263: Jim Styles - That Which Was From The Beginning

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:13

   Welcome to good Chris Selfian talks. I’m Levi. And I’m Chris. And I’m Brian. Thank you for joining us this week on this podcast. We select one talk a week to help us get the Bible in our Daily News feed. We post a new episode at the start of each week. With the short intro beforehand to kind of set the stage for the talk you’re about to listen to. And now, let’s talk more about this week’s talk to the Good Chris Adelphian Talks Podcast. This is Brother Brian.

2. 0:54

   This week’s talk is the first class in a series. That was given by Brother Jim Styles last year when he focused on breaking down the first Epistle of John, and the theme for the whole series is living God’s Eternal Life. Now this first class, which is essentially an introduction and covering chapter one, I would informally title that which was from the beginning. It’s a very good class from a very good series by a very good speaker on a very good topic.

3. 1:37

   So a perfect candidate for this podcast. We would like to thank everyone who makes the time to send in their recommendations. It is a tremendous help for finding these great gems, so please keep them coming as always. We hope this strengthens your faith and brightens your day. Brother Jim Stiles, that which was from the beginning. All right.

4. 2:07

   So the plan is to start having a look at first John. That’s one of these books that I guess I I read first John for a lot of years thinking someday I’ll get into it. And what happened was I started reading through it. And what I found was that it seemed like it just sort of rambled on the same thing over and over and over.

5. 2:26

   Again, somewhat like reading Psalms sometimes I found some of the psalms were like that. To me it’s just like the same thing over and over again. I was listening to some classes during the week that Steven Mansfield gave and he said that he can remember a time when her brother was reading reading out of First John at memorial service and.

6. 2:43

   The brother was one of these dramatic readers who like, tries to make it a dramatic reading and looks up at the audience all the time. And when he looked up one time and glanced down, he had no idea where he was because. He couldn’t find. I mean, if you’re looking at the love of God or something like that, it’s all over the place.

7. 2:59

   And 1st John. And so it wasn’t easy to figure out where it was. In fact, even the presider, I guess, was lost to that night. So that happens sometimes when you’re reading through first John. So one of my goals in this series of classes is going to be to hopefully present to you and you can talk it out and see what you think, a strategy about why John puts his letter together the way he does. This is something that was missing to me. Reading through John over these years, I I never could figure out the strategy.

8. 3:28

   And anyways, this time around I decided to have a look at, well, why does it cover these things in this order? What was John actually hoping to accomplish? And I find it it helps me remember what’s in the letter and where it is, if you can figure out the strategy. So that’s one of the things I’d like you all to work on over the next few weeks. See if you can figure out.

9. 3:48

   What each section is about and why is it in there? That’s one thing we can look at. So hopefully Nathan got us ready for this a few weeks ago. I don’t know who that was. Maybe two months ago Nathan gave some classes on 1st John and anyway hopefully he got us rolling. So one of the things you’ll notice right away is that first John, he uses the term the father.

10. 4:10

    The father over. And over again, the Father. Now who else did that? Jesus. Right. And you see it in the Gospels, not just John’s gospel, especially in John’s Gospel, but you’ll see that Jesus constantly referred to God as the Father. The Father. Now you wonder, like, why? What? What does that do for us?

11. 4:32

    Well, right away that gets into the fact that, well, if he’s the Father, he’s, he’s our Father. He wants a relationship with us where his children. And I really think that’s one of the things that John is trying to do, is make an appeal that our God is not way out there somewhere.

12. 4:48

    He’s not a God who’s way beyond us and doesn’t understand us. He is the father. He’s the father of all of us and he loves us. As you’re going to see as we go through this letter, and he wants us to be part of him. You’ll see three things coming up over and over.

13. 5:04

    Again, in this book about God is life. Life. God’s way of life. He calls it eternal life. And for Christadelphians, of course, and we read the phrase eternal life, everybody thinks about immortality, but that’s not the way John uses it. He’s not talking about immortality as such. He’s talking about a way of life, a way of life that is eternal. It spans the ages to where if you get this way of life, God will give you immortality.

14. 5:34

    That’s what he’s really after here. Then he’ll point out, well, God is light. He’s He’s the only source of light. He’s the only one who can provide the truth about this eternal life. You won’t get anywhere else. It’s you’re not going to get it from any humans. You’re not going to get it from just meditating and some spiritual enlightenment or something like that.

15. 5:54

    God is the source. He’s the one that you got to go to if you want to know about this eternal life. And then he also covers God is love. Because this is what motivates his character and his desire to save us. And he mentions this over and over again that we have to develop this love of God and the love that God has for us. You’ll also notice 3 themes that keep being wound through the whole book.

16. 6:20

    He keeps it like coming around to them all the time, over and over and over again. One of them is righteousness. There is a righteous way of life. And that we have to come to know this righteousness and practice it. John uses this phrase that, at least in English and our translations now, the modern versions talk about practicing righteousness.

17. 6:42

    He talks about love, the love of God, that God showed to us and that we must love one another and he also. Mentions truth because all of this has to be based on truth. Our faith and our way of life, It isn’t just something that, well, what do you think it is and what do you think it is?

18. 6:59

    And what do I think it is? It’s what God says it is. That’s the truth that we want to come to know. And he keeps winding around these issues and coming back to them and back to them. Many people have looked at it and some of the readings I did, the people compared.

19. 7:14

    It’s like the idea of like waves coming up on the beach. And you see the waves and one wave comes in, sort of knocks you over, and then a couple of seconds later another wave comes in and and that they sort of looked at John’s letter like that he’s coming at us in waves. And another person described it as like a spiral. Staircase that there are these core. Themes that he’s going around and around and around as you’re going up and up.

20. 7:37

    To higher and higher concepts. But he keeps coming back to the same core ideas of righteousness and love and truth. You’ll also notice what John does is he presents these things totally in black and white. There’s no Gray to John, no Gray that you’re either in this or you’re over there that there’s one or the other. There is no Gray area the way he presents it. And he comes at it with authority and he says, look it if you you might say that you might say, And it’s so you could say, you say, well, I love God, right? Well, he says, if if you claim to love God and you don’t love your brothers and sisters, you’re a liar, that there’s no Gray.

21. 8:19

    Area there to John, it’s either you’re on this pathway or you’re on that pathway, you have to make a choice. And you can see that John was trying to get people to like stay on the pathway of truth and help them realize you can’t get off this. One of the things that comes up in the study of first John is there’s quite a few references by expositors looking at this whole idea of maybe why John wrote this letter. And what was happening in the eclisions at the time is that there were people who who came along. And they were probably academic people or people that were in the lake, sort of like Far Eastern mysticism. And they got into this idea that we now call today Gnosticism. It’s about they had the knowledge. They say, well, I’ve got the knowledge, I know how this works and I’ve got the knowledge about how to get to higher levels. And if you can, you can get to these higher levels than the the actual body that you’re in doesn’t really matter. What really matters is whether you get your mind up to these higher levels.

22. 9:17

    So they present God. There’s there’s different views of narcissism out there, but the general idea is that they present God as being pure spirit. He’s entirely separated from the material world. That’s the way God is, and the goal is to get like that. That’s our goal if you’re a Gnostic. So they say Jesus was born a human and there’s also a divine Christ. And what happened was the divine Christ came into that body at his baptism, and then it left right before he was. Crucified because they can’t really have him in that body at the crucifixion.

23. 9:52

    And so they sort of separate Jesus out into these two different forms. One of them is a human body and the other one was this divine side and they would believe that he wasn’t really the body, the body. Was just there for, for this human, for this spiritual mind of Christ that came into and and walked around and talked to people. But he wasn’t really that body, because that body would have had sinful propensities.

24. 10:15

    And so they couldn’t connect Jesus with that because to them he was divine already, so he only seemed to have a body. But really he didn’t, and he lived in the Spirit. So if you’re following the Gnostic teachers, what they would try to tell you is your goal every day is to try to raise your mind up to where you can be.

25. 10:35

    Like that you can be living in the spirit. And then you’re not really involved with what your body does. And they went to the extreme of thinking, well, it doesn’t really matter what your body does, your body can sin all at once. And that isn’t really you. That’s just your your body, your physical body doing those things.

26. 10:54

    And your mind is way beyond that because they’re really like 2 separate things. And eventually they got to the point where nothing the body does really is a sin. So the battle of Romans 7 and eight, of the mind of the Spirit versus the mind of the flesh, they would resolve that by simply saying that you elevate your mind to this spiritual level, so where the sins of the flesh, they really don’t affect your spiritual mind. My body’s doing this, but it it’s not really me. It’s almost like an extreme case of the apostle Paul who says it’s not really I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. They took that to like it’s far extreme, and then got to the point where I’m not responsible anymore for what my body does. And it was a way out for them, I don’t know, so that your body could continue to do all these things you want to, and they could claim that their spiritual mind was way up there. So what John is going to do in this letter is constantly come back to the fact and emphasize over and over and over again that we are responsible for our actions and that our actions really indicate where our spiritual mind is. That’s what he’s going to do.

27. 11:58

    And it’s a great approach as far as like. I’m trying to help us understand what I like about. John’s letter is it gives you like a barometer of tests where it’s very easy to say, well, I I think I’m right here and I think I’m up here and I think I’m there. And John says, well, how are you doing on this?

28. 12:12

    And what about this and this? They’re very similar to what James would do. You know, as far as his letter. James does the same kind of things. He says you think you have faith. You claim you believe. Well, how you doing on controlling your tongue? Are you doing on not showing prejudice to people? Yeah.

29. 12:30

    How are you doing on all these things? And he would put out real simple tests that we could measure how we’re really doing. And you’ll see John does that as well. So this is the apostle John who writes this letter. He would be probably the first cousin of Jesus. So if you’ve ever looked at some of the connections in the families of the apostles, I remember being really surprised by this when I was growing up.

30. 12:51

    I think Don Stiles was the first person that ever gave a class that went through like the apostles and tried to show how they were all linked with with family ties. That this wasn’t Jesus going around just like picking people and I’ll take you and you and you and you. He he was picking people that were all connected within the family. And it’s amazing.

31. 13:11

    Some of these things are harder to actually show than others. But when you look at John up. There you can see he’s the son of Zebedee and Saloni. Who actually came from Heli and he was the father of Mary, who was the mother of Jesus. So that John and Jesus would have been first cousins.

32. 13:29

    But what’s really interesting is all the other ones on the other side over there. When you start to realize how interconnected these apostles really were, they a lot of them had family ties, which I guess is pretty common amongst the Jews. Anyways, I found it was that way amongst the Muslims too. They all have family ties with each other and they’re all interconnected as well because they they do a lot of intermearing.

33. 13:49

    So he’s full of passion and enthusiasm for Jesus. Remember that story where James and John, they wanted to bring fire down from heaven? I mean, that’s the way he was as a young person is like, yes. We’re going to make a difference here. We’re going to bring down the fire of. God from heaven and consume those people just like Elijah. Did right And their life, you know, earlier on. And that’s what he wanted to do.

34. 14:09

    James and John, his his brother, were known as the Sons of Thunder. He really did care about sitting next to Jesus and and the Kingdom. Remember when his mother came and the two boys and they they they wanted to ask Jesus if you would grant them that privilege of sitting next to him in the Kingdom.

35. 14:26

    They really were enthusiastic and full of of really gung ho Thunder. They did stay. You know John stayed with Jesus at his trial and his crucifixion. He stuck with them all the way to the end really. And that probably is because he had some connection to the high priest. You find out in John 18 at verse 16 he got Peter into the courtyard. There was something about John and his situation of what had happened in his life that he was somehow connected in with the family of the high priest and had privileges. And now he’s probably old.

36. 14:57

    You know, we’re looking at this letter may have been written, you know, in each at least eighty 70s. And a lot of people think it would have been eighty 90s. And he may have been the only apostle left at this time. He might be the only one, and you’ll see him reference quite often in this letter, my little children or little children.

37. 15:14

    And that’s how he refers to them. You’ll see that over and over again. But over his lifetime, John learned to put down all those enthusiastic passions that he have of the Thunder and instead focus in on saving people. That’s what his goal was over time, and he learned to walk in the lights and to manifest God’s eternal life. And now what he wants to do is write to us to tell us about how we can do the same.

38. 15:41

    We really can do it. It’s fun to look at the difference between John’s Gospel and his letters, because in John’s Gospel you see a lot of similar ideas. These themes that are in his letter, they come up in John’s gospel as well, but from a different perspective, with a different goal in mind. In the gospel, we know that what he did is he set out to show how Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, and that he manifested the life of God, the Father’s life. He actually tells you that at the end in John 20. And he did that so that people would believe he was trying to explain how he really was the Messiah. That’s that’s why you’ll see in John’s gospel that what’s starting in chapter, what is it?

39. 16:20

    12? I think it’s like when you get to John 12, you know John 11 was the resurrection of Lazarus. John 12 is when. That whole section there from 12/13/14, fifteen, 16/17/18 was all happening in one day. One day that was all about his last day, and a huge chunk of his gospel is about the last day, explaining to us that this is where this man had come to in developing the eternal life of God. He cared so much about those.

40. 16:47

    People he came to save, he was willing to get down and wash their feet. He was willing to hold his tongue when it came to all those things that they they claimed about him and all the blaspheming they did about him. He didn’t lash out at people. He didn’t do all those things because he really had learned to manifest his father.

41. 17:05

    So you’ll see in the gospel that you know. You’ll get phrases like first John four and in John. Four and one, John, one and four, That in him was life, and the life was the light of men. And John 10 I and my Father are one John 14 He who has seen me has seen the Father.

42. 17:22

    That’s what John was trying to explain to people about the Messiah. Or in John 14 believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me, or in John 20 At the very end he said, I wrote you these things, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name you.

43. 17:44

    May have life. So that was part of the goal. He was trying to present Jesus as the Messiah so that people would grab onto this, get a hold of his life and put that life into their own, make it their own, the eternal life of God. So John’s gospel is really all about how Jesus lived, spoke like his father, he really was the Son of God.

44. 18:05

    But when you get to his letters now, he doesn’t have to explain that in the letters, Jesus was already resurrected from the dead. He’s already been elevated to heaven. And these people that he’s writing to already believed that Jesus was the Son of God. What he had to do was get them to realize that this life that he lived was was something you got to grab a hold of.

45. 18:28

    You got to try to live it too. God will help you, but you can’t just separate yourself spiritually from your fleshly body and just say, well, it’s not my fault you have control over this and you have got to try. To put these things into practice in your own life. So he wants to show us how we have to manifest the life of Jesus in our lives now by how we live and we have to practice righteousness, which is a phrase he’ll keep using over and over again. So in first John, one at verses six to seven, he’ll say things like if we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, this is the light of God’s life that he’s talking about, this eternal life.

46. 19:16

    We have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin. What a privilege to have that if we walk in the light or in first. John Two at 29. If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of him.

47. 19:36

    This is what it means to be born of God. Which is something that comes out of the teachings of Jesus in John’s gospel. So John’s letter is going to be all about our way of life. How are we doing in our way of life and all the privileges that it brings? It when you are walking in the light that the blood of Jesus cleanses you from all sin and that God will save you, you can have confidence He’ll say. In the day when Christ returns, you can have confidence because you can develop now a perfect love that will cast out fear of the judgment seat.

48. 20:09

    It can be done. It can be done with God’s help. And this is what we really should be aiming for in our life. So what you’ll see happening in John’s gospel, it was all about how God’s eternal life radiated out into the life of Jesus and he perfectly manifested the character of God. But then when you get to John’s letter, what he wants to do is show how that manifestation of God, his eternal life, can now shine into all of the believers and you can become manifestations of the Father now in this life, not something future.

49. 20:45

    He’s not talking about the future. When Christ returns, John will be talking about now. This is something we practice now, revealing to other people God’s eternal life by the way that we live. Go ahead, James. I just, I just see it. Was that a picture of the region? Well, yeah, that’s that’s actually in the backyard here.

50. 21:06

    So James was asking about one of the pictures on the screen and yes, that was taken in maybe 2018 something like that. It was probably the last time we all got together. It was out in the back there on the I I cropped it a little bit, but that’s all the people that showed up that day.

51. 21:21

    So, yeah, you’re probably up there somewhere. I see Gary Patterson way up at the top, right up there. You can see him standing out. So yeah, that was all our gang. And I think Renee probably took that. Is that right? Probably, Renee. Yeah. So that that’s the goal. The goal is that John wants to encourage us that yes, this can be done not perfectly right now, but we can get on a pathway that this is what we want, this is what we’re trying to be, and it can make a difference in your life now.

52. 21:47

    That’s what he’s actually after. Some people have noticed that when you when you look through John’s Gospel, it appears as though this event in John 13 really played a huge part in changing John’s life. John 13 was when Judas betrayed Jesus, and it seems like this event was a touchstone for John to like. It really changed him in the sense that he couldn’t believe it.

53. 22:14

    Somebody actually one of our group betrayed Jesus Christ. They portrayed him over to be crucified and you’ll see a number of the concepts that come out of John 1314151617 from that event forward are. On things that John keeps whining into his gospel, he writes them right into there. Things like the difference between darkness.

54. 22:36

    Because, you know, on John 13 it was all about how they he went out in the darkness at Judas when he, when he left Jesus and Jesus tried to save him from going out there and he tried to hold them on and Judas decided and John and his gospel says, and Judas went out and it was darkness.

55. 22:52

    And then you have the betrayal and all the things that happened, those whose works are of darkness and all the things that Jesus said as a result of that, and John 12 and 13 and 14 and 15 about about the importance of service and loving one another. These are all things that John builds into his letter, hoping that if we can put these things into practice, we won’t be like Judas and go out because he’s going to warn us that there are a group of people, what he calls the Antichrist, the Antichrist, He says they went out from us, uses like that same phrase of Judas when he left that night.

56. 23:28

    And these people have left. They were members, they were believers. They were part of the community. And now they have gone off on this idea of, you know, whatever it is, Nazism or whatever they got into and they have gone off now and they went out from us and they’re not part of the group anymore. So you’ll see that pops up as well. So in John’s letter, you’ll notice it’s different than most of the letters in the New Testament. There’s no salutation at the beginning or the end, not either one.

57. 23:55

    And it’s possible it’s because he wanted it for all times. He wanted this letter to be eternal for everybody who would read it right through the times of the humanity. You’ll see We know that phrase. We know 25 times. It comes up in First John because he’s reminding these believers that we know these things are true.

58. 24:16

    You were baptized in this. You believe this at one time. You know, these things are right man. Plus they also had spirit gifts at that time and all the, what he calls the anointing, Later on he’ll talk about the the work of the Spirit in them. You know, these things are right. And so they had built up some confidence in the teachings because they had experienced it over years. And it’s all about God’s eternal life. This letter, the whole letter is all about God’s eternal way of life.

59. 24:43

    It’s a way of life that he’s trying to explain that God’s always had it and then God revealed it through Jesus Christ, and now what he’s trying to do is reveal it through all of us. That’s what God would like to do. And this is designed to impact the life of the reader. Then I want to make sure they’re going through this, that as we read through John’s letter and we talk about it, it’s not about judging other people like, oh, you failed on that one or you’re not living up to John’s idea on that one and point the finger at everybody else.

60. 25:13

    He wrote this so that we would take it ourselves individually and examine where we’re at and and go away with joy when we’re walking on the pathway that you can be excited about what God is doing in your life and where it’s going to lead, where it’s going to take you when you have God’s eternal life.

61. 25:32

    So what John will clearly bring out as we go through this, is that our way of life? What did you do today? What are you doing tomorrow? How do you treat people? What are your goals in life? What are you really worried about having in the future? Are you worried about all the toys of this world? You worry about your career and all those kind of things, all those things about your way of life. They reveal where you’re really at, what you really want. Do you really want God’s eternal way of life? Because if you do, you’ll you’ll, you’ll read about it, you’ll listen to it, you’ll come to know it and want to practice it.

62. 26:08

    And if your goals and objectives are really all the stuff of this world, if that’s what you really want, that’s what you will get. And you won’t get the eternal life. There’s two basic pathways you can go down in life and it’s not these. John never says you got to be perfect on that pathway. What he says is you got to practice that one. Which one are you practicing?

63. 26:30

    Are you practicing to be part of God’s family and his eternal way of life? Are you just practicing to be part of this world? What are you practicing tomorrow and Saturday and the next day and the next day? What are really you? What do you really want in this life? Because what John wants you to have is the confidence and the joy that comes from knowing that when you’re on that pathway to God’s eternal way of life and you want that life and you are practicing that life, that even though you fail, even though you make mistakes, God said that’s okay. He’ll provide a way to forgive you. He’ll take care of that.

64. 27:05

    He just wants to know if that’s what you really want. And if you do, he promises that he’ll carry you to the end and let you join his family forever. That’s how John’s going to present this. So he throws out these challenges about how we see ourselves and our life, and these are all phrases you’re going to see come up over and over again in John’s letter. So he says, look, you, you can claim to say I know him, I know God, I know Jesus, I have a relationship with them. We can easily claim to to that, but John’s going to throw in after that.

65. 27:40

    Well, you do this. What are you really doing? Does he does what you’re doing support the idea that you really know God? Or what about abiding in him? Oh, I abide in God. I abide in Christ. I’m in him, I’m in him. Right. Is that that’s a claim we can make? Those are easy words. And John’s going to throw in there and say, well, if you claim to abide in him, then this is how you live. He doesn’t let you just weasel out of it and just say the words.

66. 28:09

    Or what about I walk in the light? I I walk in the light. And John will throw in after that? Well, if you walk in the light, this is how you have to live. You can’t be doing this and claim you walk in the light. That’s a lie. Or you make God a liar. And this is the way he writes this letter. What about I am born of God?

67. 28:26

    These are all phrases that people like to use. I’ve been born again. I’m born of God. Well, if you’re born of God, you will love your brethren and sisters. You’ll love them. There’s no choice in this. You will love your brothers and sisters, or I’m a child of God, or I love God.

68. 28:43

    You can. So the words are so easy to come out of our mouth. But John’s going to put after that. He’s going to put a qualifier in there and say, well, if you claim that, then you better be doing this. It’s all about the kind of life that you leave or I keep his commandments.

69. 29:00

    Or the final one is when you get to Chapter 5, I believe right then I believe, he said. You can say you believe and that word believe is have faith. It’s easy to say, oh, I have faith, I have faith and John’s going to throw in there. Well, if you claim to have faith, how are you really doing on on this area and what are you doing here?

70. 29:17

    And John’s going to put in some great qualifiers to to help us find out and run these tests about what are we really doing in life. So he provides these specific items for us to evaluate our lives, to indicate whether or not the way we see ourselves is supported by our actions. And it’s great that he does that because for some of us, we don’t want somebody else to tell us, well, you said this, but you’re not really doing it. We don’t want to hear that from other people. So he’s written this letter so that you can read it yourself and you can run these tests by yourself and find out how am I doing, how am I really doing, on loving God, on abiding in Him, of being found in Him and knowing Him and all these relationship concepts with God.

71. 30:04

    But it’s up to us to personally do that. So make sure as we’re going through this, we’re not going to do it to judge other people. And we’re going through this to really look at ourselves to find out how are we doing. So any anything else, all the beginning stuff, anything else anybody wants to throw in there of ideas on background for first, John. All right.

72. 30:24

    So this is Richard. I just noticed in almost your first slide where you have those 3 themes about God, they perfectly matched those 3 three themes about us. You didn’t mention that. I thought, oh, I just let us know, you know, God is light and then truth. God is love, love, and then God is or eternal life.

73. 30:44

    And that will be righteousness. So thank you very much because that is his goal of saying, hey, what God is. And Christ revealed it can be us. Okay. So thanks for pointing that out. All right, here’s the way this letter starts. This is the most unusual way to start a letter. So we’ll see if you guys can figure this out.

74. 31:05

    You’ve got to read this and see if you can figure it out. Starts really different than most of these letters that which was from the beginning, What in the world is that? That. I mean, we should at least figure that out because that’s his whole premise that that which was from the beginning. What is that now?

75. 31:23

    Now if you read. One of those translations Jason was talking to us about Before that they put in ideas and try to tell you what it is. Some of these modern translations, they put Jesus Christ was from the beginning and they actually put a who in there instead of a what because John doesn’t use that. He actually says that that what is it that which was from the beginning.

76. 31:44

    Now look at what he says about it, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we’ve looked upon our hands, have handled. Those are all things the Gnostics wouldn’t have liked, you know, because they were all things about the physical world itself. And this is what he’s going to talk about concerning the Word of Life. That sounds like John’s Gospel, doesn’t it? The Word of life, that in the beginning was the word. And then the life was manifested. So verse two, look at it.

77. 32:18

    The life was manifested and we’ve seen and bear witness and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us. Now, did you figure out what the that was? It’s it’s it’s the eternal life. That’s what this is going to be all about. It’s about this life that God had with him all along.

78. 32:47

    And what he did is he now has a son. And the Word became flesh because his eternal life was in this boy and he was living like God. He had God’s way of life entirely. And God’s goal all along was to use that man to save all those people that want this eternal life.

79. 33:08

    They want it. They want to have the kind of life that God has. That’s what they’re really after. It’s not just immortality, brothers and sisters and young people. It’s not just living forever. It’s the kind of life that you have when you live forever. God’s way of life is eternal. If you adopt his way of life, you will live forever because that’s what it is. It’s eternal life.

80. 33:32

    It’s that it’s got that kind of quality to it. So he says, I’ll declare to you that eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us. Now you look at that and say, all right, when was it manifested? When did they actually see it with their eyes and look? Upon it and their hands, it handled it and so on. That’s when it was revealed through Jesus Christ. So he’s in there all right, but he isn’t really the subject. The subject is the eternal life that was with God from the beginning and was revealed and manifested in the life of Jesus Christ, that which we have seen and heard, He says. We declare to you that you also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.

81. 34:22

    And these things we write to you that your joy may be full. So these are phrases that like, come right out of John’s gospel and things that Jesus had said. These are this is what Jesus was after when he preached the gospel. He wanted people’s joy to be full. He wanted them to understand this life that he had and that they would abide in him and that they would be born of God.

82. 34:44

    All these different concepts came up, but sometimes we miss what they really were. And what John points out to us is what it was really all about was that God had a way of life all along, what he calls eternal life. It would it’s a life that goes forever, and that he revealed it in Jesus Christ, and he can also reveal it in us.

83. 35:06

    And if you are in God’s eternal life, if you’re walking in that light and you’re you’re practicing that righteousness of God’s eternal life, you are then in fellowship with God and with Jesus Christ and with one another because you’re all practicing the same thing, You’re sharing the same kind of life. That’s what fellowship really is all about. So when we adopt that, it brings us into fellowship with God and Jesus and one another.

84. 35:34

    So certainly some of these things may have been specifically mentioned for the Gnostics. But I think it also helps to point out to the fact that these are things that are involving physical it’s it’s about our way of life, how we act, things that people can actually see and they can touch and they can watch and they can hear what we say.

85. 35:51

    That’s what John is trying to get us to understand, that all this stuff is about our physical bodies and things that we do. And so it could be that he tackled mysticism right from the beginning and went after those Gnostics. It could be. So did you notice the similarities between the way he starts this and John won?

86. 36:10

    Look at how John one starts in the beginning. So just like that, which was from the beginning actually going through first. John has really helped me to go back and look at John’s gospel now and help me like really crystallize things I had missed reading in John’s gospel. I was so focused on the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God and trying to prove the trinitarians, that this was not some Trinitarian idea right here.

87. 36:36

    I think I never really caught on to what John was actually saying, but it was a lot easier to see it when you actually understand first John 1. So in the beginning was the Word. This is the plan, the message that God had, and the Word was with God. And Vine says that because the definite article is missing in the Greek, the stress isn’t on the fact that the Word was God, but if the Word was godly, it was divine.

88. 37:01

    It’s the characteristics, not the actual feeling about God himself. He was in the beginning with God, and all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made that was made. It. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. See, that’s going to come up in John’s Gospel.

89. 37:17

    It’s all about this plan, this message that God had from the beginning. Everything was made with this in mind, with the intent that the life of God, that the light of men would shine and the light would shine in the darkness, even though the darkness would not comprehend it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John, and this man came for a witness to bear witness of the light.

90. 37:40

    So the light that he’s talking about is the light that shines, that reveals God’s way of life, that it tells us about God. That’s the knowledge that we’re going to try to get from this light. That’s what the light is all about. And it shines in the darkness and it tells us about a different way to live.

91. 37:59

    There’s a whole different way. You don’t have to just live by what your nature wants or what people tell us. You can find out about God’s way of life and live that and that was John’s goal was to bear witness to that light and the light was the true light which gives light to every man coming into the world. That was the plan all along and right from the beginning. So in first John one then you can see look at the similarities then as to how he starts out.

92. 38:24

    In first John one, that which was from the beginning which we’ve heard, we’ve seen with their eyes, we’ve looked upon our hands of handle concerning the word of life, The life was manifested and we’ve seen and bear witness and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and manifested to us.

93. 38:43

    So this is the life he’s talking about. It was with God all the way from the beginning. See I used to argue about this idea of the beginning and wonder in my mind we do these readings is the beginning was at the beginning of the gospel was that when Jesus was born was at the beginning and the Genesis creation.

94. 38:58

    But this, this is the beginning. This is what God has had all along. This is going back to like, this is God. He’s had a way of life right from the beginning and his goal was to manifest it in people and he did it in his son and he can do it in us.

95. 39:13

    That’s his goal. He wants to manifest this life in all of us. So that was the message then in verse five that we’ve heard from him and declare to you that God is light. He’s light morally in in in every way that he’s got. The He is the source of this eternal life. You can’t go somewhere else and find out about it. You’re not going to get it by meditating and reading books and humanism and all this kind of stuff. The only way you’re going to find it is looking in the Bible and finding out about God.

96. 39:42

    Study God. Find out how he operates, how he acts, what he does, what he says and how he loves people. And then you can take on his life because in verse 7 if we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin. What a great way to start out the letter that he shows you that look at this is what it’s all about. You get this life and you walk in this light and God will provide a way to to change you.

97. 40:17

    He’s going to change you. The blood of Jesus will cleanse you from all unrighteousness and he will forgive our sins. So that is the eternal life he’s talking about. It was with from God from the beginning. It’s not immortality, but is a basis for immortality. It’s a way of life, God’s way of life, and it is the basis of our fellowship with God and Jesus and each other.

98. 40:40

    See, a lot of times we get all hung up on fellowship, and we think that fellowship is all based on the BASF or something like that, a list of doctrinal teachings. And John’s going to try to point out that fellowship is a sharing, it’s a participation. That’s what those words mean in the Greek It’s when you sit down with people and you talk to people and you come together and you share God’s eternal life, his way of life, and you all have bought into it.

99. 41:07

    And that’s what really brings fellowship with one another and with Jesus Christ and with God our Father as well. That’s what fellowship is really all about. It’s not taking a piece of bread and drinking a little bit of wine on a Sunday morning and thinking that that’s fellowship. Oh, no, Fellowship is about. Sharing God’s eternal life.

100. 41:29

     And to do that, as John’s going to point out, you’ve got to be involved with people. You got to be showing that you love one another. You got to be involved in ecclesia life and out there trying to share the gospel with other people and talk about it. This is what God’s eternal life is all about. So it really does demand in the end that we strive for truth and we reject error, which you’re going to see with Antichrist teachings, and that we practice righteousness. Now, it’s fun to watch the fact that this is the way John starts the letter, all about that which was from the beginning, this eternal life.

101. 42:01

     But you may not have noticed when you’re doing the readings one chapter a day, you get to John Five. That’s the way he ends. The letter too. John 5 is going to come back to this again and say, this is the testimony that God has given us eternal life. You’ve got it now, you have access to it now.

102. 42:19

     And this life is in his Son and he who has the Son has life and he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. And he’ll come right back to this at the end of the letter and say don’t forget this is really what it’s all about. Look in John 17 when when Jesus was talking, and that this section with after Judas had gone out, and he talks to his disciples, and he has some time with them in the evening and when they had the that that last meal together.

103. 42:48

     But in John 17 Jesus spoke these words, lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come, glorify your Son, that the Son also may glorify you, and as you have given him authority over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you the only true God and Jesus.

104. 43:12

     Christ, whom you have sent so eternal life, is about a relationship with God. It’s about getting to know God as our Father and trusting Him and realizing what He’s doing for us in our lives today. And that the willingness he has to to raise us and train us and change us into his children, That’s really what eternal life is, that we might know Him, the only true God and Jesus Christ. Whom he has sent, or just so you don’t think it’s only in John’s gospel.

105. 43:41

     Look at how Peter says in Second Peter, chapter one at verse three, That as his divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue. By which you have been given to us, by which have been given to us, succeeding great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. See, that’s something that’s happening now. In our lives, we’re escaping the corruption that is in the world through lust, and we are gradually being changed and partaking of the divine nature because we’re taking on God’s eternal life.

106. 44:25

     It’s a transformation that has to be happening in this life now. It’s not something that’s just going to happen when when Christ returns and the Kingdom comes and he’s going to hand out immortality and what do you think he’s going to change us into somebody else that we really aren’t. He’s not going to take us if we’re on that wrong pathway and just say automatic.

107. 44:41

     Well, I’ll put you back on the right one. These are decisions, choices we have to make now about which pathway we want to be on, where are we headed? And this transformation takes place in our characters. Now we got to learn not to live like Jesus because he’s not going to change hearts and minds at the judgment seat, and it’s really at the judgment seat of Christ when it actually comes up. What will end up happening is he’ll give us what we really want.

108. 45:06

     And he’ll look at us and say, well, look what you did in your life. What did you really want? And that’s what you get, you know. And if you really wanted eternal life with God, that’s what you will get. Your joy will be full because where your treasure is there your heart will be also.

109. 45:22

     And it pretty well gives us away, all of us. It’s challenge to everybody here about what we do all through the day. So what John is going to do then is he’s going to take this idea of this eternal life that can bring you into fellowship with God and what he wants to then do at the end of chapter one, He’s going to move into this now, this area, and say that look at this eternal life.

110. 45:42

     The only way you can get this is from God. You’re not going to get it from somebody else. There’s no other religious teachers. They’re going to tell you about it. You’re not going to read it in some Christian book. You’re not going to get it from some book on Buddhism and Hinduism and all these other things.

111. 45:57

     God is the only source of this light. That’s it. There’s only one source of light in this darkness. So he says in verse 5, this is the message which we heard from him and declare to you that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. Now watch how he brings this up. If we say that we have fellowship with him, so he’s going to challenge us right away. Because he just brought up this idea that if you’re walking in the light, you have fellowship with God and the blood of Jesus cleanses you from all sin.

112. 46:26

     And we’re all sitting there thinking, that’s me, that’s me. And John says, okay. If we say that we have fellowship with him, but we’re walking in darkness, we lie and we don’t practice the truth, he he doesn’t put Gray areas out there at all. He just says where what are you really doing in life? What are your goals every day?

113. 46:48

     When you wake up, are you all focused on all this stuff of this world? Is that all you can think about is your careers, your job and all this stuff? And it could be the same thing with raising children that could be just something that you’re doing without even thinking about and raising them for God. It’s it’s all these ideas that we can get into where we’re so focused on this life, we don’t really see the eternal life that God is trying to get into us.

114. 47:11

     And so look at if we say we have fellowship with Him, we claim to be in fellowship with God and with Jesus and with one another about we walk in this darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.

115. 47:30

     And the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin, all sin. So that’s the first thing he wants to tackle is this idea that God is the only source of this life and you’re only going to have fellowship if you’re walking in that light. Don’t don’t deceive yourself and think that somehow you’re in fellowship with God when you’re not walking in the light. That’s how you participate with with God and with Jesus Christ. That’s how you share his sufferings. That’s how you share his way of life is you fellowship. If I Polly actually uses that word for fellowship about the sufferings of Jesus, you can fellowship his sufferings when you are walking in his life, when you’re going through the same experiences he did of trying to resist sin and fighting those things and trying to live the life of God. That’s how we end up in fellowship with God and Jesus and one another.

116. 48:25

     Because the God is the only source. And don’t be deceived, don’t fool yourself. God is the light. He’s the only source of our truth and moral righteousness, His eternal life. You won’t get it anywhere else. And I say that to, you know, some of the younger ones that are here to just be careful.

117. 48:42

     You’re not going to get this out of reading Christian books. You’re not going to get it out of reading stuff from other religions. You’re going to get it by studying and reading and looking through the Bible and listening to the reading of the Word and trying to understand why God did things. What is he doing in these events? Why did he record those events in Genesis? For us to read through year after year and and try to come to understand how he operates and then put that into practice in our life, That is God’s eternal life. So in first John one, we looked at that one about our fellowship being based on walking in the light. Look what he said in John 12.

118. 49:20

     Jesus said to them a little while longer. The light is with you. So walk while you have the light. Let’s darkness overtake you. You walks in darkness does not know where he’s going. While you have the light, believe in the light that you may become sons of light. Like Richard said, this idea of God is light then becomes that we become sons of this light.

119. 49:43

     This is something that has to be in us as well. Or as Peter says in First Peter Two at verse nine, you’re a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.

120. 50:09

     This is what God has done for us. He’s taken us out of the darkness of the things of this world and all the things people care about in this world, and he’s transferred us over into the Kingdom of his son, where you can be practicing God’s righteousness, his way of life. And he is the only source. Because really anything else, any other stuff you read on this stuff is just human based.

121. 50:33

     It’s humanism at its best. It’s all basic humanism. But no matter what religious group you read, if they’re not using the Bible as a source, then it’s really just humanism. So God’s light, when you look at it in the scriptures, it’s revealed in the face of Jesus. That’s where he did it. He manifested his light in Jesus.

122. 50:53

     So in 2nd Corinthians 4, Paul would say, for it is God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Or in John chapter 8, Jesus spoke to them saying, I am the light of the world.

123. 51:12

     He follows me, shall not walk in darkness but have the light of life. This is God’s life and it’s shining and it’s just trying to get into our hearts and our minds and change us into different people. But he doesn’t make it happen. It’s a choice you have to make. It’s a choice, and John’s going to try to encourage people that look at let’s make the good choice you’ve already joined, let’s just stay there, don’t leave it and go, don’t go seek another way. So walking in the light, one person said, it really means that you consider Jesus as the lights in this world and we walk in that light by following His precepts, living in His power and growing in His grace.

124. 51:55

     That’s really what this is all about, about walking in the lights or we don’t participate in the works of darkness. We don’t get into the stuff of this world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. But instead we walk in the light. So what happens then? For all of us, our way of life really reveals our choice. There won’t be any surprises really at the judgment seat. I mean, all the angels are going to have to do to us is go through our lives and say, well, look at our choices in life. What did you really want?

125. 52:24

     What did you do day after day? What were you really after? Where? Where is your your treasure? Really. Where was it? Then you can tell by what you did in your life because our way of life reveals the choice we we either go after God’s eternal way and we practice righteousness or we go after this world and we’re in the darkness because we’re striving after something that we’ll never going to find.

126. 52:47

     Reminds me a lot of Ecclesiastes with with Solomon and looking at this idea that you can go striving after that right hand side and think that’s going to give you all this happiness. And Solomon just keeps reminding us and say, look, I tried it. I tried it, I tried it. And it doesn’t give you what you think you’re going to get. And so that’s not really what’s going to bring you the everlasting happiness and joy, But it’s walking in the light of God, his eternal life and his way of life. That’s what we’ll really do it.

127. 53:15

     So how do we eliminate the darkness? How do we get rid of it? How do we make sure that we don’t get into the darkness? And that I found myself. The best way is to just fill your life with things that are in the light. I don’t think it really helps to just say, well, I’m not going to, I’m not going to, I’m not going to, I don’t know about you.

128. 53:32

     But if I don’t provide myself with something positive to do, then inevitably I will go into the not gonnas and I’ll get into those things. So it really helps to first of all recognize I’m the problem. It’s not somebody else. It’s not our spouse. It’s not our kids. It’s not the other brothers and sisters at meeting.

129. 53:52

     The problem is me. That’s the first step, because once you recognize what the problem really is, then you can set out to try to fix it. And the good news is, you can fix yourself. That is, you don’t have to talk about other people because the other people don’t really want you to fix them. But yourself you can work on, right? So that’s good.

130. 54:11

     So first recognize I’m the problem. Then you start praying for help. I I really want to come to know Jesus. I want to find out about God. What is he? What is this? What am? What is this all about? And you pray for help, that God will open the eyes of our understanding so that we can understand who he is and how he operates. And we say, that’s the way I want to be. I want to be like him.

131. 54:34

     So then we read. Or we listen to God’s word daily. You don’t have to read, you don’t have to even study that way, but you can listen. These days we have so many great things you can listen to, and you can listen to them all the time. When you’re all over the place with all the electronic gadgets we have today, you can put these things in your ear and have a phone going and it’s like, it’s great.

132. 54:53

     You can even walk away from and it’s still in your ear. You know, you just can’t get away from them. So there’s lots of good things we can do about getting God’s Word into our head and spending time with God’s family. To me, that’s essential. You’ve got to be willing to come out and and be with people. Join them where wherever they are. It could be at the baseball game, it could be wherever. But spend time with people in God’s family and that that way you can get to know people and you can find ways to help people, and you can be part of the fellowship of the family of God.

133. 55:25

     Then practice loving one another, which means forgiving one another, showing mercy to one another. All the things you want them to do to me, you. Got to practice doing those things with all of them. You practice loving one another and becoming a faithful witness to the people that we meet. That’s another way we can eliminate the darkness. We get involved in those things.

134. 55:46

     So get involved in some good positive things in ecclesial life and in in family life and all those things. I find myself it’s much better to fill up my time with positive things and and then you don’t have to worry so much about, well, I don’t want to do that. So what other things have you guys found helpful? So we got a minute left or so.

135. 56:04

     What have you found helpful for helping you eliminate the darkness of this world? So this is Janae. I have to tell everybody because they want to know they can’t see you. One thing I like to do is listen to Christian music. I mean, it’s not Chris Adelphian, but it gets the emotionality to for me sometimes. As much as I love the word, sometimes I don’t feel as emotionally connected as I do to music. So even Chris Adelphian music or Christian music for me, that really just keeps me focused.

136. 56:34

     So that’s a good practical thing, listening to music like that. I got to admit I am a music lover as well as soon knows every time she starts the car and. All the songs are playing, yeah, or every so often the kids tell me to turn it down. But fortunately with headphones today, you don’t hear that much anymore. But it’s it’s a good, practical way to get those songs in our head.

137. 56:55

     And then I find all through the day they keep coming back all the time. Those good things that remind us about what God has done for us and what he’s trying to do. Any other things you want to add, James? What? You get the last word.

138. 57:10

     But it’s not necessarily a positive thing. But sometimes we do have to recognize some of the things that we shouldn’t do, like don’t absorb yourself with too much of the medias that are available to us and listen and you know this, this is the positive. I think you have the list there, but sometimes you got to turn off before you can turn on.

139. 57:35

     So turn off the KABC News Radio and all the commentaries that just get you riled up in the wrong way and and and do the other things we’ve been talking about. That’s a good way to end it tonight. There are some things we got to turn off. So yeah, maybe we can think about tonight.

140. 57:51

     Some of the things you can do in your life in the In the next week or so, try turning some things off of our life and turning on some other things and hopefully John’s letters going to help us to learn all those good practical things.

141. 58:15

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142. 58:35

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143. 59:08

     God bless and talk to you next week.