someone, but I know him in a personal way.

Like, I could ask you right now, how many of you know?

And I'll name some famous person and you know of that person, but you don't know that person on a personal level.

And so what we're seeing here is a difference between knowing God, knowing His existence and knowing about him, and knowing different facts about him, and then knowing him on a personal way.

And that's, that's the distinction here.

And so what is he saying here?

He says, having a shared life, a shared life with Christ and a shared Life with others around us.

He says that, that, that, that you can have fellowship with us.

Meaning.

So it's not just about a relationship with God.

It is, and that's where it starts, but it's also a fellowship with God's people.

And I think that that's important to understand because the temptation for our society today is having a lot of segmented relationships.

So, like, okay, I want to have a relationship with God, but I don't want to have a relationship with other people.

The truth is, is that the Christian life was not made or created by God to be an isolated event.

We are supposed to be around other Christians.

We are supposed to fellowship.

That's.

That's the way that God has created us.

And the, the analogy I had given this in our Bible study recently.

The way that I had it explained to me is this.

If.

If I go fishing and I catch a fish and I pull that fish up and I want to take a.

I'm.

Let's say, let's say in a world where I'm going to release this fish, okay, some people are like, release a fish.

I'll never release a fish that's going on the frying pan.

I understand that.

But let's say hypothetically, we're going to release this fish and I pull that fish out of water and does that fish die right away?

Some of you know that that fish can survive outside of water for, for a short amount of time, but that's not the way that God has designed that fish to live.

That fish is designed to be in the water.

That's the way that God has created that fish.

And so for a Christian to live outside of the fellowship with God and outside the fellowship with other saints, other believers, it's like a fish out of water.

Yeah, we can survive, but we're never going to be properly healthy and growing and thriving because that's not the way that God has created Christians.

So can a Christian be isolated?

Yes, but that's not how a Christian can live in a healthy way.

And so there are a lot of factors that fall into that.

Obviously health issues and obviously folks that are not able to get out.

But that is not an excuse for the fact that we should still be around other Christians.

That's the whole purpose of what he's going to get to here.

And so he kind of breaks down the book into two categories.

You have the category of a relationship with Christ and then how that relationship with Christ affects my relationship with others.

And so let's look at the result of the relationship and there's a lot of things that we could talk about with the result of the relationship.

But he says here in verse four, and these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.

And so the result of this fellowship is joy.

This joy is not just a circumstantial happiness, but it's a consistent sense of cheerfulness.

We would call it maybe even in this world, optimism, the fact that we know Christ, no matter what happens to us, it's not, hey, everything's going well in my life.

It's no matter what happens, I have a relationship with Christ, and so I can have joy.

And so it's not cheerfulness based on circumstances, it's cheerfulness based on your fellowship and your relationship with Christ.

And so we know that that's something that even Jesus brought before the disciples.

John 15:11.

Jesus says these things, have I spoken unto you, that my joy, that's Jesus speaking, my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.

And so Jesus tells us the source of that joy for a believer, and that is his joy.

So Jesus says, if you can't find joy, there's an issue there.

Now, again, let me, let me reiterate some.

Sometimes when people hear me preach about joy, they say, pastor, go through a hardship.

You know, am I supposed to just be laughing?

And no, no.

And we're not talking about silly stuff, circumstantial happiness.

We're talking about joy in the midst of hardship.

And what Jesus says is, because I extend you joy, you can have joy in the midst of every situation.

And so even, even, even Jesus in John 17, John 17, if you don't know the context of John 17, it's Jesus's high priestly prayer.

So again, he's interacting with the Father.

And his prayer for the, the believers is this.

He says, and now come I to thee, to the Lord, and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

So it's the heart of Jesus that we would have the joy that he has given us in our life.

And, and there's a lot of other passages that speak joy.

The joy of the Lord is our strength.

That's the book of Nehemiah, Nehemiah, chapter 8.

And so fullness of joy is, is a possibility for Christians, that it's not just the possibility, it's the expectation for Christians.

But it doesn't mean that all Christians are going to find this.

It just means that if we're living properly with fellowship with the Lord and fellowship with others, we can experience this same joy.

And so he says, you can find this joy.

And that's what we share with other people.

We share this, hey, if you know Christ, this joy is available to you.

And so John starts the book with the.

The very beginning, the very basic nature of who Jesus is.

He is God.

He is eternal.

He is the Creator.

He told us that Jesus didn't just stay in the spirit form, but that Jesus also took form as a man and was 100 man, and was manifested so that other people could experience him, touch him, understand him, have eyewitnesses of him.

He told us that Jesus is the word of life.

He told us that God is.

Jesus is different than God the Father.

So there's different persons of the Godhead.

He told us that we can know that God.

We can know that relationship with him with fellowship.

And he told us that that can only be found through Jesus.

And he tells us that the product of that relationship with Jesus is joy.

And so that's his introduction, just those four verses.

And so now John is going to transition from the introduction to dealing with.

He jumps right into the idea of sin and relationships.

And so.

So he says, okay, if you trust in Jesus, this is what the Christian life looks like.

And he's going to talk about the desire, hopefully the desire for a Christian not to sin.

But then he talks about what we do when we sin.

And so there's a beautiful thing to understand that as a Christian, the expectation is that we don't sin.

The reality is that we will sin.

But the other blessing is that God has given us an avenue to come back into restoration in that fellowship.

Sometimes that fellowship can be broken because of our sin and because of our issues.

But the beauty of a relationship with God is that he is always there, extending that hand of forgiveness, extending that hand of grace.

And we, in our humility, can come back to him and have that relationship restored.

We never lose that relationship with Christ.

In the concept of salvation, I use it similar to this is the idea that if my children say, you know what, dad?

We don't want anything to do with you, that would be a heartbreaking thing.

But that would not, biologically speaking, in our nature, that would not make that child estranged when it comes to He.

He is my child now.

He might not see me as a father, but there's nothing that's going to change.

Micah, Nora and Silas, they're my children.

But at the same time, there are things that they can do to drive a wedge in our fellowship and our relationship.

And so as a Christian, there's nothing that we can do to lose our nature as a child of God.

But there are things that we can do to drive a wedge in our relationship.

And God's character doesn't change.

It's we who need to come back in repentance and confess our sins before him so that we can have that renewed and restored relationship.

And that's what we're going to talk about next week.

Okay.

His expectation for us is to walk in the light.

But when we don't, what do we do?

We have that restoration with him and that forgiveness in Him.

So I'm excited to speak to those things as we go along in this study.

So I think that First John is a book of the Bible that many of us might know certain portions of.

But I will say that it is a wonderful book to point people to when they are struggling with their relationship with God.

Maybe they're like, I don't know if I'm saved.

The very first thing that I tell people to do is read the book of First John.

Because in the book of First John, you can see what it means to have a relationship with Christ and ultimately how to abide in Christ.

And.

And then he concludes with, you know, if you love God, what do you do?

Keep his commandments.

And.

And we're going to conclude that in First John, chapter five.

Well, I appreciate your attention here this evening, and I know that that's a lot to take in here on the first session.

But I think that ultimately, as, as believers, we, we need to have the right.

We got to start with the right belief about who Jesus is.

It has to start there.

Everything else will fall down if we don't have the right perspective of who Jesus is and what he has done for us.

Thank you again for listening to the Middletown Baptist Church podcast.

I hope that this sermon has been a blessing for you.

You would like to find out more.

Information about our church or this sermon, you can find us at middletownbaptistchurch.org or find us on Facebook or YouTube.

You can also email me directly at John Josh Massaro@middletownbaptistchurch.com if you've enjoyed this podcast.

Please subscribe and follow along for future podcasts and updates.

Thank you so much.

God bless.

Have a wonderful day.