Thirty-Seventh Meeting
(March 6, 1964 P.M.)
Read:
1 John 1:1-5
We are
continuing with our meditation in the First Letter of
John. I hope you are not tired of reading the first
verses of this letter. It is important for us to notice
how John begins what he has to say. So will you please
look at these verses again. Well, we have been seeing
that John wrote this letter to confirm the people of God
in Christ. I am not so much concerned with giving you a
lot more teaching as I am that you should really get hold
of what John is really saying. John was trying to save
the Lord's people in a difficult day from uncertainty.
When everything was in a state of uncertainty, John was
seeking to confirm believers in Christ, and that is the
object of this whole letter.
Now that
helps us to understand how he begins. You see, John
gathers up everything into one matter. He bases
everything upon a practical, personal experience of
Christ. In these first verses, John repeats himself again
and again, he says, 'That which we have seen and heard
and beheld and handled, THAT is what we declare unto
you.' If you can say, I have seen, I have heard, I have
handled, that means you have got a personal experience.
That is not mere theory, that is not just doctrine, that
is not something that you heard from someone else. That
is something which has come into your own hand and you
can say, 'I have handled that.' That is as real to me as
any thing that I can take hold of with my hands. John
says, "THAT which we have seen and heard
declare we unto you." You notice he uses that
word "declare" twice. John does not say,
"I am going to argue about this. I am going to enter
into some debate on this matter. No, this is something
that I declare unto you." The apostles never went
out into the world to argue about something. They never
went out to try and influence people to a teaching. They
never tried to influence people to a way of doing things.
Their method was not argument at all. It was a
declaration of the facts. It was what they called,
"testimony." It was what they called,
"evidence."
Now in
the Letters of John, we have seen that John uses the
phrase "this is" ten times, and he links that
"this is" with ten things. And the word
"evidence" is one of these ten things:
"THIS IS the evidence." What is evidence? What
is testimony? What is a declaration? I wonder if you have
ever been in a court of law as a witness. You have been
called to be a witness about some case, and there is the
magistrate, and here are all the other people who are
going to listen to what you have got to say. If you began
by saying, Well, somebody told me this, I heard it said
by other people, I have an idea that it was like this.
What would the magistrate say? He would simply say, My
good man, or my good woman, we are not here to listen to
what other people told you, we are here in order that you
might give us first hand personal evidence. We want to
know what you have seen. If you cannot tell us what you
have seen, please stand down, we do not want to listen to
you. We want evidence, not theory. We want first hand
proof, not what you have got second hand.
So John
says, "This is the evidence. This is the
witness." He brings everything back to practical
experience. And he says to these people who are not quite
sure about their position, we have heard, we have seen,
we do know, and we declare that unto you. In this letter,
John brings everything to the test of personal
experience. That is what John means by light. We have got
to walk in the Light. We have not to write a treatise on
illumination. We have not to write books about the
wonderful thing called light. We have not to study the
science of light. We have got to walk in the Light. That
is something very practical. That is bringing light into
experience. That is coming ourselves into the experience
of light.
So John
begins by saying that this is the message, "That God
is Light." What is your idea of God? Some great
wonderful Being far away Who cannot be known, some great
object somewhere Who must be worshipped. Is that your
idea of God? Why does John put God right at the very
first sentence of his letter? Because God is a Great
Present reality. God is right here to experience. John
had had a great experience of God. And he says, 'The only
way to escape from uncertainty is to have a real
experience of God.' I think we Christians have lost a
good deal of the sense of the greatness and the reality
of God. We ask the Lord to be Present with us when we
gather together. Who are we asking to be Present? If we
realized Who God is, we might behave very differently
when we are together.
Let me
try to help you to understand this by telling you a
story. There was a great American preacher. He was really
a great servant and saint of the Lord. He was the
minister of a very large church in the city of Boston. It
was a wonderful building, very beautifully decorated, it
had a wonderful organ, and a wonderful choir, and a very
large congregation, and he was the minister of that
church. And he wrote this story -
He said:
One Saturday, as I was sitting at my desk, preparing my
sermon for the Lord's Day, I got tired and I fell asleep,
and I had a dream. I dreamed that I was in my pulpit in
my church. The choir was in its place. The congregation
filled all the seats. And I was preaching. As I began to
preach, the door at the back of the church opened, and a
stranger came in. He looked everywhere to find a seat.
And then the man at the door just led him to one empty
seat. Something drew my attention to that stranger. He
had in his face the marks of a great sorrow. It seemed
that he had been through some great suffering, and yet,
there was something very beautiful about his face.
And I
found that all the time I was preaching, my eyes
continually went in the direction of that stranger. There
was something about him that I could not take my eyes
away from. And I decided that when the service was over,
I would find out who that stranger was. I would get down
to the door and I would shake his hand. Well, I preached
my sermon, the choir sang, the congregation sang the
closing hymn, and then I pronounced the blessing, and the
people began to go out, and I hurried down to get to the
door to speak to that stranger, but before I could get
there, he was gone. I said to the man at the door, 'Do
you know who that stranger was?' The man at the door
said, 'Oh, yes, don't you know who that was? That was
Jesus of Nazareth.' I said, 'Oh, why did you let Him go,
I would like to have spoken to Him.' The man at the door
said, 'Oh, don't worry. He has been here once, He will
come again.'
And the
preacher said, I went home, I sat down in my room, and I
said to myself, 'Jesus of Nazareth has been in my church
today. What did He think of our wonderful building? What
did He think of the congregation? What did He think about
the way our ladies were dressed? What did He think about
the way in which they sang those wonderful hymns about
Himself? What did He think about our choir and our organ?
What did He think about our worship when we used His name
so often? But most of all, what did He think about my
preaching? I was preaching about Him. What did He think
about what I was saying of Him? And then he said, I woke
up. It was a dream. But he said, "It made all the
difference to my ministry for the rest of my life."
Now it
is true, that every time we gather together in His name,
He is there. He has promised to be there. But oh, that my
people would always realize Who is Present. How
differently they would behave! How punctual they would be
in coming to the service. They would say, Jesus is going
to be there this morning, we must not be late. And every
time we use His name, we should know that He is hearing
us! What was it the man at the door said? He has been
here once. He will come again.
Dr. A.
J. Gordon, who was the man of whom I am speaking, wrote
two books. One was about the Lord Jesus coming into this
world and being here, the other one was about His coming
again. Those two books were born of his dream. Well, you
may say that was only a dream; but is there not some
truth in it? Why do we ask the Lord to be with us when we
gather together, if we do not believe that He is truly
Present, although unseen, as ever He was when He was on
this earth. Can it be true that Jesus of Nazareth -
crucified, risen, glorified - is here in this place
tonight? Is that possible? That ought to make a very big
difference to us in every way.
It all
comes to this, that our Christianity has got to be
something very real. It is not to be just something that
is a theory, a doctrine, something we have got from
someone else. It has got to be something real to us
personally. And I have made a mistake. I have used the
wrong word. I have said, "It" has got to be
real. I ought to have said, "HE" OUGHT TO BE
REAL. To Dr. Gordon, the Presence of Jesus that morning
was not the Presence of an "It," it was a
"HE."
So John
brings everything to that test, the test of experience,
the test of that which we have seen, that which we have
heard, and that which our hands have handled. There is a
way, dear friends, in which that can be as true as it was
with John. It is possible. It ought to be actual. That
you and I can say, I have seen the Lord Jesus. Not with
these natural eyes, but nevertheless, truly I have seen
the Lord. The Lord has revealed Himself to me. I have
heard Him speaking. He has become as real to me as
anything that I can handle. Everything is tested by
experience.
Well,
there were all these theories abroad, all these different
teachings, all these interpretations, but John says,
"Bring them all back to this test." The proof
of everything is: Is Christ a personal experience in your
life. That is what John meant by light. Really walking in
the Light of a personal knowledge of the Lord Jesus.
Then if
you look at this letter again, you will see that John
passes very quickly from light to truth. Truth is one of
the major things in this letter. Five times He speaks of
that which is true, he says, "This which is true in
Him and in you. This is the true God." Five times he
uses the word "TRUE." But then, eight times he
uses the word "TRUTH." I think in my
arithmetic, eight and five make thirteen. Thirteen times
in a short letter, the apostle speaks about that which is
true. Then he put something over against that. Eight
times he uses the word "LIE" and
"LIAR." So he sets that which is true over
against that which is a lie. I leave you to look at the
various references. You will find a great deal of
instruction if you just follow the word "Truth"
through. Truth is set over against everything that is
untrue.
What is
truth? Truth is that which is real. Truth is reality.
Truth is honesty. Truth is openness and clearness. What
is the opposite of truth? It is that which is false. That
which is unreal, that which is an imitation, that which
is pretending, that which is hypocrisy, that which is
deception, that which is not single but double. That is
the opposite to truth.
Now he
comes back and says, "God is true, this is the true
God." Christ is true and not false. There is no
deception about Him. There is no unreality about Christ.
There is no hypocrisy about Christ. There is no lie in
Christ. Satan is the liar. He is the untrue one. He tore
this creation into pieces by a lie. He told Adam a lie,
and Adam believed that lie. And the whole creation was
ruined. Everything was destroyed by an untruth.
Everything went to pieces because of untruth.
Now John
is saying, in order to destroy the works of the devil, we
must have our feet firmly based on truth. What is true in
the Lord Jesus has got to be true in us. Dear friends,
you and I have got to be absolutely true. There must be
no falsehood about us, no pretending to be something that
we are not, no trying to make other people believe
something about us that is not true. There must be
nothing of Satan's lie about us. In every way, we must be
true. There must be nothing unreal about us. And again
John says, "This is the proof that Christ is in
us." If we are a lie, then we are a contradiction to
Christ. If ours is only a profession and not a reality,
that is a contradiction to Christ. Christ is the truth.
And if He dwells in us, He will make us true. And we
shall hate everything that is false and a lie.
Now you
must be very patient with me and forgive me for being so
strong on this matter, because we are dealing with
something that is very vital. I have just said that it
was by a lie that this whole creation was torn to pieces.
Everything was ruined because of untruth. Even God
Almighty will not hold anything together if there is a
lie in it. If there is any falsehood anywhere in us, or
in our company, sooner or later we are going to pieces.
Have you
seen a big building that has become out of the straight?
It has sunk down a bit. And there are cracks in the
building and cracks in the wall. What are you going to do
about it? If that is your property, you will do something
about it. Perhaps you will fill up the cracks in the
walls and in the ceiling. And then you will paint it
over, and you think it is all right. That is hypocrisy.
What is the cause of the cracks? There is something false
in the foundation. And in the course of time, the lie
that is in the foundation is manifested in the building.
In the
country where I have spent much of my life, the country
of Scotland, we have a great many big trees. And we have
some big storms in that country. And after one of these
storms, you can go along the road and see many of these
great trees lying on the ground with their roots in the
air. How do you explain that? Do you begin to blame the
tree? You say, that is a silly tree to have tumbled down
like that. No, what you really say is, there was
something wrong with the roots. The roots had not gone
deep enough, the roots had not got a tight enough hold.
And when the wind blows, the weakness in the roots became
manifested.
You see,
it is the foundation or the roots that are the truth. If
there is anything false there, someday it will be
manifested. The building will not be able to stand. The
tree will not be able to endure the storm. And that is
only what John is saying in another way. You Christians
are just being knocked all over the place. There are
these winds of doctrine, there are these storms of
opposition, there are all these difficulties arising, and
many of you are just going to pieces. The reason is that
there is somewhere in the foundation an untruth;
somewhere behind your life there is something false. And
if that is true, even God will not keep it going. When
the lie came in through Adam, God did not stop the break
up of the creation. God wanted to show mankind for all
time that a lie is a disastrous thing. Anything false can
ruin everything. The world just declares that truth. That
where there is not the truth, things cannot stand.
But
there is the other side to this, they that are in the
truth in Christ will endure forever. Their life will not
be broken. Their work will not be destroyed. The values
of their testimony will last for all eternity. How
important, then, it is that at every point in every
detail, we should be true. There should be nothing false
about it. We shall only hold together in the truth.
Now I
just want to finish in these last few minutes by pointing
you to something that John brings up in this connection.
Indeed, he brings up two things. One of them I will
mention now, and perhaps the other one we will deal with
tomorrow night, if the Lord wills. In chapter two of this
letter, verse twenty, "But ye have an unction from
the Holy One, and ye know all things." And verse
twenty-seven, "But the anointing which ye have
received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any
man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of
all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it
hath taught you, ye shall abide in Him." Now you see
there, the connection between the anointing and the
truth. The anointing is far too big a matter for us to
begin to consider tonight, but I can say this in a very
few words. How shall we know what is true? How shall we
know that we are in the truth and the truth is in us? How
shall we know what is true and what is a lie?
John
says the answer to that is, "The Anointing which is
in you." In other words, the Holy Spirit in you will
make you know. He will make you know what is true and
what is false. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth,
Jesus called Him that. If He is in us, then He is in us
as the Spirit of truth. The Bible says: "The Spirit
Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are
children of God." It is by the witness of the Holy
Spirit in our hearts that we know we are children of God.
The true children of God know by the witness of the Holy
Spirit in them that they are children of God. If the Holy
Spirit is in us, and if we are not grieving the Spirit,
if we are not putting something in the way of the Spirit,
the Holy Spirit will bear witness with our spirit as to
what is true and what is not true. This is the Word of
God. Oh, then, how important it is that we know the
meaning of the anointing within.
Do you
know that word "ANOINTING" is only an
enlargement of the word "CHRIST?" The name
"Christ" means: "The Anointed One."
The anointing means the extension of Christ. The same
Holy Spirit as was in Jesus Christ is in all His born
again children. Paul says, we are anointed in Him. That
means that the "Anointed One" is in us, and we
share His anointing. Now in Him is no lie. He is the
truth. If He is in us, He will bear witness to the truth.
We ought to be so sensitive to the Holy Spirit that when
we say something that is not true, we know we have said
something not true. When we meet something that is false,
we know inwardly that is not true. What a different
situation there would be amongst Christians, if it was
always this way. Well, John says, 'The anointing in you
teacheth you all things, and He is true and no lie.'
So then,
to be established in Christ, we must know what it means
really to have the Holy Spirit in us. That brings us back
to where we began. The test of everything is experience.
It is not the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. It is not
books on the Holy Spirit. It is the personal indwelling
of the Holy Spirit. Oh, what a lot I would like to say
about that to you. But how very careful our leaders ought
to be to make sure that every young Christian knows that
the Holy Spirit is dwelling within, that every child of
God really knows what it means to have the Holy Spirit
dwelling within. That is a solemn responsibility resting
upon all teachers of the Lord's people. But even if our
teachers fail, that does not excuse us. John is not
talking about the teaching of the Holy Spirit, he is
talking about the experience of the Holy Spirit. He says,
'The anointing which is in you teacheth you all things,
and He is true and no lie.' I can only trust that He, the
Holy Spirit, will make us understand what has been said
tonight.