I Want To Know About Fellowship & Forgiveness Series

“I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT FELLOWSHIP & FORGIVENESS”

1 John 1:1-10

FBCF – 8/6/23

Jon Daniels

INTRO – Ever heard of The National Enquirer? It’s one of those tabloid magazines that you see as you’re waiting in line at Walmart w/ all the latest juicy celebrity gossip & hottest entertainment news. Find out about all the scandals, the drama, the gossip, the romances, the breakups, the true crime, the ongoing OJ Simpson saga (did you even know that was still a story???), the latest buzz from the royal family. Right now, you can find out the lowdown about JLo, Rosanne Barr, Jennifer Garner, Michael Douglas, Brangelina, &, of course, the Kardashians. I mean, don’t you need to know about them? Don’t you know that your life is incomplete without this knowledge? Campy commercial in the 80’s – “Inquiring minds want to know.”

Let me be clear: I’m not in any way recommending that you become a regular reader of that worthless rag. But I do want to piggyback on that line from their commercial as we begin a new sermon series today from the book of 1 John. Series title – “I Want to Know About…” Over the course of the next month, we are going to look at some of the topics that are covered in this awesome NT book & the importance of those topics to our lives as Christ-followers.

A significant part of the growth & progress of our spiritual lives is to dig into the Word & into issues & subjects that are essential to our Christian lives – our doctrine – that teaching that is imparted to use by the Bible – & our theology – simply put, the study of God. There is so much rich truth in the Bible, so much to learn, so much opportunity for growth & maturity! We can spend the rest of our lives digging into it & still have so much more to learn. And we SHOULD spend the rest of our lives digging into it. Learning & growing is such an awesome part of the Christian life! Learning about God the Father, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, our salvation, heaven & hell, the Church, our spiritual gifts, marriage & family issues, spiritual warfare, the Word of God, assurance of our eternal life. Knowing what you believe & why you believe it is so important in our world today, & its importance is growing all the time.

Unfortunately, many Christians are content to just know that they’re saved & going to heaven – “I’ll leave all that other stuff to the preachers & professors.” Paul Washer: “No one wants to study doctrine any more. They just want to listen to songs & read the back of Christian t-shirts.”

But 2 Timothy 2:15 tells us to “[Study] Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a worker who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.” (NASB) So let’s jump into 1 John & start digging into 2 important truths today: fellowship & forgiveness.

EXPLANATION – 1 John 1:1-10

1 John is an awesome NT book. Many people’s favorite book (Mark Sandifer). Written by the apostle John who also wrote the Gospel of John, 2 & 3 John, & Revelation.

Like other NT writers, John wrote this letter to counter a false teaching called Gnosticism. The basic belief of this system was that knowledge is the way to salvation. They taught that in order for someone to attain salvation, they had to understand certain formulas that are only revealed to certain special “enlightened” people who saw themselves as superior to those who did not have the necessary knowledge. They also believed that, since knowledge was all that was necessary for salvation, then they could live any way that they wanted to live.

This is one of the reasons that John emphasized fellowship w/ God & w/ other believers as important. The haughty attitudes of the Gnostics interrupted the fellowship of the true believers in Jesus. And John also emphasized that when you know Jesus, you don’t just live any way you want to live, but you say NO to sin & YES to Jesus.

For us as Christ-followers, the only knowledge that we need to have is that we are saved by GRACE alone through faith alone in Christ alone, not through some special secret knowledge that’s available to just a select group of sophisticated individuals. We have died to sin – We are to walk in the newness of our life in Christ – And we are to love God & love others.

APPLICATION – Fellowship & forgiveness are two awesome blessings that come from knowing Jesus Christ.

FELLOWSHIP IS MORE INTIMATE THAN WE UNDERSTAND IT TO BE – v. 1-4

John starts this letter off by immediately pointing us to Jesus. John had heard Him, seen Him, observed Him, & touched Him. This was serious firsthand knowledge.