John and his ministry

… I'm not accustomed to speaking from notes, so just bear with me, please. The topic I hope to be speaking on this weekend is the life and writings of the Apostle John. The Apostle John, one of the followers of the Lord Jesus, was the one who outlived all the others. He's the author of five books in Scripture, the Gospel of John, the first, second, and third epistles, and the Revelation. It's usually assumed that the Apostle John was a young man, perhaps the youngest of the Apostles, when he began to follow the Lord. It may well be that he was in his late teens when the Lord called him to follow. We have no definite word in Scripture on that, but he lived up into the A.D. 90s. In fact, the Revelation is often dated at A.D. 96, and he was a very old man in any case, whether he was in his teens or whether he was in his 20s. When he began to follow the Lord, he's perhaps beside the point. He no doubt lived to be in his upper 80s or 90s somewhere. Now the Apostle, I want to break our studies down in this way. Tonight, look a little bit at the life of the Apostle John. Tomorrow morning, the first session, the Gospel of John. Then the next session that I would have would be on the Epistles of John, and the final session on the Revelation, the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which he gave through his servant John. To begin with, let's turn to John 1. I want to read just a few verses there, the Gospel of John chapter 1. And I would very deliberately want to read these verses out of Mr. Darby's translation tonight, especially for sake of one word there. John chapter 1, verse 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and the next part is a parenthesis, and we have contemplated his glory. A glory as of an only begotten with the Father, end of parenthesis. So in other words, the sentence goes on from the word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, again a parenthesis. John bears witness of him, and he has cried, saying, this was he of whom I said he that comes after me is preferred before me, for he was before me, end of that parenthesis. And the main sentence goes on, for of his fullness, we all have received, and grace upon grace. For the law was given by Moses, grace and truth subsists through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. As far as we know, all John's writings were written at a very advanced age, when he was a very elderly man. And so we can say this is probably written some between 60 and 65 years, perhaps even as much as 70 years after John began to follow the Lord Jesus. And I deliberately read from this translation to get a couple things in here. That first parenthesis, we have contemplated his glory. The glory, the glory is of an only begotten with the Father. I like that word contemplated. You know, to contemplate is not just to take a quick look at something. In our society, everything is fast. And since the advent of television, they say that children's attention span has gone down quite a bit. We never heard about attention span before television came into focus. But they say it's really hurt attention span. They say the programming for children just has to move along, just like this. Unfortunately, sometimes we try to do meetings the same way. And Scripture speaks about contemplating, contemplating the glory of the Lord Jesus. To contemplate is more than simply to look at something. It's to look at something, to spend time looking at it while thinking about it. And John says this in retrospect about the Lord Jesus. We have contemplated his glory. We find he gets acquainted with the Lord, and we're going to try to run through this rather rapidly. But I wanted to start here. And I believe the 60-odd years that John spent here on earth, after the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, probably close to 70 years, I believe he was very much occupied with the Lord Jesus. And what is before him as he writes, we have contemplated his glory. His glory. The glory as of an only begotten, and literally from with a father. He was with the father. He came from the father into this world. And the only begotten, that term is used in reference to rhyme, to importance in Scripture, not only to being the first child that a man begets. Because in the Old Testament, it speaks of making David the only begotten. Isaac is spoken of as Abraham's only begotten son. The Septuagint, the Greek translation, translates the reference in Genesis by that same word, only begotten, as is of the Lord Jesus. Abraham had an older son, Ishmael, but Isaac was the son whom God had chosen for preeminence. And here, you know, if a man would have only one son, and this son is of greatest importance to him, and there's a closeness between father and son, a fellowship, and then the son comes to represent the father. You know, that's something special. It's not just one of the family. And this is really what we have here. We have contemplated his glory, a glory as an only begotten, from with the father. And it's, he's the word. The word, you know, a word is the expression of a thought. And the word is the expression of the mind of God. The Lord Jesus come into this world, you know, didn't just say, thus says the Lord, this is what God says, but he was, he was the full expression of God. He is God. The word became flesh, and John is still enjoying the wonder of it. He dwelt among us to think. He came here and lived. He dwelt among us. And he says, we've contemplated his glory. And this is the one that John the Baptist is speaking of. And by the way, in the Gospel of John, whenever we read the name John, it does not refer to the disciple, later called the apostle John, the one who we're going to be speaking about. But whenever John names John, he is referring to John the Baptist. He doesn't call him John the Baptist. Here, he simply speaks of him as John. And he mentions John's witness to the Lord Jesus. This is he of whom I said, he that comes after me is preferred before me, for he was before me. And he goes on in his main thought here, for of his fullness, we have all received and grace upon grace. We're going to see, as we look at the apostle John, that there's reason for his appreciating grace upon grace. And I think all of us who have come to know the Lord Jesus, who have learned his grace, who have experienced his grace, appreciate that it's grace upon grace. It's not just an initial dose of it, but constant grace. The law was given by Moses, grace and truth. And that is always the order in which we find these two terms in Scripture, grace and truth. Never do we read of truth and grace, but grace and truth. Grace and truth subsists. It has its being through Jesus Christ. There could not be grace and truth, this combination, without the Lord Jesus. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him. And John writes in this way, the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, not merely because the Lord Jesus had ascended and gone back to the glory, but in the bosom of the Father speaks to us of being there, enjoying the affection of the Father. And this was ever the case with the Lord Jesus. And even in those three hours on the cross, he didn't cry out, my Father, my Father, why hast thou forsaken me? No, it's my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? When he was sin-bearer. But the only begotten Son is in the bosom of the Father, and he's declared him. Well, I want to start here. This is John as a mature old brother who has come to know the Lord Jesus in his youth, who has walked with him, who's observed him, who has considered what he has observed. He's contemplated the Lord Jesus years and years and years. And what he writes, he shares from that perspective. It's not an account written when he was a young man, when he was following the Lord, but it's written with the maturity that comes of real reflection, real contemplation, real enjoyment of the Lord Jesus. And I say this from the human side, John's writings, as all the rest of scripture, are inspired of God absolutely perfectly. These two sides we always have to see as parallel. God told him what to write, but on the other hand, what he writes is the fruit of his contemplation of the Lord Jesus. And when we read these words here, we can see that John is not going to mention his name. He's not going to bring himself into prominence. The only one of his writings where he mentions his own name is the Revelation. And there it is mentioned a few times. But ordinarily in his writings, he's going to focus on the Lord Jesus, set him before us. And if he refers to himself in the gospel, he refers to himself usually by what he was in relation to the Lord Jesus, the disciple whom Jesus loved. He learned to appreciate the love of the Lord Jesus. And sometimes he simply says the other disciple. If there were two, he mentions one. And if he says the other one, that's a reference to himself. He prefers to stay in the background, let others have the place of prominence, and particularly let the Lord Jesus have the place of prominence. Well, I want to run through a few things on this outline very quickly. The disciples, with the probable exception of Judas Iscariot, were all Galileans. And if you want scripture for these things, I would have to give it to you afterwards. But they are referred to again and again as Galileans. In fact, Peter is told that his speech betrayed him. His speech gave him away. The Galilean accent was well known in that time. You know, you can tell if somebody from Brooklyn comes here, and we can tell if somebody from North Carolina comes a bit farther north. And so your accent gives you away. The disciples were from Galilee, and Galilee is called Galilee of the nations. The people in Galilee were a mixed people. And the people of Galilee being somewhat mixed, were looked down on by the Jews from Jerusalem, where the temple was, and Judea, the surrounding area. So it started with perhaps a bit of a handicap. He's the son of Zebedee, and his mother is referred to in several places. You might want to put a little question mark on that word Salome. But if you compare the accounts of the women who stood at the cross of the Lord Jesus in the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Mark, there's real reason for believing that the mother's name was Salome, and that she was one of the women at the cross of the Lord Jesus. In John's Gospel, it gives us three names, and it refers to the sister of Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus. The other Gospels, Mark's Gospel mentions Salome as one of these names. And it would be strange if two sisters each had the first name Mary, which would be the only other way to understand the reference in John if Salome is not this one. But if Salome is indeed the mother of James and John, then she is also the sister of Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus. So that humanly speaking, it may well be that the Apostle John was a, shall we say, half-cousin to the Lord Jesus. I just mentioned this in passing. It's not that we want to build on something because Scripture doesn't build on it, but it's interesting to see the connection. Now, it's usually mentioned in the Gospels in connection with his brother James, and it's normally James and John. One finds in looking at the life of the Apostle John that he is usually the one in the background. If there are two, it may be Peter and John, or Peter, James, and John if there are three. James and John, it doesn't turn it around. John, it seems, was very happy to play second fiddle. And they say that's the hardest instrument to play, second fiddle. Most of us find that difficult. We like to have a place. The younger brother of James and Mark here, they had a successful family fishing business. The reason I mention it is that in one of the Gospels, I believe it's Mark, when the Lord calls James and John, they leave their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired serpents. So, I would say from that, a successful fishing business. There were hired serpents. The business evidently went on under Zebedee's leadership. And even when we first find John mentioned in the Gospel of John chapter one, he has come to listen to John the Baptist. He's become a follower of John the Baptist. If things were really desperate at home, all hands needed on deck of the fishing boat, John wouldn't have been up there following John the Baptist. But it seems the business was going well. In fact, the scripture definitely mentions James and John to be business partners with Peter and Andrew. This is in Luke 5. And in John 18, it mentions that he was known to the high priest. And it doesn't seem that it was of a priestly family, but it may well be that they had a contract to supply fish for the high priest's household or whatever it may have been. I'm just speculating there. But the Gospel of John tells us that John was known to the high priest. Probably the youngest of the disciples, and usually with others. And he was evidently a seeking soul. Not every fellow in his late teens or early twenties at most is out there really seeking to get all that he can spiritually. He's really concerned about his own spiritual need and the spiritual need of the people. John the Baptist was preaching repentance, prepare the way of the Lord. And the disciple John, Apostle John, whatever we want to call him, was one of those who had gone and who evidently had followed John the Baptist. And he's present in chapter one of John's Gospel where we are. He's present at least on the morrow in verse 35. Perhaps he was present the first day in verse 29, where John the Baptist says, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. But in verse 35, there's John, two of his disciples looking at Jesus as he walked. He, John the Baptist, said, behold the Lamb of God. And the two disciples heard him speaking and followed Jesus. So by this time, the disciple John, as we'll call him here, was a disciple of John the Baptist. He had been in earnest about his own spiritual need, his own condition, and he had gone to hear and had given heed to the message that God was giving through this messenger. And now this messenger points him to the Lord Jesus. So the first contact with Jesus that scripture tells us of, now if there was relationship according to the flesh, scripture does not build on it. And we'd better be careful not to do too much building either. It may be that John in some way knew Jesus before. But here, John the Baptist points Jesus out, behold the Lamb of God. First of all, which takes away the sin of the world, then behold the Lamb of God. And that's all that is needed. Now John and Andrew follow Jesus. And John the Baptist later on, he's faced with the fact that many of his followers were now following Jesus. Jesus was baptizing more than he was baptizing, comes out in chapter three. Actually, Jesus didn't baptize, but his followers baptized those who came. And when John the Baptist is told this bad news by somebody who was perhaps trying to get at him, he took it as good news. And he said, yes, that's good. That's great. He must increase. I must decrease. But this was the initial contact with the Lord Jesus. It seems that after this first contact here in John one and perhaps chapter two, that John may have gone back to the fishing business. We find him, well, there are some of the disciples of the Lord Jesus in chapter two at the wedding at Cana. Jesus also and his disciples were invited to this marriage. And so, but in Mark chapter one, in Luke chapter five, in Matthew chapter four, I believe it is, we find these disciples called, while they're at the seaside, they're called to follow the Lord Jesus. And this was something more than the initial contact. According to Luke five, the Lord borrowed Peter's boat one day. He knew Peter. He had named Peter. In other words, he had staked out a claim on Peter in John one. But Peter had gone back to his fishing. And one day the Lord comes along, borrows his boat, uses it for a pulpit, and then pays Peter richly, tells Peter to launch out, let down his nets. Peter drops down one net. It's going to prove really that it's not, it doesn't work, you know, fishing in the daytime. And after all the experience, fisherman had fished all night. So he's not able to haul in all the fish that the Lord sent into that net. And it says, they beckoned to their partners, James and John. They came and my, there was a tremendous load. Both boats were filled almost so that they were swamped. So they bring them in. And it's at that point, evidently, very shortly after that, that the Lord calls them to be his followers. Mark one doesn't mention the incident with the great catch of fish, but John and James are mending their net. Peter and Andrew have been fishing and the Lord calls them to follow him. The Lord gave them a nickname. He renamed some of his disciples. He nicknamed some of them. The nickname that he gave to James and John was Boanerges. And that name means sons of thunder. And it would seem to describe their character. You know, when we read the writings of John, we don't think of him as a son of thunder, but it comes out in some of the other Gospels. Hot-blooded and jealous by nature. At least that's my conclusion. In Luke 9, we find that John comes to the Lord very perturbed. He says, Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name. And we told him he had to stop because he doesn't follow with us. Mark gives us the same account. And Mark leaves out one word that Luke has. Mark says, John said, you know, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we forbade him because he follows not us. And you can imagine this young, zealous, hot-headed young man. He's not following with us. He's not following us. He'd better stop. And the Lord rebukes him. A little later on in the chapter, they're going through Samaria on the way up to Jerusalem. The Lord sends some of his disciples ahead to, as we would say, make motel reservations for the group that was coming and register them. And they come to a Samaritan village. And because they're headed for Jerusalem, the Samaritan village says, no room here. No vacancy sign. Gets hung out. And James and John together say to the Lord, and they were right in the area where Elijah had been when the king several times in a row sent a captain of 50 with his 50 soldiers to arrest Elijah. They could probably point to the hill and they could say, Lord, shall we do like Elijah, call down fire from heaven, burn up the works here? You know, from that we conclude that this is what he was by nature. And where do we start? You know, by nature, we may well be like that. The Lord has to tell them, you don't know what spirit you're of. And he points out that the son of man hadn't come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. And you know, John in his life learns to curb that son of thunder disposition. And eventually he's the disciple whom the Lord can use to write about love and about loving one another. He learned to appreciate the love of the Lord Jesus. At that point where he's ready to call down a fire from heaven to consume the Samaritans. Well, at that point, we don't find him leaning on the bosom of the Lord Jesus, leaning on his breast. No. No, he was one of the three that the Lord seemed to take with him when he didn't take the whole group. He took usually Peter, James, and John in the mountain of transfiguration when Jairus's daughter was raised and so on. And I put down ambitious and self-confident. We usually think of Peter in that way. But you know, when Peter said that he was, well, if everyone denies you, I won't, it points out so said they all. And somewhat previously when the mother of John James had come to the Lord, really, they put her up to it, her sons. It was their idea. It comes out elsewhere too. Well, Lord, I want you to do me a favor. What's that? Well, when you rule in your kingdom, my one son sits at your right hand and the other son sits at your left hand. In other words, they have number one and number two spots underneath you and so on. Ambitious, self-confident. The Lord says to those disciples at that time, speaks about the cup which he had to drink. Could they do so? Oh yes, you know, we can. They're quite confident in that. Well, John was learning and we all learn by fits and starts. Intimate with the Lord one day and arguing with his fellow disciples the next day about the place he's going to have. The next section I've headed here, the disciple whom Jesus loved in Luke 22, we find Jesus sending Peter and John to prepare the Passover. We're not told which two disciples got the donkey for the Lord to ride on a few days previous, but in verse 8 of Luke 22, he sent Peter and John saying, go prepare the Passover for us that we may eat it. And as we go on through the life of John, we often find him associated with Peter. There's always Peter and John in that case. Later on in this chapter, verse 23, they began to question together among themselves who then it could be of them who was about to do this, that is, betray the Lord. And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be held to be the greatest. So up until the night where the, before the Lord was crucified, they're still arguing which of them should be the greatest. And we don't read, well, that was an argument between Philip and Nathaniel and Thomas, but it just simply says them. John may well have been involved too. And yet the same night, thank God, we find in his gospel in chapter 13 that he's found leaning on the breast of Jesus, lying in the bosom of Jesus. In John 13, verse 23, there was at the table one of his disciples in the bosom of Jesus, whom Jesus loved. In verse 25, he, leaning on the breast of Jesus, says to him, Lord, who is it? So it's beautiful, and to me it's an encouragement to know that on the very same night where they had been arguing which of them was the greatest, he could be leaning on the bosom, on the breast of the Lord Jesus. And it's a discouragement to realize that on the very night that he's that close to the Lord Jesus, he and the others can still be arguing which of them should be the greatest. But isn't that like ourselves? We learn by fits and starts, and oftentimes those things that are absolutely inconsistent, one with the other, are found side by side in our lives. At Gethsemane, he's one of the three disciples that the Lord took apart, took them a little further than the others, and asked them to watch with him, one of the three that fell asleep. The other eight, Judas, of course, was out to get the crowd to betray the Lord to them, but the other eight also slept. John was one whom the Lord expected a little more of. John, a few hours before, had been leaning on his breast, had been in his bosom, and yet John, like myself, and I suppose we can say like we all, wasn't able to come up to the Lord's expectations that night. We read of the disciples when the Lord was betrayed and arrested and submitted to that, when he allowed himself to be led away that they all forsook him and fled. That was the initial reaction. Later on, we find John following, Peter following at a distance. John comes to the high priest's palace. He's known, he's admitted, and then a while later, Peter gets there, and he's at the gate. Well, who are you? Why do you want to come in at this hour of the night? John goes out to the girl at the door, and on John's word, Peter is let in. Peter gets himself into tremendous difficulty, but John apparently witnessed the trial of the Lord Jesus. While we don't read that he stood at his side or that he raised his voice and said, you're doing the wrong thing. This man is innocent, anything like that. At least he was there, and I'm sure that this in itself was appreciated by the Lord Jesus. At the cross, he's the only disciple mentioned as being at the cross. There were several women, including mother of the Lord Jesus, including John's mother, if Salome was indeed his mother. Mary Magdala, Mary the wife of Clopas, and John. Remember, the Lord Jesus, during those first three hours, turns to his mother and says, probably in some way, I'm not even looking at John. At least John was the only man there. Woman, behold thy son. And to John, he says, behold thy mother. We read that from that hour, John took Mary to his home and cared for her. If there was relationship according to the flesh, it would be something more understandable whether there wasn't. I don't want to say for sure, but the Lord could commit his mother to John's care. John rose to the occasion, and this was a responsibility for the rest of her life that John took on himself. We find in John 20, when Mary Magdalene comes with the news of what had happened, Peter and John run to the tomb. John outstrips Peter, gets there first, but Peter, the bold one, actually goes into the tomb and checks things out. And there we read, John mentions about himself in John chapter 20. In verse 8, then entered in therefore the other disciple also, who came first to the tomb, and he saw and believed. For they had not yet known the scripture that he must rise from among the dead. So this is where John really believes the resurrection. And then we have the experience with one of the ten, where the Lord appears in their midst that evening. Later on in the chapter verse 19, and then a week later, the Lord appears when Thomas is with them also. And yet in chapter 21, we find that when Peter says, I'm going fishing, John is one of those that says, well, I'm going with you. Six disciples followed Peter at that time, among them both James and John. But he's the first one to detect who the stranger on the shore really is. He says, it's the Lord. And notice in verse 7 of chapter 21, that disciple therefore whom Jesus loved says to Peter, it is the Lord. He doesn't say it's Jesus, it's the Lord. And at the end of the chapter, he's quietly following. Peter is asking, well, Lord, what about him? And he's actually following. The last part, we may have to take some of that another time, but at Pentecost, he's one of the 120 upon whom the Holy Spirit came. One of those that were together in the upper room there. And when the crowd comes together, wants to know what's happening, we read that Peter standing up with the 11 said, Peter did the preaching that day. The others stood there with him to back him up. And it's beautiful to see from the resurrection of the Lord Jesus onward, the strife for supremacy, the rivalry among the apostles is gone. From the resurrection, really the ascension of the Lord Jesus in Acts 1, we find a togetherness among the apostles. Well, with Peter, he meets this lame man at the gate. Peter's the one who does the talking, but John is with him. They're working together. In the mouth of two or three witnesses, every matter is to be established. And it's a wonderful thing for two to work together. And John and Peter are working together there. Later on, the apostles send Peter and John to Samaria after Philip has preached there. So the Samaritans have not received the Holy Spirit yet. And Peter and John go and lay hands on them, pray for them, and they receive the Holy Spirit. And I believe in this way, a potential division among Christians was averted. The Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans. The Samaritans, as we saw before, were glad to reciprocate. And, you know, they could have had a Jewish church at Jerusalem, Samaritan church in Samaria, if the Spirit of God hadn't come in in this way, refrained from coming on these Samaritans directly. They needed Peter and John. And Peter and John, John who had asked that he could call fire down from heaven on the Samaritans, had to pray for these Samaritans that they received the Holy Spirit. And we don't find any dimmer on his part at that point. No, this is part of the work the Lord has given him to do. And we find there in Acts 8 that once this has happened, initially to the people that Philip had evangelized, a verse that often is not noticed, verse 25 of Acts 8, they, Peter and John, therefore, having testified and spoken the word of the Lord, returned to Jerusalem and announced the glad tidings to many villages of the Samaritans. The very people that John was ready to burn up, you know, he had gotten close enough to the Lord that now he evangelizes, helps to evangelize Samaria. His brother, James, is the first of the apostles to lose his life for the Lord's sake. In chapter 12 of the Acts, James is put to death. And after that, of course, it's not James and John anymore. But we read of another James coming into the picture, that James the brother of the Lord Jesus, half-brother. And in Galatians 2, we find that Peter, James, and John, Cephas is the other name used for Peter, Cephas and James and John, are pillars in the assembly at Jerusalem. And it's not that, you know, John has advanced one notch, the Lord has put James in ahead of him. But it's actually James, Peter, and John, I believe, there in Galatians. John doesn't mind keeping a back seat. And, you know, we appreciate brethren who are like that. And in that chapter, Galatians 2, we find that he's one of these pillars in the assembly at Jerusalem. And these brethren give the right hand of fellowship to Paul and Bantus, as far as the service that God has given them to do. So he's no longer striving for a position for himself. He's ready to recognize the grace of God in others. And service that God has given others who were not part of this select twelve. Not one of those apostles. No, he was one whom the Lord had called in a different way, to a different service. But the right hand of fellowship, it's not we forbade him because he doesn't follow us. No, Paul had a different ministry. But John would extend the right hand of fellowship to him. Well, ultimately, the Lord uses him to write. And we'll talk about that when we get to the things that he writes. Shall we pray? Gracious God, our Father, we thank thee for thy work in the life of the Apostle John. A young man, early drawn to the Lord Jesus, early exercised about spiritual things, impetuous in seeking a place for himself, and yet he became an honored servant of thine. One whom thou couldst use to set the Lord Jesus before us. He could write, we have contemplated his glory. He loves to write about the Lord Jesus, loves to share him with others, write so that our joy might be full. Oh, our God and our Father, we thank thee as we trace how human the Apostle John was and how much he had to learn. And we take a courage because we're very human, we have much to learn too, and we thank thee for thy patience with us. Teach us to enjoy the Lord Jesus, to behold his glory, to contemplate his glory, to think of who he is. And our Father, to have this earnest burning desire to share him with others. Help us too that we may not seek to thrust ourselves into prominence, to take the first place, to do all the talking, but oh... …

… We began last night by looking at the life of the Apostle John. We noted that he was probably the youngest of the Apostles. He outlived all the others. He lived until close to 100 AD, so he was probably in his 90s, at least very late 80s when the Lord took him home. And we didn't quite finish with that outline that I have at the bottom. The Lord had said, and this is recorded in the end of John's Gospel, if I will that he abide till I come, what is that to thee? He said that to Peter. And many have taken from this, and I believe rightfully so, that the writings of the Apostle John are particularly relevant in that time before the Lord comes. The writings of the Apostle John are very relevant now. But on the other hand, it was a very literal statement. Other disciples picked it up and misinterpreted it. And many times it seems we pick up something from the Word and twist it to suit our purpose. John records, and he's the last one of the Apostles living at the time, that there were those who said, well John isn't going to die. And he says, that isn't what the Lord said. But the Lord said, if I will that he, you know, remain until I come. Peter, what business is that of yours? And it's good, you know, when we quote the Word of God, and when we use the Word of God, that we quote it accurately, and that we use it according to the purpose for which the Lord has given the Word. Now after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, and by that time, of course, Christianity had been spread to many, many places. And the Jews were dispersed from their own land. We're not sure at what point the Apostle John left Palestine, left Judea, Jerusalem. But if he hadn't left before, certainly after that time. Church history tells us that John eventually wound up at Ephesus, and that he spent the balance of his days in and around Ephesus, except for the time where he was exiled to the island of Patmos. And that's where we'll find this afternoon, God willing, that the Lord used him to write the letter to, or the letters to the seven churches, and the entire book of Revelation. But that's apparently where he spent his latter years, and Ephesus was the main city of the Roman province of Asia, which is a small part of what is now Turkey. And so John would be acquainted, personally acquainted, with the surrounding assemblies too. He spent time on Patmos. We're not told how long, but it may well have been a year or more before the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus. As a very aged man, probably under the Emperor Domitian, he was exiled to that island. It's an island off the coast of Turkey. They say it's a very rocky island, sun beats down on it, it's hot, nothing wants to grow too well there. And they thought they had him silenced, and from that the Lord has given us a book without which scripture would not be complete. There he was commissioned to write. Now we are not told anywhere which of his five writings came first, second, third, fourth, and fifth. We find his commission to write in the Revelation. It may well be that he wrote his other writings afterwards. I don't know, but all the evidence is that whatever John wrote, he wrote as a very aged man. The Revelation presents to us the ultimate victory of the Lord Jesus. I've often said, and I don't mind saying it again, that I like to read, and when I pick up a book I usually start somewhere other than the beginning. I look at the latter part of the book, I may look in the middle, start reading a chapter or two just to get an idea of what it's about, how it works out, and if I like it then I'll start at the beginning. And somehow I, you know, what I really appreciate about the Revelation is that it shows us the ultimate victory of the Lord Jesus. You know, things seem so bad, and things are getting worse in the world. We're all in agreement on that, I'm sure, but the final outcome is going to be wonderful. It'll be triumphant, be to his glory, and the Scripture wouldn't be complete without that book of Revelation. They say, one of the church fathers writes that the Apostle John, when he got to be very old, past 90 years old, wasn't able to go to the meetings unassisted anymore, and Brethren had to carry him to the meetings. He wasn't able to give ministry as he once had, but he would come to the meetings, church history tells us, and he would say little children love one another. You know, that's the, really the ultimate in application of John's ministry for Christians. Little children love one another. His ministry is filled with Christ. Its application is for us. He writes of, I put it, the affectionate elder. Very important. Well, now we want to go on to the Gospel, and I've never tried to speak on the whole Gospel of John in one session, but may the Lord help us with it. It's written late in John's life, as his other books are also. The synoptic Gospels had probably all been written before the fall of Jerusalem, so they were in existence some 25, possibly even 30 years before John writes his Gospel. Now, you know, if human writers are going to write on a certain subject that has already been written on, the general idea is to try to find something that hasn't been said on that subject, something that is original, something that is going to characterize your book or your article in contrast to the others. I don't believe that John wrote with those objects. Holy men of God, we read in Scripture, spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. And yet the Gospel of John, in some respects, is something like a thumb to the fingers. You know, it's part of the hand, yes. It's one of the books that gives us the life of the Lord Jesus, and yet it's quite different from the other three. And we need it along with the other three, just like we need our thumb along with our fingers. The Gospel of Matthew, we're well acquainted with the fact that it presents the Lord Jesus as the object of prophecy, the King and Messiah of Israel, the promised one. One of Matthew's favorite phrases is, you know, that it came to pass as the Prophet said, or as it was written, something like that. Matthew always alludes to prophecy and shows how prophecy is fulfilled in the Lord Jesus. The Gospel of Mark presents us, the Lord Jesus, as God's perfect servant, here on earth. And others have said Mark presents the Lord Jesus as the Prophet, as the one who was God's mouthpiece, here on earth. And therefore also Mark doesn't present us with a genealogy or an account of the birth of the Lord Jesus. If you're hiring a servant, you're not interested in where he was born, who his parents were, all that sort of thing. What you're interested in is, can he do the job or not? So, I mean, there are very interesting reasons why the Spirit of God presents certain things by this writer, certain things by that writer. Luke is used to present the man Christ Jesus. And if you notice, his genealogy goes back further than Matthew's does. His genealogy goes back to Adam and back to God. And Luke presents us the Lord Jesus, and I don't know how many, how many times he's sitting at the table. He's invited to meals in the Gospel of Luke. But you know, if there's one place where people open up, it tends to be when they're sitting at the table with a good meal before them. And we find the Lord Jesus, the perfect man, and doing much of his teaching in that kind of setting in the Gospel of Luke. And there's so many, many things that to present as the manhood, the perfect manhood of the Lord Jesus, including the perfect boyhood of the Lord Jesus. John, again, says nothing about his boyhood, about his birth, about his ancestry. Well, it makes a couple references to it, where he quotes the Jews as making derogatory references to it. But John presents us the Son of God come from heaven. We read yesterday in the first chapter of the Gospel of John, and we'd like to turn there again for a moment. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things received being through him, and without him not one thing received being, which has received being. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light appears in darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not. We commented last night already as to the Word. The Word is the expression of a thought, and the Lord Jesus is the full expression of the mind of God, and he is God. So we find this in these verses. He is God, and yet he is a distinct person in the Godhead, and one tries to speak very carefully in speaking about these things. These are holy things, and we cannot define God in any way, and yet we want to fully accept and welcome and appreciate all that Scripture says on the subject of the person of the Lord Jesus. And he is going to be before us in this gospel in all his dignity, in all his glory. You know, this is the gospel where his cross is not born, part of the way by a Simon of Cyrene. He bears his cross. You know, the Son of God, even for something like that, is not viewed as needing the help that the man, Jesus, humanly speaking, could use. And I don't want to even say that he needed it, but his cross was put on another part way. But, you see, John doesn't mention these things. There's an interesting book that I would recommend to all of you who want to go into the Gospels and the Lord Jesus as he's presented in the Gospels, especially in view of these differences. Brother Corbroyne in England, while he was still a missionary in Lebanon, wrote a book which is entitled The Divine Design in the Gospels. Corbroyne's Believer's Bookshelf sells at $9.25, and I recommend it. But he goes in, he compares the accounts given us in the four Gospels, and not from the standpoint of tearing them apart as so many human critics do, but from the standpoint of showing the divine design in the Gospels and what the Holy Spirit is trying to bring out in each one, and why this is mentioned here and left out there, or why it's mentioned in this way here and perhaps passed over with just a half a sentence or something like that elsewhere. It's a very good book. Another book that I wish were available in English, which was a help to me in studying on this subject, is a book by Brother George Andre, entitled The Apostle John and His Ministry. It doesn't go into the full scope of what we intend to go into, but it's a beautiful book, and I've borrowed a few thoughts from him. The thoughts the Lord gives, he gives in various ways, sometimes through one's own meditation and oftentimes through one's reading, and I'm not ashamed or afraid to pick up that which he's given through others. But I wish that book were available in English, because it's a lovely book. It's written in French, it's been translated into German, so maybe somebody will have it in English. We saw last night, as we read verses 14 to 18 of John 1, that John speaks of having contemplated the glory of the word become flesh, and we emphasize that word contemplated, which Mr. Darby uses in his translation. We cannot get acquainted with the Lord by giving him a fleeting glance once in a while. In order to appreciate and enjoy the Lord Jesus, we've got to spend time looking at him, and he's the one that we never tire of spending time with him, really contemplating him. I think in this part of the country, the word study is used sometimes in that sense. I studied about it, thought about it, gave time to it. Time is a commodity that is getting increasingly rare in today's world, but if we really want to enjoy the Lord Jesus, we've got to take our time with him. And John, not only did he contemplate the Lord during those three, three and a half years that he walked with him, from this time in his gospel where John the Baptist points to the Lord Jesus, behold the Lamb of God, and he and Andrew follow, and the Lord sees them following, and he says, what are you looking for? What seek ye? And they say, I guess they were kind of shocked that he turned around and asked them that bluntly, something like myself, when I went to my mother-in-law's home for the first time, and before I got in the house, she turned to me in her broken Hungarian English and asked me if I wanted her daughter. So I had to commit myself right there. But you know, the Lord Jesus turned just that abruptly to these two men who were following him, and he said, what seek ye? Well, Lord, where dwellest thou? Where do you dwell? And the Lord said, come and see. And they not only came and saw, but they stayed with him that day. We noted that they went back to their fishing for a while before the Lord called them to really follow him, but here in John's gospel, John gets acquainted with the Lord. There's a three-and-a-half-year period before, between this and the Lord's death, where he can contemplate his glory as he walks with him, observes him day after day in all kinds of situations, and I believe the 65 or 70 years afterwards, before the Lord finally took him home, were spent in contemplating the glory of the Lord Jesus. Now, the aim of John's gospel, we find stated near the end. In chapter 20, let's turn there. In chapter 20, he comes, it seems, to a conclusion. It almost seems as though chapter 21 is an addendum to the book, a PS on it, and yet the book certainly wouldn't be complete without it in any way. But at the end of chapter 20, it would seem that we're coming to the conclusion. It's not fully the conclusion, but it is the purpose of the book. Verse 30, "...many other signs therefore also Jesus did before his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life in his name." This is the purpose of the gospel of John. And this is John wrote with definite method. Luke indicates that he wrote with method. He wrote very deliberately. Luke was a medical doctor who's an excellent historian, and he writes his gospel basically in a moral order, brings things that fit together together, and without necessarily just taking everything in chronological order. Acts we have in chronological order. He was able to write in chronological order, but his gospel, he says, he wrote with method. And John also writes with real purpose, with real method. And he mentions fewer of the Lord's miracles than the other apostles do, and he mentions a number that are not mentioned by the others. But he is referring here to signs that Jesus did before his disciples, and in John's gospel, the miracles are not miracles, but they're signs. He picks out certain ones that show who the Lord is in relation to creation, being able to turn water into wine. Now, as the Creator, he turns water into wine. The grapevine, I'll use a very layman's term, sucks up the water from the ground, and the sun beats down on it, and we know the heliphorophil and so on, everything works. The grapevine tries to go to seed and to put something around the seed that has sugar in it for nourishment and so on, and, you know, it makes grapes. We had some for breakfast. Well, man has even bred the grapes so that the seeds, the purpose for them, are not there anymore. You breed most of them out, just to have the part you enjoy. But, you know, eventually, those grapes, if they're crushed, and even if they're not crushed, if they hang and get picked at a little bit or so, it ferments and you can get the wine. Well, God can do this in creation through the processes that he has designed. The Lord Jesus can do it instantaneously, too. He is the God of creation. And then we find in Chapter 4, there's a boy, or a servant, rather. No, it's the son of a noble man who has gotten sick, and this noble man goes to see the Lord Jesus and to share his concern, to ask him to do something about his boy, and the Lord says, well, just go right on home, he's well now. And, you know, the Lord, who can and does use doctors, and who says that it's not the well people that need the doctor, but the sick people. I mean, he even points out the value of the doctor, that he is God. He can act against sickness at a distance, without medication, without a prescription, without so much rest, without so... When the man goes home, his servants meet him on the way, and they say, your boy is absolutely well. And he says, well, when did that happen? It suddenly happened at so-and-so this hour, and he says, well, that's exactly when I was talking with the Lord. And so, each miracle in the Gospel of John is a sign, and we read here that Jesus did many other signs as well. But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the One sent by God. These are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, ye might have life in his name. The last of those signs that is given us, is in chapter 11 of the book, when Lazarus, a close personal friend, got sick. And it tells us, specifically in that chapter, that Jesus loved Martha, Lazarus' sister, and her sister, that's Mary, the one who had sat at his feet, and Lazarus. They were convinced of the fact that he loved them, so when Lazarus got sick, they sent word, he whom thou lovest is sick. And I'm sure they were shocked when the messenger came back, and came back alone, and nothing had happened. The Lord hadn't healed from afar, and the Lord didn't come along. And the messenger, Martha and Mary, probably said, what did he say, what did he do? He didn't do anything. He's busy there, he's going to stay a while. I don't know if he's coming, when he's coming. You can imagine what those sisters felt like. And yet scripture says that Jesus loved, and mentions each of the three. And then a couple days later, the Lord, a couple days after getting the message, the Lord says to his disciples, let's go there. And he lets them understand that Lazarus had fallen asleep. He wasn't just sick, he had died. And they couldn't understand this, why the Lord would put himself into danger, arrive a few days after the funeral, when the Lord finally arrives with his disciples. Lazarus has been buried four days already. In fact, his sister Martha doesn't want the grave open, because he stinks. She's very blunt about it. And yet, this is the one whom, in the Gospel of John, the Lord Jesus raises from the dead. In a way that shows his love and his concern, we find the Lord weeping with the sisters, with the mourning friends. And this hit them awfully hard. Four days after the funeral is over, they're still just sitting in the house mourning, and their friends are there to comfort them. You know, in our society, yes, there is grief. But many times, four days after the funeral, you know, we've gotten back to work, and gone back to the job, and we're trying to carry on life. This has hit these sisters awfully hard. And the Lord calls this dead man out of the grave, gives him life. The last of the signs, of course, in John 21, we have still another one. It looks on typically to the Millennium, and what the Lord will do there. But the miracles in the Gospel of John are definite signs given, each one of them. And it's interesting to meditate on them, and to see what glory of the Lord Jesus is revealed in each one of these signs. How each one contributes to presenting him as the Son of God, walking, as we had in Chapter 1, the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us. And you know, I can just see John writing that at age 90 plus, to think that the Word, the full expression of the mind of God, that he became flesh, and lived here among us. Among people like us, fishermen, ordinary, common people. You know, in Acts, the King James translation refers to the disciples at one point as ignorant and unlearned fishermen. Now, when we see their writings, we know that they were not ignorant. But as far as the Jewish scribes and Pharisees and chief priests were concerned, that's what they were. They were Galileans. They hadn't had the theological training. They couldn't say, like Paul, I've sat at the feet of Rabbi Gamaliel, you know, and picked up all his wisdom, and all these disciples whom the Lord called the very ordinary people. Well, they knew how to read and write and so on, but they didn't have all the finesse of the scholarly training of the rabbis and so on. And they got along very well without it. And you know, today when I see seminaries and even many Bible schools, much of what is taught tends to be critical of God's Word, and tends to go against the thoughts of God. Thank God, there are places where the Word is faithfully taught in the measure that it's understood. But these places are few and far between. And like I say, it's in the measure in which it's understood. I had one professor when I was in school for a couple of religion courses. He was a godly man, a saved man, despite his titles, etc. And these were simply required courses at the university I went to a couple of years. It was not that I was going for that purpose. But, you know, we were in full agreement that what the basis of our salvation was, the work of the Lord Jesus on Calvary. And this man was really a lonely man in his position, and he would, you know, had he stood and had he comprehended and stood for the whole truth of God, he wouldn't have had his titles, and I don't believe he would have had the position that he had. But I felt sorry for him. We often had discussions together. He was an older man, but I appreciated the man. Godly, trying to do what he could. He told me once that in his required course, I forget how many students he had, at least 75 students, he said, I was the only one that had any interest in the subject whatsoever. The others took it because it was required. Well, anyway, I'm getting back to John here. These are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Notice, John is very specific what the purpose of his gospel is. He's presenting Jesus as the one sent by God, the Christ. He's presenting him as the Son of God. And what is the purpose of writing this gospel that believing ye might have life in his name. John has to record, and I believe he does so to his own shame, although he's no different from us. We noted it yesterday in the same 20th chapter in verse 8, then entered in to the grave. Therefore, the other disciple also, who came first to the tomb, and he saw and believed. And remember, later on in the chapter, Thomas sees the marks of the nails and nail prints in the hands of the Lord, the spear print in his side, and the Lord says to him in verse 29, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed. Blessed they who have not seen and have believed. There's a greater blessing for us who have not literally seen and have simply accepted the report. And notice the little painting back there this morning. I hadn't seen it before. Who have believed our report. And the book is open to Isaiah, and you know, it fits here. We believe, but this is why the gospel is written, that believing he might have life in his name. The Lord knew, and I'm sure that John looking ahead could see, as a very old man, that there were going to be a lot more that had never personally seen the Lord, and that needed to hear who he was, and that he was the Son of God come into the world. You know, at this time, there was a very bad teaching that had really started to blossom out. The Apostle Paul is already writing against it when he writes his letter to the Colossians. The teaching is called Gnosis, G-N-O-S-I-S, is apparently the Greek word, or one Greek word for knowledge. And these people felt that they had a superior knowledge, and that, you know, if you had the right connections, and you had to have quite a few connections between yourself and God, but you know, this was the way to go. John points out that the Lord Jesus is the Word, and that he is God, and you know, John just dispenses with all these intermediary beings between man and God. You don't have to go through this one, that one, that one, up the channel. No, you have direct access, and one of the things that the Lord Jesus does while he's here, before he leaves, he puts his disciples into direct access and direct contact with the Father, not just with God. An Israelite could pray to God, yes, normally he came through the priests and with the offerings, and so on. But the Lord Jesus, before he leaves, tells his disciples in John 16 about praying to the Father, praying in his name, and then he tells them these wonderful words. The Father himself loves you, and he uses not the ordinary word for the love of God, not this word agapau, which speaks of the love flowing out from the heart of God. God is love, and the love has to manifest itself. He uses, as an exception, the other word which speaks of the love of friendship. You know, when Paul saw something attractive in Linda, he was drawn to her, and this is the word that the Lord uses here. He says the Father himself has been drawn to you, loves you in that sense, because you've loved me and have believed that I came out from God. Isn't this wonderful that God, I mean it's wonderful, God so loved the world that he gave, that's the agapau, but also God is drawn to those whom he has drawn to the Lord Jesus and who have responded to that call, and he himself loves us, and therefore we can go directly to him. We come in the name of his son, the one who is precious to him, and you know, John brings this out in his gospel. Just, you know, one could speak on these kind of things all day long. There's so many precious things, and we're not going to get through the gospel of John, we're not going to take it just in chronological order, but I'm trying to bring out a few things that, a few of the precious characteristics of the gospel of John. Well, these Gnostics, you know, they believed they had a superior knowledge of God by coming through angels, through higher beings, and the New Age movement today is one more revival of the ancient Gnostic heresies. Jehovah Witness teaching emphasizes another aspect of the Gnostic heresies, that the Lord Jesus is not God the son. He may be the son of God, they say, a son of God, but he's not God the son, and so on. Satan hasn't really come up with much that's new. He's a counterfeiter, and every once in a while he revives some bad teaching and brings it up again, and he's found men were suckers for it a long time ago, and they're suckers for it today in some other guise, and that's how it goes, and that's why the gospel of John and the writings of John are particularly relevant for our day. With all the teaching of New Age and the Eastern religions and, you know, that man has to somehow work his way up, it's good to know that God came down and dwelt among us, and that he's made direct access to the Father, and that God is now Father, and because the Lord Jesus is our Savior and our Lord. Another thing that John does in his gospel, to a greater degree than the synoptic gospels, each person of the Godhead is presented very clearly. The Lord Jesus, of course, is the central focus of John's gospel, of all the gospels of the New Testament, of Scripture as a whole. Everything centers on him, but here in this gospel, after a number of chapters that really center and focus on the Lord Jesus, we find the Lord giving his own, not the world as such. I mean, he mentions the Father to the world, but hardly, but he really concentrates on teaching his own who the Father is and the relationship that he is going to open for us to the Father, and he also spends time teaching his own who the Holy Spirit is, and that when he goes back to the Father, he's going to send down the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit couldn't come here to the earth as a divine person to live and to indwell people, to indwell the church as a whole. It couldn't do that until the Lord Jesus was glorified. But, you know, the Lord Jesus tells us about the person and the mission of the Holy Spirit, and we have more about that subject in the gospel of John than we do anywhere else in Scripture. So each of the persons of the Godhead are clearly set forth in this gospel, wonderfully set forth. What book is it when a person comes to receive the Lord Jesus as Savior? You know, so often John 3.16 has been used to bring a person to the Lord. Well, the gospel in a nutshell, it's been called. I wonder how many sermons have been preached on John 3.16. You know, they tell stories of, they speak of this English preacher Henry Morehouse who came to the U.S. a century ago, a little over a century ago. He was invited to speak at the Moody Memorial Church, whatever was its predecessor in Chicago. Anyway, he spoke the first night on John 3.16, and he was so full. The second night he spoke on John 3.16. When Moody returned after a week of absence, and his brother had been filling in for him, he found his brother had been speaking every night on John 3.16. And he comes to the meeting that night, and the brother gets up and says, well, you know, all Scripture is so full, has so much to give. Well, there's one Scripture the Lord had just given on his heart. He couldn't seem to speak on any other topic that night. Let's turn to John 3.16. So, you know, a full week. And I'm sure that he could have gone on well beyond that time, had time been allotted to him. But, you know, once a person comes to the Lord, you tell them, read the Bible. Well, where should I start? Gospel of John, which one single gospel is probably most often given to people, the Gospel of John. To reach out, it's given instead of a gospel tract. If there's anything that'll lead a person to the Lord, it's reading this gospel. And yet, it's the most profound of the gospels. It has the deepest teaching. It's what an old Christian, well-matured in the faith, experienced with the Lord. You know, somehow he loves the Gospel of John. And there's so much to see there. And it's wonderful to have this book written in this way, that the babe in Christ, or the unsaved person who hasn't heard the word before, can grasp it from that gospel. And it's that which the Father in Christ thoroughly enjoys. Into two main parts, chapters 1 to 12, and bring before us the life and ministry of the Lord walking through this scene. Chapters 13 to 21 bring before us the events of the last night that the Lord was with his own, the day that he was crucified, the day that he rose from the dead, and a couple other incidents after his resurrection. These parts, of course, can be subdivided and so on. But I just say, the major break in the Gospel of John is between chapters 12. And you'll find the last part of chapter 12 is really a summary of what has gone before in the gospel. And then you have these next chapters with their first summary, the verses we read at the end of chapter 20, and then like a little addendum, chapter 21, and finally we get to John's summary at the end of chapter 21, where he states, verse 24, this is the disciple who bears witness concerning these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his witness is true. And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which if they were written one by one, I suppose that not even the world itself would contain the books written. And you know, the supposition, there's one thing, I suppose, no one might say, well John, you didn't know how big the world was. But remember, this, even this, I suppose, is written by inspiration. And I believe God is wanting to tell us, you don't know how big my son is, how great he is, if you'd go into every detail of what he's ever done, the world itself wouldn't hold the books. And you know, a very fitting conclusion for the gospel of the Son of God, that the world wouldn't hold the books written to describe the things that he did, if one went into detail one by one. Brother Andre, in his book, points out a rather interesting analogy between the gospel of John and the tabernacle. I've never read this anywhere else, and I just mention it. You know, as one was in the tabernacle, looking up at the curtains overhead, or even the veil and the curtain at the entrance, there was basically four colors. The first color to be mentioned is the blue. This is what John presents, the Lord come down from heaven. We have the scarlet, the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ shed for our sins. We have the purple, his royalty. And we have the fine, twined linen, the white, his perfect manhood. In one sense, they bring before us the four gospels, and yet they're intertwined. We can find every one of them in the gospel of John. But then, as a person came into the tabernacle enclosure, the first thing he encountered was the brazen altar. You don't get very far into the gospel of John after the introduction to the person of the Lord Jesus, before you come to Nicodemus and the serpent lifted up as the Lord tells him about. He's just to be born again. What is the way? The son of man must be lifted up. God so loved the world that he gave, and so on. When you went farther, you came to the labor. In the gospel of John, as you come to the second part, you really come into the sanctuary, in a sense. In John 13, we find the Lord washing the feet of his own, before they can enter into the holy place. The things that he wants to tell them that are just for them, and that second half of the gospel of John is really for the believers. The world is behind us. It's the dealings of the Lord with his own now. You have the cleansing at the labor. When you get inside that holy place, there is so much more. In the holy place, in the tabernacle, there were essentially three objects. You would see the table, which had on it the loaves of showbread. You would see the candlestick, the lampstand, and you would see the golden altar of incense. The lampstand was the only thing that gave light inside of the holy place. The full light of heaven is really shed by the Lord Jesus in these chapters. The full light for his own. We see how concerned he is about his own. We see him presenting them to God as the showbread. These chapters really bring us into worship and our relationship with the Father. One can go beyond that. We go into the most holy place. The ark of the covenant was there. The atonement was made there. We have the chapters that bring before us. First of all, we have John 17, the prayer of the Lord. It brings us into the most holy place. We are standing there listening to him pray. We have the death of the Lord Jesus. Then we have the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. The word sent by Mary, go to my brethren. Tell them I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. The veil is rent. You have access. You have full access to God. He's now not only my Father and my God, but he's your Father and your God too. I appreciate it. The brother's writings on this, I'm not presenting all that he gave, but just to see this analogy. It's not the whole gospel. As far as some themes of the gospel of John, while you have a framework in a way, in the first chapter there are three days. In chapters one and two, and in chapters 20 and 21, there are three post-resurrection appearances of the Lord to his disciples. The three days in the first chapters, in a typical way, present the Lord at three separate times and to three separate groups. The same times and groups are referred to in the appearings at the end. The 21st chapter of John, the second chapter of John, the last of these three, bring before us the millennial blessing. We find Israel, Philip and Nathanael in chapter one, and unbelieving Thomas in this chapter. We find them before the millennium. The first ones, of course, are his disciples as a whole, and John and Andrew, who come believing, really picturing ourselves now. I'm taking this backwards, but this is sort of the framework because we have, in one sense, a thing mentioned here and repeated there again. In between, there are five chapters each on these three Ls. Five chapters, chapters three to seven, that emphasize the Lord Jesus being the life. We read of him as, in him was life, and the life was the light of men, and so on. But these chapters emphasize life. He must be born again, and so on. I'm not going to trace out the details because we're nearing the end of our time. But then chapters eight through twelve, what is emphasized in these chapters particularly is the light. There are many other things, but there the light is emphasized. Chapters thirteen to seventeen, we see love emphasized. The crucifixion is, of course, the manifestation, how these things all come together, don't they? Those two chapters stand by themselves, chapters eighteen and nineteen. But these are things I'm just putting down here, things that you can study out for yourself. That's one reason to have a handout, so that you have something beyond what the speaker said. Some of the special features, and I'll just run through the ones we haven't taken very quickly. Well, we took the first one, the eight recorded miracles are all viewed as signs. Seven times in the Gospel of John, the Lord Jesus says, I am. These I am's are very precious, and again give us a very full picture. Although there are more that could be added, but it gives us a very nice balance. Seven is the perfect number of who the Lord Jesus is, and I am was the title by which God revealed himself to his people in Exodus chapter two, I believe it is. God spoke to Moses when Moses asked, you know, what name he should give the Israelites. Who sent you? Who sent me? I am that I am, and the Lord Jesus uses that title. He is God here on earth. I am. I am whatever you need, essentially. Very few parables. The ones who are given are signs. The Gospel of John gives us very frequent encounters of the Lord with individuals, gives us details of their conversation, and to think that the word became flesh and dwelt among us, took an interest in individuals here. Yes, he would talk with the theological expert. He would also talk with the woman who was living with the sixth man that had come into her life, and that was an outcast in society, and so on. The Lord took time with individuals. It's so beautiful to see that in the Gospel of John. In the other Gospels, sometimes when the Lord is speaking to an individual, it's with a definite background of having others listening in. In John's Gospel, the Lord also deals with individuals on a purely individual basis, as if he had all the time in the world for that person, and it's precious. He has that for us, too. The miracles and events in John's Gospel are often followed up and lead to the Lord giving teaching. The encounter with the adulterous woman in chapter 8 leads to the teaching, I am the light of the world, and all that came out of that. The encounter with the man born blind leads to the beautiful 10th chapter of the Gospel of John, the Lord being the Good Shepherd. The Lord had found this man after he was thrown out of the synagogue, had brought him to himself, the man worshipped him, and then he's attacked by the Pharisees for that, and the Lord speaks about those who come in other ways, and so on, and I'm the Good Shepherd. The events lead to the teaching in this Gospel. Always before us in the Gospel is the cross. Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world. Even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. You can trace this through the Gospel. The shadow of the cross lies over the whole Gospel. This is why the Son of Man, or the Son of God, I should say, had come into the world. The Upper Room Discourse, books have been written on it, these chapters 14 to 16, although part of that was actually spoken outside the Upper Room. The Lord says, arise, let's go hence, and they are on the way to Gethsemane, and part of that discourse is there. The 13th and 17th chapters belong with it too, but these are very precious things. In John's writings, we find the family of God. We find the Father is presented in a way that he is not in other areas. I mean, the Father is spoken of elsewhere, but the Father's affections are particularly before us in John's Gospel. The fact that the Father loves the Son is distinctly stated in John's Gospel. The Lord Jesus here in this world was very conscious and appreciative of the fact that the Father loves the Son. We have commented already, the Holy Spirit, his task here in this world, his personality, his object, and so these things are all brought before us in the Gospel of John. The enemies of the Lord Jesus are referred to as the Jews, again and again in this Gospel. This Gospel was written after the destruction of Jerusalem, after the Jews had been dispersed, and John views them as these people who were against the Lord, and this is the result of their enmity. Well, there's a lot more that could be said, but we'll stop here. Thank you for giving me those extra two or three minutes there. …

… We took up the whole Gospel of John, but we couldn't get to all the details of it, of course. This afternoon, since we did so well this morning, we're going to take up three books, at least in this session. We'll take up the epistles of John, and again, we'll be doing quite a bit of skimming. Hopefully, our appetites get whetted, so that we dig some more ourselves. We've mentioned already that the writings of John, as far as we know, all date from the latter part of his long, fruitful life for the Lord. Probably all written in the 90s A.D. You know, the Apostle Paul was martyred approximately 64, 66 A.D., 67 A.D., somewhere in there. So, the Apostle Paul was with the Lord about a quarter of a century already, when the Apostle John writes his epistles. The Apostle Paul, you know, to him, there were a number of things entrusted to him that were mysteries that had not been revealed previously. And the biggest of these, I suppose we should say, is the mystery of the Church, the relationship between Christ and the Church. We have the Lord's coming, the rapture, and so on. Also, there are a number of things that he speaks of as the Lord having given him from heaven. The Apostle Peter emphasizes the kingdom, the kingdom of God. The Apostle John writes very late in life. He writes for believers, at least his epistles are particularly for believers. And he's writing, presenting the family of God. Now, let's read in the first epistle of John. We'll read in the first chapter a few verses. Let's read. And the light has been manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and report to you the eternal life which was with the Father and has been manifested to us. That which we have seen and heard, we report to you that ye also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is indeed with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And these things write we to you that your joy may be full. Here we find a portion of the aim of the book, and this is really John's introduction. Three times in Scripture we find a book beginning with the beginning. Genesis 1.1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. John 1.1, in the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And now, in 1 John, we read of that which was from the beginning. But each of the beginnings are really different beginnings. John 1.1 takes us back farthest. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And you know, we can't go back any farther than that. Whatever we can go back to, to the beginning, the Word was. The Word was with God, the Word was God. And Moses tells us in the 90th Psalm, from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. So, you know, we can never get back to the beginning of God, because in the beginning, God was there. Genesis 1.1 takes us back to the beginning of this creation. In the beginning, God, who was already there, created heaven and earth. And, you know, there are various theories as to what happened next. But, and of course, many theories even as to how things started. The date for that beginning has been set by some scientists at 15 billion years ago, right or wrong. You know, it seems that when it comes to the scientific theories as to the age of the earth, every 20 years, the age of the earth has doubled. You know, you don't want to go too much by what man says. Man takes his guess. He hopes it's an educated guess. But what God says in his Word is definite and not to be questioned. And there we read in Genesis that in the beginning, God created. Now what we have here in the epistle of John is the beginning, shall we say, of Christianity. Shall we, I'm using terms a little bit loosely here. We might say the beginning of the new creation. That which was from the beginning. And he says that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes. Actually, you know, the Lord Jesus goes back as we've seen in John 1.1. At the very beginning of anything we can go back to, he was already there. But John is now going to speak of the beginnings really of Christianity. And he, you know, it began with Christ. John loves to speak of Christ. And he says, which we have heard. Now we weren't at the beginning in John 1.1. We were not at the beginning in Genesis 1.1. And at the time of writing, the apostle John was the last one left here who was at the beginning of what he's writing about. And he's pointing out not just a time, but he's pointing to a person with whom this new creation that we enjoy has begun. The person around whom Christianity centers. And he says we've heard that which was from the beginning. We've seen with our eyes. And again, he uses that term, and I like this term in the Darby translation, and I'm sticking with the Darby translation in these talks on John, that which we contemplated. We spent time thinking about it, about him. We've contemplated. And our hands handled. Art brought this before us this morning when it came to the resurrection and the Lord standing before his disciples. Well, you know, touch me and see. The spirit has not flesh and bone such as I have. Well, before the crucifixion as well as after the resurrection, the disciples had the opportunity physically to touch the Lord Jesus. And we saw that John lay on his breast. John was in his bosom, lying on his breast, and was, I believe, really the physical, practically leaning against the Lord as they were together at the Last Supper. In his bosom, it would speak of that place of affection. You know, physically we can lean on someone's breast and still perhaps be far from them in thought, but John was both. But here he speaks about which our hands have handled, concerning the word of life. And the second verse is a parenthesis here. The life has been manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and report to you the eternal life which was with the Father and has been manifested to us. Isn't this wonderful? The eternal life which was with the Father. It took me a long time to learn that eternal life doesn't just mean to exist forever. Because the unbeliever is never said to have eternal life, but once a human life begins, it goes on forever. Any person born into this world will continue to exist forever, either with the Lord, in glory and bliss, or in eternal condemnation in hell. But eternal condemnation in hell is spoken of as the second death, and not ever as eternal life. Eternal life, the Lord Jesus says in John 17, this is life eternal that they might know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. And you know the word knowing, as it's used in Scripture, generally denotes more than knowing about. You know, Adam, when God brought Eve to him, in fact, actually after they were expelled from the garden, we find that Adam knew Eve, his wife, and a child resulted from this. So the knowledge, knowing in Scripture, is usually something much more intense than knowing about. It speaks of a relationship. Adam knew his wife, there was a relationship there, and there were consequences of that relationship. And while our relationship with the Lord Jesus isn't the sexual relationship of a husband and wife, it is an intimate relationship. And this is life eternal that they might know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. And the thought there is not only knowing who he is and knowing something about him, but of being in relationship with the only true God and with Jesus Christ. That is the essence of eternal life. Yes, it goes on forever. Thank God for that. But it's a relationship that continues forever, a loving and appreciated relationship. Any relationship of knowing a human being, in the sense that Scripture uses the term, ultimately comes to an end. But this relationship that we have with God the Father and with the Lord Jesus, thank God, will never end. And there are songs that say sweeter as the days go by. Well, the Apostle John, as an old man, meditating on these things, he mentions the wonder of it, the eternal life which was with the Father and has been manifested to us. We have this opened up before us. You know, it took several years of walking with the Lord Jesus for these disciples to come to know him and to appreciate him. And John had lived on perhaps 65 years beyond that before he writes here. And he's still speaking of that eternal life has been manifested to us. And it's not something that one just quickly grasped. We may be saved in an instant, but we have a lot of growing to do in our appreciation of the Lord Jesus. But now we come to his purpose here in verse 3. He says, that which we have seen and heard, we report to you. Now remember, John is the last of the 12 apostles left. And others have gone on. False teachers have come in. We spoke of the Gnostics this morning. I mentioned them, Art mentioned them too from a couple of different directions. And these people, we find in the first epistle of John how there was a denying of the real deity of the Lord Jesus. Oh, you know, you went to God through a series of intermediate beings. But we have the Son of God who is himself God and a direct relationship with him. And they denied the incarnation of the Son of God too. That Jesus Christ was come in flesh. You know, that he was there. He was a person from eternity past. He's the eternal Son and he's come in the flesh. You know, there are people today who will teach you that Jesus became the Son of God when he was born into this world. And there are others who say that, well, at his baptism he received the Christ consciousness. Or, you know, when he was a boy at age 12 he was awakening to a sense of who he really was. And he said, I must be about my father's business. This is nonsense and it's worse than nonsense. It's blasphemous teaching about the person of the Lord Jesus. Well, John is writing really to combat that kind of teaching as one who had personally known the Lord Jesus, had personally been called to follow him, had personally enjoyed the relationship with him. He is writing for the benefit of those whom he calls little children. And he uses that term and unfortunately our King James Bible has the translation of children and sons and little children. It really has it messed up. In this way, I again would recommend the Darby translation when it comes to a very careful distinguishing of these terms. Because the King James translators, one of their instructions, sad to say, was the instruction that a high school teacher will give the class when it comes to writing a theme. Don't overwork any one word. Use a variety of words. Use synonyms. I mean, there's good instruction for writing high school themes. But when it comes to translating, it's not good instruction. Often commented when I was a boy in Kenosha, a visiting brother once came and gave ministry one Sunday afternoon on the difference between judgment and condemnation and damnation in the Gospel of John. Unfortunately, the brother only had read his King James Bible. It confused the brethren there who were accustomed to the JND because there's only one word in the Greek translated by these three words which the translators of the King James used as synonyms. But it was utter confusion in the ministry that afternoon as the brother sought to bring out the difference between these terms. And, you know, even as a boy, I could recognize something was wrong. But we appreciate a careful translation. And John is using a term in most of his address to the children that is what we call a diminutive, really, dear children. And, you know, it doesn't have to do with how old they are or how mature they may be, but it's a term of affection. There is an area in the epistle where he distinguishes Christians by their growth, by their spiritual maturity. There it's, we have children, we have young men, we have fathers. But the general term that he uses is a term of affection. And John does not use the term sons, which Paul loves to use. Paul loves to present us in the dignity of sonship, the dignity of our relationship. And, you know, this is my son and I'm proud of him, in that sense. And this is how he speaks of adoption, too, because the Roman not only could adopt a baby as we would, take a baby into his home and raise it as his child, but there was a technical term among the Romans that when a Roman man who was the pater familias, the father of the family, the head of the house, when he felt his son had grown mature enough that he could handle things, that he was a man, then he would take him to the proper authorities and declare, this is my son. Well, he had been his child all along, had been under tutors and governors and so on, as Galatians tells us. But the time came, hopefully, in the life of a boy when his father would declare, this is my son. That was called adoption by the Romans. And that is really the sense in which Paul often uses the term, that we are declared sons, that we come into the privilege and dignity of sonship, and such a son was then an heir, too. Well, John doesn't use that term. John uses a term, generally speaking, that indicates that we have been born into the family, that there is an intimate relationship. It's not the dignity, it's the relationship that he stresses. Now, here he goes on to say in verse 3, that which we have seen and heard, we report to you, that ye also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is indeed with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. John says, we, not just the plural of majesty, as they would tell you grammatically speaking, but though the other apostles had gone on to be with the Lord, essentially their message was the same. And I believe they all would have wanted to communicate the same truth. John is the last one to be able to express it, but he wants to report this which they had seen and heard. You know, seeing and hearing comes out in the early chapters in Acts. The Lord had said to his own, just before he left them, ye shall be witnesses unto me. You shall be my witnesses. Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost parts of the earth. And when they're called on the carpet, in what name, in what power did you heal this lame man? It was in the name of Jesus. And they bear witness to the fact that this Jesus, whom the Jewish leaders had taken and had crucified, God had raised him up. God had exalted him. And it was through him that there was salvation and none other. And John is still using these type of terms, that which we have seen and heard we report to you. That ye also may have fellowship with us. Here we have the apostles' fellowship. And the apostles' fellowship is based on something concrete. You know, we have the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and the breaking of bread, and prayers, Acts 2.42. And you can't have fellowship if you're not standing on the same doctrinal footing. And that's one of the sad things that is, you know, present-day Christianity tries to gloss over it. Don't talk about doctrine at all. Let's just have fellowship together. But you can't have real fellowship if there isn't that which we hold doctrinally in common. And John is passing on these things. He says, our fellowship is indeed with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. Why does he say our fellowship is with the Father? The Father delights in his Son, the Lord Jesus. The Father finds all his joy in him. And when we learn to find our joy in the Lord Jesus, when we really learn to appreciate him, we have fellowship with the Father. John had learned to share a common object with God the Father. But he doesn't limit it to that. He says, and with his Son, Jesus Christ. You know, the Lord Jesus, delighted in the Father, delighted in presenting him, manifesting the Father. And the Lord Jesus was on good speaking terms with his Father. Early in the morning, before daybreak, he would rise up and go and pray. And we find him praying through the night sometimes. You know, he was in constant communion with his Father. And he's the one who made the Father known to his followers. And as we were reminded this morning, before leaving, right after his resurrection, he sent Mary Magdalene to tell the disciples, I send to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. The one whom he rejoiced in, the one whom he had fellowship with, his disciples could now also fellowship with. And John says, I want to share all this with you so that you can have fellowship with us. And this is the fellowship that we already enjoy. You know, many times, sad to say, when we talk about fellowship, and we use terms like he's in fellowship, or he's not in fellowship yet, we use these terms in an altogether different sense from how Scripture uses them. And being in fellowship means far more than that he takes part in the breaking of bread. And I think we really need to be more careful of how we use terminology, especially the terminology that Scripture uses, that we don't narrow it down and make it mean something that Scripture doesn't make it mean. The apostle writes in verse 4, These things write we to you, that your joy may be full. That's the object of this book. These things write we to you, that your joy may be full. He's already said that you may have fellowship with us. Now he's going to write about the Father and about the Son. He's going to write about these things that are essential if we want to fellowship with the apostles who fellowship with the Lord Jesus and who fellowship with the Father. And the end goal of fellowship here is joy, that your joy may be full. And he's writing that to people here on earth. We realize that when we're in heaven, our joy will be full, and we're looking forward to that. We're looking forward to the resurrection or the rapture, whichever comes first for us. We all would like to see the rapture come first, but it'll bring us into God's presence. In thy presence is fullness of joy. At thy right hand, pleasures forevermore. But on the other hand, we can enjoy full joy, according to this epistle, here already. And it's one of the objects with which John is writing. Chapter 5 mentions another distinct object for which he's writing. Verse 13 of chapter 5, he's coming toward the conclusion of the letter. He says, These things have I written to you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, who believe on the name of the Son of God. You know, there's a lot of confusion about this in the world today. And there are so many, many who are dear children of God, I believe, who teach that you can be saved and that you can be lost again. And you may have to be saved over again. This 13th verse of 1 John 5, ought to settle the matter once for all. And there are quite a few other verses that back it up. But this is one of the purposes with which John wrote. He didn't want Christians to be in doubt. Those who believe on the name of the Son of God can know that they have eternal life. Really a patriarch in Jamaica. He lived to be 94. He was saved, I believe, when he was 21. He spent over 70 years in the Lord's service. He was a pharmacist by profession. And the Lord used him to begin several assemblies down there. The early years when I would visit down there, Brother Eddie was already a patriarch. And, you know, one appreciated so much a man like this who knew and appreciated these things. But he often referred to 1 John 5 as the verses that gave him assurance. The verses just before this. That if we, you know, accept the witness of people, the witness of man. Verse 9, if we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater. For this is the witness of God, which he has witnessed concerning his Son. He that believes on the Son of God has the witness in himself. He that does not believe God has made him a liar. Because he has not believed in the witness which God has witnessed concerning his Son. This is what the Lord used to speak to that brother when he was a young man. You know, he realized with all the upbringing he had had, well, it's preposterous to think that you can assert I have eternal life, I will not be lost, and so on. If he would follow that kind of teaching, humble as it might sound to men, he was calling God a liar. And if we can take man's word for something, certainly we can take God's word for something. And when God says the one who believes in his Son has eternal life, we've got to take God's word for it. I had the privilege once of traveling with Brother Eddie to the Bahamas and sharing a room with him. I was in my 20s and he was in his 80s at the time. It was a real learning experience. A few days together where there wasn't much to do during the day but to draw on the wisdom of an old brother like that was a real privilege. Well, so these are some of the aims of the Apostle in this book. When we get to the other two epistles of John, the second and the third, two very short books, we find that these are epistles addressed to individuals. The second epistle is to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth and not I only, but also all who have known the truth. The third epistle is addressed to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth. And both of these epistles speak about receiving and not receiving. The sister and her children are instructed whom they are not to receive in their home. You know, as Christians, we're told to love one another and love is something that is much stressed and particularly in the writings of John. Well, in these little letters, we read about love in truth. And love isn't just this sticky, smeary stuff that just covers everything and that is emotional and sentimental and so on, but love in truth is something different. And if someone comes, the sister is instructed, who doesn't bring sound doctrine as to the person of Christ, but someone who may think he's got some advanced knowledge that nobody else has and he's learned a little bit more and so on, don't receive him, don't have anything to do with him. Don't even show him the common courtesy of, you know, the greetings that would express fellowship in any way. And third John is the balance. In third John, there are brethren who have gone out for the namesake. They're not looking for anything from the heathen, but they're really out to make Christ known and if these come, by all means receive them and help them along. There was a brother in the assembly where this Gaius went. I don't know if he was allowed to be in fellowship anymore, at the point he got the letter, but there was a brother, a man in that assembly, I'll say, Diotrephes, who wouldn't receive these traveling brethren, who traveled through. And anyone who received them, he was going to toss them out of the assembly. He was a man who loved to have the preeminence. Colossians 1 tells us, of the Lord Jesus, that in all things he must have the preeminence. And whenever a man wants the preeminence, whenever a man wants to run things in the assembly, he's wanting the place that the Lord Jesus alone is worthy of and should have. And, you know, we have a problem there. So, while on the one hand John writes a letter to a woman and her children, whom they are not to receive, not even into their home, he writes another letter to emphasize who should be received and that you do this even if there's some brother who's taking a place out of place and who's trying to forbid you to do it. And, you know, the third epistle of John is probably one of the most important epistles as to what the individual is to do if things in the assembly are not in order because some brother is taking a place that is out of place. Well, then the individual, you know, John doesn't say, Gaius, you leave that assembly. He doesn't say that. But he tells, he commends him for doing what is right and he tells him to go on doing what is right. And, of course, John was an apostle. The last of the apostles, he was going to come himself and face this man down. This man wouldn't even receive John's writings. So John was going to come personally and face him down on this. But that is the basic object of those two letters. And while they are short, scriptural teaching wouldn't be complete without them. They're very important for teaching. Well, as far as the structure of the first letter of John, we'll go back to that for a moment. The first part of the chapter, the part we read, really deals with eternal life and its manifestation. Manifestation in Christ. This is life eternal that you might know, they might know thee the only true God in Jesus Christ whom thou hast met. And John is bringing this out as we've seen. The next portion, beginning with verse 5, we have fellowship. All right. He's expressed already in verse 3 that ye also may have fellowship with us. Well, what is fellowship? Does it mean that a person is allowed to break bread? Breaking of bread is not mentioned in this epistle at all. And like I say, we have used terms in a way that scripture doesn't use them many times. But if we say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. And so on. We saw in the Gospel of John these three L's in our language. I'm not sure what they start with in Greek. I don't know Greek. I'm sorry. Not like art. He studied it. But in English, fortunately, there are three L's. There's life, there's light, and there's love. Nowadays, as far as man is concerned, well, the first one is at his disposal. He can destroy it if he wants it. Even before it comes out of the womb, he can take the light. This is what man thinks he can do. And if man rejects the light, the Lord Jesus in the Gospel of John already spoke about those who men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil and so on. They won't come to the light. And so men are going to love all over the place. Smile, God loves you. Well, thank God he does. And we can smile about it. But, you know, to tell the unsaved person that, yes, God loves you. That we can tell the unsaved person. But to simply smile, that's not enough. The unsaved person needs to repent and come to know the Lord Jesus. And so on. But, you know, love has been brutally misused. And it's a very popular word in the world today. And a word that is used in ways far different from how Scripture uses it. And here in the first epistle of John, where we read much about love, we begin really with the fact that God is light. And in him is no darkness at all. Before we're going to talk about God being love, and, you know, there are many people who like to talk about God being love, like to put up a big plaque, God is love. It's a good scriptural expression. Find it in this very book. But very seldom do you see the term that goes with it and that really comes first, God is light. Man doesn't want that. And to have God being love at the expense of being light is quite a distortion. Well, we have conditions of fellowship and how far we can get from it. We need to walk in the light as he is in the light. Then we have fellowship one with another. Not just if he's asked to break bread and brethren have visited him or have recommended him to the assembly and he's been received, then we have fellowship one with another. Our fellowship is based really on common life, but then on, excuse me, on a common walking in the light. And then the question of sin, saying we have no sin, well, it points out we deceive ourselves. It's very hard to convince anybody else that I have no sin and to convince God of it would be rather foolish, but some people have very foolishly convinced themselves. And if you withstand them in that, they'll usually get very angry and it doesn't take long before it's obvious to everyone but themselves that what they have is more than righteous anger. Well, we find that John writes in chapter 2, verse 1, these things I write to you in order that ye may not sin. You might say that is also an object of the book. If anyone sin, we have a patron with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, someone who takes up our cause, someone greater than ourselves who takes up our cause. We can go to him and notice we have a patron with the Father. In the Gospel of John, it's a matter of that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God, believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye might have life through his name. The Gospel of John is written to reach out, and it's often passed out because it's the Gospel. The Epistle is written to children. It's written to the family of God, and when it deals with sin, it doesn't say you need to be saved. It says you need to confess your sin, and it says you've got an advocate with the Father, a patron with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and this sin that has temporarily interrupted or broken or marred your communion, your fellowship, it needs to be dealt with. It needs to be taken care of. Not that you need to be saved over again, that you've lost your salvation, but you simply confess your sin. It doesn't even say you need to ask to have it forgiven. No, if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, and it tells us if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father. Now, it was interesting to me years ago when I first got into this book, and this is one of the last books in the New Testament that I got into to any degree. It was a book that always frightened me as a young Christian. The one book that was dreadful to me was 1 John because I had struggled for some years with assurance of salvation. My dear mother didn't help the situation. I was saved when I was about six or seven years old and then I'd get into a fight with my brothers or talk back to my parents or something like this, and my mother would say, and you say you're a Christian. Is that the fruit of the Spirit? It wasn't the fruit of the Spirit, but it didn't change the fact that I was a Christian. But it really made me doubt it many times and for several years I struggled with that. I went to the Lord practically every night. Oh, Lord, you know I came to you then and then, but if I didn't come the right way, I'm coming now. And you said, Him that comes to me I will in no wise cast out. I don't know how many years, I do know approximately how many years, but how many times I came to the Lord with that verse before the real impact of the verse came home to me. But John is writing to children and he's writing on the subject of fellowship and that fellowship is to be restored. I see I'm running out of time a lot faster than I thought I was. I'm sorry. But he takes up, after dealing with these things, the question of the world, the Christian's enemy, and he takes that up in connection with the stages of growth in the Christian's life in chapter 2. Then he goes into, now are we children of God? In chapter 3, Art had us there this morning, and the world doesn't know us. What we shall be hasn't been manifested yet, hasn't been made known so that we can see it, but we have this assurance that we're going to be like him. And I appreciate how the resurrection is tying in with the writings of John. And again, John is very practical. Everyone that has this hope in him purifies himself even as he is pure. Eventually we come in chapter 4 to the fountain of love. We find that love hasn't originated with us. We take credit for so much many times, but we find in chapter 4 verse 7 that we're to love one another because love is of God, and everyone that loves has been begotten of God and knows God. And these verses, they were hard for me as a boy. As I was saying before, John writes in absolutes, and this is the problem that we often have with John. And then this is one of the poorest translated books in the commonly used King James Bible. Of all the New Testament books, this is one you really have to get some help on because committing sin and so on, these terms that are used are a bad translation in terms of our present-day language. Well, I would commit a sin, yes. And did that mean I had lost my salvation or I wasn't saved? Was the evidence that I wasn't really saved and so on? I had to learn what it meant to live that kind of a life. And the fact that John, dealing with absolutes, he is saying the person who is a Christian has a new nature. Peter says he's been made partaker of the divine nature. And that new nature cannot sin. But the person who has the new nature, unfortunately, still has the old nature. And this question of two natures, while it isn't taken as such here in John, but it is very important that one understand that in order to appreciate the epistle of John. Because, you know, he says, these things I write to you that you may not sin, but if any man sins. A Christian doesn't sin. A Christian never sins. A Christian cannot sin. As a Christian. You know, what he is before God with the new nature. But the person who is a Christian, unfortunately, is still quite capable of sinning. And in fact, that old nature often enjoys it. And this is the struggle. And when John says, you know, can and can't and so on, he's speaking in absolute terms. He's speaking about a person in virtue of what they are before God in the new nature. And yet he's dealing with persons who are still here and who, unfortunately, have the other nature too. And if we don't realize that, we're really going to have problems with the first epistle of John. Well, he winds up his epistle with some very important things about faith and about getting the victory. And as I said, he deals with children of God, loving the children of God, the new nature, being God's nature. You know, we're partakers of the divine nature. That new nature can't help but love the children of God. Can't help but love the brother. Now, I may not like the brother at all, but I love him. And, you know, we sometimes struggle with these things. Well, these are some of the things that John writes. And he points out, especially at the beginning of chapter 2, early verses there, that what we call believing and what Scripture calls believing has the element of obeying. Paul mentions this in Romans 2. He speaks about obedience of faith. Well, John, you know, believing isn't just saying, I believe, and it has intellectually entered my head somehow, but it involves a commitment of life. It involves what we speak of as obeying. John stresses the word to know. We can know, we can have certainty about something. And John points out in chapter 2, in these well-known verses, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world, and all that is of the world, or in the world rather, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father but is of the world. John is the one who teaches us very definitely that the antithesis between the Father and the world. You know, the devil is the enemy of the Lord Jesus. The world tries to replace the Father in giving to the believer, in offering to the believer, in alluring the believer, and the spirit and the flesh have constant battle, constant problems, one with the other. Well, unfortunately, we're about at the end of the hour. Just would say yet in connection with 2 and 3 John, 2 John is not written, there's no mention of the assembly as such, but to the individual Christian, and even a sister, a sister with children, we would assume a widowed sister, she is to use this kind of judgment, the Lord must be first. Faithfulness to him. This is true love. Love in truth doesn't make exceptions where there is someone who does not bring sound doctrine as to the person of Christ. And John emphasizes in both these epistles how he appreciates his children, his spiritual children, and we certainly can apply it to literal children as well, walking in truth. You know, as parents, one of the things we appreciate about our children, and it's one of the griefs of heart of many parents, where the children are not walking in the truth. One of the things that makes parents pray. Well, John is speaking of those to whom he stood in relationship as an older one. He doesn't speak with apostolic authority here, but he addresses them as the elder. And, you know, he has a love, an interest in younger believers, not simply for they're saved, they'll go to heaven, fine, get out the next one, no, but that they walk in truth. And Gaius in the third book is commended for this walk in truth. We have the two men mentioned toward the end of the epistle, Diotrephes, whom we've mentioned, who we might say was one of the early ones in the, shall we say, clergy running things and kicking out anyone who didn't want things the way he wanted them run. The contrast is Demetrius, who has witnessed born to him by all and by the truth himself. And so on, he was one who did what was good. And John makes these very simple statements, very absolute statements. He that does good is of God. He that does evil has not seen God. Does it as a practice, as a way of life, not the person who may slip and fall at some time. But good is always of God. Evil is never of God. And so on. Well, we must obey the Lord regardless of what leader says what. And that is the lesson in this third epistle of John. So I think we'll leave these epistles here, hopefully to study them more ourselves. Shall we pray? …

… The last surviving Apostle of the Lord Jesus put him in exile there. He's challenged. The Lord Jesus shows, or God shows us in this book, how Rome and the power of Rome is going to come to an end and the earth is going to be judged and so on. Terms are used, you know, the great harlot sitting on seven mountains. Rome was built on seven hills and there are many terms used that allude to Rome at that time. If this book had been written without using symbolism, had just given its message in plain everyday Greek of the day, it would have been a very counter, a very revolutionary book and, you know, it would have been a very dangerous book for a Christian to have. But God, in his wisdom, gave it in signs and he was not giving this as a sensational expose to be a bestseller in the Roman Empire. No, this was to show to his bondmen what must shortly take place. Now the prophet Amos tells us, the Lord says there, you know, will the Lord do anything except that he reveals it to his servants, the prophets. The Lord doesn't do things just unexpectedly and without warning. If they affect the Lord's people, if they affect whether it's Israel of old or the assembly today or whatever may be in the future, the Lord gives warning first and, you know, bring it to bear on your life. Everyone that has this hope in him purifies himself even as he is pure. And so the Lord is going to speak to his bondmen, going to tell them what is ahead. He's not writing this as a bestseller in the Roman Empire. And Brother Raymond Campbell, I don't know if Jack and you were there, but remember when we had the meetings in the Woodman's Hall at Stony Point, two weeks of meetings on the chart from eternity to eternity. The first public meetings with an outside speaker in this county in connection with what is now the assembly here. After that, a local brother, not too long saved at the time, came to Brother Campbell and he said, you know, I hope in about three or four months you can come back and give us a series a few weeks on Revelation. I'd like to understand something of that book. And Brother Campbell, I was standing there listening, he said, no, I won't do that. He said, you're not ready for that yet. In order to understand the Revelation, you have to have some understanding of the 65 books that go before it, because the Revelation ties together loose ends. The Revelation uses symbols that are introduced to us in Ezekiel, in Daniel, in various prophetic books, and it draws together the loose ends from all over the scripture, if I can use that term. I'm expanding a little bit on what Brother Campbell said. He said, you're not ready. You have to know the other 65 books first, to some degree, and I'm not coming for these meetings in a few months, that you wish. And, you know, I've appreciated that. I've often thought of that. The Revelation is an intensely interesting book, but the background is in the rest of scripture, and we don't want to forget that. If a symbol is used in Revelation that is not used elsewhere in scripture, it is explained on the spot in Revelation. And we, one example of that, the verse 20 of this chapter, the mystery of the seven stars, which thou hast seen on my right hand, and the seven golden lamps. The seven stars are angels of the seven assemblies, and the seven lamps are seven assemblies. We have no assemblies in the Old Testament prophecy. The church was something that was revealed in New Testament times, really through the Apostle Paul, so we can't expect to find the church in the Old Testament. And if a symbol is going to be used to represent assemblies, the Lord has to explain it here in the Revelation. And the stars, the angels, messengers, angel and messengers, the same word I understand. You know, this is something new here in the New Testament. And you'll find with the symbolism, if you don't have an explanation for the symbolism in Revelation, you've got to dig, because it'll be back farther somewhere else. And this book brings God's Word to its victorious conclusion. It's part of the Word of God. This bondman John testified the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, all things that he saw. Blessed is he that reads, and they that hear the words of the prophecy, and keep the things written in it, for the time is near. Notice how that is emphasized. Things that must shortly take place, the time is near. You know, this is a tremendous encouragement, to know these things. And there's a special blessing attached to reading this book, to hearing the words of the prophecy. You know, there were many people in those days, as there are today, who are unable to read. Are they going to be deprived of blessing? No, they can hear the words of the prophecy, and then keep the things written in it. All right, John begins. John to the seven assemblies, which are in Asia. Grace to you and peace from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits, which are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, firstborn from the dead, the prince of the kings of the earth. All right, here's who it's addressed to, the seven assemblies. Who it's from, this was the way letters were written in those days. You started out, not dear John, but you know, you started in this way. Who was writing, instead of the signature at the end, that was right at the beginning. Who was writing, who was being addressed, and then what you had to say. But notice, the Lord Jesus is presented in different guise from the very beginning, and even God. God is presented as he who is, and who was, and who is to come. It's nothing new for us, but it's not the way God is ordinarily presented, and after all the scriptures that we've had on God being our Father, you know, the Lord doesn't have John write this. From God the grace and peace be unto you, from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ. That's the language the Apostle Paul can use. Now, here it's God is, you know, in the majesty of his person, the existing one, the one who always has been, the one who always will be, and then the seven spirits. There you go back to Isaiah 11, the first verses, the sevenfold witness, really, or the sevenfold personality. I don't know how to best express it, but we have the spirit mentioned in a sevenfold character there, and I think this is what we have here. We find at various times the seven spirits, the fullness of the Spirit of God. It's not that there are seven Holy Spirits, or a gradation of spirits, no. But the Holy Spirit in his fullness, and Jesus Christ is referred to here as the faithful witness. John had to suffer for his witness' sake. There had been those who had been unfaithful, there were those who were faithful, but the Lord Jesus is preeminently the faithful witness. The firstborn from the dead, art has brought that before us. Firstfruits of them that have fallen asleep, firstborn from the dead here, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Incidentally, that last title was a title that the Roman Emperor took for himself. If you know little of the history of Rome, they had, hundreds of years before, they had tossed out a succession of Etruscan kings, and they had set up a republic. Julius Caesar was assassinated because some of his closest friends felt that he was wanting the title of king, and the title of king was repulsive to the Romans because of the history they'd had with kings. Julius Caesar's nephew, Octavian, Augustus Caesar, as he's called in scripture, when he became the top ruler, he would not take the title king. He was politically too savvy for that, but he allowed himself to be called princeps, p-r-i-n-c-e-p-s, a Latin word really derived from the root first head, and that's the word from which our word prince, in English, is taken. The prince of the kings of the earth, the first head of all the kings of the earth. And remember, there can be a Herod, and an Agrippa, and a this, and a that, and so on. They're all kings over some little petty area, maybe as big as a county here, and the emperor is over them all, but he doesn't call himself a king. He's the prince of the kings of the earth. And here, that title at the beginning of the book is given to the Lord Jesus. That puts him in direct conflict with, you know, a human emperor. Who is king of kings and lord of lords eventually? It's the Lord Jesus Christ. And from the start, his dignity and his supremacy over all human kings is asserted. And, you know, it's beautiful to see how John is writing this letter that the Lord wants him to write, and he'll write on subjects that he's got to present. But when he speaks of the Lord Jesus, Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth, you know, his heart just overflows. It's hard to speak of a chapter like this without overflowing. And he says, to him who loves us. That's in the present. Yes, he loved us in the past, but he still loves us. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. To him who loves us, and has washed us from our sins in his blood, and made us a kingdom, priest to his God and Father. To him be the glory and the might to the ages of ages. Amen. And, you know, if we read the Revelation, and we see this as the revelation of Jesus Christ in his dignity, in his majesty, in his power, this end of things that only comes out occasionally, for a moment, in the Gospels, you know, on the mountain of transfiguration, there in the garden, as we referred to before, and so on. Here in the Revelation, it's going to be presented full-blown. When we see the Lord Jesus in this way, what do we do? The first thing is worship, isn't it? And John can't write about this without just letting his heart overflow in worship to the Lord Jesus. And this one, who is Prince of the Kings of the Earth, is the one who loves us, the one who has washed us from our sins in his own blood. You know, this is most precious. Prince of the Kings of the Earth loves us. An exile on an island can write with overflowing heart. And he says, behold, he comes with the clouds. Behold, he comes with the clouds. This is not the rapture. This is the appearing. This is the second coming. Very literally, he comes with clouds. Every eye shall see him, and they which have pierced him, and all the tribes of the land shall wail because of him. Yea, amen. Wonderful, isn't it? This one, whose servants were persecuted, put on lonely islands, put to death, whatever, he's coming. He's coming with clouds. He's coming as the final victor. Every eye will see him, yes, and they which pierced him, the Roman soldiers, the Gentiles, and all the tribes of the land shall wail because of him. And Israel is really responsible for his being pierced. We have this in Zechariah. I mean, the revelation ties in with so many other scriptures, and it's such a beautiful picture we have of the Lord. Well, John, the Lord says, I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, he who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. Then John gives his own history in writing this book, and we stop in the middle of that. He says, I turned back to see, verse 12, the voice which spoke with me, and having turned, I saw seven golden lamps, and in the midst of the seven lamps, one like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment reaching to the feet. Now, John sees the Lord Jesus here in a way that he's never seen him before. Clothed with a garment reaching to the feet, gird about the breasts with a golden girdle, his head and hair white like white wool as snow, and his eyes as a flame of fire, and his feet like fine brass as burning in a furnace, and his voice as the voice of many waters, and having in his right hand seven stars, and out of his mouth a sharp two-edged sword going forth in his countenance as the sun shines in his power. You know, when we read the description of the Lord Jesus given us in the Song of Solomon, and read this description, it's quite a contrast. White and ruddy, hair black as a raven, here it's white as snow. The same person is being described, but you know, up until 150 or 200 years ago, the judges and the important men in our country were still powdering their wake, you know, when they were to sit on the bench. No, they were to have white hair regardless of what their age was, and what their experience was. You know, they were to sit there in dignity, and I believe the English judges still wear the powdered wakes. You know, they're not there as John Doe, who's been elected to the judgeship. They're there as the one who represents the authority of the state, and you know, man has to put on some dignity. The Lord is seen here in his judicial majesty, and this one who's walked all these years with the Lord, who loves him so much, who's appreciated being the disciple whom Jesus loved, when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. It was that much of a shock for John to turn around. He recognized him, yes, he recognized who he was, but he had never seen him in this way. I fell at his feet as dead. You know, there are things that are just overwhelming for us, and he laid his right hand upon me, saying, fear not, I'm the first and the last and the living one, and I became dead, and behold, I am living to the ages of ages, and have the keys of death and of Hades. Right therefore, and here in this 19th verse, we come to the outline of the book, the basic outline of the book. Right therefore, what thou hast seen, point one, the things that are, point two, and the things that are about to be after these, point three. The things thou hast seen, that's chapter one, the description of the vision, the experience with the Lord, the introduction here. The things that are, chapters two and three, existing conditions in existing assemblies at that time, but those existing conditions in seven existing assemblies, representative assemblies really, they also give us a prophetic picture of the whole dispensation of grace that we live in, and there are things written to each of the assemblies that are applicable in each of the others, because each time at the close of the letter, we have the words, he that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies, not to your assembly, and you know to me that those were, that verse seven times repeated, is one of the most powerful verses against the thought of an assembly being independent of another assembly, of other assemblies. The thought of independent assemblies is not countenanced here in the Revelation. He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies, you're one of many. Well, this is chapter one here, a little bit. I fell at his feet as dead, just from the human standpoint. John fell at the feet of the Lord as dead, and you know, if you're lying at my feet as dead, if I want to put my right hand on you, either you're going to have to rise, or I'm going to have to stoop, and we see the tender grace of the Lord Jesus to his own. The presentation in a public way, the Lord is seen in all his dignity, but on the other hand, we see these glimpses just like the majesty of the Lord, and shines out here and there in the Gospels, you know, when the Lord can stand up in the boat and say, down boy, to the waves and to the wind, or on the mountain of transfiguration, you know, for an instant, his glory shines out, and here in the Revelation, every once in a while, there's an instant where his tenderness, his care for his own, shines through. The picture is just reversed, but you know, he says, John, I've got something for you to do. The Roman Emperor may think that you're useless now, you've been put aside, you're in a position where you can do nothing for me and for my people. He says, you've got a pen, I want you to write, I want you to write, and he tells him exactly what to write, and he starts to explain what he's already seen here to him. We read that 20th verse, and then the Lord dictates seven brief letters to these seven representative assemblies in the Roman province of Asia, and I understand if you go from one to the other in the order that we have them here in chapter two and three, you're really kind of going in a circle. And each letter, the Lord presents himself in that character that corresponds to the need of that assembly, and eventually of that period of time in church history. And the Lord commends what he can commend, and isn't it nice, the attitude of the Lord. First of all, presents himself, which was the way a letter was written in those days. You know, you speak who you are, who you're addressing, and then the Lord immediately commends anything good that he can commend. He can't all commend in every case, but anything good that he can commend. Then he takes up any problem that he sees that needs to be addressed. And you know, if we would work in that order, we would be much more successful in helping with problems. But so often we jump into the problem, we've long lost sight of anything good in our brother or sister, and we're just concerned about their problem areas. And then the Lord, in several of the first ones, appeals to all, he that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies. And then he addresses himself to the overcomer, the one who by his grace will seek to rise above these conditions. In the last, he reverses that and addresses the overcomer first, and then says to the overcomer, he that has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies. Things in a general way are too far gone to address the whole group. We could go into a lot of detail on these chapters, but books have been written on them, and I'll let you study them out more for yourself. The third part of the book begins very definitely in chapter 4, verse 1, where we read, After these things I saw, and behold, a door opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard as of a trumpet speaking with me, saying, Come up here, and I will show thee the things which must take place after these things. That couldn't be any plainer, and John being told to come up hither, you know, maybe a veiled reference to the rapture. The rapture is not before us as such in this book, but John is told, Come up here, and I'm going to give you a, what shall we say, ringside seat, balcony seat, box seat, you know, so that you have a good view of what's going to happen after these things, after the church dispensation comes to its close, is what is really meant here in being a prophetic book. And this goes on. You come to a conclusion of the book in terms of a rapid chronological survey of things that are going to happen. You come to a conclusion of the book at the end of chapter 11, and we'll just turn there for a moment. The seventh angel sounds his trumpet in verse 15, and there was, there were great voices in the heavens saying, The kingdom of the world of our Lord and of his Christ is come, and he shall reign to the ages of ages. And the 24 elders who sit on their thrones before God fell upon their faces and worshiped God, saying, We give thee thanks, Lord God Almighty, he who is and who was, that thou has taken thy great power and has reigned, and the nations have been full of wrath, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead to be judged, and to give recompense to thy servants, the prophets, and to the saints, and to those who fear thy name, small and great, and to destroy those that destroy the earth. And the temple of God in the heavens was opened, and so on. But really, with the Lord setting up his kingdom, and so this, in a sense, is the conclusion. So when I read the rest of the book, there are a series of flashbacks. I call them flashback close-ups. You know, we've seen films of athletic events, and here's this football game going on, and 22 men running around knocking each other over and things like that, throwing a little ball around. And you know, this counts for a whole lot. They're being paid a lot of money, and so on. And so certain things that they do are much more important than some of the other running around. And what the man who has the ball does with it is what really counts. And so when there's a crucial play, you know, they replay it in slow motion. And then you see the arm going back to throw the pass. You know, that's not how the man did it. But you see the details. You know, you see the details. That is how he did it, but he didn't do it that slowly. And you know, the most crucial things you want to see the details of. And that's what we have really basically in the second half of the Revelation. Now, there are a number of things that are looked at for themselves in detail. Some of them are not mentioned in the first part, but the idea of the Revelation is to present the Lord Jesus as the final victor. And in that sense, it ends there at the end of chapter 11. And all the rest is still further detail. Now, chapter 21, 1 to 8, for example, gives us a picture of the eternal state. Almost the only picture that we have of the Revelation, of what eternity is going to be like. Well, it's very important, very beautiful. But, you know, even before that, the Lord will have taken his rightful place. So here's one added detail that God can give us. We have the great harlot, the contrast to the Bride of the Lamb. The city, Rome, called Babylon symbolically here, confusion, contrasted with that glorious city that comes down from heaven, from God, the new Jerusalem. We have both the false pretender and the true, pictured as a city and as a bride. And, you know, we have the details of the judgments of God. There are providential judgments, and there are very direct judgments. Many times we read of a fourth of the earth or a third of the earth, and that part of the then known world that was exposed to the truth of God very directly will come under the greatest judgment, too. You know, we're judged in proportion to the light that we've received and that we've rejected. Well, these are some little details. The revelation seems so different from the rest of John's writings, but it has a different purpose. It's to give us one more view of the Lord Jesus, the view that we're waiting for. And, you know, this scene in Revelation 5, the picture of heaven, very particularly during the tribulation time or at the beginning of the tribulation time, Revelation 4 and 5, I don't think that that's necessarily the eternal picture, but it's a beautiful picture. The throne of God is in the center. I think of Bush Stadium in St. Louis. And, you know, the playing field is in the center, and all the seats are arranged in a circle around it. No matter where you sit, you have to look forward. And in heaven, the description we have in Revelation 4 and 5 is the same way. And who has the box seats, the best seats? Well, you have the four living creatures, of course, representative of God's attributes and judgment and government of the world, but then you have 24 thrones and 24 elders seated on them, dressed as priests, crowned. Crowns are thrown down, cast down at the feet of the Lord. Thou art worthy, you know, but these 24 elders represent the saints of God in glory. And, you know, we're closest to the Lord. And it's one of these elders who later on continues the tour that John is getting of heaven and future events and so on. He is able to explain. He's able to explain in chapter 5 when, you know, why this weeping and so on. Well, the elder can explain. We will have an understanding when we're in the glory with the Lord. And an understanding, you know, sometimes we couldn't explain certain chapters of certain verses here, but then we'll be able to. And who is the center? First you see the throne, one seated on the throne, and then one that is viewed in a double character of the lion of the tribe of Judah, the conquering lion, but he's seen as a lamb freshly slain. The Lord Jesus is there. In the center of the throne, the center of God's throne, and he's to take his place here on the earth. This book sealed with seven seals, I believe it's the book that really, shall we say, the title deed to the world. Title deed to the world and all that it has. Well, in order for the Lord to take over this world, he's got to cleanse it. He's got to execute judgment, and he's the only one worthy to do so. And then we see him beginning to do so. The first judgments are the sealed judgments, and they seem to be very providential. The final judgments later on are very directly from God, and there are an awful lot of details in between, both in the chronological sequence and in the series of flashbacks later on. That series is mostly in chronological order, but not altogether. For example, after the eternal state is depicted to us in chapter 21, we go back and look at the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven and so on. We go back into a picture that brings the millennium before us. And in our present condition of body and of understanding our limitations, how can we really appreciate anything beyond the earth being reconstituted and things being made wonderful, the environment being cleaned up, justice coming in, the Lord ruling in righteousness, putting down evil, dealing with it? As far as the eternal state, when the tabernacle of God will be with men, God will dwell among them, be their God, they will be his people. These things are told us, but we're not given description in detail of things that we're just not capable yet of entering into. Well, there's a special blessing attached to the study of this book. It's the only book that presents us with details as to the assembly's future. I say details. We're told to depart and to be with Christ is far better, and we know that our future is with the Lord, but here we're given some details. And just as the bride of a king, well, she'll be pleased to see every honor that is brought to her husband. She'll be pleased to see him conquering his enemies, putting down evil and so on, and she rules with him. She's at his side. We will be at the side of the Lord Jesus. We will be following him. We read of the marriage of the lamb in chapter 19 and so on. We have an interest in these things, much of what goes on in the tribulation time, and we're in the glory. What's going on is here on the earth, the remnant of Israel, those whom they reach from among the Gentiles, people that are being brought to the Lord, but it's his interests, and that's why we're interested in it. It's not directly our future, but it's his future, and we love him. We appreciate him. We have this wonderful relationship with him, and we're very interested in what will happen. We're not just going to be, if I can use the term, maybe it's a bad term to use, intoxicated with our delight in him, in heaven, so that we would be oblivious to anything else. No, we will be there intelligently entering into all that concerns his interests. There are more glimpses of heaven in this book than in any other, and yet it's a book essentially of judgment. Majestic ascriptions of worship, the verses I read out of chapter 11 before are part of Handel's Messiah too, you know, and the focus is on the area that John was acquainted with, the area that had the gospel presented to it. The Lord's nearness is coming, his reign, that's emphasized. There are appeals to assemblies, actually to individuals in the assemblies too, to heed the Lord's evaluation. Art brought this before us. We're not told things in scripture just to have our heads filled with knowledge, just to have an intelligent understanding. No, there's to be an application, and it's a wonderful book. It was a powerful stroke against the greatness of Rome. There's one who's far greater, and the book ends on a very beautiful, very tender note. John has been shown all these things, and then repeatedly in the last chapter, he's told by the Lord Jesus, behold, I come quickly, and the virtually final words, verse 20, he that testifies these things says, yea, I come quickly, and there's a response. Even so, or amen, come, Lord Jesus. You know, if we can read the revelation without responding in this way, amen, let it be so. Come, Lord Jesus. If we can read it without that, we've missed the point of the book. Lord Jesus, we thank thee that thou, the one who was rejected, who was crucified, whom men thought they had done away with, that God has raised thee from among the dead. We've seen this. God has exalted thee to his own right hand, said, sit down at my right hand until I make thy foes the footstool of thy feet. And we thank thee for this book of revelation that shows that God will do this, that thou wilt rule, thou wilt come back, thou wilt judge, thou wilt deal in righteousness, thou wilt take thy rightful place. Lord Jesus, we thank thee for the assurance in thy word that we will be with thee and that we will see these things come to pass. And Lord Jesus, we thank thee that thou art coming for us personally, even before. And we appreciate thy promise that thou art coming quickly. Not only that thou art coming quickly in relation to the earth as such, but also for us. And we simply answer, amen. Come, Lord Jesus. Amen. …