I Write To You!

 I John 2:12-14

Welcome! Today we continue our series in I John, and we will also spend time remembering the Lord’s sacrifice for us by partaking of the bread and the cup. Following this we will have a time in which anyone who wishes can share what the Lord has been teaching them, or how He is using them, as well as to request prayer, and we will close in prayer together.

It is easy to get lost in the details of the first parts of I John, to go along for the ride, so to speak, focusing on the individual turns and bumps in the road and lose sight of where it is we are going. And if we are not careful, our taking a limited number of verses to study from I John each week can exacerbate this tendency. For this reason, today I wanted to explore the big picture of where John has been going. And in fact, I think this is the reason for the very verses John writes that we will look at today!

Love and Hatred

 1 John 2:3-11

In order to begin at a good starting point and also to re-emphasize a couple of important points  from last week I will begin today’s message starting with 1 John 2:1.

Here we read:  "My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.  But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense, Jesus Christ, the Righteous One." 

The apostle John said in chapter 1, “If we say that we have no sin we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” 1 John 1:8

Light and Darkness

I John 1:5-2:2

Good morning everyone!  Welcome as we dive into the second week of our series on the book of I John.  Today, we are going to look into the nature and purity of God and contrast is against the darkness.  Last week when Carl introduced this series, he talked about the confrontational nature of the book of I John amid the beautiful promises that we memorize and hang on to dearly.  In today’s passage, right away, we get our first taste of John’s pointed identification of error.  He does not waste time in sounding the alarm.

Before we tackle these 12 verses, let’s pray and ask God to give us His insight and understanding.

True Fellowship

I John 1:1-4

Welcome! Today we begin a new series on the book of I John. To be honest, I come to this series with a bit of trepidation. Over the years I have talked to a fair number of people who have said that I John is their favorite book in the Bible, or one of their favorites, that they find it very encouraging and uplifting. Again, to be honest, I sometimes wonder if they have the same I John in their Bibles that I have in mine. Now, I don’t disagree that parts of I John are indeed very encouraging; to give you three examples,

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! – I John 3:1a

and

You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. – I John 4:4