Today, Sean Kelly gives us a great overview of 1 John. Come back next week for 1 John 1:1-4.

Introduction to 1 John
1 John 1:1-3
By Sean Kelly

Philippians last week. This week we're getting started in one John. The plan is to do one John and then to knock out second and third John, which should be a little bit quicker than first John.

I hope so. We're just going to do an introduction this morning. I really don't know how long this is going to take, so we'll see.

I have quite a few verses to read, but I'm not going to go too in depth on anything for the most part. Just kind of give you an idea. We're going to talk a little about who John is and some of the concepts and themes that we spend most of our time this morning.

So let's go ahead and open in prayer. Ted, will you open us in prayer? We just thank you again for this day that we're able to worship you and pray that you help us learn from things that Shawn prepared. Lord, just one little thing, kind of a personal, personal prayer request.

Just as long as I'm up here and talking, you have to listen to me. Anyways, Abigail will be flying back home starting tomorrow. She's leaving tomorrow afternoon from Japan, arriving tomorrow morning in Vancouver.

So she's on a time travel plane? No, she's crossing the international day line backwards so it makes up hours. She has a twelve hour layover in Vancouver and then overnight flight to Dallas and then Dallas back to Des Moines on Tuesday. So she just pray for her travels.

It sounds like she's really had a good time in Japan, done some ministry there, seen some samurai stuff, I don't know, different things like that, so I'll find out more. She hasn't been able to communicate a whole lot, but she's sending pictures and stuff to us. So it seems like she's really at a profitable time.

Let's go ahead and start in the introduction of the first John. So we're going to start out with the author. That's a great place to start.

The author is the apostle John. There is a little bit of debate among people whether it really is the apostle John, but most conservative theologians agree that this is the apostle John who wrote it. The difficulty comes because John doesn't ever mention himself in this epistle.

He just kind of starts out and goes into it, you know, as we study Philippians, Philippians starts out with Paul and the apostle of Jesus Christ with our brother Timothy and blah, blah, blah. Paul does that a lot. John does not do that.

Second and third John, he also doesn't, I believe, second John. He uses the term the elder. So you know, you know who that is, and then the third John, also the elder.

So, but in first John, he doesn't even have a real introducing who's writing this. But there's a lot of evidence that this is the apostle John, the one who was with Jesus. We're going to look at a little bit about the apostle John, mostly about kind of who he was, kind of the names that he has been given.

I mentioned the elder. I didn't put that in here. And then kind of evidence that it was him.

So we're looking at a few of these verses. Let's start with Luke 613 14. This is John being called and showing that he is an apostle.

Nathan's hand is up before I even ask, so I'll let him go ahead and read that. And when it was day, he called his disciples to himself. And from them he chose twelve, whom he also named apostles.

Simon, whom he also named Peter and Andrew, his brother James and John, Philippus, Bartholomew, and then the rest. We just are concerned about John mainly. So John is one of the original apostles.

It's interesting here because we always talk about the twelve disciples like they were the only disciples here. It shows that there's a group of disciples that were following Jesus and Jesus from those group, he chose twelve specific ones to be a closer part of his ministry. And John was one of those.

Let's look at Matthew ten two. This gives us a little more idea of who John was. Matthew ten two.

Who would like to read? Josiah? Go ahead. Now, the names of the twelve apostles are these. First, Simon, who is called Peter, and his brother James, the son of Timothy, and John his brother.

So this passage gives us a little bit more information than Luke did. First of all, it tells us that John is a brother to James, that these were brother apostles. And also it tells us who their father was.

Who was this guy named Zebedee? So that's who John was, that he was. It wasn't just him, but him and his brother were both apostles. Mark 317.

We'd like to read that. We're going to get a little more information about him. Go ahead, Jonathan.

James is son of deputy and John's brother James, to whom he gave the name Thunder dreams. That is tons of thunder. So here I think you see a little bit of Jesus Christ having a little humorous side to himself.

He's calling James and John the sons of Thunder. That's a nickname he's given them. Yeah.

You can kind of see why when you look at the passage about, remember when they went into the city and the city rejected Jesus and James and John God. Hey, you want us to call down lightning from heaven and strike down the sea? I mean, they were kind of hot headed when they were first there, remember? Also, the disciples were probably all very young. We think maybe Peter was the only one that was over 21 because of the passage where it talks about that.

Peter was concerned about the temple tax, and Jesus said to catch a fish, grab the coin oven, and pay the tax for you and me. So it seems like that Peter was the only one responsible for himself to pay the temple tax, which meant the rest of the disciples may have been a little bit younger. In fact, a lot of people think John and James were very young, maybe the youngest of the disciples.

So they were maybe hot headed teenagers at this point. And Jesus gives them this name, sons of thunder, kind of humorously, but kind of fits their personality from what we know of them. Let's look at John 1323, because John never identifies himself, really, in his gospel, other than that, when he first introduces the apostles at the beginning, this is how he usually refers himself.

So John 1323. Who would like to read that? Go ahead, Lynn. And this is how John generally refers to himself in his gospel, is that the disciple that Jesus loved? And maybe he's reflecting a little bit on the undeserved love that he received from Jesus and identifying with that, even maybe this humility that he doesn't want to really promote himself, but to show it's all about Jesus in this.

So we see that's kind of a neat thing. John's gospel is one of the later gospels written, we think so at this point, when John's writing the gospel, he's much older, a little more mature, obviously, has been walking with Christ for many, many years at that point. So we can see some of his humility in some of his theology there and just how he refers to himself in the gospel.

Matthew 17 one shows we have the twelve disciples, but there is a kind of an inner circle of disciples, and John was a part of that. So Matthew 17 one. Who would like to read that? Go ahead, Isabel.

So here, and we see this a couple other places in the gospels, but it seems Peter, James and John were kind of the inner, inner circle of disciples. These were the ones that were really close to Jesus, not that the other nine weren't. But Jesus invested the most time even in these three.

And John was one of those. Matthew 26, 36 and 37. Let's skip over that one.

Basically the same point there, that when he went to pray in Gethsemane, he also took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, of course, being James and John, with him a little bit further. So these were the inner three of the group. So why do we think that first John was written by John? Well, let's look at one John one, one three.

We're going to cover this next week, but we'll give a little observation here from that. So go ahead, Ted. With our eyes which we have looked upon and our hands have handled concerning the word of life, the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness, declare to you that eternal life which was with the father and was manifested to us that which we have seen and heard, we declare to you that you also may have fellowship with us.

And truly our fellowship is with the father and with. So the first question we have to ask here is, who is the word of life? Or what is the word of life? I think the capital w might give away a little bit of a hint. What's the answer? God, more specifically, Nathan, thank you.

So when you look at the beginning of the gospel of John, John one in the beginning was the word. The word was with God, and the word was God. The word was with God in the beginning.

And he's referring in verse 14, he says, the word dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the father. So the word here in John's gospel is obviously Jesus. We can see here John is using the same terminology, calling him the word of life this time.

But talking about Jesus now, what does he say about Jesus? He says that which was from the beginning. Well, what beginning? The beginning. But this is a specific beginning because it's talking about Jesus.

So this is talking about the beginning of probably his ministry here, when John was called as an apostle. The things from the beginning which we have heard. Who is the we? Yeah, the apostles.

Right. The people that were there were Jesus, which we have seen with our eyes. Who's seen with our eyes? Well, the apostles from the beginning of the ministry.

Right. Which we have looked upon, which our hands have handled. So he's using all these sensory things that we were there, we experienced this, we were physically with this word of life.

Verse three also says, that which we have seen and heard, we declare to you. So the things that they've seen Jesus do, the things that they heard Jesus taught, they have declared, this has to be somebody who was there for the whole ministry from the beginning through everything, which probably limits it to mainly the twelve disciples, because all others forsook him. So this has to be one of them.

And again, using the term word for Jesus Christ in verse one and stuff, this shows pretty good evidence that this is probably the apostle John who is writing this. And so that's what we would acknowledge, and we would believe here that this is the apostle John writing this book. The date of the writing is the late eighties.

This is not the 1980s, Nathan. This is the actual eighties, like the zero zero eighties, I don't know. Or the early nineties.

Probably 90 to 95. Now, the reason for this, MacArthur says 90 to 95. A couple other people have said late eighties to early nineties.

95 seems to be the cutoff date. In 95, one of the roman emperors began this great persecution of the church. And many scholars think that if John was writing after that point, there would be something in his book that would reference that or encourage the believers to do that.

Since we don't see that, they think it's before 95, but they do think it's much later in life, probably after the gospel. So that's why we place this date on this. John doesn't give any historical context in the epistle.

So the exact dating is difficult. We don't have exact events he's referring to. That's one of the later epistles that was written.

Probably John wrote his gospel, then one John, second John, third John, then revelation is probably the last thing he wrote in his life, and those are probably the last books of the Bible written. The place of writing, given the date and given the church history, people think it's probably Ephesus. This is based on church tradition, which teaches that John lived out his later years in Ephesus in Asia Minor.

Many of you probably know the life of John. He was exiled to Patmos towards the end of his life. That's where revelation came.

This would have been just before that. And we know that John was in Ephesus during this time. It's written, too.

People believe. Again, there's no introduction to the church inn or to whatever. So we believe it's written.

The church is an Asia Minor. Asia Minor is what we know as modern day Turkey. And so Ephesus is in Asia Minor.

So he is writing to the local churches around him, probably. So this letter is not written to a specific church, but to an extended group of believers. So we're not going to see specific church issues listed.

Like, we see, like with, like, especially one Corinthians, which lists a lot of specific church issues. Or, you know, we've seen some in Philippians, you know, even about the church giving and stuff. Remember, Paul talked about that at one point they weren't able to give, and now they are.

And he used that as an object lesson. So there's not going to be specific church things here. This is going to be more general to the believers.

So what are the key concepts and themes here? So the theme of one, John is recall to the fundamentals of the faith or back to the basics of Christianity. Again, since this is a broad audience, he kind of sets down, this is how Christianity works. This is how we're supposed to live as Christians.

This is what it's supposed to look like. This is the evidence of who you should be in Christ. And it's really a good book to help us get founded and to know what we're supposed to be doing and how we're supposed to be doing it.

Again, not because it doesn't deal with specific things. It's more of a broader epistle. There's a constant repetition of three sub themes which reinforce the overall theme of faithfulness to the core of Christianity.

And these themes are joyful. Let's look at chapter one, verse four. If you have your bibles, this is where you're going to need your bibles.

So chapter one, verse four. Go ahead, Jenny. This is just one example.

But in here, John says part of the point of his writing is that our joy would be full, that it would be just the idea of, you know, I'm trying to explain full. I don't know how. I don't have to explain full.

Right. You know what a full thing is? It's there. It's encompassing.

It's everything. So joy is one theme. The second theme is holiness.

Chapter two, verse one. Go ahead, Nathan. My little children, these things I write to you so that you may not sin.

And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. So not only that we have joy, but that we would not sin. This is holiness in our life.

This is progressing from being sinful, wicked people to being holy saints in God. That's another theme there. And then security, verse 513.

Go ahead, Josiah. These things I bring to you believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the. He writes to you that you may know that you have eternal life, that you.

And this idea is that you're confident and you know for certain that you have eternal life. So he's writing that they may have joy, that they may not sin, and that they may have eternal life. And this appears over and over in the book.

By being faithful to the basic teachings of Christianity, the Christian will experience these three results in their life, this joy, the holiness, and the security or assurance. In addition, John teaches that a proper belief in Jesus Christ will produce obedience in the believer's life. Let's look at chapter three, verses 23 24.

Go ahead, Jonathan. If this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his son Jesus Christ, who love one another as he give us a commandment. Now, he who keeps his commandments abides in him.

In him. And by this we know that he abides in us by the spirit whom he has given us. So verse 23 says that we should believe in the name of Jesus Christ and love one another.

So there's a belief system there. And then verse 24 tells us that if we keep the commandment, we abide in him. So there's this idea that belief, right belief leads to right action, right belief leads to obedience.

Right belief leads us to do what God wants us to do. Now, some of the themes here, Nathan Le Prayer asked me a little bit. The first one is Gnosticism.

And, you know, that's a term we use every day in our christian life. Right. So you're always talking about Gnosticism and.

Yeah, all the time. So what is Gnosticism? Well, it's a heresy. First of all, it's a heresy of the early christian church.

And it's characterized by basically five things here which I've listed. First of all, knowledge is superior to virtue. And you say, what does that mean? Well, that means that it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you are gaining knowledge and possessing knowledge.

That's what God wants for you. Well, we know that that's not true. The whole book of one, John talks about believing the right thing and then doing the right thing, believing and acting the right way.

So John's teaching against that. Another characteristic of Gnosticism is the non literal sense of scripture is correct. It can be understood by a select few.

So what's that? It's only you. Only Nathan can understand scripture. He's a select few.

And the idea is that, again, what John is teaching here is that we can know the truth. And again, knowing the truth helps us to act on the truth, but that we can know the truth. We can know what's right.

Yes. Lynn? Yeah, I don't know if the priests are Gnostic, but they do hold to a view that you can't really know the scripture. It makes it really hard to talk to a Catholic about the Bible, because you start touch saying, this is what the Bible says, and they go, well, you can't know that.

You're not a priest. It's like, no, I can know that because I have the spirit of God in me. But their theology doesn't teach that.

So, you know, it does make it difficult at times. And even their idea that, you know, the Latin is the true Bible, and who knows Latin nowadays? I mean, not a lot of us do. I don't know Latin.

So they would argue on a number of different reasons. I don't know that they're Gnostic necessarily, but that they do have this kind of idea also. Third point here is that evil in the world precludes God being the only creator, so that basically before creation, there was still evil in the world.

We know that to be false, based on Genesis chapter three, that sin and evil came into the world through man. And so the evil was not there beforehand. Yes.

How could the evil exist in the world before the world existed? Yeah, it's probably evil in the universe. Maybe the world probably hasn't. Cosmos type idea.

Yeah. So that it's kind of this duology. I'm a big Star wars fan.

I like Star wars. But there's a duology that you have light and dark and they're kind of even and stuff like this. And we know that's not true.

We know that light is God and God is supreme. He's omnipotent. I'm trying to think of the right word here.

Yes, he's all powerful, he's sovereign, he's all knowing. So light is definitely not just the opposite of darkness. In that sense, they're not equals fighting against each other.

But this Gnostic idea is kind of that there's always this conflict going on, and evil and good have kind of the same place. Letter D here. The incarnation is incredible.

And by incredible, not meaning like, wow, that's incredible, that's great, but incredible, like, you can't give it credibility because deity cannot unite itself with anything material, such as a body. So this is really difficult. But what they say is that God came into Jesus instead of.

He wasn't Jesus, but he came into Jesus. And then just before the crucifixion, he left Jesus. And so Jesus was a man, but he had God dwelling in him for a while, and then when he was ready to die, God left him.

That is obviously a heresy. We know that Jesus is both God and man. 100% God.

100% man. Yes. Do you know that they would deny the virgin birth as a result of that.

I think it's possible. I don't know that it necessarily would be necessary for their belief, and I don't know what exactly they would believe on that. But that is possible, I guess.

Yeah. Besides, I have to study otto a little bit more. Yes.

And this is where some of the other beliefs, like the knowledge of superior virtue, they're gaining knowledge to make themselves more holy and more God like. It's not a salvation through faith, it's a salvation through doing something. So, you know, so point a kind of works off that, that there was no sacrificial atonement by Christ.

And I think some of them, it's like, I think some of the Gnostics actually believed he came in at the baptism of Christ. So that would be like. That'd be 30 years without Jesus being with God.

Yeah, I think it could. Like I said, I can't answer for sure. I haven't studied Gnosticism to that depth, that I know everything about what they believe about all this stuff.

Yeah. And part of this, too is that. And this isn't in here, but I know that I, from my past study, I know the material is evil and the spiritual is good.

So part of the reason why there can't be an incarnation is that God would then become evil because he become physical and God can't become evil. So he obviously can't be Jesus. He just kind of comes upon Jesus.

That's part of their theology. And the verse, I don't know which verse is. Again, I could probably look it up here in first John, where it talks about, he denies that Jesus came in the flesh as an antichrist.

That's part of the reason why he's saying that, because that's what these guys are doing. They're saying Jesus didn't. God didn't come in the flesh.

He didn't become flesh. He's saying, no, that's a heresy. That's wrong.

Jesus Christ became man. He is 100% God, 100% man. So that's part of what John is dealing with in this book.

And then the last one, there's no resurrection of the flesh. Obviously, if you don't have Jesus God actually drying for your sins, you don't have need of a resurrection because God left and, you know, whatever. So they deny the resurrection also, which really makes it really hard to have a salvation by faith and the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ if you don't have a resurrection, Lynn, maybe a little bit, because the Sadducees didn't really believe in anything spiritual, but they still believed in some kind of spiritual, though.

They just believed it was separate from the flesh, so they would believe in some of the miraculous stuff that the Sadducees wouldn't believe in and stuff like that, because God could still do that because the spiritual is good, it can do that kind of stuff. It's just mainly the hard part here is that God doesn't become a man and then God doesn't die for our sins. And that really, you can see how that's a heresy that would really affect what you believe about Christianity if this was your belief.

I don't think there's generally Gnostics today, but there's some of these elements in some of the belief systems today, like we talked about with the Catholics about understanding the word of God, or there would be people that would. That do talk about the physical stuff is bad, that we got to be more spiritual, kind of a new-agey type thing. There's elements of these and stuff today, so it's still useful for us today to talk about these things and to understand what Christianity is based upon.

So that's a big theme in here. The rest of these are different contrasts that John brings up. So I got six more things where John makes a contrast between one thing and another.

So we're going to go through these and look at these verses here. First of all, he often contrasts light and darkness. Let's look at chapter one, verses six and seven.

Go ahead, Nathan. 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, we have fellowship with one another.

And the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from all sin. Somebody can read chapter two, verses eight and ten. Matthew, go ahead.

Commandment, I like to you and in you, because the darkness is passing away, the true light is already shining. He who says he is in the light and Jesus bloodhood is in darkness, until now, he who loves his blood, and there is no cause for stumbling with him. So light and darkness.

We're going to talk a little bit more about this, obviously, when we get to these passages in our study. I think one of the best ways to look at light in the New Testament is the idea that light represents truth. I think most often it does.

I don't know if every single situation it does, but in John one, it talks about it in the word was the light, and the light was the life of man. But if you put truth in there, in him was truth, and truth is the light of man. Truth is the one that brings life to people.

So that works really well. You look at these passages here. Verse five or verse six.

I'm sorry. If we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness and untruth, we lie and do not practice the truth, but we walk in the truth as he is in the truth, we have fellowship. It works really well.

And so a lot of times, that's how I take it. Light and truth are synonyms here. We even sing a song that everlasting life, and light he freely gives.

Well, if light is truth, he brings us truth and he brings us life. That is a pretty good summary of the New Testament. I mean, not that we want to summarize the New Testament in one phrase, but if you did, that would not be a bad summary.

Bringing us life and bringing us truth. So I think it works pretty well. But we're going to see that a lot in this book.

Contrast of light and darkness. Another contrast we see is love of the world and the love of God. Very familiar passage.

I'm hoping to you. Chapter two, verses 15 through 17. Another reader, please.

Pastor Jordan, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the private life is not unto of the father, but is of the world.

The world is passing away in the lust of it. But he who does the will of God abides forever. So there's a contrast there.

You can love the world or you can love the father. If you love the world, the love of the father is not in you. And so you have that contrast between what you are loving.

And we'll talk in depth about this passage, these three verses here when we get to that. It's a very powerful section right there. Contrast of truth and lies.

Just a few verses down. Chapter two, verses 21 and 22. Who would like to read? I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it.

And that no lie is of the truth. Who is a liar, but he who denies abuse? Jesus is the first. He is Antichrist, who denies the father and son.

So here it's the idea. Jesus is a Christ, Jesus is the messiah. It relates back to Christ being God, and that even at the end of the verse, he denies the father and the son.

The idea of them being God together. So there's a Gnosticism thing right there. But if you look at verse 21, you written you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth.

There's that comparison between what's a lie and what's the truth and that God has taught us what the truth is. Again, we'll study it more in depth. Comparison between the children of God and the children of the devil.

Chapter three, verses four through ten. Who wants to be a bold reader today? Go ahead, Olivia. I know you had this come up a couple times.

I just saw it right at the end. So I'm going to give you a chance here. And you know that he was.

Whoever abides in him is not who ever since has neither seen him nor known him. Will. Children, let no one deceive you.

He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who sins does the devil, for that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for this seed remains in he cannot sin in this.

The children of God and the children of the devil are manifest. Whoever does not practice righteousness, so there the children of God and the children of devil are manifest. If you sin.

He who sins is of the devil. He belongs to the devil. He who does righteousness belongs to God.

So there's that contrast there. Either one or the other. Spirit of God and of antichrist.

Chapter four, verses one through three. Another reader. Go ahead, Jenny.

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world by this. You know the spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit that is not confessed that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God.

And this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard was there. You see another Gnostic one there. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ says, come in the flesh is of God, that God became flesh.

So there's dealing with Gnosticism again, but here it talks about that you have the spirit of God if you're believing and acknowledging the truth. But if you deny it, then you have the spirit of antichrist. So there's that contrast there.

Then the last one, love and hate. Let's look at chapter four, verses seven through twelve, to start with here. Go ahead, Matthew.

The love, and let us love one another. He who does not love does not know God, but God is love. In this, the love of God has manifested with us that God has sent that we might live through him in his.

Not that we love God, but that he loved us. If God so loved us, he also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time.

We love one another. God abides in us and his love. And.

And then let's look at 16 through 21, if somebody else. Okay, Nathan, go ahead. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us.

God is love. And he who abides in love abides in God and God in him, but has effected among us in this, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment. Because as he is, so are we in this world.

There is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect.

And love. We love him because he first loved us. If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar.

For he who does not not love his brother, whom he has seen. How can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God must love his brother also. So there's a big section on love here.

But when John gives his kind of conclusion here, he talks about, if you say you love God but you hate your brother, you're a liar. You're not practicing love. You don't love God if you can't love others also.

And so there's that contrast between the love and hate there. So those are kind of some main comparison contrasts that we'll see throughout the book. Obviously, we're going to go into more depth on all of these.

Last thing I've given you here is an outline of one John, and this is from John MacArthur. As you can see, there's kind of a parallelism in here. He starts with doctrinal tests in a section, and he talks about moral tests.

And then he goes back to the next section, does doctrinal tests and moral tests. I'm not going to go through this outline, by the way. I'm just giving an overview.

And then part three, doctrinal test and moral test. And then kind of a summary and .4 there.

So a lot of times, like before I started looking at this, I always thought John's epistle was kind of all over the place, kind of jumped around and stuff. And what is he doing? But there is a real purpose and parallelism that you kind of miss if you don't look at the whole thing. And so that's why I gave this outline.

I think it's very good here. So I guess that's about all I have this morning for the introduction. I'm excited to dive into this.

This was actually, Ted and I, when we were in North Carolina, were challenged to memorize the book of one. John. I don't remember how far you got to.

I got through chapter four and had it memorized at one point in time. I was working on chapter five. I haven't kept up with it, so I don't think I could do it now.

But it was really quite an encouraging thing to memorize, too, that just to kind of have the whole book in your head is really extraordinary thing. It's something I'd like to try to get back and reclaim that a little bit. It.

So it's always been a book I've loved, and I'm excited to dig into it and unlock the truths that are in here. So, any comments or questions this morning? Nathan, we cite this in vital study. We came to the conclusion that it's basically, he goes through the same thing, like three times, but each time he builds off of it and builds off of it.

And you kind of see that in MacArthur's offline outline that he kind of, kind of circles around that. He calls it spirals. Here I was trying to figure out when I first started looking at this.

Why is he calling it spirals? Because that's what he does. He spirals around. It goes back to the same points, like I said, builds off it.

Yeah. So there's really a neat, I want to say, as symmetry to the book that you really don't see when you're just trying to read through and you're not paying attention. You kind of go, well, this is.

This is weird. Always talking about hating my brother. Now he's talking about being the light.

Now he's talking about Antichrist, what's going on here? But there is a structure to it that is a pretty neat structure here. So to throw right at you right away. Yeah.

You hate your brother. You're an antichrist. Dad.

What? He kind of gives the base concepts and then builds on a little bit more. Gives you a little bit more. And then gives you a little bit more.

Yeah. That's short. I was challenged just by your testimony of memorizing the book.

I think that it would be a really good challenge for us as a Sunday school class if we would take that challenge now and try to work on it while we're studying it. I think that would help our study of the book as we do Sunday school, but also personally, and, you know, the speed I go through the book. So it wouldn't be a whole lot each week to memorize.

I think it's one through four. We're going to try to do this week. Jenny and I were going to try to memorize the first four verses and have it ready to memorize by next week.

I remember when I did this, you know, what I was doing was making index cards. I'd write it out and then carry the index cards around. I left off the first phrase of first John one.

One the things that we have. I remember what it is now. That was from the beginning, and it still made sense to me.

But I kept on thinking, this seems weird. It seems like he kind of jumps in, kind of in the middle of a thought, and he did jump in the middle of thought because I left the phrase off. So I had to go back and I had to scribble that in on there once I realized I missed that.

So, yeah, if you're doing index cards, just make sure you're copying. Right. A lot of the variations that we have in the New Testament are probably scribal errors, where they didn't copy a word.

Right. Misspelled something, or as they're riding along, they remember a phrase from somewhere else, translated that phrase on there, added words or whatever. So.

Not that it makes it inaccurate, not that we can't trust our Bible, but that's where we get a lot of our deviation between different versions and stuff like that. So if you're transcribing, be like the Hebrew scribes and actually count the words and letters. No, I don't know.

Studied a little bit more and that helped him memorize some. And that's specifically always just trying to. Just to memorize it to build the words.

Yeah. But he told me that he just studied so much, sometimes I just kind of didn't come to him. There's been.

If you try to memorize it and stop on a day or two, that's what I'm going to try to do. Yeah. Because just trying to memorize the words.

Yeah. Yeah. There's passages I've taught that I still can get almost word perfect because I've studied them so much and read them so much and different things like that.

Like second or first Timothy? No. Titus, 211. The grace of God, which has appeared to all men.

The grace of God which brings salvation, has appeared to all men. Teach us to deny ourselves, denying ungodliness and worldly lust. We should live soberly, godly and righteously in this present age.

Looking forward to the faith. Yeah, that's the one I got the first three, then that fourth one's a little tricky, but, you know, there's parts of it where I can just like, oh, yeah, I know that passage. So, yeah, the studying does help that, too.

Yeah, I remember. And part of the reason why I was doing so good through the first four chapters is I was working at a job where I was on a recorded production floor watching a machine that just ran. And I'd be there.

I'd do my quality inspections, and it'd be like five minutes before I do the next quality inspection or whatever. And so I'd get off the card and go over a little bit, and they made it easy. Then I switched positions where I was not actually at a position where I could pull out my cards regularly.

That kind of threw me off a bit, but, yeah, and John's a pretty easy one. The way he writes, in some ways, it's kind of confusing, but it's kind of simple. He's not using a lot of huge words and stuff.

So stuff you can think of, you think of some Paul's epistles, some of the things that he has in there. You're going, well, this is just complicated. His sentences are about six verses long, and you have to try to remember how everything fits in the sentence.

John is like short sentences, so you can get those thoughts. So it's a good one. If you haven't memorized before, something like that is a good one to start with.

Grace. I just remember when I was disciple, a new christian, we are memorizing verses that we've done, and the verses title, for example, verses. It says in that if anyone is in, Christ has come.

And then also Galatians of 20, that is, assurance of salvation, too. And then the next, when we memorize that word for words, if we cannot memorize words for words, we have, I tell you, had it. Yeah.

Word for word. And then what is it for the verses? And then we go another week, and then we push it to another topic and what it is, and we have to specifically memorize another. Yeah, and that's.

That's very good, too, to, like, have kind of the topics and what verses relate to that so that someone has a question on it, you go, okay, I know these verses. Somebody is struggling with their assurance of salvation. I can give them these verses that you talked about there.

So, yeah, that's another good method to do it. I think there's a value in both of them. Memorizing a whole book at once and memorizing separate verses and knowing what they relate to.

So I would encourage both things. If you can do it, it's not a bad idea. There's a value in memorizing a whole book of that you kind of.

It forces you to think about what you're memorizing, and it helps you to kind of see how everything fits together in the book a lot of times, and that's helpful. I know that when I started memorizing first John, things started to become more apparent. It was like, oh, I know what he's saying here.

I know how this goes together and stuff. And so it helped a lot. So, yeah, it takes some work.

You know, first four verses, you probably not too bad. You'll get it this week. You start adding on the next five verses, and you go, okay, this is a little more difficult.

By the time you're getting into chapter four, you're like, okay, I got to keep on working on chapter one still, but I have to learn chapter four. So, yeah, it takes some time and effort, but it's doable. I used to always be amazed about these guys who come in and just memorize or have memorized whole books of the Bible, and they just sit there and recite.

I'm like, I can never do that. I almost got first John, and I'm not great at this. Nathan will probably have it memorized by next week, but I had to work at it.

But you can do it. It's very doable. But the other sweet thing about memorizing verses is when you're visiting someone, you don't have to be going, where was that again? You might not even have a Bible.

God said that we have everything that pertains to life and godliness. Everything we need is in the Bible. Part of that, having that memorized and having to be able to be brought to mind by the Holy Spirit is something God wants in our life so that we have the things that we need.

That's why he tells us to meditate on his word, to keep on bringing it up. That's part of that memorization, is to be able to meditate on it and to understand what God is saying. How are you going to do that? Yeah.

Yeah, that's good. Anything else? Well, this is a long discussion I wasn't planning on having this morning, but it's good. It seems like it's a very profitable one.

Yes, story. We can move on. That's fine.

Say it's. I got a text from Sarah, and she asked me to pray because her nephew Owen, that we've been praying for, so he was life flight into Frank so he was like, because of. So he's not just getting it.

I know when we first heard praying, he was four years old, and he might be up to five, but he's a little guy. About what influence you may have beyond Sarah. Yeah.

It sounds like, from what I've talked to them in their family, that there's not many saved in their family at all. I mean, most of it's unsaved, it sounds like. Yeah.

Okay. Changing the subject field. The church directory got updated finally.

Yep. I have a copy for my family. Olivia has a copy now because, well, if I take it, it will end up someplace, and then I'll not remember what place it ended up in.

I can use it out because she called herself the secretary, so if my secretary takes it, she'll file it away someplace where it's like. Cause if I have a directory, she'll be like, yep, right here. No, that's probably the worst place.

That's. Yeah. Yeah.

I wouldn't put anything on the fridge that's important. No, Olivia, shake your head no. Okay.

Let's go ahead and pray, then. And we'll. We'll let you go if you want to talk more about one John or Bible memorization or whatever we have all after you hang out.

Right? Okay. That's great. Heavenly Father, we praise you and thank you for this time this morning.

We thank you just for this introduction. Lord, we pray that as we open up this book that the apostle John wrote for us, that we would really be diligent to seek out the truth of what you have written, that we would want to know more about who you are, about what you would want for us, how we are to live the christian life, what it's supposed to look like, lord, and that we would desire that in our life, help us to love you and love your things, Lord, over the things of the world, and help us to love one another and show compassion and kindness to one another, to walk aside alongside one another, to grow one another. Lord, we just pray even that you'd help us to really put the effort in to do some memorization this year during this study.

And we pray that you'd help it bless our lives, that we would grow closer to you because of it. Lord, we do lift up Owen, Sarah's nephew. We know that he's in very critical condition.

We don't know his spiritual state or even his parents. Lord, and we just pray that you would use the situation to glorify yourself and bring people to you. Lord, we pray that Sarah and Eric could be godly influence in their lives and just be able to share the gospel with them.

We do pray for Owen's health, Lord, we pray that you give doctors wisdom if there's anything that can be done, that they would do it and that they would know what the right course of action is. Lord, and we know that sometimes you just call people to be home with you, and maybe this is the case here, and we just pray that, again, you would just be glorified and honored in it. And, Lord, we thank you for this time.

Now bless us as we go from here, help us to do what's right, to please and honor you, to serve one another and be unified and growing together as a church. We thank you again for this time and the time that we had in your word this morning during the service. We thank you for all your blessings to us.

In Jesus name, amen.