Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church — Dardanelle, Arkansas
Pastor Chuck Trusty — Sunday evening service, September 13, 2026 I, II & III John · Series Introduction · 1 John 1:1 · 1 John 2:19 · 1 John 1:4 · 1 John 5:13 · 1 John 5:11-12
Watch this lesson on video (47:47)
We are going to start a new series tonight, and here is the way I have it laid out - the way I hope it works. Every other Sunday night we will do a lesson from 1, 2 and 3 John, and on a Sunday night we will kind of skim the surface. Then the next time I preach on a Wednesday we will go a little bit DEEPER . . . the first layer of the onion on Sunday, the second layer of the onion on Wednesday. And the Sunday nights in between we will do the Route 66 thing . . . I have got eighteen or so lessons prepared for this, and that may change a little as we go along.
Now, 1, 2 and 3 John - is it a prophecy? Is it just a book? Or is it a letter? It turns out it is a LETTER . . . and it is a letter that has been addressed to US - we will touch on that directly.
There are some names we will run across tonight. Ephesus - you remember that was the city where John pastored as he got older . . . and the seven churches of Asia were the churches in that part of the country. Smyrna - that was the one church in Revelation chapter 2 that had NOTHING wrong with it . . . and two men we have probably not run across before. One is named Polycarp - he was one of the preachers at Smyrna, and he learned from the apostle John firsthand. The other was Irenaeus - a young preacher in one of those churches who learned from Polycarp. Hang on to those names, because the reason I am going through them will show up in just a moment.
A Letter Has Come to This Church
Let us use our imagination for a minute. I said these three books are actually letters - so suppose a letter showed up in the church mailbox this week . . . it was hand-written . . . there was no return address on it, and the reason there was no return address is that after reading the first line or two, it would be obvious who had written it. “Oh - I recognize that, that is Brother So-and-so’s writing. That is what Brother So-and-so always talked about and always said.”
Now suppose the man who wrote that letter was literally the LAST living person on earth who had personally walked with Jesus Christ before the cross. This same John is the John in the Gospel of John who leaned on the breast of Jesus at the supper - he was the John who stood at the cross - he was the John who ran to the empty tomb . . . and he was the John who ate the broiled fish with Jesus after Jesus had come up out of the grave.
Well, that is what 1 John is. It is not a textbook - it is literally a LETTER . . . it was written by the last eyewitness of the “person Jesus” there was, to the churches he pastored in the country around Ephesus. And one of the reasons it was written - was that something had gone WRONG in those churches. Some of the members - members that the church TRUSTED - had been overcome with a particular error . . . and we are going to touch on that here in a minute.
So this evening I am not going to go line by line and verse by verse and actually preach the letter. I am just going to hand you a little bit of information - who wrote it, why it was written, and how he put the letter together . . . the way it is structured. Because there is a HUGE difference between reading a letter that was written to somebody else and reading a letter that was written to us. I could read a letter that was written to Brother Ken . . . but if I read a letter that was written to ME, there is a significant difference in how I am going to look at what is in it - and that is the idea here.
Now I want to point out that this letter was written to the churches in the days of John - but by extension it was also written to THIS local church, here, today . . . if we find a book in the Bible that was addressed to a church in New Testament times, we can add the address of Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church to that same letter . . . literally.
So here is the point of this evening’s lesson, and this is the first time: This letter is addressed to us. It is addressed to Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church.
Who Wrote It - the Last Man Who Touched Him
I have already said the man who wrote it was the last person alive who had touched the flesh of Jesus Christ. Now this is where some of the details start to matter, and when I explain the error that was found in these churches, you will be able to connect the dots. Notice 1 John chapter 1, verse 1.
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life;” - 1 John 1:1 (KJV)
We have HEARD . . . we have SEEN with our eyes . . . and our hands have HANDLED. We have actually put our hands on Jesus Christ. Now that is not written just to sound nice and give comfort . . . if you look at it, it is a whole lot like a witness taking the stand in a courtroom - “this is what I saw FIRSTHAND,” is what John is saying.
And by the time this letter got written, the number of people left alive on the earth who could say that - I have seen Him with my eyes, I have touched Him with my hands, I have heard Him with these ears - had been narrowed down to ONE man. John was the son of Zebedee, one of the twelve, and he was the last one of the twelve still living . . . he was an old man, and he was pastoring - taking care of the churches in the country around Ephesus.
Now here is one of the ways we know that, and we are going to look at a little bit of history. This is history - it is not written to us in the Bible - but according to history it goes like this. I mentioned a couple of odd names at the beginning . . . Polycarp - who in the world would be named Polycarp? Well, this was a pastor the apostle John taught personally, and he was the pastor of the church at Smyrna - the very same church that got the letter in Revelation chapter 2 with not one single word of rebuke in it. Now the oldest records - and when I say records, I mean letters that were written a long time ago, at that particular point in time, and actually survived - one letter of Polycarp’s has survived all the way down to us, and in it he quotes 1 John.
And according to history, at about eighty-six years old they stood that old preacher up in a stadium full of people and ordered him to curse Christ. Polycarp is reported to have said - “Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King who saved me?” And right after he said that . . . they lit the fire and burned him alive.
Now Revelation chapter 2 - we are not going to go there tonight - but verse 10 is where Jesus tells the church at Smyrna to be faithful unto death. And one of the pastors of Smyrna was a man who actually WAS faithful unto death - he did it.
Then there was the other man, Irenaeus. He did not know the apostle John himself - but he was taught by Polycarp, and he later wrote, in letters that have survived, that he could still remember right where Polycarp sat when they were in church together . . . he remembered how Polycarp talked about the apostle John, and how he would tell about the conversations he had had with him. And he says plainly, in the letters that have survived, that John the disciple of the Lord had written this letter at Ephesus.
So one man knew John - that is Polycarp . . . the next man, Irenaeus, knew the man that knew the apostle John. You see how this information passed straight from John to a man who knew him, to a man who knew that man.
Now I realize history is not SCRIPTURE . . . what we have just gone over is some letters that survived, and they are not the Bible at all - and we do not build any kind of doctrine on Polycarp or Irenaeus, because the Bible proves itself. But what we have here is a word found OUTSIDE the Bible - agreeing with what the Bible has already said.
So - when we open up this letter - we are reading something the last apostle wrote – and it is not the voice of a stranger . . . it is the voice of one of our fathers in the faith. And I think we would all agree that the apostle John earned the right to correct us - and he did, in these three books, as we will see - and he corrected us with a great amount of tenderness, because he loved us.
Now think about this . . . if the last man alive who had touched Jesus sat down to write one last letter - how CAREFULLY would we read that letter if it arrived in our mailbox?
Why It Was Written - Something Got In
Let us touch on why John wrote it. The letter never names a city . . . and there is a reason for that - it was intended to be passed from one church to another. You remember there were seven churches in Asia, and these churches met in HOUSES. I have actually pastored a church once that did not have a church building. We met in one member’s house one Sunday and a different member’s house the next Sunday . . . we just kind of went around that way - and that is the way these churches operated at that time. Ordinary, everyday people were the members, and they had been saved and brought into the fold ten, twenty, thirty years after the crucifixion . . . and according to history they were living in a world totally saturated with idol gods. If you walked three miles to work, or rode a donkey to work, it would be impossible not to pass a shrine or a temple to some idol.
And one of the problems in these churches was that they were beginning to be POISONED. Now here is the thing - what was poisoning them was not coming from the outside in . . . some of the members of these early churches were in error, and they were spreading poison from WITHIN. Notice 1 John 2:19.
“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest (shown up for who and what they were) that they were not all of us.” - 1 John 2:19 (KJV)
According to history, certain teachers had risen up from the membership of these early churches, and they claimed to have a HIGHER knowledge of God than the ordinary church member out in the pew. Do you think that is still sort of common? You do not have to look very far to find somebody who claims to be a preacher and has raised himself up - SELF-elevated - above the congregation . . . well, that was beginning to happen in that day. They claimed to be part of a secret inner circle, and they claimed to have knowledge that those in the pew had been denied.
And when they walked out - when they left the church - that is the reference here . . . they went out from us, but they were not of us. And when they left they took members WITH them - there were those who were deceived and believed their lies.
Now one of the things they taught was not something that could be glossed over and ignored . . . it went to the very HEART of what we are as true worshippers. The thinking of that day said that anything physical was dirty - it was down low - and the spirit was elevated high. And their reasoning was, if the things of the flesh are down here and the things of the spirit are up here, then if Jesus was truly divine, truly from heaven, He could not have taken on actual flesh. So they taught that Jesus only SEEMED to have a body . . . the real Christ, they said, never suffered, never bled, and never died.
Can you see the seriousness of that error? If Jesus did not come in the flesh, those people were in the same boat as the Muslims are today - a god with no son, and no savior. If there was no flesh, there was no blood . . . if there was no blood, there was no payment for sin . . . and if there was no payment for sin, there was no SALVATION. You take away the body of Jesus, and you have taken away the cross. Take away the body of Jesus, and you have taken away the settlement of sin - and with it, every single hope that anybody who puts their faith in Jesus Christ has got. You have just taken it all away.
Now go back to the very first verse we read, and after hearing the error that was starting to prosper in these churches, notice the significance of what John says. Our hands have HANDLED . . . our eyes have SEEN . . . our ears have HEARD . . . of the Word of life. John did not come up with some fancy philosophy to answer them - he just gave an eyewitness account of the way it really was. “I was there, people. I saw Him with my eyes” - and you cannot see a spirit. “I touched Him with my hands” - and guess what, you cannot touch a spirit.
Picture that old man in a courtroom. On the one side you have those who say nothing of the flesh can be holy - they are on that side like they are in a court of law - and the apostle John is on the other side. He does not ARGUE with them . . . he simply takes the stand and raises his right hand - “I swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.” And every claim these impostors had to a higher knowledge just disappears against the eyewitness of the one man left - who had actually touched what they claimed was only a spirit.
Now there are two verses of Scripture it would do us well to write somewhere in our Bible. You do not have to - but these two verses give us the purpose, the reasoning, behind the writing of this letter. Yes, it was written to the churches in Asia . . . but if it is a letter written to a church in New Testament times, it is a letter that has been written to THIS church.
“And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.” - 1 John 1:4 (KJV)
Why did he write it? That your joy may be FULL. And 1 John 5:13 - same song, second verse.
“These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.” - 1 John 5:13 (KJV)
That ye may KNOW something - that it may be SETTLED in your mind and heart that you have eternal life. So the letter was written to fill up our joy, and to help us to know something . . . no fear, no doubt, no guessing, no hoping and wondering all the way to the graveyard whether or not we are going to make it when we finally die and stand before God. Now, if we are not sure whether we have been saved, how is it possible to have very much joy in our life? That is how those two verses are connected.
I have actually heard people who spent the majority of their lives in a New Testament church say, “Well, preacher - I hope I make it. I hope I make it.” Well, 1 John was written to counter that attitude . . . it was written to counter that fear and that doubt. People, we do not have to HOPE we make it. If our hope, our faith, our trust is in Jesus Christ, then there is no doubt - we are saved to the uttermost, and nothing can undo that.
So for the second time, the point of our lesson this evening: This letter is addressed to us. It is addressed to Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church.
How the Letter Is Built - the Lighthouse Staircase
Now I want to take a few minutes and point out how this letter is structured. 1 John does not argue in a straight line the way Paul’s letters do. Paul builds a case like a LAWYER - point one proves this, point two proves this . . . and the proof gets a little more definite every time Paul makes a point. John does not go in a straight line - and he does not go in a complete circle, either. Everything I read as I prepared for this lesson - talks about how John goes in a SPIRAL.
I have mentioned before that it is like a lighthouse. You have a circular staircase inside a lighthouse, and a window on the north side. When you are down at the bottom you look out that north window and you see something. Then you go on up the staircase, and you are still looking out that north window - but you are a little bit higher, you are on the second floor . . . it is the same view, but you can see MORE, because you are higher. That is the way 1 John is put together. He comes back around to three tests, over and over - it is like looking out that north window at three different levels. Every time he goes to a higher floor, he sees things that could not be seen from the floor below.
Now on the surface, if you do not know that, it feels like, “Well, he is kind of going around in circles - did we not already discuss that?” But when a man gets to the very top of that staircase, he sees things from up there - that were simply not visible from the first floor. Keep that in mind when you read through 1 John, because that is exactly the way it is structured.
Let me point out what the three windows are - three windows, three tests - and what they are for. They are there to tell what is REAL from what is COUNTERFEIT . . . bear in mind the error that had been introduced in these churches: Jesus did not really come in the flesh. That is obviously the counterfeit. “Well, I have touched Him - I have seen Him” - that is the real thing. So these tests are designed to separate what is real from what is not.
The first window is OBEDIENCE - do we keep the commandments of Jesus Christ? The second window is LOVE - do we love our fellow brethren? The third window is TRUTH - do I confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh?
And there are three porches, if you will - three landings - and the verses for them are on the handout I gave you. On the first landing the tests EXPOSE what is really there. On the second landing they MANIFEST - they show - what is actually there. And on the third landing the window opens up straight into God Himself. Now this is a picture that will carry through this entire series of lessons. On the first landing, love exposes a liar - did He come in the flesh, or did it only seem that way? On the second landing, love buries the sin of Cain. You remember the sin of Cain? He was jealous of his brother, because his brother was doing it the right way and Cain was convicted in his heart - he just did not have the backbone to do it the right way, and he was jealous and angry at the brother who did. And on the third landing, love opens up the heart of God, and we can see what godly love is really like.
Then you have got 2 John and 3 John, the two little books on the end . . . 2 John is a door we SHUT - we shut the door on error - and 3 John is a door we OPEN - we open the door to what is true.
So as we look out these three windows, there is probably one of them that puts a little bit of dread in our heart. We are not as obedient as we ought to be . . . we do not love the way we know we ought to . . . or, “I know enough truth - I am satisfied with the level I am at. I am going to stay down here on the second floor,” when there are higher floors and better views available.
This Is Not Somebody Else’s Mail
As we bring this to a close, I want to point out that this letter is not somebody else’s mail. It is OUR mail . . . and those two verses - the purpose verses, as we are going to call them - joy made full, and knowing without any doubt at all that we have salvation. Now the tests we are talking about, the windows we are looking out of, are not the destination. They are not the final place we are going to be - they are the PATH we use to get where we ought to be.
You see, John is not writing this letter to make a saved person start doubting his salvation. He is writing it so that normal people, just like you and me, can STOP doubting - and so that those who are counterfeit can be seen for what they really are.
So as we start out, first of all, we need to commit ourselves to the CLIMB . . . there are eighteen lessons, unless I add some more, and we need to commit to climbing those eighteen steps one paragraph, one verse at a time - willing to say, “I am not going to skip any steps. I am not going to skip over something I know in my heart I ought to do.”
Second, it would be good to keep that little handout I gave you. That is our floor plan - the floor plan of the lighthouse, for lack of a better way to put it.
And third, I want to make certain we have settled the question of who this letter has been addressed to. It has not been addressed to some church a long time ago . . . it has been addressed to our specific local New Testament church, TODAY. So for the third time: This letter is addressed to us.
Now if there is somebody here this evening who has never believed on the name of the Son of God . . . if there is someone here who doubts that Jesus actually took on real flesh, shed real blood, and literally rose again with a real body - remember, He ate some fish and a honeycomb, and He said to Thomas, come here, put your finger in these wounds in My hand - then that is something we need to take care of before we ever begin climbing this staircase.
“And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” - 1 John 5:11-12 (KJV)
This is the record - the testimony, the sworn word . . . and the day of grace is TODAY. Take the Son - put your faith in Jesus Christ - and then start climbing this staircase, too.
We have been having lessons about a staircase in 2 Peter, and now there is a staircase up this winding lighthouse. And you do not get to the top of a staircase in one giant step . . . one step at a time, people. We do not get to be the kind of Christian we will be later all at ONCE - it takes one step at a time. So, okay . . . I will admit I am less than what I ought to be. I am less than what I could be. But I am going to be one step higher, one step closer to that goal tomorrow. I am still not going to be what I ought to be - but I am going to be closer, and I am going to take another step. And that is a summary of the rest of our Christian lives. One step at a time.
Please consider what you heard.
Scripture Used
1 John 1:1 · 1 John 2:19 · 1 John 1:4 · 1 John 5:13 · 1 John 5:11-12 · Revelation 2:10 (all KJV)
This lesson opens the I, II & III John series. Every lesson is kept on the Lessons page.
No comments:
Post a Comment