2001 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

©2006 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

05-28-06

Reasons For Writing

5/28/06 Reasons For Writing

JOH 1:16-18 For of His fulness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.

I tried last week to reenter our study

of the first chapter of the Gospel of John,

but somehow ended up in the first chapter of Genesis.

I have no regrets with that

because it gave me an opportunity

to share some thoughts

about why we so often have so much trouble seeing the Word of God

for the incredible gift it is,

but this morning I do want to try to get us back to John.

As we’ve moved through these first few verses of John’s Gospel

we’ve seen the way in which

John begins his words to us

by attempting to answer the biggest questions for us right from the start.

And really that’s not the best way for me to say it.

It isn’t so much that he tries to answer the big questions in these first few verses,

but rather that he tries to plant within us the crucial attitudes

that will then allow us to find the answers we need.

And before we return to the verses I just read,

I want to reinforce something

that we spent quite a bit of time on

during our earliest studies in this Gospel.

It has to do with the motivation for writing

that is imbedded in all that John shares with us.

There is something unfortunate that happened

when we took the words of John, and Paul, and Luke, and Matthew, and Mark

and bound them in black leather,

and etched “HOLY BIBLE” in gold leaf on the front.

It did something in our attitudes,

robbing us of one of the most critical truths we can ever come to understand

about the words we read inside those leather-bound covers.

And that truth is simply this -

that the men who wrote these words

were in every way exactly like us,

like you and me,

and that the only thing that set them apart from us

was their response

to the intrusion of God into their lives.

The words they wrote were, and still are

in every way divinely inspired, of course,

and carry absolute authority over our lives.

But somewhere along the way,

after two thousand years of religious tradition,

a great and almost uncrossable gulf has now been created

between the lives of those who were used by the Spirit of God to write these words

and our lives today.

In the late 60's I came across a book,

a novel entitled “Tell No Man”

that told the story of a highly successful business man

whose life was turned upside down

by his personal encounter with Jesus Christ.

It’s been nearly 40 years since I read it,

but I remember one aspect of the plot

that fascinated me.

Every so often this man would receive packets in the mail,

documents of some kind addressed to him personally.

He waited eagerly for their arrival

and was obviously excited about each new one he received.

As the plot developed

the reader finally found out what they were.

The man had told his secretary

to take each of the New Testament Epistles, one at a time,

and type them up as if they were letters written just to him.

Then every few days she would put another one in an envelope

and mail it to him.

Taking those letters out of an envelope addressed to him

and reading them from sheets of typed paper

helped him better relate to what’s really going on in these documents

that we find contained inside our leather-bound books.

I mention this whole area once again this morning

because I know that so much of the power of the words written to us by John

depends upon our understanding what was going on inside John when he wrote

and why, in the final months of his life,

he felt compelled to put his thoughts and memories into written form.

You see, John did not write

in order to communicate Christian doctrine to his fellow Christians.

It was not a driving desire

to create a systematic doctrinal structure

that drove him to record these words.

What drove John to do what he did when he wrote this book

was not religious system,

it was the same thing that caused him

to lay down his fishing nets

and step out of his father’s boat

and follow this unknown Teacher

when he was still 18 or 19 years old.

It was relationship -

his relationship with this Man, Jesus.

We’ve talked already

about that title that John chose for himself

when he wrote this Gospel.

He called himself the disciple whom Jesus loved.

And from the very beginning

it was that one truth

that drove his life.

For reasons that he would never understand,

this remarkable Person

offered John a depth of friendship

far beyond anything John had ever known before in his life.

It was a depth and quality of friendship

that was evident to John from the very beginning,

and a friendship that simply grew deeper and deeper and deeper

throughout his entire life.

And I know how this thing worked in John’s life.

I know

because I know the power

that kind of friendship has in the human spirit.

It wasn’t long before his friendship with this Man

forced him into situations

in which he had to choose between the friendship

and his career,

between the friendship

and his social standing in the community,

between the friendship

and the entire world of religion surrounding him.

And each time

in the end there really was only one choice he could make.

He chose the friendship.

He chose faithfulness,

and loyalty,

and allegiance to the Man.

And it was that friendship

that became the driving force of his life,

that friendship that, both before and after the death and resurrection of Christ,

compelled John to make the choices he made.

With John the pattern was set from earliest days of his contact with Christ.

MAR 1:19-20 And going on a little farther, Jesus saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who were also in the boat mending the nets. And immediately He called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and went away to follow Him.

Did you think that was some sort of religious “call to the ministry” that John was responding to?

Did you see it as “the blessed St. John”

recognizing his calling as the great man of God

and turning his back on “the world”

and following his God into a holy and unknown future?

Get a grip!

At that point in his life

John didn’t know this was God,

and he certainly had no aspirations for sainthood

or any kind of religious vocation whatsoever.

He was a fisherman.

That’s what he did,

that’s who he was.

At this point in his life

he did what he did for just one reason -

it was because of the kind and quality of the friendship

that this Jesus had already created between Himself and John.

He chose between the career

and the relationship,

and he chose the relationship.

And more than 50 years later,

when he wrote these words that we now know as the Gospel of John,

he did it for exactly the same reason.

John wrote because this Person, this Jesus who turned out to be His God, loved him,

and he desperately, urgently wanted to communicate to us what that was like -

what it was like to be loved by God,

and to live with God,

and to have that relationship form the foundation for all of life.

When John says to us,

JOH 1:14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth...,

and when he says,

JOH 1:16 For of His fulness we have all received, and grace upon grace...

do you know what I hear him saying?

I hear him saying, “Do you have any idea what it’s like

to live in the presence of God,

and discover that this God loves you with an all-consuming love?

Do you understand how that discovery

changes everything forever?

Listen to me, my friend,

please listen while I try to tell you what that’s like,

because, if you can hear me,

even a tiny bit,

it will change you forever, too.”

I mentioned a few minutes ago

that John did not write this book

to try to pass onto us “doctrine” about Christ.

What he did do

is to write this book

with the hope of passing on to us Christ Himself

because he knew that, if he could do that,

then all the doctrine would take care of itself

because the doctrine would grow out of the relationship.

There are two distinctly different ways

for us to bring doctrinal beliefs into our lives.

Nearly 40 years ago now

I sat in several theology classes

and studied Christian doctrines.

I studied about the doctrines of God’s omniscience - that He knows all things,

and God’s omnipresence - that He is everywhere, all the time,

and God’s omnipotence - that He is all powerful.

I studied about the doctrine of eternal security - that once a believer enters the family of God

he’s there forever.

I learned all of the verses,

and read all of the arguments,

and passed all of the tests confirming that I now understood those major doctrines and many others.

And do you know what it did for me?

Mostly it armed with ammunition with which I could then battle with those who didn’t agree with my doctrines.

But now, after living 40 years in the presence of my Lord,

and after seeing the way He’s never ever left me,

and never walked away from me,

and the way in which He has so skillfully loved me and led me

through His perfect redemptive process for my life,

the only doctrines I care about

are the ones that have grown out of what’s gone one between Him and me throughout my life.

If someone were to ask me today

if I believed in the doctrine of eternal security,

all I’d say is that

I’ve done some stupid things during the past 40 years,

and there have been too many times

when I have disobeyed the voice of my Lord,

times when, by all rights, He should have turned His back on me

and walked away in disgust.

And yet, even at those times when I wouldn’t look at Him,

He was always right there with me,

looking at me with eyes filled with love,

holding me,

protecting me,

guiding me back into His light and His love.

Will my God ever leave me?

Will He ever forsake me?

Will He ever stop loving me?

Will He ever disown me or kick me out of His family?

Who or what could ever separate me from the love of my God for me?

No one, and nothing, no matter what.

I have a young friend

who has gone through some very difficult years,

years in which he made some really stupid choices,

choices that could easily have destroyed his life forever.

For a number of years he did his best to hide that part of his life from me,

but last year it all started to come out.

And there was a point in that whole process

as I learned more and more about the stuff he was dealing with

when he and I were suppose to get together

and he sent word that he didn’t want to see me.

I understood why he did that.

Knowing what I knew

I could see where he might figure it was just too risky.

He didn’t like what was going on in his life at that point,

and he certainly couldn’t imagine I’d be real happy about it.

When I got his message that he didn’t want to see me,

I got into my truck,

drove over to his house,

walked into his room,

and as soon as I saw him I said, “Listen Kid! I’m never ever going away.

I’m never ever bailing out of your life.

And nothing you’ve ever done or ever could do

will ever have the power to destroy my friendship with you.”

We’ve had lots and lots of long talks since then,

and the changes I’ve seen in his life since then

are truly remarkable.

And this afternoon at about 2:00 o’clock I’m going to baptize him.

Do you know why I did what I did at that point in that boy’s life?

I did it because

that’s exactly the same way

that my God has responded to me during the past 40 years.

Every time I’ve wanted to run away from Him,

or hide from Him because of what was going on in my life,

instead of turning His back on me,

He found some new way

to tell me once again how much He loves me.

Is that “eternal security”?

Well, one thing I know for certain -

it is that living reality,

that history with Him

that gives me courage, and strength, and renewed hope every morning.

And those are the true doctrines,

the ones that have the power to change our lives,

the ones that grow out of this sometimes agonizing process

of living one day at a time,

one battle at a time,

one issue at a time in the presence of our God.

John writes his letter to us

not so that he can give us doctrines,

but rather with the hope that He can give us Christ Himself,

because if he can give us Christ

he knows that all the doctrines will eventually take care of themselves.

I understand that now,

and I also understand why he chose to write

at this point in his life.

He wrote, at least in part,

because he saw the real issues of life with remarkable clarity,

because he knew that nothing in life will ever make sense

until it is seen in the context of our relationship with our Creator,

and because the thought of the next generation

not knowing what he himself had come to know

was simply unthinkable.

I have begun to understand that in my own life in recent years,

and to see it as I’ve never seen it before.

I’ve shared with you many times

the way in which my Lord blasted into my life in the fall of 1966.

At the time I didn’t even know I wanted Him,

I didn’t know I was looking for Him,

I didn’t know I needed Him more than life itself.

But then all of a sudden there He was,

asking me what I was going to do about it.

It took me several weeks, but eventually I chose to let Him in,

and for the past 40 years

I’ve been in the process

of trying to figure out what it means to live with God on the basis of faith in Christ.

Compared to what there is to know,

I haven’t understood much,

but I have come to understand a few things,

a few things that are incredibly worth knowing.

And, like John, I think,

the thought of not being able to pass on the things I know

to those who will come after me

seems like such tragic waste.

But during the past few years

the most remarkable thing has been happening.

During the past few years

I have watched in amazement

as my Lord has brought a number of young men into my life,

and then allowed me to reproduce in them

some of the best of what I have come to know about my God.

Most of them have sought me out,

and then given me access to their minds and their hearts

in a way that has allowed me to pass on my understanding of my God

with a clarity and effectiveness I’ve never experienced before.

And the hope for the future it has given me

and the sense of fulfillment that it brings

is truly remarkable.

In fact I tried to put this into words recently to one of those young men,

telling him that he was my link to a generation and a world that I would never see.

When I said that

he just grinned and said, “Ya, I know. Isn’t it great!”

And I couldn’t agree more.

And as I read the Gospel of John

I’m certain that there were some of those feelings and longings going on inside of John as well

when he took what he knew

and what he remembered about his Lord

and wrote it out for those who would come after him.

Which brings me back to these verses

that I said I wasn’t quite finished with.

And before we move ahead in our study of this book

I want to be sure we see what John is trying to do in these three verses.

The first statement, “For of His fulness we have all received, and grace upon grace...”,

is this explosive burst of gratitude to His God for who He is and what He’s done.

It is John crying out to us,

“If your spirit ever gets near Jesus Christ as He really is,

you will find yourself flooded with grace upon grace.

What He pours out on you

will fill you as nothing else has ever filled you before in your life.”

I have my own personal phrase

that affects me the same way as I think this phrase must have affected John.

It won’t make any sense to you, I suppose,

but I’ll share it with you anyway.

Earlier this spring

Sandee went to visit our daughter for three weeks.

While she was gone

I got into some house projects,

one of which was stripping 20 year old wall paper off the bathroom walls.

We hadn’t painted those walls before the paper went up,

and it was a mess, to say the least.

But as I was working in there,

I started thinking about my life -

the way my Lord put it together for me,

and what it would have been like had He not called me to Himself so many years ago.

And all of a sudden I saw it as I’d never seen it before

and I said, “I know what You’ve done!”,

and I found myself flooded with gratitude for the kind of God He is.

That phrase, “I know what You’ve done!”

has stayed with me ever since,

and it’s my own personal way of saying what I hear John saying when he says,

For of His fulness we have all received, and grace upon grace.

But then John sets up a contrast that he wants us to see.

He says,

For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.

Now, he’s talking about history, of course,

about how God used Moses to bring the Ten Commandments to the human race,

but he’s doing far more than just that.

In one remarkable sentence

he is also recording for us the blueprint of our lives.

We all begin our relationship with our God through the law.

It is all our spirits can understand prior to our submission to Him through Christ.

We hate it,

we fight against it,

but we can never break free from it on our own.

And if it serves the purpose for which God gave it,

ultimately it creates within us

a desperate hunger for some other way.

It creates within us a longing for a Savior,

for forgiveness,

for some way to find peace with our God.

And at that point grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.

Condemnation and fear come through the law, driving us to Christ,

and then, through Him we find grace and truth.

And then, just so that we never misunderstand what he’s saying,

John gives it to us once again

in that final statement.

No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.

In other words,

Christ really is God,

and what you see in Him

really is the heart of God Himself.

It is that truth,

that understanding most of all

that John wants imbedded in our minds

as he then moves us into the historical account that follows.