Eyewitness, Part2

These things we write, here's another purpose statement, so that our joy may be made complete. Some translations read so that your joy may be made complete.

Frankly, either one works, for their joy was John's joy, John's joy was their joy. Because the gospel of the word of life, ultimately through this relationship and reconciliation, brings joy. The Apostle John found his purpose in bearing witness to Jesus Christ.

I can't imagine anything more significant. John was an eyewitness to the life and ministry of Jesus. He spent extensive time with Jesus. He heard him teach and preach. He watched him perform his miracles. John even had the opportunity to interact with Jesus after he rose from the dead. John wanted us to know Jesus, just like he did. So he gives us an eyewitness account.

Today on Wisdom for the Heart, Stephen Davey continues looking at that account in a message he's called Eyewitness. What's interesting is that John changes the verb tense here to speak of one moment in time. Seeing and hearing is the tense that's just continual.

This here of handling him, the tense of the verb means it's referring back to a past moment. John doesn't tell us what that moment is, but all you have to do is study his gospel account and you know when it was. It was in that room. They were all hiding out.

They were behind a locked door. Jesus the resurrected Christ materializes through that door, and yet that's strange. He's a real body and eats fish and whatever, but when he arrives and they notice he's there, his very first words to them are, peace to you. Now if I'd been Jesus, those would not have been my first words. My first words would have been, what are you guys doing in here? Hiding.

Or, why did you all abandon me? Or something, you know, more spiritual like that. Jesus said, peace.

How upon what can there be the establishment of peace? The very next phrase says, Jesus then showed them his hands and his side, pulled his gown up. Here's where the spear went. See I've retained these scars.

The only person in heaven will have any, by the way, so that you could see, so that you could identify me as Jesus Christ, the anointed Messiah. And so they did what Thomas will do at that next meeting. They handled him. They ran their fingers and hands over his scars, his side, no doubt embracing him.

They were hugging his feet as they wept with joy and recognition. He's real. He's real. Tangible, glorified, resurrected. He's not a phantom. He's not a ghost. He's not a mystical spirit. God now has a glorified body. He is not an abstraction from God. He is the revelation from God and in him, his body dwells the fullness of deity. One day when you see God, you're going to be looking in the face of Jesus.

And who is Jesus? John ends verse 1 by writing, oh, he is the word of life. He's the word of life.

Do you notice that? I love that phrase. The logos of life, one of his favorite words. To the Greek world, the word logos meant meaning, reason, purpose, explanation.

Plato had once lamented, oh, if only a logos would come from God. If only an explanation would appear from God. John says he is the explanation of life. He's the word of life. He's the reason for life. He's the purpose for life.

God the Son is the logos of life. You abandon him. You reject him. You also reject meaning in life. You also reject purpose in life.

Discard him and you discard the explanation of life which leads many people that you know to say things that would only be logically true based upon the rejection of Christ like Carl Sagan, one of the most prolific evolutionists, a man who died not too long ago, discovered unfortunately tragically the truth of his creator too late. He was interviewed by Ted Koppel on Nightline after they found out he was dying. Koppel asked him, Dr. Sagan, do you have any pearls of wisdom that you would like to give to the human race? Sagan responded, and I quote, we live on a hunk of rock that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way galaxy. This is worth pondering, end quote.

Well, that's thrilling. But it is illogical when you rule out God. Clarence Darrow, the attorney who successfully defended the teaching of Darwin's theory in public schools, made this summary of the human existence. He said it's like a ship tossed, and I quote, by every wave, by every wind, a ship headed in no port, in no harbor, with no rudder, no compass, no pilot, simply floating for a time and then lost in the waves. Back to Carl Sagan, he said, our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping darkness. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there's no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Stephen Auging wrote, if we could find an answer to why we and the universe exist, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason.

Hello? This is it, the reason, the explanation, the meaning. It did come from God. The Lagos of life appeared, he's real. John now says, I've got to make a couple of claims about him as an eyewitness to this God man in verse 2. Two claims about the word of life. Notice John writes, Jesus, that is, the life was manifested to us.

You could render it life appeared. In other words, he became visible and tangible. He appeared. John will use that same word in chapter 2 to talk about the second coming of Christ. He'll appear again.

Jesus Christ intersected human history in his first coming, his birth. He will intersect human history again at his second coming. And by the way, that one will be literal too.

That one will be physical too. He won't be a phantom. He'll be real.

He'll have a body. The same one John saw still retaining scars so that we can embrace him and hug his feet and thank him. He also, verse 2, secondly makes this staggering statement. He, speaking of Jesus, is the eternal life which was with the Father, which was, that verb refers to the past continuous existence of the word of life. He was born, but he existed before then, uncreated.

He was. He was, John writes, with the Father. With, that preposition means face to face, close, intimate communion, a relationship existing in the eternal mystery of the Godhead. In other words, Jesus Christ, the pre-incarnate Son of God existed in eternity past in this mystery of the Godhead in close communion with the Father. In fact, that agrees with Paul in Philippians 2. He says, you know, he didn't grasp that equality with the Father. He let his hands loose so that he could humble himself and become a man so that he could die. Because if all he was was God, he couldn't die. Because he was man, he could die. Because he was God, he could die for all of your sins forever paying the price and then rise from the dead and offer us salvation for free. This is why Jesus Christ could claim to have existed long before he took on flesh. This is why he could say, before Abraham was, I am.

This is why John can get all excited in verse 2 with the fact that he has the passion and the mission and the opportunity to both testify and proclaim of this word, this reason, this explanation from God. What do you do, by the way, when you receive good news? Do you keep it to yourself? Well, that's good to know. I'm just going to tuck that away. No, you tell somebody, don't you?

You text, you tweet, you email, you walk down the hallway to the next cubicle, you go across the street, you get on the telephone. Why? Because you cannot keep good news to yourself. John says, I'm all about testifying and proclaiming because of this good news of this word of life which is eternal. This is what I heard. This is what I handled. This is what I saw. The claims are true.

He's a living man and he is eternal God. Now, as we wrap up this introduction, what difference would this make to us? Is there any life changing, mind altering, behavioral beginning impact? Certainly. John would say this affects at least three things and I'll put them in the form of three words. First of all, this impacts your relationships.

Relationship. Look at verse three again. What we've seen and heard, we proclaim to you also, so that, here's his purpose statement, so that, here it is, so that you too may have fellowship with us. It's a wonderful phrase because you might think, oh wow, John is in this special category. You know, he's an eyewitness. I've never seen Jesus. I've never heard him.

I've never handled him. So John is in this special class with these others. No, John says you can just join us.

In fact, as we read earlier at the beginning of this hour, you have a special blessing because you believe in one whom you have not seen or heard. No, John says you join us. You have fellowship with us. There is a relationship together among those who believe in the person of Jesus Christ. And the word fellowship here is the word koinonia.

You've probably heard that before and we'll talk about it in sessions yet future. But for now, that word means close bond, partnership. It's a kindred spirit and the basis for it is not shared nationality, shared income, shared education, shared background, shared language. It's a shared life.

That's the basis for it. This is why you can meet a man or a woman at work or on the street, a young man or woman on the campus or whatever and you find out that they are a Christian and immediately there is friendship. There's kinship. You've experienced this.

I've experienced this in different places around the world. I can remember sitting, fellowshiping, enjoying people I'd never met in a hut in Africa. I'd been asked to speak to this assembly that met in this hut. They didn't tell me ahead of time that by the time I would preach, it would be dark in that hut and they'd have one lantern they'd put on the floor in the middle of the room and so I couldn't see my notes. I couldn't see my Bible. I was making up all kinds of things. Preaching what I thought sounded biblical, I certainly hoped it was.

I had to quote everything. Fellowship with these people. We had nothing in common except this.

Christ! We shared a life in Him. I've shared this kinship with people in India. I didn't understand a thing they said and what I said they didn't either unless it was translated and there was kinship and friendship. I shared that kind of fellowship in a church of hearing impaired believers in Japan where I didn't hear anything but it was all signed. And only recently as you know I was in South America greeting people, total strangers and I wished I had studied Spanish like I was supposed to have studied it in high school.

I had two years and all I had was a few phrases and I used them over and over again. People would come up to greet me after the services and I would say muy bien. Muy bien.

And they'd smile and sometimes they'd think he knows Spanish and they'd just take off and I'd just muy bien. And I found out that Amen works too by the way and so does Hallelujah. Hallelujah. So I'm Hallelujah.

You should have seen me. Hallelujah. One hand up. Hallelujah. Sweet, sweet, sweet fellowship. Kinship. A close bond. You see when we belong to Him we actually belong to each other and we miss that don't we? In fact I wonder if Jesus is going to have us one day as we stand before Him say hey by the way what did you do with my family, your family? And we'll say well you know I love my spouse and kids no no no no what did you do with your family?

The one that's going to last forever. Well a couple times a month I met with them. Didn't have much to do with them outside of that. The more fanatical among us came back on Sunday night. We belong through this kindred spirit of Christ to each other. That's relationship. Number two, reconciliation. Verse three again the you two may have fellowship with us and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son. Jesus Christ said there is horizontal relationship, fellowship with each other and there is vertical relationship and fellowship with the Father and the Son.

Paul wrote this. He said now all these things are from God who reconciled us to Himself by means of through that is Christ and has given unto us the ministry of reconciliation. He has given to us the ministry of connecting people together and bringing people to God. And by the way if you have ever shared the gospel with someone and you have prayed with them as they receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior you know there's no happiness quite like that. Lord would you help me be the means by which reconciliation takes place between people by means of the gospel.

That's our ministry together. Let me give you an illustration of someone who was an agent of human reconciliation. Two Jewish families had been ripped apart because of World War II. A man by the name of Marcel Sternberger had emigrated to the United States after the war and found work, man in his 50s. He always took the 909 Long Island train from his home where he would then catch a subway into the city. The date of this story is January 10, 1948. He boarded the 909 as usual but en route he suddenly decided to visit a Hungarian friend who was sick. He himself was Hungarian, Hungarian Jew. So he changed to a subway headed to Brooklyn, went and visited his friend and boarded another subway and headed downtown to his office downtown Manhattan. Let me read the account written by Marcel in person. He wrote, I've been living in New York long enough to know not to start conversations with strangers, but being a photographer I have the habit of analyzing people's faces and I was struck by the sadness of the passenger next to me. He was in his late 30s and seemed to be terribly grieved. He was reading a Hungarian newspaper and something prompted me to say to him in Hungarian, I hope you don't mind if I glance at your newspaper. The young man seemed surprised to hear someone speak in his own native tongue and answered politely, certainly you may.

During the half hour ride to town we ended up carrying on a conversation. He said his name was Bella Paskin. He'd been a law student when the war started and he'd been arrested and immediately put into a German labor battalion and sent to the Ukraine. He didn't even have time to tell his wife or his family goodbye and they had no idea what happened to him. During or near the end of the war he was captured by the Russians and put to work burying the German dead. When the war was finally over, Bella covered hundreds of miles on foot until he reached his home in De Brotzen, a large city in eastern Hungary.

I myself knew De Brotzen quite well and we talked about it for some time. He told me that upon arriving to the apartment once occupied by his father, mother, brothers and sisters he found strangers living there and they did not know them. Then he went upstairs to the apartment that he and his wife had shared. No one there or in that building had ever heard of his family and no one knew his wife or the whereabouts of his family. As he was leaving full of sadness a boy ran after him calling, Uncle Paskin!

Uncle Paskin! The child was the son of some old neighbors of his and he went to the boy's home to talk with the boy's parents and they informed him your entire family was killed. Nazis took them and your wife to Asfisch.

Paskin said a few days later, too heart sick to remain any longer in Hungary, he set out again on foot stealing across border after border until he managed to immigrate to the United States in October 1947, just three months before I met him that day on the subway. All the time he was speaking, I was thinking about a young woman I had met recently at the home of friends who had been also from De Bratsen. She had been sent to Asfisch and then transferred to work in a German munitions factory. Her family had all been killed in the gas chambers but she had been liberated by the Americans and brought to America in the first boatload of displaced persons a year earlier. Her story had so moved me that I had written down her address and phone number, intending to invite her to meet my wife and family and try to relieve some of the terrible emptiness in her life.

It seemed impossible to me that there could be any connection between these two people. But as I neared my station, I fumbled anxiously looking for my address book. I found it and then I asked in what I hoped was a casual voice, was your wife's name Maya?

Maya? He turned pale and said, yes, why do you ask? I said, let's get off the train. I took him by the arm at the next station and led him to a phone booth. He stood there like a man in a trance while I dialed her phone number. It seemed like hours before Maya answered and when I heard her voice at last, I told her who I was and asked her to describe her husband to me. Then I asked her where she'd lived in De Bratsen and she gave me the address asking her to hold the line. I turned to Paskin and said, did you and your wife live on this street? And he said, yes. Now trembling, I said to Umbella, something miraculous is about to happen. Here, take this telephone and talk to your wife. He was so overwhelmed he couldn't speak coherently. I finally took the receiver from his shaking hands and said to his wife, stay where you are.

I am sending your husband to you. Maya would tell me later that she walked to the mirror like in a dream to see if her hair had suddenly turned gray. The next thing she said she knew was a taxi had stopped in front of the house. It was her husband coming toward her detail. She said, I can't remember, but I do know this was the happiest moment for God had brought us back together that day.

Wow. Can you imagine being used by God to bring two people together? Can you imagine with even more eternal significance bringing someone to God?

Being the agent in the ministry of reconciliation. You know what that brings you? That's the third word, rejuvenation. John calls it joy. Look at verse four and we're finished. These things we write, here's another purpose statement, so that our joy may be made complete. Some translations read so that your joy may be made complete. Frankly, either one works for their joy was John's joy. John's joy was their joy because the gospel of the word of life ultimately through this relationship and reconciliation brings joy. By the way, John uses here a perfect passive subjunctive paraphrastic construction and I knew that would be exciting to at least one person somewhere out there, but it's actually very helpful. It's helpful because I've heard pastors take this text and distort it and I've heard them say this verse here says that you've got joy and your joy is complete and it just it grows every day and it gets better and better and I mean it's just amazing and I'm sitting after going uh-oh.

I think I felt better yesterday than today. I'm not sure it's growing. They miss the construction of this text.

Here's what he's saying. He tells us that joy can be tasted now but it will be nothing like one day in the future when it is completed. We taste it now and it's a great taste, isn't it? But because our feelings ebb and flow and come and go, we're a little more joyful yesterday, maybe tomorrow, don't you long to long for God more? Wouldn't you love to love God more? Wouldn't you have great joy to have greater joy in Christ? Absolutely. So taste every opportunity you can.

How do you do that? In fellowship with each other, in reconciliation, in fellowship with God the Father. But here's his point. What we taste now is just a start. What we sip now is just the beginning.

One day that sip will be transformed into Niagara Falls. One day that taste, which we would love to have more of, will be transformed into an unending banquet feast. In the meantime, if you want to know what joy tastes like, you taste it when you enjoy the fellowship of the saints.

You sip on it when you walk in fellowship with God the Father and God the Son, who is, by the way, our life and our living eternal Lord. That was a message called Eyewitness, and it comes from Stephen's teaching series entitled After Darkness, Light. We're going to bring you more from this series in the days ahead. Stephen is the pastor of the Shepherd's Church in Cary, North Carolina. You can learn more about us if you visit our website, which is wisdomonline.org. Once you go there, you'll be able to access the complete library of Stephen's Bible teaching ministry. We also post each day's broadcast, so if you ever miss one of these lessons, you can go to our website and keep caught up with our daily Bible teaching ministry. The library of Stephen's teaching ministry is also available there. Stephen's been teaching the Bible for over 36 years.

In that time, he's preached hundreds of sermons. All of those are posted to our website. You'll find that collection of sermons organized by Book of the Bible. If there's a particular book that you want to study, and if Stephen has preached through it, you can listen or read each message.

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