1 John Walk Through
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As with any time we open the Bible:
As with any time we open the Bible:
We must ask ourselves some important questions to try to understand why the passage we are reading was even written. Questions like:
Who is writing this letter?
Why did they write this letter?
Which isn’t always listed right off the bat
What is it?
A Letter? Poem? Song?
Which is very similar
Where was it written and where was it addressed to?
When? When was it written, which again, isn’t always something we will/can know.
But we must always ask.
Think of it like this…I know you guys don’t really do this anymore, but back in my day ( I sound like I’m 50 ), we used to write love notes to each other. If it was a new crush, sometimes you wouldn’t write your name, or you’d be somewhat mysterious.
The reader of the letter than would pour over it, over and over, trying to figure out who wrote it, why did they write it, what was the purpose, etc.
And you’d figure out style of writing, or things they said to help you figure out who sent it.
Or, you’d just discard it because you didn’t care…maybe you were already dating someone.
You guys are missing out on so much in the digital world you live in!
We have the greatest love letter ever written, by God himself, who has filled this book with the greatest truths ever known to man. And so to not ask questions, we are doing Him a great disservice.
Over the next few weeks, we are going to be walking through 1 John....together
Over the next few weeks, we are going to be walking through 1 John....together
Meaning I will be needing input from you all, meaning you will have to open your mouth and make sounds come out that are known as words, and I need you to use those words to communicate with me.
Got it? Sound like a plan?
1 John, one of 3 smaller books written in the NT, coming after 2 Peter and before Jude
so go ahead and turn there with me
Now, we’ve got some important questions to get figured out before we can even jump into walking through the book. So let’s start simply:
When was this written?
We honestly aren’t sure. We know it was after Jesus’ ascension obviously
Where was this written from? Or Where was it written to?
I’ll help you out here, again, we aren’t sure.
Church tradition seems to favor the idea that
Who wrote 1 John?
And I don’t want you just to guess, I want you to tell me as a matter of fact, if you can.
It could be John the apostle, John the Baptist, or it could be another John of that day…so let’s find out
Volunteers: 1 read , another read , and another
What do we learn from the opening of 1 John?
The author heard, saw, looked upon, and touched the word of life.
Does anyone want to take a stab at who the word of life is?
yep, Jesus, which we’ll prove here soon
Now, when we read that this author was someone who heard from Jesus, saw him in ministry, touched him, does that give us any clues as to who this author could be?
someone turn to
We just studied this in acts on Sunday nights…where the apostles picked a replacement apostle for Jesus.
What about ? Read it for us. And go ahead and read 3 John 1
The author is what?
An elder
What in the world is an elder? And no, it’s not just an old person
An elder is a leader in the church, a pastor/deacon
Okay, so we’ve determined that most likely this author was a leader in the church, a pastor even, and was also someone who went in and out during Jesus’ ministry, an apostle.
Which gives us our answer. This book was written, as far as we can tell, by the apostle John
Whew
When was this written?
We honestly aren’t sure. We know it was after Jesus’ ascension obviously
Where was this written from?
I’ll help you out here, again, we aren’t sure.
Church tradition seems to favor the idea that the apostle John spent his later years in Ephesus, which is located in Asia Minor.
Who was it written to?
One can assume that it was the churches in Asia Minor.
Now, there would be a couple reasons to think that.
If John really is in Ephesus, then he is right in the middle of those churches and he would have been involved in day to day life and would have a firsthand experience to see what was happening.
Secondly, do you know who wrote the book of Revelation?
John did
Someone read
Logic would then tell us that John most likely was also writing this letter to the churches in Asia Minor.
Now we get to the big ones, two very important questions.
First, what is this book?
Is it a letter?
Is it wisdom literature?
Is it a poem or proverb?
Is it a historical narrative?
Is it a parable?
What do you think? Skim over it....what do you think this is?
Why was it written?
Now, this is the most important of all. If we don’t know why a book was written, then we are starting from behind the 8 ball in trying to figure out each part of the book.
There will always be some reason behind why a book is written.
For instance, the book of James, we went through it several months ago as a youth group.
That falls into the category of wisdom literature.
It was written to provide Christians a guideline for living, to provide them wisdom.
So, why was 1 John written? Why did the apostle John decide to write this letter
Now, we’ve referenced Revelation, and in Revelation the first 3 verses lay out why the book was written.
We aren’t so lucky here, as John doesn’t start off with a prologue, or an opening statement, or anything of that nature
If he was in our English writing classes today, he’d be in trouble.
So what we have to do, as people who are eager to hear from God, we have to do some reading, and we have to try to find out why the letter was written.
Because I promise you if you don’t, then most of your Bible reading will seem void and pointless.
So, in this instance, there are a couple things we can look at to determine the point of the letter:
I write these things to you.....
Passage headings
Now, my only issue with this is that these aren’t part of the Bible. They aren’t inspired words of God, they are placed there by man to help us know what a passage is about.
This is never my go to, but is helpful
For instance, if you look at Hebrews, you see that so much of it is about Christ and his supremacy, and you can determine that by passage headings.
Key phrases that might indicate the point of the letter
I am writing these things to you so.......
Now, I will tell you in 1 John, we see this phrase written a couple of times, which helps to give us an overall picture of the point of this letter.
So, what I want you do real quick is read through 1 John and look for the reasons he wrote this letter.
As you come across them, write them down on your paper
This side take chapters 3 & 4
Go! You’ve got 5 minutes