1 John 1 1-4

A study on staying faithful to the Scriptures.

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Thank you for joining my podcast. This message is taken from the first epistle of John, chapter 1, verses 1 through 4. John begins this epistle to counter the falsehood of Gnosticism entering into the church. We will only be able to get through the first few verses in this chapter, but it is my hope and it is my prayer that it will bless you. So thanks for joining us. And now let's listen to the message. Let's read today's scripture. 1 John chapter 1, verses 1 through 4. 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, 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 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. In advance, I want to say that today's message is not a message about bashing any individual or any group of people. We need to love them. Today's message is about purity, our purity, and so importantly, church purity. Christ's bride, the church, needs to be presented to him as pure. And it's up to you and me to ensure that when he returns and comes for his church, we have been found faithful to him by having been faithful to his word, which is truth. I'd like to read to you an email that I received this past week from a very prominent Christian ministry. On a Sunday morning just six months ago, Reverend Phil Fanouf went to his pulpit and announced to his congregation that he was giving up pretending to be a man. From now on, he said his name would be Philippa, his pronouns would be she and her. He would dress as a woman, he would alter his body with months of hormone drugs. And guess what? All of this was done with the approval of his United Methodist bishop and district superintendent in upstate New York. It was in keeping with the denomination's 2024 affirmation of LGBTQ clergy. In fact, the United Methodist Church denomination called LGBTQ identities sacred gifts. Yes, in some churches, sins are now presented to Americans as sacred gifts. The

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email goes on to bring up a couple of other instances, but it ends with, Thankfully, there is hope. End quote. And of course there is, but it is dependent upon us with Jesus by our side and our Bibles open. And now while the video and the email that I just read to you may have focused specifically on homosexuality in the pulpit and in church leadership, which is rampant in some main denominations, I want us to remember that we need to consider any heretical teaching as we take just a shallow drive into the passage which I read this morning. It is widely considered that the apostle John wrote this book and that he wrote it around 85 to 90 AD, and this makes John a pretty old man. If he was born at or around the same time as our Lord, he would be about 85 or 90 years old right now. And as a side note, for those that might be octagenarians or older, or for that matter, even younger or much younger, don't think that the Lord can't use you or doesn't want to use you. Abraham was 75 years old when God called him from Ur of the Chaldees, and he was a hundred years old when Isaac was born. Moses was 40 when he saw an Egyptian mistreating a Jew, and then after killing the Egyptian, he spent 40 years in the desert working for who would become his father-in-law Jethro. That would make him 80 years old before God called him to return back to Egypt and rescue his people. Stories like this are abounding in the Bible. If you have voluntarily shortened your service time for the Lord simply because you think you're too old, I would ask you to rethink your position and ask the Lord how you might continue to worship him through service that be perhaps because of your age or experience, you might be the only one that can do what needs to be done for him. And as you can see, with the infiltration of the world and lies, your work and your stance for the truth is needed perhaps more now than ever before in your lifetime. Let me use the example that Brian uses so often about the church being a boat in water. And as the church is, and as the church, the boat, if you will, is running through the water, it makes waves. And we should make waves. We are counter-cultural people. We don't stand up for what the world stands up for, we stand up for what God stands for. And that's a good thing if that's what the boat is doing. But if the water gets into the boat, in other words, if the world starts coming into the church, the boat is going to start to sink. And what we find right now is we have people that are in the boat that are actually drilling some holes in the boat so that the water can naturally seep into it. Let's look at exactly what is the purpose of this epistle that the Apostle John wrote. And I believe there's two purposes that for the Lord to have had John pen the words of the Holy Spirit. The first is to counter the false teachings of the first century, most prominently Gnosticism at that time. And as we will see, and as we've just read, John starts off by combating these lies quickly in the very first verses of this chapter. The second purpose for this book is found in chapter 5, verse 13, where John says, quote, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. And that's going to be our message for next week. John wants to bring peace, confidence, and assurance of your salvation if you are truly saved. But today we're going to focus on the first order of business found in this letter that we just read. When John wrote the book, probably pastoring churches in the area of Ephesus, which is now Turkey, he was witnessing the church seeing a group called Gnostics gain traction with their ideas. Now bear with me because I need, I believe, to give you a very brief, partial explanation of what Gnosticism is, because I think it's important to understand what it was doing to the first century church, because we're going to apply it to today's church as well. Gnosticism was a prominent movement that grew up around the church beginning in the first century. It gained more traction in the second century. It was a mix of Persian, Egyptian, Jewish, and Christian ideas with some Greek philosophy thrown in. It's called syncretism, where you take a bunch of different religions and beliefs and form them into one new religion of faith. The word gnosis itself is Greek. It means knowing or having knowledge. And having knowledge was a significant part of Gnosticism. To say you were a Gnostic was to say, I know something you don't. I'm in on the secret, I've been enlightened, I've been awakened, I'm spiritually on a higher level. But as well as thinking you're that kind of big deal spiritually, Gnostics also had a problem with the human body. Gnostics said that the spirit is good, and matter, including the physical body, was evil. So naturally, Gnostics can't believe that Jesus, the Son of God, actually took on human flesh forever in the incarnation. That wouldn't do at all because, again, all matter is evil. So as a result, many of them argued that Jesus merely took on human form temporarily. Rather like putting on some nasty, moth-eaten, smelly old coat that you can't wait to take off as soon as you put it on. The problem with this, of course, is that Jesus' atonement for human sin requires that he be both truly and fully God and truly and fully human, just as our pastor acknowledged in his prayer this morning. Merely appearing to be human means that any atonement can only appear to be effective. As it says in John, in 2 John verse 7, for many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the Antichrist. As Barry Cooper of Ligonair Ministry says, I quote, Scripture nowhere says that matter is intrinsically evil. On the contrary, as it says in Genesis chapter 1, God made everything good. It's true that as we look at the physical world, we can clearly see the corruption in it. There's dysfunctioning, there's suffering, and there's evil. But those

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problems are caused by sin, not by physicality. And God's redemption will end the former, not the latter. He has no intention of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, end quote. So hopefully we see that Gnosticism has a number of big issues. One of the greatest being that they believed and taught that Jesus was not fully human. And if not, then his atonement for the sins of this world falls apart, for a perfect human being was required to become the sacrifice for those very sins. And if Jesus wasn't fully flesh and fully God, then this could have not happened and all of us will perish in our sins. It was less than 20 years since the apostles preached the true word of God that these falsehoods and others, but this is primarily what John is writing about, that these falsehoods were entering into the church. And John, an apostle himself, would have nothing to do with that. And so he faces head-on the falsehoods of Gnosticism by doing so in the very first verses of chapter one. Now, I don't really care that much if you remember the word Gnosticism. What I do care about is that you and I understand how errors can creep into the church, just like we saw in the video and what John is preaching against, and that we all need to be vigilant because once they enter the church and are accepted, they enter into our minds and finally into our hearts, because that's how it works. That's how lies deceive us. It's just how error sneaks in. It first goes here into our ears, then into our minds, and finally into our hearts. And with that, we wind up accepting deception and falsehoods in this case about the Lord Jesus Christ. So we need to be reminded, or maybe we need to learn for the very first time how to combat this ongoing, present-day evil that's all around us, both outside of the church, and more importantly, with regard to my message and Paul's, John's message inside the church itself. So, with that background in mind, let's look how John begins this letter when he writes about Jesus. He says, that which was from the beginning. And although we're not focusing on Jesus being fully and truly God this morning, we will do so next week. In this sentence, the word that, that which was from the beginning, refers to the phrase that comes later in this passage, namely the word of life. And in this case, John is probably using this phrase with a double meaning referring to the message about Jesus and to Jesus Himself, who is the Word. Think back on the Gospel of John chapter one. Listen to what he says. He says twice, we heard him. Three times we have seen him, and also that we have touched him. The main idea in these first three verses is this Jesus Christ is the God man who is the one basis of true Christian fellowship and eternal life. Christianity stands or falls on the person and the work of Jesus. It succeeds or fails on whether or not a true and genuine incarnation actually took place in space and time. Today there are obviously many opinions about who Jesus is, just like there were back when he walked this earth. The video showed us a couple of opinions that were all wrong. But this morning I'm concerned with who we think he is, or better yet, who we know him to be. Because of heretics entering the church and being allowed to teach, even those who think they are worshiping Jesus correctly, do you think that lady thought she was worshiping Jesus correctly? Yeah. You can be very sincere in your beliefs, but you know what? You can be very sincerely wrong. And the only way to correct that is with this right here. So whether it was the Gnostics 2,000 years ago or the lies of today that have damaged the church. Remember that there is nothing new under the sun. So as such, this is nothing new in 2026. But in the face of it, we must stand for the truth of Scripture at all times. The Apostle John faced the same challenges in the first century, and he penned first John in part to set the record straight. He knew that it was absolutely essential to get the Jesus question 100% right. Both that he was and is fully God and fully human. And here's a very important note to all of us, and actually it's the crux of my message today. Whenever we hear anything that has this question, our beliefs are faith, true belief, true faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in his word. There is only one place to turn to, and that is the very Word of God. It is the only place where we can be a hundred percent positive that we are reading and hearing the very truth of our Creator, our sustainer, and our Savior. No other book, no other individual will ever be a hundred percent correct unless the premise for what they are saying is directly from the Word of God. We should question everything we read and everything we hear when something just doesn't feel right, and we need to do so by opening the Bible to see if it's true. So here's what I'm saying. Here's my admonishment to all of us at any stage of our faith. All of us need to be like the Bereans all of the time. Acts chapter 17, verse 10 and 11. It should be highlighted in our Bibles. The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue. Okay, so here's Paul and Jewish, here's Paul and Silas going into the church of the time, the synagogue, to preach, to preach Jesus. How did the Bereans sitting in those pews, if you will, respond to what these two godly men, and as a matter of fact, one of them, an apostle with a capital A, verse 11, says, These Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. That is an excellent position for every one of us to be in. You hear me from behind this microphone right now. You hear something that you say, hmm, I wonder if that was true. You get into the word of God and you find out whether or not it was true. If it is, praise God. If it isn't, you come and see me so that I can correct it. Listen to what Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, 3 and 4. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but have itching ears. They will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. You know what that in that video, you know what that lady's main problem was? She didn't read her Bible. She didn't read her Bible. Paul tells Timothy, don't be surprised at those in your very own church who hear, who are there rather, but don't want to hear your sound teaching. But they would rather hear things from the pulpit that satisfy their own passions and their own desires. Think back just a few minutes ago. What did we read about ministers and bishops in at least one of the main denominations of the church? They have been placed in positions of teaching their congregations, and they are open transsexuals or open homosexuals leading lives that one are leading some astray, and two, satisfying, itching ears in the pews. God forbid that that should ever happen here at Greystone or any other true evangelical, Bible-believing, Christ-centered church anywhere. What does Paul tell Timothy to do in response to those that want their ears tickled? In verse 5 of 2 Timothy chapter 4, Paul says this, as for you, he's talking to Timothy, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of evangelists, fulfill your ministry, fulfill the ministry that the Lord God has given you. You know, maybe some of you here don't know, and our pastor doesn't know, I'm going to say this. But if it wasn't for Pastor Bryan and his rock, solid desire to endure suffering and to fulfill the ministry that the Lord gave him, this very church that you're sitting in here right now might be preaching a false gospel and have gone down a path of destruction. But thanks be to God, it didn't happen. So when you watched the video, did you wonder how did these people get to this point in their church? Yes, I've already said they're not opening the word of God. That's the primary problem. But here's how it happened: someone began to itch. Someone in the pulpit began to itch, tickling ears by presenting to them a false Messiah. It wasn't like what the Gnostics were teaching, but it was a lie, nevertheless. What was that lie? Well, it was spoken about in that video, even if it was tacitly. They have reduced Jesus to be only love. As mentioned, he is that for sure. In this very epistle that we opened this morning in chapter 4, verse 8, at the end of that verse, John says, God is love. But that's not all he is. He is holy. But they decided that Jesus was only love. They decided that he was no longer righteous, that he was no longer holy, that he was no longer God everlasting, that he is no longer ultimately going to be the judge of each one of them, that he no longer cares about his commandments or whether or not they're obeyed. They have been taught to change who he is and who they want him to be. It's blasphemy. And they don't even know it. And how did they get to that point? They believed what they were being taught and they did not dig into the scriptures to see whether or not what they were hearing was true, think Berean. There was a woman on the program, The View, that said Jesus never called himself the Messiah. You believe that? How would you find out whether or not? I thought it was true. The Bible. And oh, by the way, this is what the Bible says about that. I'm going in quoting from John chapter 4, verses 25 and 26. The woman said to him, This is the woman at the well now. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, he is called Christ, and when he comes, he will tell us all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am He. How many people do you think believe the lie from the view? How many people do you think believe the lie from the view that go to church? If you don't open this up, we are all susceptible of believing lies. There's another prominent X TV personality that has a tremendous podcast right now that said that Muslims and Christians worship the same Jesus. Well, I say, hear ye, hear ye. Jesus is not just a prophet, like the Muslims say. He is the great I am, he is the Alpha and Omega. He is God in flesh. He is very God of very God. He is from everlasting to everlasting. He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. He is the one to whom every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Amen. Listen to the words of our Lord responding to a question from Philip. John 14, 8 and 9. Philip said to him, Lord, show us the Father. Philip wants to see the Father. Is there anything wrong with that? And he says, and it'll be enough for us. Just show us the Father. It'll be enough for us. Jesus said to him, Have I been with you so long and you still don't know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? Boy, if that's not a verse that says, God the Father and God the Son are one, there it is. It goes along with Thomas, who when Jesus came to the upper room the second time, Thomas wasn't there the first time. He says, look at my hands. And Thomas looks at the holes in his hands and he says, My Lord and my God, with the beauty of God's holy word in each of our homes, why don't we open it more often? We should be in his word daily at the very least, and I hope we all are. And I know that nobody will bet a thousand percent on this. There's things that come up, and all of a sudden the day's over, but it's a good goal, and it's one that we all can do and should do. And why be in it daily? Because it is there and only there where we will find truth, where we will be able to combat falsehoods that can attack us day in and day out, where we can read so that we can correct any error, sinfulness in our own lives, and where we can, as the Lord will allow, guide us into all righteousness. A well-known verse, verses in 2 Timothy chapter 3, verses 16 and 17. All scripture is breathed out by God. Hear that? All scripture is breathed out by God. God cannot lie. Is the only book, the only book on the planet earth that every page in it, in the original languages, is exactly 100% true. Because although God, the Holy Spirit, used men to pen the words, it was the Holy Spirit's words that men were penning. All scripture is breathed out by God. It's profitable for teaching. When anybody gets behind a pulpit on a Sunday morning, where should their teaching be derived from? The word of God. Nowhere else, it is profitable for reproof and for correction, which we all need. And it's profitable for training in righteousness. Why? That the man or woman of God may be complete equipped for every good work. Was painting the steps to that church a good work in the eyes of our Lord? How do we know? The holy word of God. That's how we know. You and I cannot be equipped for works considered good in his eyes if we are not in his word. And because your heart and my heart are desperately wicked and deceitful above all things, none of us will ever know if we are being taught or caught in error if we're not listening to the Holy Spirit dwelling within each believer, followed by confirming or rejecting what we just heard by matching

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it up with His holy word. Be a Berean. Receive the Word with all eagerness. When you open your Bibles, are you eager to read what God has for you this very day? There will always be something new. I don't care how many times you read through your Bible. But for somebody like me or somebody on the radio or some book you're reading other than the scriptures, be a Berean. Examine what you're hearing, reading with this book, which has been written to correct error. Be a Berean. Receive the word with all eagerness, but examine the scriptures to see if these things are so. I want to take the next couple of minutes to talk to anyone who doesn't know Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. You have an opportunity while you're breathing to become part of the family of God. It's up to you. You know, God is holy, and his word tells us that he will never have any sin before him. So if you or I die carrying our sins on our shoulders, when we meet him face to face on judgment day, and it's coming, we will all stand or kneel before the Lord, and he will judge us with regard to our purity, sinfulness, sinlessness. If you die carrying your sins on your shoulders on judgment day, you are going to be found guilty of having greatly offended him in his holiness, and he will judge you righteously. He will judge you a righteous judgment, and you will be cast into a place called the lake of fire. That's what the Bible tells all of us. But because he loves you, loves this world so much, he sent his son to take the punishment for your sins, for my sins, for the sins of the entire world, such that if you go to him through prayer, you repent of your sins, and you place your faith in the fact that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died and bled on the cross at Calvary, took your punishment from the Father that we deserved, paying the price for every one of your sins or my sins, if that comes from your heart to his, you will be saved. The Bible says in Romans 10, 9 and 10, paraphrasing right now, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that he rose from the dead, thou wilt be saved. You see, we're saved with our confession and with our hearts. God changes our hearts. He gives us a desire to come to him, to run to him, to turn from our sinful ways, to no longer want to be the captain of our own souls, but give our lives, submit our lives to the Savior of the world. Please forgive me, Lord Jesus. Please help me to not sin and please help me to walk in the ways of righteousness. I want to be yours now. And his promise, his promise is this no matter how many sins you've committed against him, no matter how egregious those sins are, he will in no wise turn anyone away. You hear that? I just told you that Jeremiah tells us that our hearts are desperately wicked. We are blackened, we are darkened by our sinfulness. Yet when we go to Jesus in faith and ask him to forgive us of our sins and help us to turn from our wicked ways and help us to repent of those sins that have uh put a block between he and us, that he says, Yes, I will do that. I will in no wise cast anyone away that comes to me. You can have eternal life. And he died that you would have eternal life if only you will go to him and ask him to be your savior. I want to pray a prayer of salvation. And uh perhaps when I do, I can I will ask the praise team to come back up. The words that I say are not magic, and frankly, the only reason that I'm saying this is if there is someone out there that says, Well, yeah, I really don't know how to do this. I've really never prayed before, but I do feel the spirit of God tugging me to change my life and run to Jesus. I'm gonna give you some words to pray. My words are meaningless to you unless you're saying them or something similar to them from your heart. But if I can help, I'd like to help. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as a sinner, I want to be forgiven. I want to enter into the family of God. Oh, I know I've offended you in so many countless ways. I know that I don't deserve forgiveness. I know that I have been wayward and sinful, and yet I've been told on the authority of your word that if I repent of my evil ways and ask Jesus to be my savior and my Lord, that He will receive me and that He will accept me, and He will touch me and make me whole, and I will be able to say, What manner of love is this that I should be called a child of God? But that is what I will be if I pray this prayer, if I speak to Jesus like this from my heart to his. And so, Lord, I want to be a thankful family member, I want to be a faithful family member, I want to be a knowledgeable, faithful member, and so I promise, with your help, guided by the Spirit that you've promised to enter into me upon my moment of salvation, that I will be in your word, that I will do my best to walk in the ways of the light, not to bring any glory or the spotlight on me, but to glorify the one who died for me and made this new life possible. And I pray these things for the very first time in my life, in the name of names, the name that is above every name. Jesus, my Savior. Amen. Thank you for listening today. I hope the message encouraged you and helps you along in your faith. May the Lord richly bless you and yours until we meet again. God bless you.