“They Heard & Believed” (1 John 1:1—2:2) Easter 2B, April 2015

1.                  Sanctify us by the Truth, O Lord, Your Word is Truth.  In the name of Jesus.  Amen.  On this second Sunday of Easter we hear from the Gospel lesson Thomas’ confession of faith.  Jesus is alive and standing before Thomas, inviting him to touch him and believe in His bodily resurrection from the dead.  This Gospel lesson helps us to understand the proclamation from 1 John.  Today we’re going to look specifically at 1 John 1:1-4, as we begin our sermon series on 1 John the next few weeks.  We’ll see that the Apostle John wants us to know that the Christian message is about Jesus Christ, who even after he was raised from the dead, could be heard, seen and touched.  John wants the truth of the incarnation, that Jesus took on human flesh, really lived, died for our sins and was raised to new life to be understood and believed.  The message is entitled, “They Heard and Believed,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                  On October 2, 1930, one of the greatest missionary endeavors began when the  Lutheran Hour radio program began broadcasting from coast-to-coast.  From the first program the Lutheran Hour caught the attention of the American people.  It’s good that we review the results of this missionary endeavor.  Obviously, a person can’t measure someone’s conversion to the Christian faith in mathematical calculations.  But, from the thousands of letters that have been received at the Lutheran Hour headquarters we can gather evidence of the divine blessing which accompanied the preaching of Christ.  First of all, men and women who had never acknowledged Jesus as their Savior were brought to the confession of Christian faith.  Then, many more who had lost their faith were led to renew their belief in Jesus. It’s not without importance that this radio program was begun at a time of serious economic depression.  At a time of unemployment, bank crashes, and economic downturn people could be comforted in those days with heavenly consolation and receive the spiritual strengthening that’s expressed in the following simple statement: I believe in Him.  Back in 2007 more than 1 million people contacted Lutheran Hour Ministries, and nearly 80,000 referrals were made to local pastors as a result of listening to the Lutheran Hour.  People are still  hearing and believing.

3.                  This brings us to our Scripture lesson for today taken specifically from 1 John 1:1-4.  Here the Apostle John begins his epistle by saying, “¹That 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— ²the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— ³that 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. ⁴And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.”

4.                  A little background to the Apostle John’s epistle would help us to understand why He’s writing to the Christian church of His day.  Believe it or not, in the 1^st century of the Christian church, false teachings of the faith had begun.  They were being taught by such men as Cerinthus.  Cerinthus was an Egypitna Jew who knit together teachings from the Old Testament, fragments of Christianity and pagan philosophy.  This early movement promised that there was much more spiritual knowledge that the Bible didn’t have.  The Greek word for knowledge, gnosis, gave the name Gnosticism.  And just like New Age teachers today, Gnostic teachers taught:  1.  There was no incarnation or virgin birth, no atoning death or resurrection.  2.  The Christ of heaven and the Christ of Earth were two separate things 3.  Matter was evil and only mind and spirit were pure.  4.  The spiritually advanced Gnostic leaders were no longer sinful.  5.  The Bible wasn’t a reliable source of information.  6.  The apostles had no special authority for telling people how to think and live.

5.                  The sad result of Gnosticism was that believers were losing their confidence in the Bible, their certainty of being saved from sin, they were drifting into unrepentant lifestyles and they were growing selfish and unloving in their churches and families.  Christians were even becoming confused about authority in the Church and they were losing their ability to distinguish truth from error.  In John’s 1^st letter to the Christian church he was seeking to bring people back into a stronger relationship with Jesus.  Since God is light and love, real Christians always combine right thinking with right living.  In true Christianity, what we believe and what we do with our deeds of faith are inseparable.

6.                  Here in 1 John 1:1-4 we learn that John wanted people to believe his testimony about Christ because he was an eyewitness.  In fact, he was an eyewitness to all of it.  From the beginning, his own ears had heard the Father’s voice on the Mt. of Transfiguration.  John had heard the shrieks of demons as they were hurled out of human bodies.  He’d even heard Jesus sermons day after day for three years. John had seen Lazarus come out of his tomb, still wrapped like a mummy and he’d seen Jesus speaking with Moses and Elijah.  His hands had touched the evidence of God’s Son—the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper, the bridle for the Palm Sunday donkey colt, and the fishing nets that had hauled in a miraculous catch.  For that matter, his other two senses would also have experienced Jesus—when he smelled the perfume that splashed on Jesus’ feet and tasted the miraculous bread and fish for 5000 people.

7.                  What was John’s point?  He wanted to establish Himself as an eyewitness and a teacher of the Christian faith to make his readers sure that they were receiving the Truth of the Gospel.  John uses the special term Word to refer to Jesus Himself.  Jesus is God’s ultimate self revelation.  Words convey thoughts and messages from one mind to another AND Jesus is the ultimate communication of God’s love, His own personal word to us and is the fulfillment of so many words that were prophesied about in the Old Testament.

8.                  But, why is this important?  Because all people are born into a fallen world and are sinful and unclean in God’s sight.  Because we’re born this way, we’re spiritually dead in our trespasses and sins and we face a life of pain, death and eternal condemnation in hell.  The Word that brings life to people comes through the message of the apostles.  And John is one of them.  That message works faith in people’s hearts.  The faith to believe that Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins, but was physically raised on the third day never to die again.  And because He lives we too shall live.  John was worried that his readers were losing their confidence in the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  That’s why He wrote this letter and why we still read it today.

9.                  How can we apply what John is speaking to us here in 1 John to our lives today?  In a recent survey of Evangelical Christians in America nearly everyone agreed with the statement "It is more important for me to give my personal testimony than to explain the doctrines and claims of Christianity." That’s an interesting statement, given the fact that not even the eye-witnesses of Christ's saving acts gave much attention in the New Testament to their own experience and feelings. "What Jesus means to me", or "how Jesus changed my life" aren’t important headlines on their own when they have so much to say about what Jesus said and did. The testimony that concerns Biblical Christians is that of eye-witnesses who observed events upon which we cast our hope for eternal life. "That which was from the beginning," says John in First John 1:1, "which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled concerning the Word of Life." That's the message of our faith in Jesus. The Bible doesn't separate faith from reason and history in the way that we do in our day. In fact, for us a Christians the foundation of our faith rests on the message of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.  Because Jesus took on human flesh the Christian Gospel has been publicly known from the beginning. That's not to say that our faith is founded on reason, for only when reason receives the light of revelation is it capable of guiding us into such great truth. It’s one thing to say that the resurrection can stand up to questions, but can it confront doubts?  From John’s words here in 1 John we can say it can.  We can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus has truly risen from the dead just as He said and that we have the promise of eternal life through Him.  Amen.