Sermon Tone Analysis

Alêtheia Christian Fellowship       (Sermon 58, 02-20-05)

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Last week we talked about the fact that God already loves you and if you genuinely accept His love through Jesus, you are already in heaven.

We talked about the Love Wheel and the fact that it is all about relationship.

True Christians aren’t trying to get anywhere, except closer to God!

 

Once we begin to realize the great love of God for us, we can then be freed from our native fear and allow His love to fill us.

God’s love is first and foremost Agapê.

Unconditional love assures us of our place with God.

Now, there can be no fear of rejection.

Whew, I’m glad we got that over with!

Now, we are free to focus on loving God because He loves us, it is that simple.

Regardless of what you believe to the contrary, the Truth is righteousness comes from God and God alone.

We take the righteousness of perfect Jesus upon ourselves by faith.

The Bible is clear.

Faith is righteousness and faith only comes from a relationship with God.

The Love wheel shows the reality that obedience is the proof of trust, which in turn is the proof of faith.

We also saw that faith proceeds from Agapê.

Obedience enables us to grow because it’s not easy.

As we grow we have more Agapê, giving us more faith allowing us to trust more, enabling obedience.

Obedience should be easier then, but God isn’t interested in making things easy because He loves you too much to let you stagnate.

So, He asks something more difficult and around and around we go.

This is the way our relationship is built and it enables us to be friends with God and ultimately leads to intimacy with God.

Intimacy is God’s goal and it should be our goal.

Intimacy forever starting today and lasting for etenity.

As an aside I want to make it clear that the word ejrw>v, does not actually appear in the Bible.

The terms used for intimacy with God and the baser lusts of the flesh are combinations of words and phrases to evoke the sense.

I use ejrw>v, for the sake of simplicity because it enables easy comparrison with ajga>ph and filia>, Intimacy is indicated with words like family member, face to face, into the Father or Jesus or the Spirit, as well as many others.

Jesus says He and the Father are one and then tells us we are in that same relationship with the Father through being intimate with Jesus.

If you’ve seen Me you’ve seen the Father, you can’t get more intimate than that!

If you’ve seen my wife you’ve seen me?

To some degree.

*John 1*, Jesus is pro>v to~~n qeo>n, intimate with the Father.

The Bible talks often of us being the bride of Christ.

The Bible talks often about praying without ceasing and we think prayer is some kind of Christian duty.

God already knows what you want!

Prayer is to connect in intimate relationship.

*Revelation 22:4&5* says,

4And they will see his face, and his name will be written on their foreheads.

5And there will be no night there—no need for lamps or sun—for the Lord God will shine on them.

And they will reign forever and ever.

How do we gauge the health of our relationship with God?

Is it our outward behavior?

This is fruit and gives an indication of where our heart is at, but fruit can be plastic.

Is it in our devotion time with God?

Not necessarily, my son read a chapter on Latin verb cojugation in a college text book.

He got all the words right, I mean he read it, but he didn’t have a clue what the chapter was about.

For him it was a monumental waste of time and it is possible for someone to spend hours each day in prayer without having any idea of who God really is.

The Bible says the way you gauge the health of your relationship with God is my examining your relationship with people.

We are going to systematically go through 1 John.

The Apostle John and the Apostle Paul are my favorite guys.

If I could meet anyone in history outside of Jesus Himself I would be hard pressed to decide which of these two guys it would be.

Paul was without question the greater evangelist and theologian, but John knew Jesus better than any other man and while he didn’t have Paul’s education, access and ability, he was no slouch.

John moved with the Apostles Philip and Andrew and perhaps Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdelene to Ephesus just prior to the decimation of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The Emporor Vespacian started the war with the Jews but left his son Titus to finish the job when he ascended the Roman throne.

Titus followed his father as emporor and was himself followed by his brother Domitian who was the lunatic who thought he was the God Apollo and persecuted Christians including our author.

Peter, the Jewish apostle of authority, and Paul, the Gentile apostle of freedom, had done their work on earth before the destruction of JerusalemBut there remained a most important additional work to be done, a work of union and consolidation.

This was reserved for the apostle of love, the bosom-friend of Jesus, who had become his most perfect reflection so far as any human being can reflect the ideal of divine-human purity and holiness.

John was not a missionary or a man of action, like Peter and Paul.

He did little, so far as we know, for the outward spread of Christianity, but all the more for the inner life and growth of Christianity where it was already established.

He has nothing to say about the government, the forms, and rites of the visible church (even the name does not occur in his Gospel and first Epistle), but all the more about the spiritual substance of the church—the vital union of believers with Christ and the brotherly communion of believers among themselves.

He is at once the apostle, the evangelist, and the seer, of the new covenant.

He lived to the close of the first century, that he might erect on the foundation and superstructure of the apostolic age the majestic dome gilded by the light of the new heaven.

He had to wait in silent meditation till the church was ripe for his sublime teaching.

This is intimated by the mysterious word of our Lord to Peter with reference to John: “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?”1-429

No doubt the Lord did come in the terrible judgment of Jerusalem.

John outlived it personally, and his type of doctrine and character will outlive the earlier stages of church history (anticipated and typified by Peter and Paul) till the final coming of the Lord.

In that wider sense he tarries even till now, and his writings, with their unexplored depths and heights still wait for the proper interpreter.

The best comes last.

In the vision of Elijah on Mount Horeb, the strong wind that rent the mountains and brake in pieces the rocks, and the earthquake, and the fire preceded the still small voice of Jehovah.

John was a son (probably the younger son) of Zebedee and Salome, and a brother of the elder James, who became the protomartyr of the apostles.1-430

He may have been about ten years younger than Jesus, and as, according to the unanimous testimony of antiquity, he lived till the reign of Trajan, /i.e/., till after 98, he must have attained an age of over ninety years.

He was a fisherman by trade, probably of Bethsaida in Galilee (like Peter, Andrew, and Philip).

His parents seem to have been in comfortable circumstances.

His father kept hired servants; his mother belonged to the noble band of women who followed Jesus and supported him with their means, who purchased spices to embalm him, who were the last at the cross and the first at the open tomb.

John himself was acquainted with the high priest, and owned a house in Jerusalem or Galilee, into which he received the mother of our Lord.1-431

He was a cousin of Jesus, according to the flesh, from his mother, a sister of Mary.1-432

This relationship, together with the enthusiasm of youth and the fervor of his emotional nature, formed the basis of his intimacy with the Lord.

He had no rabbinical training, like Paul, and in the eyes of the Jewish scholars he was, like Peter and the other Galilaean disciples, an “unlearned and ignorant man.”1-433

But he passed through the preparatory school of John the Baptist who summed up his prophetic mission in the testimony to Jesus as the “Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world,” a testimony which he afterwards expanded in his own writings.

It was this testimony which led him to Jesus on the banks of the Jordan in that memorable interview of which, half a century afterwards, he remembered the very hour.1-434

He was not only one of the Twelve, but the chosen of the chosen Three.

Peter stood out more prominently before the public as the friend of the Messiah; John was known in the private circle as the friend of Jesus.1-435

Peter always looked at the official character of Christ, and asked what he and the other apostles should do; John gazed steadily at the person of Jesus, and was intent to learn what the Master said.

They differed as the busy Martha, anxious to serve, and the pensive Mary, contented to learn.

John alone, with Peter and his brother James, witnessed the scene of the transfiguration and of Gethsemane—the highest exaltation and the deepest humiliation in the earthly life of our Lord.

He leaned on his breast at the last Supper and treasured those wonderful farewell discourses in his heart for future use.

He followed him to the court of Caiaphas.

He alone of all the disciples was present at the crucifixion, and was intrusted by the departing Saviour with the care of his mother.

This was a scene of unique delicacy and tenderness: the /Mater dolorosa/and the beloved disciple gazing at the cross, the dying Son and Lord uniting them in maternal and filial love.

It furnishes the type of those heaven-born spiritual relationships, which are deeper and stronger than those of blood and interest.

As John was the last at the cross, so he was also, next to Mary Magdalene, the first of the disciples who, outrunning even Peter, looked into the open tomb on the resurrection morning; and he first recognized the risen Lord when he appeared to the disciples on the shore of the lake of Galilee.

(Jn 20:4; 21:7)

He seems to have been the youngest of the apostles, as he long outlived them all; he certainly was the most gifted and the most favored.

He had a religious genius of the highest order—not indeed for planting, but for watering; not for outward action and aggressive work, but for inward contemplation and insight into the mystery of Christ’s person and of eternal life in him.

Purity and simplicity of character, depth and ardor of affection, and a rare faculty of spiritual perception and intuition, were his leading traits, which became ennobled and consecrated by divine grace.

There are no violent changes reported in John’s history; he grew silently and imperceptibly into the communion of his Lord and conformity to his example; he was in this respect the antipode of Paul.

He heard more and saw more, but spoke less, than the other disciples.

He absorbed his deepest sayings, which escaped the attention of others; and although he himself did not understand them at first, he pondered them in his heart till the Holy Spirit illuminated them.

His intimacy with Mary must also have aided him in gaining an interior view of the mind and heart of his Lord.

He appears throughout as the beloved disciple, in closest intimacy and in fullest sympathy with the Lord.1-436

In the Gospel of Mark, John appears as a Son of Thunder (Boanerges).1-437