On Sunday, March 8, 2009 Southern Baptist pastor Fred Winters was shot and killed mid-sermon in his pulpit at First Baptist Church of Maryville, Illinois. Two Sundays later a private plane crashes into a cemetery in Butte, Montana, killing all 14, including three families. Two of the mothers were sisters; the seven children were 9 years and under. In the first two months of this year (2009) over 1.2 million jobs were lost in the U.S. (186,000 per week) and Congress just passed a 700+ billion dollar “bailout package” purportedly to keep the economy from shutting down. Like you, this stream of brutal tragedy and colossal events has me asking tough questions like, “God, where were You, and where are You in all of this? Lord please, this just does not make sense.” We need answers and responses to horrific events and pressing life issues. If we cannot voice these questions or hear no responsible answers, we begin to question God’s love and character. As the unaddressed pain persists, we tend to question His existence. As Christians we are reluctant to ask why or to cry and bang on His chest as any healthy father-child relationship would allow. Without answers, the doubts and uncertainties morph slowly into resentment, bitterness, and debilitating anger. Can we really be sure of anything? Yes, there are some things we can be sure of. We will be taking a journey through the epistle of 1-John to discover and reaffirm certainties of the Christian life. The lessons tell us about who Jesus is and why He came, the assurance of salvation, criteria for discerning truth and living with confidence. God is not silent. There are definite, real answers and He longs to share them with us even more than we want to hear them. Imagine that! The thrust of our current lesson series is that God has provided a way for us to live confident, victorious lives in the face of unspeakable human tragedy and economic uncertainty. His plan through Christ is to save us and enable us to live beyond the stranglehold of paralyzing doubt and uncertainty. Repetition may be boring – more often it is essential. This letter of 1-John is clearly and intentionally repetitious. John hammers away at the crises of faith with the strong and continued blows of a few simply stated ideas: e.g. God’s Word is true; God is Truth; God is love; God is light. In embryo, these simple affirmations compose the message of 1-John. They are stressed tirelessly. They are stated in a variety of ways and woven into a multitude of patterns, but the basics remain the same. The purpose of this short epistle from John is to restore the broken fellowship in the seven churches of Asia Minor. Fellowship had been disrupted by a deadly philosophy that had crept into the churches called Gnosticism. This quasi-philosophy/religion basically held that 1) all matter is evil, and a person’s spirit could not be contaminated by the body because the two never touch; you can do what you want with your body; 2) God had not come in the flesh in the person of Jesus, because flesh was evil and God would never inhabit evil matter; 3) man’s problem is ‘flawed thinking’; there is no sin. 4) Our goal in life is to escape this world of evil by ‘special knowledge’ (gnosis) given to the worthy recipient by a special mystical revelation experience. This ‘gnosis’ was rarely attained by the average church member. Gnostic heresies were deeply infiltrating the churches of the time. It is reasonable that an eyewitness, John the apostle, should speak boldly – this letter (epistle) was written as a general letter to the churches. John keeps applying his major idea to each new set of problems. He weaves one set of ideas onto another. The vertical threads are stationary – these are the basic truths to which the author constantly returns. They provide the context for the weaving of the horizontal threads. Okay? Get ready. WORD, amigos!
Posted on: Thu, 04 Jul 2013 12:18:18 +0000
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