you're in fellowship only in so far as you're willing to run your fellowship is connected to your identity and your identity makes you a part of the fellowship and so when christ saves you you're brought into fellowship with god which means your existence is for god good morning church welcome to 2022 we are right into it it's going to be so good scott and i have been talking about this year since last year we're really excited we we are so excited about where our church is headed and there's a couple places we are headed this year we are focusing deeply on god's word on heart transformation on home groups on connection and the way we've packaged our church into just a bullet of a phrase is gather grow and go and what that does is it encompasses three values for us one when christ died on the cross he died for his church and last week if you got to hear scott's amazing sermon you learned how important the church is in the life of the believer it's so important that christ himself says that our marriages reflect the relationship between himself and his church you show that in ephesians 5 it says that marriage is this mysterious thing but it reflects christ in his church and so scott had this awesome metaphor us he said skipping church would be like being married and not going home think about that how would your marriage last if you were never in relationship with the body and so that is awesome that's where gather for us is such a big deal your spiritual walk with the lord is connected with your walk with other believers because i get to see things in you you may not see in yourself and you get to see things in me that i may not be able to see when we come together we can hold each other up and as hebrews 10 said we encourage one another keep fighting the good fight keep pressing forward keep pushing on the day is coming when christ will return and we want to be found blameless and innocent in his sight we want to have him say good and faithful servants oasis church you took the gospel to tucson and you built each other up so now we get to week two and we get to get into a small little letter called first john and so if you have your bible open it first john verses one for four one through four where we're hanging out uh the way we talk about vision month is we like to preach our journals to you and what that means is scott and i want to demonstrate that we have a quiet time too it's important as a believer you need to get with the lord get alone with him in the word and have an intimate relationship with him and so this is one of the passages that has radically shaped my life over the last 10 11 years my mentor mark julian actually would make us read this passage and teach this passage and teach this book to our students every single year why because first john is this foundational basics if you can't get first john you haven't even put the key in the engine yet it's so fundamental to our walk in our faith and so one of the questions i was asking coming into 2022 is lord it has been an absolute roller coaster override since we shut the country down however many i don't even know how long ago was but one of the things that i'm watching is i just look out in the world turn on the news listen the radio get on the internet i like watch way too many videos on youtube everyone is freaking out and it made me wonder should the church be freaking out at any moment in human history is there ever a freak out moment for the church and the question that came to mind was is it possible we have forgotten where to get our joy is it possible that in the chaos of all these big things we can't control the big movements of history the big movements of nations that we feel small insecure and out of control and we're grasping for our joy and what we can hold on to and is it possible we have forgotten where joy comes from and i know about you but i'd like to be joyful this year amen y'all want to be joyful i want to be joyful do you want to know where you can get it john is going to open that up for us immediately in first john so we're going to do this we're going to read this passage and then we're going to dive in here we go first john verses one through four 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 testified to it and proclaimed 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 let's let's go to god right now and let's ask him to do something in our hearts this morning let's ask him to show us one the truthfulness of what we're going to study and 2 that it would it would take root in our hearts and the holy spirit would let it blossom into relationship knowledge of god leads to relationship with god and we want that transfer to happen it only happens through the power of the spirit in our hearts so let's ask god to do that now lord thank you for your word we just want to acknowledge that these are your words it means you're speaking audibly right now in this room through first john that we get to hear you lord would you move now in our hearts soften them if they're hard
open the eyes of our hearts that we can see and perceive and understand and lord help our hearts turn back to you as we study your word this morning god i pray that i would be helpful to our church and that we would all come to a place of just adoration for your son we love you god and we ask you to do these things in the mighty name of jesus amen amen let me tell you about a time i lost my joy but i thought i had it i thought i had my joy and i lost it in ninth grade i went out for the cross country team and although i was kind of a weird skinny little kid and i was worried about being a freshman one of the things the lord blessed me with was the ability to run and so i go out for cross country and there were seven spots and cross country you get seven opportunities to make varsity most of the time those spots are reserved for seniors and juniors and maybe some uppity sophomores who have been working hard over the summer all right luckily for me i don't know why but like you know like forrest gump i could run okay and i got out there and i started competing against these upperclassmen and so we had a couple practices and we had a time trial coming up and i was sitting in like ninth place so two spots away from varsity we ran the time trial i beat one of the seniors ended up making varsity my freshman year i was like i've done it i've arrived high school is basically over i can put on the jacket i'm going to be good to go i remember i got home and now like my coach gave me that jersey and i went home i like i remember just being like victory like i love don't say i don't think they watch this since and so it was so important to me though i felt so much joy there was an accomplishment i had made the team my identity was now secure i was a varsity cross-country runner this was going to be great we got to the first race in louisiana do you have to deal with uh swamps and when you deal with swamps you can't always just run straight like out here we could do a cross-country course you just run a line out and line back nothing between it's just that we probably have to dodge cactus right out there you're dodging lakes rivers swamps and so a lot of times our cross country courses would start they line about 150 guys up and then the courts in about a hundred yards would narrow down to about five yards and inevitably that just led to a nascar race in the first hundred yards every single time so if you knew what you were doing even if you weren't going to run this place the whole time you sprinted ahead of the pack so that you would not be right in the middle of 150 uh hormonal high schoolers with you know spikes attached to their feet when they all hit the 10 yard mark and so i didn't know that okay i've been practicing my pace and my pace was going to be great and so when the gun went off as nervous as i was i took off i'm running and i noticed that everything was getting really chaotic right in front of me and really quick and i don't necessarily remember all the things that happened next but i remember like 10 yards ahead of me someone just ate it went down boom and like you know watching like uh the tour de france you just watch the cyclists just start spinning everywhere cross-country runners i mean there are body parts flying all over the place and so i remember i tried to jump and kind of be a hurdler and a cross-country runner at the same time someone's foot caught my leg i did a front flip landed on my stomach and that's when i felt someone else's spike landed in my calf and i was like oh that's bad like that was that was that was not good i'm at the bottom of whatever this nascar pile is and so i get up everyone's kind of shaking themselves off the winners have they knew better they sprinted ahead they're gone and i start running but we got three miles to go i remember at mile two i am trying my hardest to keep up with these guys but it was hard and it hurt it'd have hurt even if i hadn't been stepped on i remember i kept glancing down on my leg and i'm watching just kind of blood trickle down my calf and i'm just like why did i go out for cross-country
what what about this is fun where is the joy i was so full of joy and yet i encountered trial in the middle of this race and all of a sudden because of some blood some scuffs and i couldn't breathe i lost sight of joy joy was gone and the question for us today is when you walk with christ have you lost sight of where the joy's at did you get on the team did jesus save you did you realize what he did for you you gave your life to him and joy upon joy is i belong to god and then tragedy he lose a job
what happened because i'm looking at a world right now that has lost its joy the vast majority of our world doesn't even know where to get it they've got a cheap imitation of it they call it money entertainment maybe even their families or their jobs but they they're trying to fill this void where joy exists this deep indwelling awesome thing that spurs you on to go to great amazing heights for god it exists in this in this chasm of joy and it doesn't take two seconds listening to the state of things the way people talk to each other what people are focused on to realize we don't know where to get it we've lost it we're trying to find it in all the wrong places
look at what john is going to do for us this morning he's going to give us three tools that you can put in your belt this morning i want to do three things for you today i want you to one figure out where the joy's at because you need it joy is the fuel of the christian life and it's given freely to us it's it we have unlimited unfettered access to the joy god wants you to have i want you to know where it's at and then i want to give you these three things let me give you some assurance something that you can anchor on to some bolts you can put in the floor so that when the wind blows you're not going to just blow away something to ground yourself some assurance the second is i want to give you something to focus on so we're going to plant your feed and we're going to set your eyes this morning on the right things and lastly i'm going to call you to step into an experience with god to actually experience the thing that he is promising you so here we go first john chapter 1 it says that which was from the beginning which we have heard which we have seen with our eyes which we have looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the word of life first john is written by a guy named john i like john john's really cool in fact out of all the new testament authors i probably like john the best and probably for superficial reasons one his gospel i just i love it his his letters i love him he writes revelation love that all of john's writings are really good but the thing that i really like about john was he was a competitive runner i don't know if he knew that in fact when jesus rose from the dead it says that the women come back they tell the guys hey he's risen and who goes sprinting to the tomb john and peter and john just happens to think it's important and god seems to think it is important that he include this detail john wins the race with peter to the tomb i'm like i like this guy he knows how to run he knows how to compete how to dig in john's a good guy he's also kind of misunderstood a lot of people think about john from you know the medieval paintings of him where he's kind of leaning against jesus he's one of the younger apostles he lives the longest he dies last he goes through terrible persecution but he's the last one to die and he's the last one to finish writing in the new testament and a lot of times he's depicted in art as kind of like soft effeminate maybe even uh childish maybe immature and john couldn't be more than opposite he's one of the most dogmatic like just strong preaching writers in the new testament in fact he gives us such simple awesome black and white views this is who god is this is what god has done and this is the only way to get eternal life and so john the book the gospels means but first john his letter this is a book i would go to if i were you every year just just brush up on john because he answers really really cool basic questions really cool basic questions he might tell you like how to think about your sin what do you do when you sin how do you ask for forgiveness how are you supposed to intermingle with your brothers and sisters in christ what's your relationship to the world now that you're a christian he answers these fundamental ethical questions for the christian but he grounds all of it in what we're going to study today which is that joy comes from christ
joy comes from this assurance this focus and this experience of jesus that it all centers in on him in fact the church itself must be so explicitly about jesus because to give you anything else would be to peddle something that doesn't work we're not here to sell a product we're here to get you to meet a person a person who has changed everything so look how john gets us started the first thing he's going to do is he's going to give us some assurance john wants you to know this is the if you want to teach this to your kids this is how i would say this theologically to a third grader john doesn't want you to know that jesus is not a ghost john wants you to know this you're like what what does that have to do with anything john wants to know jesus isn't a ghost let me say that in adult language are you ready jesus of nazareth was a touchable talkative describable man who was in fact the second person of the trinity made flesh the incarnation of god
he wasn't a ghost he wouldn't dream you could see him you could touch him you could hear him look at this that which was from the beginning which we have heard which we have seen with our eyes which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life john's prologue here is almost an exact replica it's very similar to his opening in the gospel of john where he talks about the deity of christ what does he say in john 1 1-3 in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god without him nothing has been made and all things have been made through him in him was life and that life was the light of men and what he'll do is as he breaks down who jesus is he'll gonna say that john comes in he's proclaiming the light but john was in the light but rather those who did receive the true light all who received him would get what eternal life and he tells us something radical in john 1 14 the word became flesh and dwelt among us he became a touchable hearable talkative human being for you that is unbelievable news and that's hard news to swallow in fact that's the sort of thing that when you tell someone that they say you probably were dreaming are you sure you didn't just see that in your mind you shouldn't have a vision did you take some drugs when you went out to galilee what what how in the world can you say that god became flesh this is the gospel you and i have got a serious problem we are separated from god because of our sin we need someone to represent us and pay for our sin but there is no one on our roster and all eight plus billion people on planet earth right now and all the billions who have come before us who could ever stand before god and say i got it i did it right take me instead none of us have that and so god in his grace and mercy sends his son a promise he made to eve i promise he repeated over and over and over to the prophets and then jesus comes and he does what we couldn't do he dies on a cross for your sins and he rises from the dead this is the gospel and look at what john's trying to emphasize that which was from the beginning that's him referencing jesus pre-exist our story jesus is the maker of our story the son the second person of the trinity was with the father and he comes and he takes on flesh and he says which we have seen with our eyes which we have looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the word of life why do we need to start here because we live in an age of relativity where something can be true for you and maybe not necessarily true for me it's a weird thing and i can't believe english majors actually took that up because it doesn't make grammatical sense it doesn't make philosophical sense that's not how you define truth john gives it very clearly to us there is a word of life and we know him we have seen him we have touched him that's an assurance for us because it means our testimony in christ our faith in christ is grounded in true historical events it means that the history books bear witness to what happened at golgotha it means that even liberal scholars today who will make slight jabs maybe jesus didn't exist no serious historian holds that view any longer jesus really existed and he really died and the debate is over what comes next did he rise dead people stay dead now john wants you understand something i saw him i heard him and i touched him which means he wasn't a figment of my imagination i can compare notes with peter and i could touch him he had a body he was physical he was tangible he was real and so the church has got to start here jesus is who he says he is and john really saw him and he really rose from the dead and when we proclaim that sort of stuff to people we can with assurance say put your faith not in an idea put your faith not in a religion put your faith in christ because he is as god is he is as god was he was as god will be he will be he is god in the flesh and he is who we're trying to get you to know it's the assurance that jesus actually came and actually did these things and think about john's story because i don't want to overemphasize but you just got to see how cool this is for john because he's going to repeat these things like nine times in these three verses during jesus ministry john walked with him for three years he listened to all that jesus had to say is reproducing what jesus taught he then saw jesus arrested he fled with the other apostles we just went through this in mark but when jesus was crucified where was he he was kneeling next to mary at the cross and jesus says to him john that's your mom take care of her and when jesus said it is finished and he gave up his spirit john's a few feet away he's watching he witnessed the death of christ
he also witnessed the empty tomb because he ran there he sprinted there and he went in and saw that there was nothing covering a body but just linens swaddling clothes
and he walked with jesus i love this because sometimes and maybe this is just me so if you relate that's awesome if you don't then give this encouragement to someone else but sometimes i forget about the physical body of jesus and jesus becomes an idea a good idea right like like a really good teacher kind of idea which is exactly what the world thinks about jesus he was a guy with some good ideas but it's the ideas that we hold on to and not the person the physical person of christ that jesus chose to take on flesh and walk with john for three years and john now can't say it enough i saw it i saw it i heard it i touched it i got to tell you where to get joy it's in this man who took our sins and gave us eternal life and so this is the second point all right focus all right so the first is john wants you to know jesus wasn't a ghost all right so if anyone asked he wasn't a ghost if you want to dive really theologically on this john is combating a heresy known as nazism and they were saying things like maybe jesus was a ghost he's like nope jesus wasn't a ghost all right it's not in your head this is a real reality you can teach that to your kids jesus was a real guy
second point john wants you to know that jesus is the and circle the word thee all through this past the v is such an important word john wants you to know that jesus is the eternal life he is the means by which we have access to god and here's the better word for john he's the means by which we have fellowship with god he's the means by which we get our jersey and we get adopted into the team that is god check this out he says concerning the word of life that's where we ended in one which is a reference back to you in the beginning was the word the word was with god the word was god so in jesus is life jesus himself all right so the breath you're breathing right now is not life the life is what god gives you because of your breath
but this life this physical life is temporary our bodies will perish they will pass away but there is something eternal the spirit and that spirit is at odds with god unless god comes in and redeems the man and so there is life right now your breath you're walking around that's that's little stuff but in you is a life and when you have christ it becomes true life check this out he says the life was made manifest we have seen it and testified to it and proclaimed to you the eternal life which was with the father and was made manifest to us i just find it so interesting the way he chooses to phrase this because he could have said we want to give you a life there's an option for you that's probably better than what you got but you choose it's just one way amongst a hundred ways he uses something called a definite article in fact the word the is so important when trying to identify what you're talking about would you like to go to a restaurant with me today or do you want to go to the restaurant we all know is the only restaurant that we all really want to eat at
john never ever talks about jesus as a something but is always the source of life in fact in john 14 when he's recounting jesus's words in the upper room jesus will say it this way it's the most exclusive claim in christianity it's the thing that makes people so mad at us and so mad at jesus and so mad at the church it's why christians have been persecuted from the beginning the inception of the church is because jesus said these words so we get to blame jesus our persecution is because they hate him he said in john 14 6 i am the the way the truth the life and no one comes to the father except through me
that's radically exclusive our culture hates that they hate it the problem is jesus said it and then he proved that it was true when he rose from the grave and here's what comes next are you ready in john 14 6 we get the access to the father what we learn in john 15 is that jesus tells us these things so that we might have joy and that our joy might be complete that it's a full joy it's an empowered you to move forward and move for god to do it in his fellowship kind of joy so what is our focus what is our focus it says the life was made manifest manifest is when something goes from in my mind it's an idea it's ethereal it's metaphysically not in front of us and it takes shape becomes tangible right so i can say let's talk about liberty how is liberty manifested i might say well the united states manifests liberty in that we have freedom you can see it you can touch it we have laws to give you a b and c whereas if you go to a dictatorship you don't have liberty it's not manifested jesus in his body manifests the fullness of god john got to get right next to the nuclear reactor he said i got to touch it i got to see what was it was made known to us
the life was made manifest and we have seen it and we testified to it and proclaimed to you the eternal life which was with the father and was made manifest to us do you notice how he's repeating things over and over again bible students let me give you an easy hermeneutic trick if you see something repeated in the bible circle it pay attention when the bible repeats things god's putting exclamation marks on the page for you he's saying this is important it's so important he says we testified to it what does that mean it means he has an obligation to tell you he saw it if you're called in as a witness in a court case and you're called to testify you're called to tell us what you saw which is true and to say something that isn't true is what we call perjury john's saying we're saying cross our hearts this happened we're testifying to what we saw he died and he rose from the dead and in him is eternal life so they testify but look at what comes next he says we 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 there are so many verses that we could point to the whole new testament is all about this this is the whole message of the gospel is that the apostles knew jesus saw jesus saw what he did saw what he paid for us and then they went and told people and the holy spirit saved them through the message of the gospel and god built the church of redeemed men and women and children that glorify his name and those men and women and kids that that community that formed out of faith was brought into a relationship with god they were given a jersey and came into fellowship with god what was their focus the focus is on what john saw and what john heard and what john touched leave it like this the way to joy starts with an assurance that jesus is who he says he is the second step to joy is to fix your eyes on everything god has revealed about himself through the apostles about jesus
look at this you and i didn't get to walk in the footsteps of jesus i i thought about that once i'm like do you think john like ever was walking behind jesus and saw his footprint in the scene it was just like wow god's footprints like that's how that's how much he could see and and taste and like he was there we don't we don't get that physical experience do we but what does jesus tell thomas in the upper room blessed are you because you've seen thomas i've given you that blessing but guess what more blessed are those who have not seen and believe because the reality is seeing is not believing faith given to us by christ because of what he did on that cross and we get access to him in his word i don't know if you ever pick up your bible church and say
i want to get close to jesus as close as he'll let me get when i read matthew and and the leper runs up to jesus can i just go there can i be in this scene that god felt fit to reveal to me can i can i see the crowd can i hear jesus can i hear the pharisees can i hear the tone in his words can i how am i getting close to jesus it's through his word and it's a focus on the work of jesus that jesus went to that cross
sometimes i think we think about the cross as this this gory thing and it is but it's something that should fill your mind something that you should be coming back to all the time
you know when we walk in fellowship together we walk in common purpose it means that the reason we got together was for the thing like when i went to cross country i knew i was there to run it's the only reason i showed up the only reason i put on the jersey was to run if no one was running i'd be like i thought we were cross country team what are we doing if the coach saw we weren't running he'd yell at us and he let us know this is a cross-country team you're in fellowship only in so far as you're willing to run your fellowship is connected to your identity and your identity makes you a part of the fellowship you see how this kind of goes back and forth and so when christ saves you you're brought into fellowship with god which means your existence is for god that your life is for god that the cross that you see is to draw your heart to god this is fellowship with god and where we get it is in the word
god wants your eyes on jesus so you're grounded in assurance jesus existed he did what he said he did before he took on flesh he pre-exists he's eternal co-eternal with the father he is the second person of the trinity but for our behalf he became an incarnation he took on flesh dwelt among us we know that's true that's our grounding that holds you to the floor but now we've got to set our eyes and god wants you to set your eyes on jesus if you don't have joy today it's because you're not setting your eyes on jesus
and we know in hebrews that it says that jesus understands every single one of our weaknesses and every single one of our sorrows every single one of our pains every single one of our losses we know that when we look to christ we're looking at someone who 100 percent gets our experiences and walks with us in those things we know that he's given us his spirit the comforter who comes around our heart and in our deepest longings and cries comforts us in our affliction
we set our eyes on jesus all right last point we've got assurance we've got to focus set your eyes on jesus here's the third the third is an experience experience joy experience joy by walking out the word by walking out the word let me tell you how not to walk out the word i i love my story i hope you love your story with christ it's your story it's so personal in my story i used to drink a lot way too much the lord saved me i got sober one of the means that i used when recovering from alcoholism was an organization called alcoholics anonymous and there's lots of good things about aaa and there's lots of things that i wish we could get christ into naa i remember i went to 90 meetings in 90 days because i knew i needed to be treated i had a problem i needed to take my medicine the medicine that was prescribed to me was aaa so with my bible in hand i went to aaa for a long time went through the whole program and i observed some things in aaa and so first let me put a disclaimer as a recovering alcoholic if you're struggling with that addiction come talk to me what i'm about to say is kind of general and i understand it's general i intend it to be general don't don't go jump through a window okay but track with me i sat in that room and one of the promises given to me is this if i would submit my life to a plan of action then i could get sober and i had a guy tell me i think he was like the third or fourth week i said i want to submit my life to jesus that's who i'm following and he goes well jesus will get you drunk and i said well that's weird why would you say that he said because you're following someone else's god you need to come up with your own okay one of the problems with aa and this is not to get off into aaa is that it wants to reach a wide variety of people not just christians and so what they do is they play a psych a psychiat a psychology trick and it's a good one because it works it will get you sober and that is i submit my life i give up my willpower i say i can't do this thing help me do it that's a good thing the language they use to describe that is kind of an affront to christians because they use words like god or a god of your own understanding and so you'll get some goofy things that happen there as well if you give your life to christ you'll get sober you will because you're going to submit your life to jesus
if you don't give your life to christ you'll get sober but you also get an eternity without the father
and what a.a became for me over time was i realized it was a way to manage my behavior and i can treat the bible that way i can say hey look the bible says don't do a b and c if i can just make sure i'm not doing the things then i can experience the promises of god and i will miss god you can misuse this book you can misuse god's word in an attempt to be a morally upright person and you can get sober make a lot of money have a great life have a bunch of kids and everything will go great for you and you'll miss jesus that is the biggest tragedy and i think satan loves that i used to tell people i say i love a.a i love it those people were so helpful to me but i know that god and satan are at war in that room because of the doctrine they espouse but what they're saying is true you can get sober without jesus but you can miss god and not have the father i can experience a cheap version of joy by just following rules i can if i follow some basic rules around finances i can be financially at peace and i'll experience joy around some piece of my finances but it's a cheap joy it's a trick because what happens when the economy crashes and all that hard work and all that rule following all of a sudden just disappears something more eternal has to exist
i will tend to worship the cheap joys and i'll miss worshiping jesus so how do you use the bible thing because that's that's an important question to ask we know who jesus is we know that our focus is supposed to be on him and now he's pointing us back to his word and so i want to take you to john chapter 15 and we're going to listen to some of the upper room discourse
jesus has just got done telling the apostles i'm the way of the truth and life no one comes to the father except through me he makes this exclusive claim and then he begins to talk about his relationship with the father and he says i'm the true vine and my father is the vine dresser every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes then it may bear more fruit jesus wants to mess with your life so that you bear more fruit for his kingdom and pruning means he's going to take some shears and cut things away from your life he doesn't think fit and they might be things you really like they might be things that you love they might be things that you worship but look what he says and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit so this pruning this taking away is going to build something in you
you've given your life to christ you're focusing on jesus and now he's dabbling with your heart he's changing you look what he says down in verse 11 this is the promise
these things i have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full
that is a promise on a transaction that's saying if you'll follow me if you'll abide in my word feel abide in my love if you will reside with me if you'll know me and set your eyes on me then there are going to be promises that i fulfill to you and one of them the biggest one in my opinion is that you are going to be filled with joy and that joy that experience of joy of having known jesus and walked with jesus and obeyed jesus is what drives you straight back to jesus it's the fuel we toss on the fire is the joy of walking with jesus it's the relationship now look at this how do we do this experience true fellowship with god in this way one get saved how do you get saved you give your life to christ by believing he is who he said he was john writes this in john 20 i wrote these things so that you would know that jesus the son of god and in him you might have eternal life that life is in christ you can have that that's the first culture of god and the second is obedience not obedience so that you can manipulate your behavior but so that you can get joy from jesus that you can glorify christ and enjoy jesus paul say it this way this is so good in in ephesians chapter three he's praying for all the christians in ephesus and he says look i pray you understand the depth of breath the with the height i pray you i hope you know the deepest doctrines of god i hope you get real smart with your bible but i pray you know the love of christ which surpasses all knowledge
to know a bunch about god does not give you joy but to know god and focus on god and then walk with god is to know his love and you'll experience him it's a real deep abiding joy and it will drive you back to your bible every single day because you're opening the word with a new intent i didn't open this today to get my religious reading out of the way i want to meet jesus today i want to i want to touch christ today i want to experience relationship with him today and so i've got to get my eyes on jesus and i might be reading first john and it might say if we confess our sins he's faithful and just forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness i might say i haven't asked jesus for forgiveness today let me try it and close my eyes and pray lord will will you forgive me for the thing i know was an affront to you or will you show me my sin when you begin to respond to god's word when you see it saying here it is respond we respond to get jesus and in making jesus our focus and walking with him we gain this experience
here's where i want to land the plane for you because we want to take this idea and get it out of the air and put it on the ground john says in verse 4 and we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete and look what he says right before that he says in verse 3 so that you two may have fellowship with us and indeed our fellowship is with the father and with his son jesus christ let me double down john wrote that so that he could get that fullness of joy because jesus told him way back in john 16 you're going to go testify about me along with the holy spirit and in acts chapter one verse eight he said you guys are gonna be my witnesses you're gonna go to the ends of the earth you're gonna tell the whole world what i've done and that's why you and i are gathered here together because they fulfilled their mission got the joy of christ and the gospel spread throughout the roman empire like they did it they experienced it and they said i wrote this letter because i know i'll get more of jesus i know there's joy and i'm not doing it in a selfish way i want you to have that joy too
look at what he says and indeed our fellowship is with the father with his son you too may have fellowship with us so let me just give you some basic examples because when you set your eyes on jesus when you understand who he is when you're walking in his word this will change the way you move throughout the world and it will change the way the world perceives you and change the way you operate you need to go home and google christian ethics look at john mcarthur's book and what you need to understand is that this reality changes everything but it's the foundation stone it's the cornerstone if i don't know and love christ it doesn't matter what i can get you to do to mess with the world we are arranging furniture in a burning building if we don't have our eyes on jesus but when we fix our eyes on jesus everything comes underneath his ethic he interacts with the world the way christ calls us to here's what that looks like though how do i get that how do i lay the foundation for me i'll give you three things i used to do i used to go duck hunt with a good buddy of mine named jake whitehead he had a pond 15 minutes from the church where i was working and i had a dog and he had a gun and i had a gun and there were ducks on that pond and we were gonna go hunt him and we got out there 4 30 every morning and we'd sit there and pray until the sun came up he was a good brother in christ i can't think of a single duck hunt we didn't talk about scripture pray talk about his walk my walk because we were there duck hunting but it wasn't about the ducks it's about jesus christians don't do things for the sake of the thing anymore they do it for jesus you go to a tailgate party it's about jesus
when you go home and you sit down with your kids it's all about jesus christians that get together and forget to talk about jesus have forgotten what christian fellowship is 100 the world cannot know the hope you have if you are not habitually talking to each other about your hope
how do you know your hope's not in jesus you never talk about him he's not on your lips how do you know your hope is in the stock market you talk about it all the time i transfer this i did that and move this and look i got these gains and i'm not going to actualize this we obsess over the things that give us joy how do you know your kids are not pointing you to jesus because you're so obsessed with your kid you forgot your job is to introduce them to who jesus
this is something that we really ought to like just take a day meet together and just parse this out with you personally what does your life look like and where can we refocus it back to christ
you like woodworking you like makeup you like the movies you like all of it when christians get together it's about christ 100
the eternal life in christ is what we are called to talk about because we are a fellowship and the only reason we showed up today is because jesus rose from the grave the only reason you come to church is so that you can get more of christ and more of his church
so to double down from last week we encourage one another let me give you something really basic you can do when you come to church you want church to be about jesus again for you when you get here find someone and encourage them about the coming kingdom of christ let's find them a lot of people don't like when i say this but just be awkward about it and be like brother i'm just gonna say it because i've never said it feels really weird did you know i know you know but i'm just gonna say it jesus jesus rose from the dead and he's coming back is that not the coolest news since 30 a.d
and they're gonna be like you're right that's why we're here isn't it he's coming back brother is there any way i can pray for you how can i pray for you because i want you to be encouraged how do you how can we get more of jesus in your life get let's pray let's go pray right now i'm feeling really goofy bro we've never talked about jesus in church this much like how often do we just skip jesus in our conversations even in the basic social aspects of a place like this
without jesus you won't have joy without joy you won't get in this word without this word you won't know jesus
this is the formula you want to have a good year tell me you can take this to the bank get with jesus be assured of who he is put your faith in him set your eyes on him meet with him you get confused about what he's saying come talk to me or scott go talk to a home group leader we've got a reading plan did you know this you can go on our website home page click the button you see everything we're reading for the whole year you can go to a home group and they're all talking about the word every single week you got questions write them down take them to those groups you want a one-on-one with me on scott text call email we're so excited to do that sort of thing because we want you just like john wanted this for you we want this for you that you would have joy and we want to meet with you because it means we get more joy too it's an exponential compounding process of joy and it's beautiful let's pray jesus we love you we thank you for your word we thank you for just the amazing reality that you father you father sent your son to take our place lord help us wake up with that in our minds help us to focus completely and totally on your side and then lord when we go out into the world whether it be on social media work in our families that we would just emanate the character of christ lord we pray for this joy and we pray for the power of your spirit to move us into obedience we love you lord jesus we love you so much jesus name we pray amen
hi i'm pastor scott pastor of the oasis church listen we are so excited that you decide to join us for the preaching and teaching of god's word we just pray that this will stir your affections towards christ but we have one encouragement we want to leave you with please do not allow this to take the place of the local body of believers we pray that you will be involved in a local congregation a local church that you can find yourself submitting under the eldership and the leadership of a local church we pray that you will find yourself stirred towards christ and that your joy in christ will be ever increasing