Decades later, an aged Apostle John still cannot finish a sentence about Jesus without being overwhelmed with excitement. The Gospel has not become ordinary for him, but has it for us?
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The pastor contrasts John’s carefully composed Gospel with the emotionally overflowing style of 1 John. How does recognizing this difference in writing style help us understand the authenticity of John’s excitement about Jesus decades later? What does this suggest about how our own faith should feel over time?
What practical habits or reminders could help keep the Gospel from becoming “normal” in our daily lives the way a flying car eventually would, so that we still speak about it with John’s decades-later excitement?
The pastor challenges us to consider what we’re actually excited about and would naturally share with others—not what we think we should share. When people observe your life, what do they see you as most enthusiastic about? How does this reflect or conflict with your stated faith in Jesus?
In what ways might viewing fellowship as a real partnership and preview of eternity—rather than mainly coffee-hour social time—change how we spend time with other believers or invite others into that life together?
Using the weather metaphor, the pastor suggests we should know “which season we’re in” spiritually and help others recognize it too. What does it mean practically to live with an eternal perspective while navigating daily life’s ups and downs?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
A few weeks ago… Oh, there it is now. A few weeks ago, I made reference to trying to predict the future. And of course, I made reference to what everyone makes reference to when you want to say that we can’t predict the future. I made reference to a flying car because of course. There is no such thing as a car. And that’s the sort of thing that we’ve been told, right? We were going to get… Someday, someday we would have a flying car. Ah. You see this? Yeah, okay. Yes, that is real. That was not AI, there was a live audience there watching Tesla premiere. It’s new flying car. And I have to say, I’ve always been fascinated with the art of unveiling a product and I’ve watched probably every recording of the greatest product and veilings of all time type videos. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one quite as good as that. When that car started to go up that wall if you saw it, and it was about to flip over and then it just writes itself on the way down like a cat. Flying cars exist now. Think about that for a moment. Flying. Cars exist now. I can’t anymore say, you know, when we try to predict the future and we say everyone’s going to have a flying car. Well, I guess we could say, well, probably not everyone’s going to have a flying car. But, you know, if anyone thinks that, you know, that would be a good evangelistic tool for me to drive around in one, just let me know. I’d be glad. I can provide information on how to donate to help make that happen. But, uh, yeah, flying car, just the fact that it exists, I’ll take that exists right? It is going to be possible to buy one. So what, of course, did I want to do as soon as I thought, I want other people to see that video. I think this. That helps. I want everyone to see that video because can you believe that there’s actually a flying car now. Can you believe that someone can actually take a car that will be commercially sold and have a license plate on it. And drive up a wall and flip it over or jump over semis or whatever it might be. I mean, just imagine you’re stuck in traffic on 70 and you just…
It would be unsafe, but I mean, come on, it would just be, yeah, it would be so amazing. So, of course, I wanted to share it, right? And that’s how it goes when there is something that we’re excited about, right? We want to share it. We want people to see it. Could someone hand me another microphone, please? We want somebody to share it, to see it. And so here’s the question I have. What is it that you are excited about? What is it that you would really like to have people know about? I think that’s a good question to ask is, what is it that you would like, in your life, people to know about?
Not intellectually, but what are you actually going to share, right? What are you going to bring up at the dinner table? What is it that you are going to post on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or whatever? What is it that you’re going to talk about at the water cooler at work? What are you going to really not be able to stand but to share? And I think that’s a question that what we think we should say and what we actually would say, well, they’re not necessarily—they’re not always the same. How’s that? There we are. Okay. They’re not always the same.
And so John, by his amazement in our God, I think really is providing an object lesson because we’re going to turn to 1 John tonight to meet the Apostle John and think about our next fisher of men. And when we come to 1 John, here’s the thing I think we really need to be thinking about. Here is someone who saw what he saw decades ago. And what we’re going to see in these first verses is his excitement is still so great, he can’t contain how he even writes about it. And I think about that.
Now, I’m still pretty excited about that flying car, right? And some of you probably are. I heard people on TV and on radio and on the internet still kind of, there’s a flying car. Can you believe it? But you know what? In a year or two, or at least after the first ones roll off and people actually destroy a few of them and all that kind of good stuff, it’s going to get to the point where, oh, yeah, yeah, flying car. Can’t afford it, but it’s pretty neat. But yeah, flying car. It’ll be normal.
I don’t think, for example, if you run into someone, say, 50 years from now, they’re going to say, can you believe that there are flying cars? Well, yeah, that’s been that way for a long time. John’s not that way. He saw something more amazing than a flying car, but he didn’t allow it to become normal. So many things that we take for granted today at one point would have caused excitement and joy, but then they become normal. And our challenge as Christians is not to have what Christ has done for us become normal.
So let’s pray that that isn’t the case, and then we’re going to turn to the very beginning of 1 John. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the true miracle of what you have done for us. And Lord, as we sometimes are tempted to take it for granted, Lord, would you help us to not? Would you help us to remain excited day after day and year after year so that the people around us continue to hear about something far more amazing than a flying car or any other wonder that we can come up with? Because indeed we encounter the wonder of the creator caring for us. And that’s something that should never be considered just normal. We pray this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
Let’s go ahead and look at the first two verses of 1 John. John writes, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest and we have seen it and testified to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the father and was made manifest to us.
Now there’s so many words there you may not have even noticed, but if you think back to when you had to take English composition or language arts or whatever it happened to be called, remember there was this thing called a verb and you’re supposed to have a subject and a verb and that’s sort of supposed to be the main part of the sentence.
I haven’t read it yet in this sentence. You’re saying, well, why are we starting talking about excitement and joy by talking about grammar, Tim? That’s how you make things not exciting. But in this case, it’s really telling. John is so excited still, decades later, that as he’s trying to write about what’s happened, he doesn’t even get to finishing the main thought of the sentence until verse three that we haven’t even read yet. He just has to pack in everything that he’s seen before he gets to what he’s actually trying to say.
That strikes me because I think, well, when was the last time I was so excited about what Jesus has done that my sentences were bending under the weight of my excitement? That it was just like, Tim, where’s your thought? Because all you’re talking about is how amazing Jesus is. Come on, go ahead and at least tell us what you’re trying to say about how amazing Jesus is. And it’s just like, but he’s so amazing.
And that’s what John’s doing here. It was from the beginning and we’ve seen it and we’ve heard it and we’ve touched it. Follow up to the Gospel of John chapter one, verse one. Think back to that. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. But notice there, there are verbs and subjects. And it’s very orderly. Because as John writes the Gospel of John, he’s concentrating on composing this very careful thing. And it is very carefully composed.
When he’s writing first John, he’s just tapping his emotion. He’s just sharing how he feels. And so once again, we’re at the beginning, that which was from the beginning, but this sentence becomes very different than the other, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life, the life that was made manifest and we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the father and it was made manifest to us.
Kind of reminds me of something that, remember that guy that used to do the micro machines commercials in the eighties. You remember that, that, that, that guy needs to read that. John is excited. He’s talking about the same things. They’re all the things, but here’s the telling thing. He’s writing this an old man thinking back to something he did when he was a very young man still. And just we’re talking 40, 50, 60 years later and he can’t contain himself.
And I do think about that. And I think, is that me? Because here’s the thing. Yes, we didn’t go on three years of ministry with Jesus. We didn’t see him resurrected from the grave. We didn’t see him on the cross, but we have read those things. That’s the first part of what John’s talking here in the beginning, right? He wasn’t John’s older than us, but he wasn’t that old. He wasn’t there at the beginning, but he knows that part.
And then he moves from the part that he’s been told to the part that he’s experienced. And we can do the same thing. Remember when we first understood what it meant to know Jesus or the times that we’ve prayed and we’ve seen the answer to prayer. And so often we get weighed down by the concerns of life and the challenges of life. And even the times that maybe we’re still waiting for an answer rather than that we’ve seen the answer that, that whatever joy we had becomes stated instead.
I think John here, as we think about how we go fishing, we stay joyful. We don’t lull ourselves to a slumber where we’re not really paying attention. We don’t feel it anymore. We talk to people on, so what are you doing this weekend? Well, I’m going to church. Now, I’m not going to church. I’m not going to church. I’m not going to church.
Now, I’m not saying every once in a while, it’s not just like I have so much to do and I’m overwhelmed, but we talk about God and the things of God and being with the people of God. Do we sound like it’s something that people would want? Sometimes I think that’s really hard for any of us because we take on, we have all of our responsibilities away from church and in church, and it just becomes utterly overwhelming and we lose that.
And what we need to feel like, what we need to come back to is the miracle of what God has done to us, to reflect on it afresh and say, that’s true right now. And that’s what John’s doing here. He’s talking about things from years ago, but things that still have an impact on him today. And it’s not normal. It’s amazing. And it’s spectacular.
And so as he writes to those he’s ministered to, he’s just excited because listen to what God has done. It’s so unusual. Do we experience salvation is so just breathtakingly, mind-bogglingly out of the ordinary of everything else of life that it doesn’t matter how long it’s been, that it’s still amazing? And we’ll have some of those things in life, right? We have certain experiences that we can still bring back emotion years later because it was so different.
Kind of imagine it for the people who were driving home the other day and had this happen to them. Can you imagine driving down this road and a giant pumpkin just starts rolling at you? I look at that SUV who may have been wishing that it was a flying car. And so you’re coming down the road and here comes the giant pumpkin. And you probably think a little bit, well, I can’t believe this is happening to me. And a little bit, well, I wonder what I should do.
But I would imagine that for a good long while after that’s happened, that you could tell that story of the time that you had to dodge a giant floating pumpkin coming at you. And you could probably be pretty excited about it because that’s weird, right? That’s different. And the fact that you evade the pumpkin and it all works out, how much the better, right? You can tell the great story and no harm, no foul. Just some time with Jack rolling towards you. Isn’t that nice?
If we experience something striking, we have that emotion we want to tell, but is the Gospel the sort of thing that we still have that emotion for a year or two years or 10 years or 20 years or 50 years later? Does it strike me enough now to be excited? Does it strike me enough when we come to confession?
You think about this. Anytime you come and confess your sins, whether it’s here at church or you’re just praying to the Lord alone, you can come to the God of the universe and you can confess the places that you’ve fallen short. He’s clearly outlined here, right? It’s clearly outlined. We can come before him and we can repent and his mercies remain new every morning. They still are new every morning.
And I think that’s exactly where John is. He’s seen the promise of God fulfilled, but he’s still a sinful broken human being who knows that that one he saw and heard and touched is also the one who every morning forgives him anew and restores him anew. I let the Gospel strike me enough each day that it isn’t that one time I was driving down the road and a giant pumpkin was rolling at me. But today there was a giant pumpkin rolling down the road and it was wonderful.
Years later, it was still new for him. And this is crucial for going to be fishers because talking about, yeah, years ago, God was really merciful to me. You know what? If there’s a particular time that he’s done something amazing and delivered you from it or protected you from it, that’s a wonderful thing. But it’s sort of like if you were going fishing and you told people where it used to be really well stocked 40 years ago, I don’t think people are going to rush out to the pond because they’re not going to necessarily assume it’s well stocked today. It might not be.
And if we always talk about what God has done for us in the past, was he still that way today? Do people still feel that urgency? But if they hear us talking and living as those who are just utterly in awe of something that genuinely should have us in awe, that today, God has forgiven you. Today, God has forgiven me. This is new and fresh. Then I should have real joy about it and not just sort of, yeah, I’m going to write down now I have joy. I have joy, joy, joy, joy. I have joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.
And in our best grumpy cat, and it was joyful. We should be excited to share. Verse three. We’ll finally get to the rest of the sentence. That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim. There we are. We proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things that our joy may be complete.
John has joy. And what does he want? He wants more complete joy. And what does it mean to have more complete joy? That the people he’s writing experience the joy too. If you saw that flying car earlier this week, wasn’t it a little bit more fun if you got to show it to somebody? Did you see the flying car? It did flips. It did a kickflip thing over a lineup of cars and landed. And then it went zero to 60 in 0.5 seconds. There were, it was breaking the speed of sound, the sound barrier with the gases it was shooting out the back of it.
I mean, it’s so much more fun when you actually get to share it, right? It’s fun to see it. It’s fun to see something. But when we really get the excitement, it’s so much more fun when we actually get to have the complete excitement of sharing it and sharing it and having someone else actually excited about it too, right? If you’re going on and on about that and someone says, well, well, that’s nice. Kind of deflates it, right? How much more so when you know that the other person is going to, their entire life is going to be better for it. That it’s not simply that they’re excited with you, but they’re excited with you because they’ve been saved, because they actually have eternal life because there’s hope for them now.
John is, he can barely contain himself here. What does he do? He wants to proclaim. He wants to share what he’s experienced because it’s so exciting. The only thing that could make it better is if other people have that joy and excitement as well. They too experience the salvation that comes from the Savior. And they too then not only have that salvation, but they’re rejoicing as well and they’re rejoicing together and there’s fellowship together in that joy. That is what makes it more joyful. That’s how he has complete joy.
What is joy for John? It’s sharing. And sharing to have fun. This word here is stronger than sometimes, I sometimes try to avoid using the word fellowship, but I still probably use it too much. But, you know, outside of Christian circles, I’m not sure how much it often means to people. And in Christian circles, we’ve kind of tamed it, right?
What does fellowship mean? Ah, coffee hour, right? And we do that pretty well here at Little Hills. I mean, we often have some really amazing things that we share, right? Sorry to our online family. One day, I said, they weren’t flying cars. I’m just going to stick with transporters now. And maybe next year, next year we’ll send over the snacks, but that’s all great.
But the idea of fellowship in the Bible isn’t we all get together and drink coffee and have snacks. That’s not what it’s about. It’s about sharing. But the idea of fellowship in the Bible isn’t we all get together and drink coffee and have snacks. That can be a part of it. There’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s not it. But we’ve kind of tamed it. We have fellowship halls in churches oftentimes, right? We have fellowship hours. We’re trying to think of a nice way to get together and make it sound a little bit more biblical. Let’s all have fellowship together.
But this term really means something more like partnership, being bound together, sharing life together, actually doing something where we’re unified together. And so, yes, all those things that we place the word on are a part of it. They’re real. And if it’s really happening, that’s probably going to be part of it. But they’re more the side effects of it, right? If you have fellowship with a group of people, if you genuinely have fellowship, yeah, you’re going to want to spend time and you’re going to want to have, what’s better than having some food together while you’re spending time together, right? I mean, those sorts of things are good.
But fellowship actually means, no, we see that we’re family together. We’re actually on mission together. And that this isn’t a temporary thing. It’s a temporary thing. That, in fact, I think this is very clearly what John sees here, that it’s a preview of what’s to come.
And part of that is hinted at, one commentator made a great point. Does John really think his joy is going to be utterly, completely, unequivocally complete in this life? No. He doesn’t. He doesn’t. No. Not until Jesus returns, at least, right? And that’s not what he’s talking about just here. He’s not saying when Jesus returns, my joy will be complete. No, he says, when we share this together, my joy will be complete.
Well, he wants Jesus to come, right? Go to the end of Revelation. He’s waiting for Jesus to come. So, so how can his joy be complete before that? Well, it’s really quite simple. Because every time that we actually experience genuine fellowship, genuinely sharing together, genuinely having joy together, we’re previewing what’s to come. We’re looking forward to what will be. That this isn’t a nice little highlight before the end, but this is what the end is.
The best, the absolute best of the picture of the body of Christ working together is a picture of the end. Now, we do a good job of making that a little murkier and more difficult because we’re sinful human beings. And so we’re not going to experience complete joy.
And if you think of the times where, I don’t know, maybe you’ve been in a committee meeting and no one can agree on anything and it just goes on endlessly. And you start to muse on Einstein’s theories of relativity and the movement of time. That may not be experiencing the fullness and the completeness of joy in that moment.
But you know what? When we’re working together and it, and we see where we’re going together and it’s going, there’s a little taste. When we are celebrating together, whether it’s our monthly birthday celebration or we’re doing Faithtoberfest and we’re all together, or even just on a normal everyday, ordinary Sunday when we’re together and we say, wait a second, but we’re brothers and sisters in Christ. And that’s not just a term that’s sort of a nice thing to toss around. It’s really talking about what God has done, that we’re adopted together into the family of God. And we actually take that in and we soak that up for a moment. We’re getting a preview of what’s to come.
Questions, what do we do with that then? We get a preview of a lot of things. This week sort of felt to me, weather-wise, like when you go to the theater and they’re doing the extra long set of previews and it’s like everything coming out in the next year. Because what, the beginning of the week, if you can think back that far, just like the day after the last time we were all together, it was like, just like the day after the last time we were all together, we were breaking records, right? 95 degrees. It could have been July, right?
If you ignored the few trees that were hinting that maybe they were ready to call a year, you could go outside and think, it’s the middle of summer out here. And last night I had the indicator up, frost warning, right? Because it didn’t quite get that cold, but it could have gotten cold enough that we had an actual frost. And certainly going out the last couple of days outside, it was, well, is this like a warm December day? This is kind of chilly and kind of wintry feeling. So we got the whole thing within a week.
So what do you do with that? Well, you can say, well, maybe next week we’ll be wearing it. I’ll put away all my winter clothes. I’m going to get my shorts out. I’m going to plan a nice day at the beach. I’m going to plan a nice day at the pool. But none of it was complete in itself, right? I was neither swimming nor making snowmen this week because it wasn’t complete. It wasn’t completely there, but you could certainly imagine either of those.
And then the next question is, well, which one are we headed towards? Well, I’m sorry, summer lovers. We are headed towards winter. So if you’re going to kind of preview that and think of the best parts of it, it might be better to start thinking how you’re going to deck your halls than where your beach towels are. And know, even if you can’t experience it right now, there are no snowmen right now that if any of that can bring joy, that’s where it’s going, right?
We have lots of things that seem to change the weather in our lives. Little victories, big victories, little sorrows, big sorrows. And in the middle of that, for those of us who trust in Jesus, is that experience of encountering Him. Sometimes we let that get drowned out by pumpkins rolling down the road or flying cars or whatever else. And it feels like we’re going, we’re 95 one day and 30 the next. And I have no idea which one’s actually the one I should be looking forward to.
But we know in God’s word, Jesus is going to return and He’s going to unite His people. There’s the weather that we’re looking for. There’s the one that’s actually going to happen and the one that’s, that’s going to fulfill us if we’re looking to it and we’re helping other people look to it.
And a lot of times when we’re staking our claim on earthly joys, it’s like telling someone who is new to the area, you know, I think you should probably get ready to go swimming next week. I said, well, I don’t know what Missouri weather’s like. Maybe that’s the norm for late October and early November. I guess I’ll do that. And you’re doing that person no favors.
And when people see us, they see us more excited about a political candidate or a sports team or a flying car or a great book or the beautiful weather or the decorations for the holidays or job promotion, whatever it might be. They see that. That’s where the person’s excitement is. That’s where my excitement is or your excitement is.
If they don’t yet know Jesus, how do they know which weather is the actual weather that’s coming? And how do they get ready to actually enjoy that weather? But when they see us actually knowing the season and celebrating the right season, the one that’s actually coming. And when it feels all cattywampus and it’s going up and down and all over the place, we actually know where we are in the year.
We’re helping other people experience that preview and experience the right preview. And when every preview ends up being a little short of what we ultimately hope for, we can at least say, but this one’s actually going to come true. This one is going to be full.
Am I looking at the eternal calendar, looking at the season and saying, you know what? I can feel the warm breeze of the kingdom of God. It comes because he saves us. And because of that, that’s what I want. That’s what we want other people to experience. And that’s what I’m excited about. That what people hear from us.
Am I contagiously joyful for Jesus? I think too often today, we are not that as Christians. We get things that get us excited and a lot of things that get us down.
As we look at this beginning of first John, I think it really is a challenge for us to say, but I want to be contagious. I want to remember what Christ has done for me.
I think of all kinds of ingenious ways that we can go and be fishers of men and women, how we can go and fulfill that commission that Christ has given to us. But we don’t need to find some kind of bait, some kind of clever trick. You know what we need? We need to understand that God has sent us to fish with joy, true joy, joy anchored in a promise that will be, and we can already taste, and we can already see, and we can already hear.
There’s nothing else that people need more. We be fishers with that joy. Would you pray with me, please?
Father, we do pray that you would help us to be those who have joy, that we would be contagious with joy, that we would not forget what once was that you have done for us, but we would see every morning when you make it new. And because it’s new, that we would live with joy and we would desire to share that joy with those around us. You’d help us to spread it and to encourage people in it. And through that, to see more people have joy and in that taste, taste a little bit of that complete joy, that joy when all things are restored. And we truly experience the fullness of what it means to be the body of Christ, the sons and daughters of the living God. We pray this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.
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