The Resurrected Life, Part One...

The Resurrected Life - A Series in 1 John - Sermon notes and outline

The struggle of Easter is that we have this season marked by just a day. The day ends. We go home. Everything turns back to normal. But that is not the way of Easter in the church. In the life of the Christian. In you. For if Christ has died. If Christ has risen. If the cross killed your sin, and the tomb lays barren now because death has been overcome by Jesus for you, then Easter Sunday is more than a day. It means more than a good meal and family. It means something has happened to you. In you. For you. Because of Jesus. Not just in one day either, but the course of your life. In fact in the church Easter lasts 50 days. 50 days of Peeps and dyed eggs. So, for the course of Easter Sundays, we are going to be spending our time hearing the word of God spoken to us by John in his first letter. 

1 John is one of those books you go to better understand what the cross and empty tomb have to do with the Christian Monday-Saturday. It was a letter that history attests to as being written by the Apostle John. This same Apostle who was one of Jesus closest disciples. A man who calls himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved” in his Gospel account.

By the time the letter is written, John is living in Ephesus. He appears to be an overseer of a large number of churches. A multi-site pastor. Historians suppose that this letter was written to a collection of churches in what is modern day Turkey, and it was written most certainly in defense of the cross, of the incarnation, of God coming to us as Jesus to redeem us from sin and death.

At the time, there was this teaching creeping in among the early church called “adoptionism” that stated that God did not come to earth as Jesus, but Jesus was just a dude. The son of Mary and Joseph. When he was baptized the Spirit descended on him and God adopted him as a son of God. When the crucifixion came, the Spirit left him so that God would not suffer or die, because that would just be crazy. So John, as an elderly leader in the church comes as a pastor, as a spiritual father in order to preach the truth of the cross, the crucified God. Because if there is no Son of God, there is no Christ, no suffering that can take away sin, no suffering God, no need for resurrection because our sins would still exist.

John first brings this authority as apostle – beginning, heard, seen, observed and touched – the Word of life.

Having seen the Word Himself. Able to tell them of the glory of God  incarnate for salvation

This great chain here of God’s Word

• Genesis 1:1-3 - The creating Word; The sermon that works
• John 1:1-4 - The Word as God incarnate before all time that creates life; Being present in and among us
• 1 John 1:1-2

God’s sermon in the flesh to you

I was there, I spoke with him

Pastoral Guidance – to declare it (the message), not for the sake of it, but for your sake.

• Pastoral work – preaching, teaching, study, discipling, spiritual direction
• My work, my job description
• Tell you what I have heard, seen, observed, touched
• Paint a picture of God and Christ – Nurture faith and devotion
• PREACH – that you might see and know

Purpose for John and for your pastor – in order that… vs 1:3-4

Koinonia – fellowship, communion, partnership…but more than that.

• Marriage imagery – the 2 become 1 flesh
• Growing together. Becoming 1. Moving together.
• More than a passing fancy or coffee in the Narthex.
• Christ’s work of drawing people to him

“With us”? –

• Apostles? – having fellowship with those who literally saw Jesus and heard him
• More so – Being in fellowship with the Father and Son
• Being drawn together to the Father and the Son
• Do you realize that when you come to this place, when you read his word, when you pray to the God of the universe, the Author of Creation, who says he will hear you, that you are to be in fellowship? In partnership? In communion? The 2 of you becoming 1?
• Working of faith in and among you- trusting that you were once not in fellowship with God, estranged from God, and now you are in fellowship with the Lord, and the Son

Kara – joy, gladness, object of joy –

• Our joy be fully filled, complete –
• More than happiness, but a way of life – something that has invaded us.
• a glass so filled up that it overflows with that little bubble of water on the top

“Our”?

• Apostles? The joy of pastors and teachers seeing their people walking in the truth (3 John 4)
• Remember the fellowship we have with the Father and the Son
• Our joy being the joy of God over you (see Luke 15 – God rejoicing over you)
• Our joy being the joy when we find ourselves in communion with God

Do you have joy in this? –

• Church – joy in the alarm clock?
• Joy in communion with God this morning?
• Joy when you pick up the Bible and read it?
• Joy in prayer with your children Joy to pass down to your children, grandchildren, neighbors

The joy of fellowship – to see the light

• God is light and truth – v5
• Hard message today – post truth culture
• What is true for you is not true for me
• The Truth – On a hill outside Jerusalem, 2000 yrs ago, Jesus Christ was given to die for you and rose again on the third day

Dichotomy - Light – truth, see the way, the road

• Headlights on the deer
• The nightlight in the bathroom
• Dwelling in the light – Walking in God – not behavior as much as place, being defined by you being found in God rather than yourself.

Darkness – hide, abandoned, stumbling, secrets

• Can’t see the acne on my face, deny my hairline, not see the dirty clothes on the floor
• Where we can pretend that what God offers does not exist.
• Clinging to what it is makes us, us – our sin, our shame, our entitlements

But the light is where the blood of Jesus is

• Light scares us because we think it works to find our skeletons and expose them, which it does. But the Light is God himself present in Christ as the embodiment of forgiveness, not condemnation. God standing in the light saying come to me, don’t allow your sin, shame or pride to be your definition. Here in the light it is washed by the blood of the Lamb.

Purpose of the light – True enlightenment. If we say we have no sin… v8-10

• Words of the confession – read it yourself. Memorize it!
• Sin is meant to be forgiven but…
• We don’t want our sin to be seen, let alone forgiven, so we say it doesn’t exist.
• When we forget our sin, make it small, we actually take from God his favorite work. Christ’s favorite thing – See the paralytic in Mark 2
• Joy being that we get forgiven, growing in fellowship with God, God as the focus, not us anymore. We are gone, and Christ is all in all.
• But if we do sin… Jesus   1 John 2:1-2 – Sin still exists in the light, but that is where the remedy is.
• Within fellowship means the possibility of sin, of falling short, but when we lie in the dark, we try to keep us from this Jesus who stands in the light saying – I Forgive You!

​The life of the Christian revolves around this cross of Jesus

• Death and resurrection becoming our daily thing – if forgiven, how do we forgive?
• Keep the cross in mind, this blatant and undeniable forgiveness at the forefront as you read this letter
• Ephesians 5 Men - love your wives as Christ loved the church?​

​​TW