In this episode, Dr. J. Vernon McGee untangles the misconceptions of Gnosticism, contrasting it with the authentic knowledge of Christ shared by John the Apostle. With illustrative discussions and thoughtful anecdotes, learn how true fellowship with God brings not only knowledge but also an abundance of joy and the promise of eternal life. Dive deep into these spiritual insights and discover how to live a fulfilling Christian life without the confines of rules, but through the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit.
00:24:24 Discovering Joy and Fun in God’s Relationship
SPEAKER 02 :
What does it mean to have a relationship with God? We hear that phrase a lot. Do you ever wonder how it works? Is having a relationship with God like having a relationship with other people? Welcome to Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee. And those are good questions. And Dr. McGee answers them in this study in the book of 1 John. As we begin, let’s join Dr. McGee for another introduction on the important themes of 1 John and in our previous study of Jonah.
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Now, we marvel at the fact that since we go from Old Testament to New and then New back to Old, how often the one book will tie into the other book. And this is true here. The lesson that we got in the book of Jonah was a great lesson on missions. Now we come to 1 John, and 1 John has something else. that ties into the main theme of the book of Jonah. Now, the main theme in the book of Jonah, you’ll recall, is resurrection. God raised the dead. And the great theme, actually, of the New Testament is not only that Christ died for our sins, but the fact that he rose again The third day, he was dead. He was buried, and he rose again the third day according to the scripture. And part of that scripture is the book of Jonah. Now, 1 John is going to deal with this matter of life in Christ. How are we going to live it? Now, we have had that Actually, in three books now in the New Testament, the epistle of Philippians deals with Christian living. The epistle to the Hebrews deals with a great subject, life in a great high priest who is today at God’s right hand. And now 1 John is going to talk about that God is light, and God is love, and God is life. And he says, he that hath the Son hath life. Problem today is that we have all these how-to books and quick-fix books, and if you follow a few little rules and regulations, you’re going to live the Christian life. Well, you’re not going to live the Christian life. It’s only done through the power of the Holy Spirit working in us, the life of the resurrected Christ. Paul says that I might know him and the power of his resurrection. And this is very important, friends, for you and me to understand. Therefore, the great theme of Jonah is resurrection.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, that’s a great reminder that the reason we study the word of God, including this passage in 1 John 1, is so we can know Jesus and the power of his resurrection. Let’s pray for understanding as we come to this amazing section of God’s word. Father, thank you that your son, Jesus Christ, not only died to pay the price for our sins, but he also was raised and that we might be justified and secure a place with you in heaven. Bless your word as it goes out now. Help us to understand the important message that you have for us. And thank you for the fruit that it will bring in the lives of those who trust you. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Here’s our study of 1 John 1 on Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.
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Now friends, we come back to this first epistle of John. John the Apostle, and in this first verse of this first chapter, we’re in the section that we’ve labeled, God is Light. And that covers the first chapter down through the second verse of the second chapter. And we’re in what we’ve labeled a prologue. And we have read the first verse, but I go over it again. He says, “…that which was from the beginnings.” Now, the beginning that he’s talking about here is the incarnation, when the Word became flesh. Now, he’s speaking of the Lord Jesus, of course, when he was in the earth. Now, he says, which we’ve heard. John here is not prattling about his opinions and his speculation. He is talking about the fact that he heard the Lord Jesus. And when he listened to him, he listened to God. He’s speaking to man. This is God speaking to man. Now, he says here that we not only heard him, but we’ve seen with our eyes. We cannot see him with our eyes as John did. That’s true. But still, we can see him with the eye of faith. And Peter, you remember, told us, whom having not seen, ye love. And the Lord Jesus himself, you remember, speaking to Thomas. after his resurrection, when Thomas would not believe until he could see and handle. And the Lord Jesus said to him in John 20, 29, Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed. And we’re walking today by faith, and we can have the Lord Jesus made as real to us as he was made to Thomas. Someone has expressed it like this, And warm, sweet, tender, even yet, a present help is he, and faith has still its Olivet, and love its Galilee. We’ve seen him by the eye of faith. And now he says, looked upon. As we said last time, that word comes from theosophy. We get our word theater from that. It’s a place where you go in and sit down and look, you know. It’s not just a passing glance, but a gaze. And that is what the word means here. And John, you remember, said, we beheld his glory. Glory of the only begotten of the Father. And as we said last time, the look saves, but the gaze sanctifies. And many of us today need to do more than just look to him for salvation. After we’ve done that, we need to gaze upon him with the eye of faith. And you can do that in this epistle here as he makes it very clear. Now he says we handled him. We handled him. And again, I want to turn back to Luke’s gospel this time, to the 24th chapter, verse 39. And I read this here. He is speaking to his own in the upper room after his resurrection. He says, Behold my hands and my feet. that it is I myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have. And when he had thus spoken, he showed them his hands and his feet. Now, there have been those. In fact, Dr. G. Calvin Morgan takes the position that when the Lord Jesus held out his hands to Thomas and to these others here, that they were so overwhelmed that they did not have and they just bowed down in reverence to him. And that would be the normal thing to do. But John, I think, makes it clear here, and this is the one place I disagree with Dr. Morgan. Well, I probably in other places too, but this is the one that I know of, and I dare not disagree with a man of his caliber unless there’s a reason for it. But John says we handled it. And that means that John knew what it was to recline upon his bosom before his death and resurrection. And afterward, he felt those hands, saw the nail prints, and that he was a man, that he was the Word made flesh, God manifest in the flesh. Now, there arose at this time, after the death of Paul, which was about 67 AD, there arose the heresy in the church. And it’s called Gnosticism. And Gnosticism, you know, is the opposite from agnosticism. We have a great many agnostics today. We have them in colleges and out of colleges. Men that say, well, I’m an agnostic. I do not know. Well, I always think of what Charles Spurgeon used to say about the agnostic. He says, well, the agnostic, that’s a Greek word for the Latin word ignoramus. And when a man says, I don’t believe the Bible because I’m an agnostic, he really means I don’t believe the Bible because I’m an ignoramus. as what Charles Spurgeon said. Well, the agnostic says, I do not know. The Gnostic says, I do know. And Gnosticism was a group that arose, and they claimed to have a superior knowledge to any of the other Christians round about them, that the other Christians were very simple folk, but they were super-duper saints. And they knew a little bit more than anyone else knew. And among them was a man by the name of Serentis. And the tradition says that in Ephesus, John went to the public bath to take a bath. And old Serentis was down in the water. And John grabbed up his clothes and put them around him in a hurry. And he ran out of the place because he wouldn’t take a bath with that old heretic, that Gnostic. Well, Gnosticism came up with quite a few little novel ideas, which was literally heresy. And one of the things they came up with was that what really was true was that Jesus was just a man when he was born. Just like any other man, no difference. But at his baptism, the Christ came upon him. And then at his death, that is, when he was put on the cross, the Christ left him. And that was their interpretation. Well, that’s not the way John tells it to us, you see. The Word was born flesh. In other words, John makes it very clear in his gospel and he makes it clear here that we have handled the word of life and that we handled him after he came back from the dead and he was still a human being. He still had flesh and bones. And John says we handled him. So John says that we’re not talking about a theory. We’re not talking about something that we’ve heard. But he says this is something that we know, and we want to impart it to you. We want you to know what we know. And verse 2, he says, for the life was manifested. That is, the life was brought out in the open where men could see him. And we have seen it and bear witness and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us. One of these men who was rather, we would call him a smarty, smart aleck is what we used to call him. He came up to me after a message and he said, you talked about eternal life. Now, he said to me, what is eternal life? He said, I’d like to know what eternal life is. Well, I said, and I gave him this verse. John says the life was manifested. We’ve seen it. And bear witness, and we show unto you eternal life, which was with the Father, and it was manifested unto us. Now, I said eternal life that John is talking about is the word of life, and it’s none other than the Son, Jesus Christ, as we’re told down now in the next verse. Now, I said if you want to know what eternal life is, you want a definition of it, eternal life is a person, and that person is Christ. Now, I said, it’s just as simple as this, brother. And even you can grasp it. You either have Christ or you don’t have Christ. You either trust Christ or you don’t trust Christ. And if you trust Christ, you have eternal life. If you don’t trust Christ, you don’t have eternal life. Now, I said to him, that’s eternal life. Do you have eternal life? And he had to turn and walk away without answering. And his very fact, he turned away, was to me an evidence he didn’t have eternal life. And he didn’t want to pursue that matter any farther. He didn’t want to be pushed regarding a decision for Christ. Now, what he’s going to say here is something actually that is quite wonderful. That is that you and I can have fellowship with God. There is a possibility of a man having fellowship with God, and that’s one of the most glorious prospects that’s before us today, that you and I can have fellowship with God. Now, will you listen to him? Verse 3 now. That which we have seen and heard. That’s the third time he’s told us this. And I hope now it sort of percolated through to us that he had heard him and had seen him. We declare unto you. Now, why, John, are you telling us all about this? That ye also may have fellowship with us. Now, believers can have fellowship one with another. And truly, our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. How are we going to have fellowship with God? Well, the only way we can have fellowship with God is for us to know Jesus Christ. That’s the only way that we can. And it does present a dilemma. God is holy. Man is unholy. We are not holy people. But how can this gulf be bridged? How can you bring God and man together? Or, as we saw Amos put it, how can two walk together except they be agreed? How are we going to have fellowship? Well, to get over this impossible hurdle, John is going to present three methods. Two of them are man-made methods that won’t work, and only one will work, and that will be God’s method. And we’re going to see that. Now, before we get to that, Let me say just a word here about this word fellowship. Now, I’ve talked about this word before because it’s such an important word. Fellowship. What is fellowship? Well, it’s the Greek word koinonia, and that means what you have in common. That is what you can share together. It means for a believer that if we are to have fellowship with John and fellowship one with another, you and I to have fellowship on this radio, it means we have to share the things of Christ. And that is the only way that you can have fellowship. Now, that means that you and I must know the Lord Jesus. And we must not just know about him, but we must know him as our personal Savior. What is this thing then called fellowship? Well, again, let me tell this story. We have dragged this word down in the mire today, and it means nothing in the world but going to a dinner and maybe a banquet in the church and patting somebody on the back and say, how you feel? That’s fellowship. Well, that’s not fellowship. And several years ago, I used to go down to Huntington Beach here in Southern California and speak at the Rotary Club. They had a very wonderful doctor who was the program chairman. And he told me that they could probably take me once a year. He’d either invite me at Christmas or at some other time, which would be Easter. And he said, give them both barrels. And I generally tried to give them both barrels. And since he’s no longer program chairman, they don’t have me back, I can tell you that. I’m not very popular on the banquet circuit, by the way, because they want to have a good time, whether they’re Christian or non-Christian, at banquets. They don’t want the Word of God just spread right out for them. And the thing I noticed at this place where they met, they had a big banner up over the speaker’s table. And the speaker’s table was elevated. And on this banner, the motto was, Food, Fun, Fellowship. Well, I want to tell you, the food wasn’t anything to brag about. I shouldn’t complain dinner didn’t cost me anything. I don’t think I wanted to pay anything for it. It was embalmed chicken with peas as big as bullets. And that was the lunch that we had. And then the fun, well, it was corny jokes like I tell. That’s not too much fun, I guess. But then the fellowship, as best I could make out, was this man greeting another man, and he pats him on the back, and he says, Bill, how’s business? And then Bill answers back that business is good. And he says, how’s your business? Fine. And somebody else says, well, how’s the wife? You know, that’s fellowship. And then they sing a little song together. And I’ll be honest with you, I don’t see the thrill in that type of a meeting. But I’m not criticizing because I don’t belong to the knife and fork circuit at all. But that was the sum and substance of the meeting. Well, that’s not fellowship, friends. And it’s not fellowship when you hear an announcement made from the pulpit, come to our dinner, we’re going to have good food and we’re going to have a lot of fellowship. Well, what in the world do they have? Just meet around the table and talk to each other about everything under the sun, except the one thing that gives us fellowship. And that means to meet around the person of Christ. Now, let me give an illustration of the one place where they use it correctly. I had the privilege of being at Oxford University, just as a tourist going through, looking at everything. I saw the quad and all of that. I saw Wren’s Tower there. And Oxford is made up of different schools. They got one school there where you can study Shakespeare. Now, suppose that you wanted to know all about Shakespeare. You wanted to teach it, probably. You’d go to Oxford and you’d go to that particular college where they specialize in that. Well, when you got there, you went and sat down at the board and we saw where they eat in each one of these colleges. And you meet the man, the professors eat there, and you talk with each other, and you hear them talking about Shakespeare in a way that you never knew before. For instance, you and I thought that Romeo and Juliet, that she was just the only girl that he ever went with. And when Romeo made the statement, the all-seeing sun has never seen her like since first the world begun. that he was really talking about Juliet. And did you know that that fickle fellow, Romeo, was talking about another girl when he said that? And you thought, my, there’s a lot about Shakespeare that I don’t know. So you begin to study. You pull books down off the shelf in the library. You go to the lectures. And after you’ve been there a while, there’s a couple of years, maybe three years, they make you a fellow. And now you go in and sit down at the board and they talk about the sonnets of Shakespeare and you are right in there with them because you read them now and you know Shakespeare and you can have fellowship with them. Now, fellowship for a believer means that we meet and share the things of Christ. In fact, this Bible study we have together here each day, I trust is a fellowship with many of you. As we talk about the Lord Jesus and about his word, we trust that you enter into it and that it becomes meaningful to you and that you and I share the things of Christ. We can have fellowship one with another when we share the things of Christ, and we can have fellowship with him. And I think right now, and I mean this, right now, I think that he’s listening in to us. And that he’s watching you and me both. And he’s saying, McGee, why don’t you do a better job than you’re doing? You’re not presenting it maybe as wonderful as it should be. And I do say, I wish I could present him in a more wonderful way. Because friends, that’s one of his names. He’s wonderful. And he’s the only one we ought to use the word wonderful with. All right? Now, that’s what we have. That we might have fellowship. Verse 4, I’m going to read this verse, and this will be as far as we get, I think. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. Now, this is the second reason that he mentions here, is that we might have joy. How wonderful this is, that we might have joy. Now, not just a little joy, but a whole lot of joy. Now, if you and I… are having fellowship with him, then may I say to you that we’re not only having fellowship, And by the way, that means the experience of fellowship. The word sometimes can refer to an act of fellowship. The communion service in the church is an act of fellowship. Giving is an act of fellowship and praying is an act. But he’s talking about the experience of fellowship. The thing that Paul said, that I might know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering. Now, in this chapter, we’re talking about the fellowship, the experience of fellowship. And we mean by that, that which will bring joy to the heart. And that’s the high note. That’s the ultimate aim of preaching, is through conviction and repentance. salvation might come to men and women, and it might bring great joy to their hearts, like that Ethiopian eunuch. Why, Philip wasn’t necessary. He didn’t go around bragging what a great preacher Philip was. The thing that he did was he went on his way rejoicing. Why? He’d come to know Christ. And friends, he wants us to have a lot of fun today. We’re going to pick right up there tomorrow and look at these two wrong ways that men try to have fellowship with God. So until next time, may God richly bless you, my beloved.
SPEAKER 02 :
Do you know that God wants your relationship with Him to include fun? Well, He does. He wants you to experience pure joy. These studies in 1 John not only address very important, very serious subjects, but also they’ll bring us joy as we think about what a relationship with God and with other believers is supposed to include. Ask the Lord to show you each day some facet of what your relationship with Him should look like. You’ll find more to help you explore your relationship with God in our app or at ttb.org. Or if we can help you find a specific resource, call us at 1-800-65-BIBLE. That’s 1-800-652-4253. You can also write to us at BibleBus at ttb.org or at Box 7100, Pasadena, CA 91109. In Canada, Box 25325, London, ON N6C 6B1. We’ve got more to come in this study of 1 John, so go ahead and read through the rest of chapter 1 to prepare for the great things that we’re going to learn. I’m Steve Schwetz, and I’m going to save a seat on the Bible bus just for you.
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