Thirty-Fifth Meeting
(March 4, 1964 P.M.)
We are
going to be occupied with the First Letter of John. I
want to read the first five verses of chapter one:
"That
which was from the beginning, which we have
heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have
looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of
life; (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it,
and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life,
which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us,)
that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you,
that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our
fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus
Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy
may be full. This then is the message which we have heard
of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in
Him is no darkness at all."
Between
the time that John wrote this letter and the Lord Jesus
had fulfilled His ministry on the earth, quite a long
time had passed. John was writing this letter after all
the other apostles had gone to be with the Lord. In that
long period since the Lord Jesus went back to the Father,
up to this time of John's writing, many things had
happened. Many things had invaded Christianity to destroy
the certainty of believers. A great number of different
teachings had come in, there were many opposing
interpretations of the teaching of Jesus. A variety of
sects and parties had arisen. Divisions and separations
between Christians had taken place.
In
addition to these things, the world had invaded the
Church. The world had gotten into the churches. In the
Book of the Revelation, chapters two and three, we see
how the world had gotten into the churches in Asia.
Whenever the world gets into the churches, it always
weakens their testimony. And it was just like that when
John was writing his letter. To realize all this is to
understand why he wrote this letter, that very difficult
background gives a very good explanation to this letter
of John. It is easy to understand how difficult the
Christians were finding things. Of all the different
teachings and interpretations, they did not know which to
believe; they did not know which was the right and the
true one. Of all the divisions amongst Christians, they
did not know which one was right. And the world had
brought in such confusion and such weakness that the
believers were in a state of great difficulty.
Therefore,
because things were like that, John wrote this letter. He
not only wrote this letter, but he wrote two other quite
short ones, and much about the same time, he wrote his
Gospel and the Book of the Revelation. It is quite clear
that John had a very special object in writing. In the
first place, his object was to try to help these
believers in their difficulties, to bring them back to
the fundamentals of their Christian life, to tell them in
all this confusion what was the true thing. That was his
general objective. Then, if we look at this letter more
closely, we shall see how he got to work to fulfill his
object.
John has
set out to confirm the faith of believers in a difficult
day. And it is good to note that John himself was
altogether untouched by all these conditions. There was
no question in his mind as to where the truth was. He had
no doubts whatever as to what was right. And so in this
short letter, he uses a small phrase thirteen times. I
suggest that you take your pencil at some time and
underline these two words in this letter. Of course, I do
not know whether it is two words in the Chinese language.
In the English, it is just two words, and those two words
John repeats thirteen times in this very short letter.
And the phrase is this: "We know." Thirteen
times he says, "We know." You see,
there is no question in his mind. He has no doubt about
things. He knows where he stands. And so he says
repeatedly, "We know."
Then he
had another phrase. Ten times he uses this other phrase,
and that phrase is, "This is." And he
links that "This is" with ten things. We have
read the first one in verse five: "This is the
message." The next one is: "This is the
promise." Number three is: "This is the
commandment." Number four is: "This is
the witness." Number five is: "This is
the love of God." Number six is: "This
is the victory." Number seven is: "This
is the confidence." Number eight is: "This
is the antichrist." Number nine is: "This
is He that cometh." And number ten is: "This
is the true God, and eternal life." "We know,"
"This is," all questions, all doubts are set
aside. And in this way, the apostle seeks to confirm the
believers in Christ.
Now
there are some other very distinctive marks. And I want
to say here that I am not doing your Bible study for you.
Perhaps you would like me to do that, but I am not going
to make lazy people of you. So I am not doing your Bible
study for you. That is why I have not given you the
references to all those words. You go through the Letter
and mark each occurrence of this: "We know."
Thirteen times you will see it. And then go
through the Letter again and mark every occurrence of "This
is." That is a very helpful way of studying.
That is what I mean when I say I am not doing it for you,
I am giving it to you to do.
I have
said that there are other distinctive marks in this
letter, and these marks have to do with this matter of
confirming faith. I think it is unnecessary for me to say
that the conditions with which John was dealing are
conditions which we have to meet in our time. We have to
meet these many kinds of teaching, these many
interpretations of the Scriptures. We are familiar with
the many divisions amongst God's people, and we know so
well how the world has invaded Christianity, and how the
world has robbed the churches of their pure testimony. We
have to face these conditions. Many of the Lord's people,
especially the young people, ask: 'Which of all these is
right? Which of these different teachings is the right
one? Which of these divisions amongst the Lord's people
is the right one?' It is a time of much perplexity,
especially for young Christians, and that is why we are
looking into this letter of John. We are going to let
John help us, just as he helped the believers of his own
day.
So I
want to point out three other great words in this letter.
For these words are words which will solve many of our
problems. Indeed, John said that these were the things
that would solve the problems of the Christians in his
day. And the three words are: "Light,"
"Life," and "Love." You
will probably remember how often John uses those
words. They are the great words of Christianity: Light,
Life, and Love. And John links with that last word
"Love," the word, "Fellowship." He
says a lot about fellowship in this letter.
Now we
are going to begin with the first of these great words.
We come back to the fifth verse of chapter one: This is
the message, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness
at all. "God is Light." This is the
message. Now we must remember that John is just full of
the Old Testament. John always has the Old Testament as
the background of his mind. I could give you a good hard
piece of work now. If you were to take the Book of the
Revelation written by John, you would find that there are
four hundred allusions to the Old Testament in that book.
I do not mean that there are four hundred quotations, but
there are four hundred ideas taken from the Old
Testament. I say, I will leave that to you. We are not
going to attempt to look at four hundred Old Testament
allusions.
But
having said that, that brings us right to this matter of
the message. THIS IS THE MESSAGE, THAT GOD IS LIGHT. And
do you notice that John takes us back to the beginning?
He says, "In the beginning." That is
how he opens his Gospel. And in this letter, he is taking
us back to the beginning. What is in the mind of John? He
is thinking about the creation. And he is referring to
the fact that the first thing in creation was light. God
is Light. The first thing, of course, is God. That is the
first thing in creation. It all begins with God. But what
is God? What is the effect of God anywhere? When God
comes on the scene, what happens? What is the first
result of God coming in? John says, as in the creation,
it was light. So in this present difficult situation, the
first thing is God and Light.
Now we
must go back to the beginning of the Old Testament. You
know how the Bible begins, "In the beginning,
God." Then the next thing, "And the earth
was without form and void, and darkness was over the face
of the deep." A state of terrible chaos existed,
everything was in a condition of disruption, disorder and
barrenness. "The earth was empty, without form and
void." There was no beauty there, and darkness was
over the face of the deep.
Now it
is believed by many that this condition was the result of
a previous judgment. It was not the beginning of the
existence of the world. The world was there, but it was
in this terrible state. It is believed that this
condition was the result of a judgment which had come
upon the world in an earlier time. Literally, the world
had been destroyed. And it is believed that the New
Testament teaches that is going to happen again to this
world. All things here are going to be destroyed in the
judgment of God. When the Lord has taken away His people,
then, as Peter says: 'The earth will be destroyed and
burned up.' And John says, 'There is going to be a new
heaven and a new earth.'
Now we
can understand better today, than anybody in those days
could understand, how easy that could be. It is known
that there is in existence power enough in hydrogen bombs
to destroy this whole earth. It has been definitely
stated that that could be done in a very short time.
Peter in his letter prophesied that that is going to
happen. If there is to be a new heaven and a new earth,
then the old one must be destroyed.
But John
here is not particularly concerned with the destruction
of the material earth. What he is concerned with is a
spiritual condition which corresponds to the condition in
the second verse of Genesis. If in the beginning of
Genesis, the earth was without form and void, and
darkness was over the face of the deep, if that is how it
was with the material creation way back there, John sees
that there is a spiritual condition just like that in his
own time. Everything has gotten into a state of disorder
and disruption. Everything is broken up. There is no
beauty to look upon. All these spiritual conditions just
speak the one word - "Chaos." The verdict is,
darkness over the face of the deep.
Now God
intervened in that situation. In effect, God said, 'This
is never how I intended to have things. This state of
things does not express My Mind for the world.' So God
came in to redeem the world from that condition. In
Genesis, God intervened through His Son. John says in his
Gospel, that it was through God's Son that all things
were created. Then John goes on to say, that in this
spiritual chaos, God has intervened again by His Son. In
exactly the same way as He intervened in the material
creation, so He intervenes in the spiritual. God said
over the material creation, "Let there be
light." And God says over the spiritual chaos, "Let
there be light." And that light comes in through
His Son. You will remember that in his Gospel, John said,
"In Him was Life, and the Life was the light of
men. And the Light shineth in the darkness." The
Light came into the world through the Son.
Now John
is looking at this state of things spiritually in his own
day, and he says that God's way of redeeming this
situation is to bring the Light in, to come in Himself in
the Person of His Son as Light. God is going to reverse
this whole situation, by His Son, in terms of light. The
first thing in redemption is light.
First of
all, light reveals the state of things. When Jesus came
into this world, He made all see what the condition was.
Men began to see things just as they were. It is
wonderful to see how everything was made plain wherever
Jesus came.
Are
there wicked men about? Well, people did not see that
they were wicked men until Jesus came. Of these scribes
and Pharisees, Jesus said, "You are of your father,
the devil." No one had ever thought that about
scribes and Pharisees before. These were outwardly very
religious men, and Jesus says, "You are of the
devil." And as He goes on in this earth, it becomes
perfectly clear that He is right. These very people whom
the world thought were the religious people will one day
crucify Jesus Christ.
As the
true Light, He has brought out into the open the true
condition of men's hearts. And you know, that is always
the effect of Jesus coming anywhere. The first thing that
we feel when Jesus comes near us is, What bad creatures
we are! On one occasion, Jesus came into the life of
Simon Peter. Simon Peter cried, "Depart from me,
Oh Lord, for I am a sinful man." The first
effect of the Light in Christ is to reveal the true state
of man's heart. If man does not like to have his true
condition revealed, he will crucify Christ. He will
persecute and fight against the Lord Jesus. But if we are
prepared to have our true condition revealed, we shall go
down on our knees, and say, 'I am a sinful man, O Lord.'
The
first effect of the Light is to reveal the state of
things. The true meaning of such a revelation is to bring
us to repentance. Any man or any woman who has never felt
the awfulness of the sin of their own natures, has never
met Jesus Christ. This is a test as to whether we have
come to the Light. No man or woman can ever come near to
Jesus Christ without crying out, "I am sinful."
Like the prodigal, we have to say, "Father, I
have sinned against heaven and in Thy sight." Let
us have no doubt about this. A touch with Jesus Christ
means we realize how sinful we are in ourselves. No true
union with Jesus Christ can mean that we have any pride
in ourselves. We can never have any true relationship
with the Lord Jesus and feel that we are ourselves quite
all right.
The man
or the woman who lives nearest to the Lord Jesus is the
man or the woman who feels they are the worst people in
this world. The cry of their heart is, "HAVE MERCY
UPON ME, O LORD." They are not just words, not just
religious words, they come out of a revelation of our own
hearts in the Presence of the Light. Will you remember
this thing, that in one sense, the pathway to heaven is
the pathway of discovering more and more how sinful we
are in ourselves. The person who gets nearest to heaven
is the one who knows best that they ought not to have a
place in heaven, they are the people who are most ready
to say, 'I am altogether unfit for heaven.' So the Light
reveals the state of the human heart. It has to be like
that before there can be redemption. This is the first
step toward redemption. It was so in the case of the
material creation, and it is so in the case of the new
creation in Christ.
But then
watch Jesus again as He moves about the country. You
notice what happens? Here are poor people bound in
affliction, here is a poor woman who has been suffering
for many years, here is that poor man moving about the
tombs, filled with devils, no one could tame him, every
chain that they put on him, he snapped. Wherever Jesus
went, He showed that behind these awful conditions was
Satan. People had not thought of it like that; they
thought, 'This poor woman.' Well, she is suffering from
some malady; Jesus said, "Whom Satan has bound these
many years." This poor man in the tombs, people
said, 'Well, of course, he has lost his reason, he is
mad.' But Jesus says, 'It is the devil in him.' And so,
whether it is sickness or whatever it is, Jesus sees
another power behind this. And when Jesus comes on the
scene, the evil spirits cry out, "I know
Thee Whom Thou art."
You see,
the evil power hidden behind the chaos in this world is
brought to light by Jesus. There are many conditions
which are not according to the will of God. But we accept
them because we say, 'Well, they are just human
conditions.' If we had the Light, we should see that
another power is responsible for that. So wherever Jesus
went, He showed that by the Light these things were not
according to His Father's will. Everywhere that He went,
it became clear that this is not as God would have it,
this is all wrong, God would have it different from this.
That is what became clear by Jesus coming into the world.
Now come
to this first letter of John. We have spoken of the
conditions, the conditions that John was having to meet,
the conditions that the Lord's people were having to meet
- confusion in teaching, divisions amongst the Lord's
people, and a lot of other things. John is saying, "That
God is Light, and in Him is no darkness." All
these are contrary to the mind of God. That is what
the Light shows. False teaching is against God. Divisions
amongst the Lord's people are against God. Any disorder
and disruption is contrary to God. Therefore, the Light
demands some reaction. Light is never passive. You
realize that?! Light is never passive. Turn off all the
light, and darkness is everywhere. Switch on the light,
what happens? Well, something happens. The darkness goes.
It cannot abide the Light. Light is effective. Light is
active. Light does things.
Now that
is the challenge to us. Do we claim to have much light?
Do we think that we have got the truth, that we are a
very enlightened people? Well, what is happening with all
the Light that we have got? Is it just passive light?
There is no such thing. If it is not active light, it is
not light at all. Light is intended to do something.
Light is intended to change conditions. Just imagine, how
can people who claim to have the Light be responsible for
division amongst the Lord's people? That is a
contradiction of light. So John says, "If we
walk in the Light, we have fellowship." One
effect of walking in the Light is having fellowship one
with another. And some people think that having light
means to make divisions, to break up fellowship. John
says, that is a lie, that is not the truth. Light means
that we must walk in it. "And if we all walk in the
Light, we shall have fellowship one with another."
You see,
light effects things. "Light" is a practical
matter. I am not content with just giving you theory. My
object in coming here is not just to give you more
teaching. Probably, this week will see the end of my
special ministry here, and before long I shall have gone
again. What I am really concerned about is this: Not that
I have given you a lot of words, but that I have given
you light, or the Lord has given you Light. Because true
Light always does things. The darkness cannot abide the
Light. The darkness cannot overcome true Light. That is
what John said about the Lord Jesus, "And the
Light shineth or was manifested, and the darkness
overcame it not." Light ought to be something
very effective. Are we walking in the Light? Or are we
just claiming to have light? Do remember that every bit
of true Light is power. There is power behind this Light.
Light is
power. It is always power. Is all that which we claim to
have as Light, really power? Is all the Truth that we
possess, power? Does it do things? Or is it only in our
heads? Is it only a theory? You see, when Jesus came a
Light into the world, something happened wherever He
went. And that is how it all came to be. "God is
Light, and in Him is no darkness at all."
THIS IS
THE MESSAGE. This is the thing that we carry with us. Not
just something in words and theory, but something that
does something. We must examine all our truth, just to
see what it is doing. How much it is changing the
situation from chaos to light, from disorder to order,
from emptiness to fullness, from ugliness to beauty.
These are all the effects of light. That is what Jesus
does, because He is the Light of the world. That is how
it ought to be without teachings.
Now I
only commence on this first message. I may have more to
say on this particular thing, if God wills tomorrow
night. But do not wait until tomorrow night, start
tonight. Ask the Lord how much of all that you have in
your heads is doing things. What changes are being made
by the Light, for no light is true light that does not
make changes.