Amen, 1st John, which you all read, right? Over and over and over. Some of you I know read over and over and over, which is a very good report to hear. I'm actually counting on you having read to be acquainted with things that I will probably need to just brush over really quickly in an overview. This is just going to be an overview. Overviews are a little tricky because you get into preparing like a normal expository sermon, and then you have to pull out of that. You start getting deep, and then you say, wait, we're in an overview mode. And so that's what we're going to do today. We're going to discuss in general a few things, but your familiarity with it will really lend you a lot of benefits as we go through. Most of you know my work situation is pretty intense, and preaching in the middle of all that is complicated. So I did ask the Lord starting a couple weeks ago to really help me, to aid me, to come alongside. And I started waking up at 345, and then the next day, 349. Oh, okay, same as our pastor. So that is the help that the Lord gave was to give me a very early wake-up time to make sure that I had several hours before work to enter into the study of His Word. And no headaches for two weeks, practically no headaches. You know that I live with them, and so there was a lot of work done on behalf of God's Word being prepared for you today, and for which I praise the Lord. And thank you for all your prayers. Many of you communicated that you were in prayer. It matters to me, not for me, it matters to me because the Word of the Lord must be taught well, and it must be received eagerly. And so to hear that you're praying for the preparation of the Word signifies to me, which gave me great joy, that you are interested in hearing it well. That's the point. And so what I'd like to do today is take us into our imagination. And I know very well what expository preaching is. I know the benefits of it. And we will get into exposing John as we go along. But for now, I want you to think about what it would be like if in our present age today, we still had out there in the world somewhere these sort of apostolic figures, these eminent, appointed, authorized men of God that had spent time with Christ on his earthly ministry, and somehow they were still alive, they were still among us in the world. By some miracle, they were still out there writing letters, putting things down that God was giving to them, that they were working out, and they were sending them out to the churches. What would it be like if that was still the case for us today? And imagine that you had a group of faithful elders who kept oversight of the flock based on all the ministry of these men. So an elder is not an apostle. An elder takes apostolic truth as it was cataloged by the apostles, as it was laid out by the apostles, and we teach it. We come to an understanding of it, and we teach it. We are not of that group of men who took the teachings of Christ, the preaching and teaching of Christ, and established a doctrine out of it. What the apostles did was to take Old Testament truth, backfill it with the teachings of Christ, and then lay out doctrines for the church. That was their job, and it was a hard job. It took, for many of them, a lifetime. Some of them didn't live long enough to have a lifetime doing it, but all of them paid a very dear price for their devotion to that. All of them, essentially, as far as we understand, set an example of dying for the sake of their Lord and the message that Christ would have us to know down the ages. And so imagine that these men were still laying out truth, that some churches out there were still receiving an occasional letter directly from an apostle, and that the information that was being presented was new information, was new insight. Imagine the kind of reaction that we would have here. I mean, think about the texting and the communication that would suddenly explode among the body if we were to receive a letter from someone like the apostle John. Like we actually, like Jenny came running and said someone slipped it through the slot, or a group of people, arrived from somewhere out there to us and saying, we're carrying a letter of the apostle John to you. Imagine what kind of excitement. Like would we not come that night, or whatever day that was, would we not say, let's hear the letter? Like we would come here. All of us would bring our family, we would sit here, and we would be fit to be tied to hear what it was, what was in this letter. We have a lot of knowledge. We have Paul, we have his letters, we have Jude and James, and we have all these bits of information that each one lays out differently, and they all confirm each other. What is going to be said to us? There would be an incredible amount of anticipation. The letter gets opened, and you hear, you have to please use your imagination, because think about how you would react if this was the first time you were hearing this. 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, for the life was manifested, 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. That which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you, so that ye also may have fellowship with us. Wow, I mean, can you imagine to hear that for the first time, and to think, okay, this letter is being sent to us, and is now being read to us, so that we could have some kind of special fellowship with the apostles. And then the next line would just cause us to rejoice, and to celebrate, because it says, and truly our fellowship, the kind that they want to have with us, is with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. Those are the first few lines of the letter, and you can imagine the excitement that would grow in your heart to hear that. Okay, I am in great anticipation of what comes next. I mean, there's a promise here that what's coming has as an intention, as a goal, to fill my joy to the brim. That's what it means, for your joy to be full. We would be very excited. Imagine how we would all react to that letter being written so that our church here at Dale and Boonville, so that we would receive it. Now, this is a general letter from John, but if we got one that was specific to us, just think of who we are, unnoticed by the world. I mean, it's just another church on the corner of two streets with a broken sign, right? We are what we are. That we could have the word there, fellowship, is koinonia, communion, a communication with the eminent apostles of God, and more importantly, with the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. That would have us in a frenzy to know more. I know that if, and I'm asking you to really imagine that through the door walked someone right now saying, we got a letter from an apostle for us. Open the letter. What's inside? That's how we would react to something like that. What about these other lines? I'm not going to go through all of them, but I'll highlight some. 1 John 1.5, God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship, koinonia, one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin, and that would ring true. We would be familiar with other scriptures that would come to our mind, like John 8.12. I am the light of the world, Christ's own words. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. And then we would keep reading. The letter would keep coming out to us. Excitement would grow. 1 John 1.8 and 9. If we say that we have no sin, but we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And that would easily remind us of Paul in Romans. It's Romans 3.23, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And some of the church musicians who are more familiar with the Psalms generally would recall possibly Psalm 32.5. I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgression unto the Lord, and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Do you know what that would do to you, to hear those words called out to you for the first time? It would be exciting. It would be amazing to receive a letter of that kind. And so we would go through the letter excited by every newly stated truth, every newly worded truth, and our minds would be relating those truths. We would probably be confirming. You know, if a stranger showed up with a letter claiming it was from an apostle, we would be thinking, okay, we need to confirm these things too. We need to be a little bit on guard here. John isn't here. Does this stuff ring true? Is it believable? And with everything that rang true and every study that we gave it, what joy would end up finding its way into our hearts? It's true. We would be studying, and we'd be thinking, and we'd be comparing, and we'd start growing in this celebration that we've received another portion of scripture, some writing that goes with, that expresses the mind of God in another way. We would probably stop there to worship at some point, and how reassured we would feel in our faith after admitting and blushing over our sinfulness if we pondered the meaning of John 2, 1 through 3. My little children, a term of endearment used by Christ after Judas has departed the room. Christ uses the term, my little children, to express a tender care and affection for his own. And here John repeating it, my little children, these things write unto you that ye sin not. So we would understand that this, the arrival of this letter has another purpose, is that we would not sin, that we would stop sinning, that we would sin less, whatever form it would take, that we would abandon sin, that ye sin not. And how we would blush, how we would think of all those sins that we constantly commit, but what a provision is made. And if any man do sin, if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. Here John calls him Jesus the Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. And hereby we do know that we know him if we keep his commandments. And so there would be a huge check there for us. I'm writing so that you will stop sinning, so that you will not sin in the future. If anyone does sin, there is an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And then the assertion, here's a way that you can know that you know him, because the struggle with sin does produce a absence of peace with God. It does disturb our communion with God. It does break that fellowship that we're intended to have with God and the brethren. And so it is important for us to know how we may know that we know him. And it's laid out in confessing, and going to the advocate, and admitting our sin. Now Shane isn't here, but Shane is the brother that reached out to me to talk about that term, my little children, of something that I believe Gil wrote that he sent to me that was just very precious about how John picked up that phrase, and it seems to have stayed with him till he wrote this. He began then to fashion terms for his sheep, for the people, for the brethren, my little children. He used it, he picked it up from Christ, and then used it as a term of endearment for people. A beautiful thing. How our hearts would rejoice to know that we know him. Isn't that actually your experience? That is your experience. When you confess your sin, and you go through the process of acknowledging your sin before the Lord, and recommitting yourself to abiding by his commandments, to living according to what pleases him, you do gain a sense of assurance. You do regain a joy, and a happiness, and your relationships with other people do improve. You shed a lot of what you should have been putting off, and you start to put on a lot of what you should have been putting on, which had been reversed. You had put on the old man, and you had cast off the new man. And when you correct the relationship with God, when you go through the process that he established to make sure that you're sure, then those things begin to reverse, and you become altogether more pleasant, and all of your talents and abilities get reassigned to the worship of the Lord, to the life of the body and its well-being. And I think all of us, to a great degree, to some degree or another, have experienced that switch occurring when we admit to God that we have been living sinfully or committing a certain sin, and we confess and repent and choose a different way. I think we're all familiar with that effect. I wrote here that how our hearts would be nourished by 1 John 3, 1 through 3, probably one of the more famous passages of Scripture in all of the Bible. But how our hearts would untangle from the human interest in the world and the things of the world. Behold, it's right there in the middle of the letter. It really needs to have that behold there. And even with that command to look, to consider, to gaze at this, it's become something we're very accustomed to. Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us. We know it. We're very familiar with it. But can you imagine receiving it for the first time? Behold, what manner, what kind and quality of love the Father has bestowed upon us that we the children of perdition, the sons and daughters of destruction, and all the other names that we, Philistines and Assyrians and Babylonians and whatever we are, whatever we have been, that we should be called the sons of God, that our identity should be so stamped on us by God's grace that we are no longer identifiable by anything greater than that son of God, daughter of God. And therefore, the world knoweth us not because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure. And of course, we could think this draws your mind right over to John 3, 16, 17, Romans 5, 8, Ephesians 2, 4 through 5, that read, But God commendeth his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ by grace, ye are saved. And how much more boldly we would take each step of obedience in our journey, and how well-warned we would walk away from this letter, a letter given to us in the same voice and tone and terms and frame as 1 John. You can't leave 1 John feeling poorly warned. You feel the abrasion of that stark black and white terminology that he uses. He's so intent that we abandon sin that he takes it to the extreme. He doesn't qualify it with, well, we all sin and that's okay. We know that that's how it's going to be. He just says, those who know God don't sin. And he almost puts it in never sin terms. He's that intent. It's that intense. You cannot leave this letter or a letter like it without feeling warned, without feeling inspired by the themes and the topics that come up. But, and you probably know I'm going to say this, but there is no need to imagine what receiving such a letter would be like. We have the letter. It did come to us as it came to some church. Imagine that there is actually, in history, a group of churches that this exact thing did happen to. Someone arrived from a journey with a letter and said, I have a letter from the Apostle John. And to the surprise and amazement of the people, it's not like they received it by email long before this person arrived or something like that. Someone actually came to their church and held up and said, I have a letter or have a copy of a letter. And as it spread, other churches began to receive it and it got read out loud. And the elders of the church began to get into the letter and decipher it and compare it to other scriptures that they had gotten ahold of and began to teach out of the letter and began to command the abandonment of sin and the adoption of righteousness and holiness in our lives. And there was a great ripple and a great disturbance in the life of the body out of 1 John when it arrived. But it arrived to us, like we have it. The problem for us in responding to it with the same kind of excitement and intensity that they probably would have is that we've always had it. 1 John has always been in the book that we've all known to just be there. It never arrived in a sense to us. And so I'm going to read a little different kind of sermon for me. I'd rather be doing a verse by verse. It's easier for me, but I was impressed very late in my preparation to kind of set all of the word studies and all of that aside and really just communicate with you, communicate to you and get you to ponder how you should be actually reacting to the presence of such a letter in the volume of God's word. Should you just take it up and say, Pastor Stephen told me to read it, so I'm just going to read it. It's only going to take me 18 minutes. Well, that would be like the least response you should possibly have to it as well. I was told to read it and there's some good stuff in there. Yeah, yeah. I did it, but we should be holding it like this. There's a letter from the Lord. There's a letter from one of the apostles of God that intends for these certain things to come about as a result of me reading this letter, as a result of me taking it in. There, what I would hope for is that we renew our interest in such writings as this, and particularly this one, because we're going to be studying it, but we have got the letters. We need to react to them as if it's the first time that we're getting the letters. They should never grow old to us, but more and more precious. Our intensity in responding to the word of God as we open it should get more intense, not less intense. We should be more deeply shocked by it. When we come back to 1 John, two weeks after we first started reading it and reading it and reading it, we should be more shocked at our sin, not less. We should look at that ye sin not and be like, yes, but with more intensity. We should look at the other parts of it that are inspirational and that comfort us and say bigger and bigger amens. I believe that's the effect that the word of God should be having on us. It's many stated purposes are still going to come about. All these thousands of years later, the purposes that John wrote for his letter are the same. They're the same purposes. They're still there and they will, by God's power and the power that he has put into his word, they will bring about the same outcome as it had on the early church that received the letter for the first time and read it for the first time with fresh eyes and eager spirits. As long as it's received according to the formula, and we know the formula, but I will read the formula. We must receive the word of God humbly and with clean hands, having acknowledged and confessed and repented of our sins. If you take up the word of God with sin in your heart just to do the duty, it will give you zero benefits. One benefit it may give you is that it may confront your sin. But if you are confronted with your sin and you just keep reading as if there's nothing to deal with, as if there's nothing to do with that ye sin not, that you walk in light and not in darkness, if you just read over those and are not confronted and don't respond to it, then there will be no effect beyond that point for you. There's nothing for the word of God to do to a stiff neck. So we have said this, it has to be in the thousands of times here. You must come to the word humbly and you must come already prepared with clean hands, confessed and acknowledging your sin before the Lord. Listen to and read its words with the full intention to obey and practice what it commands you, what its imperatives are. If you come to the word of God, knowing that you're going to reject what it calls you to, it will have no effect on you. You will not respond in obedience to it. You must come to the word of God. You must take it up in your personal life. You must listen to it when it's being preached with the intention to apply it or else you will not apply it. And therefore the word will have no effect beyond falling on your ears. And that's it. And what a shame to hear the very voice of God speaking into your ears. Okay, thank you. That was great. Good words. I will remain as I am. What a shame. And so we must listen with the intent to obey. We must read with the intent to obey. And if we already do that, we need to grow and cultivate that and refine that in our lives. We must pray for the Holy Spirit to give us light, to shine the light of truth into our minds. To enlighten our minds and to give us understanding of the doctrines that we're reading without the very work of the Holy Spirit is so connected. The very work of the Holy Spirit in this world is so connected to the scripture that he is mostly called the spirit of truth. The Holy Spirit of God came to minister that truth to us. So he must be involved in our process of reading and hearing the word of God. Raise your hand if you in your strength can understand the eternal counsels of God. No one raises their hand because we know it's impossible humanly to decipher the mysteries of God and the glory. It's impossible to absorb it. We know that we need a helper. We know that we need a paraclete, someone to come alongside and help our unbelief, to help our blindness, to strengthen our mind, to strengthen our hearts, to receive what lies in God's word. The Holy Spirit is the conduit. He must conduct the energy that lies dormant in God's word to energize the soul. I will be giving more references as we go along to this formula, these parts of this formula, this recipe, but for now we'll just leave it to the statements. Revisit, reread, contemplate, meditate, and hide the word in your heart. If the Holy Spirit were to give you light and you immediately turn around and fill your mind with the things of the world, the world and the things of the world, the light will go out. If between the head and the heart you put so much stuff that pertains to the world, so many of its cares, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, if you stick that right there between the head and the heart, all the work of the Holy Spirit to give you light will end, will stop right there. And that truth will never take up seat or root in the affections of your heart. It can't. The enlightenment that the Holy Spirit gives us is so that we understand that we can take the knowledge, come to an understanding of the knowledge, and then learn to apply the knowledge. But if we stop right there at understanding and don't work to apply it, don't work to increase our skill in applying it, then the light will fade. The light will go out. So it's a very important part of the process to revisit, to reread, to reengage with the Holy Spirit. Lord, He preached, and I've already forgotten, I've distracted myself. Go back, open your notes, open the scriptures, go to the recording, do whatever you have to to rekindle, to regain what you've lost in the meantime. It's very easy to lose it, isn't it? We all know that we've paused, right? Some of us have gotten in our car on a Sunday and gone, I didn't get anything. It happens. We are creatures of this world. We have a frame. We are but dust. And so we must involve the Holy Spirit in the process. But we also, we have a lot of work to do. We have to cultivate. And what farmer gets a plant or a tree with great abundant fruit that doesn't multiple times cultivate the same ground and tend the ground? No farmer does one row, plants the seed and walks away and expects to come back to great abundant fruit. I mean, in the tropics, maybe there is a condition in tropical Central America that can give you great fruit over no work. But the expectation is that if you intend to cultivate fruit, you're going to have to tend and tend and retend and prune and give a lot of attention to the ground where the seed was planted. The same is true of our Christian walk. So that's why you have statements like, it's not grievous for me to put you in mind of these again. I care for you. I'm going to put you in mind again. It doesn't bother me. I'll repeat them from the apostles that two that make statements similar to that. And then if you're concerned with cultivating it, revisiting it, rehashing it, relearning it, devoting yourself to it, seeing to it at whatever cost for the King's glory, then just go out and do it, practice it, adhere to it, devote yourself to it. It is for his glory. And here's a promise of the word of God. It does not return void. It does not go out on a mission and then come back defeated. The word of God always accomplishes what it sets out to do. There is a mystery in that reality. And that is that God does allow, he does allow the devotion of the hearer or the energy that we give to the process to dictate the effect that the word may have, the fruit that may be produced out of it. But here's the promise that all who apply this formula will see these stated purposes here in 1 John come true. These are his stated purposes for writing the letter, that we would experience communion with the saints and with God. That is like, it's talking about intimate, it's talking about common union. Let me ask you a question because, and I have pondered it very hard different times in my life and had to face it. Who are you? Who in the world are you little speck of dust that you should enjoy communion with the eternal God of the universe? Who are you? Does it not boggle the mind? Does it not cause you to wonder how that came about? How is it possible that this little speck of dust on this earthly plane can have communion with God? What is the quality of the communion with God that the scriptures established for us? And John will do, we'll study it out. What's the quality of that communion? Is it some degree that God lays out, I'm going to have communion with them, but it's going to be low quality because they're human or well, they are in church. It's going to be good quality. The communion that we may have with God, the father and God, the son is the same as God has in the Godhead. They have extended to us, they have extended to us the same quality of communion that they themselves enjoy. Let us make man in our image, they said. And then began the journey of God into the world to lay down his life, that we may have not a low quality communion, not a low quality fellowship, but the same quality of fellowship that God has enjoyed within himself for all eternity. He has made us eternal beings that we may enjoy that quality of communion. It is remarkable. It does definitely smoke up the mind. Praise God. I should point out that when the three, with the triple thanks of that psalm came forward, I was so thankful because that is all that I have in my heart at this point. I told our brother Caleb, I don't know if I'm going to go up there to just weep or to preach, both. For the glory of the truth that is contained in the word of God, for the beauty of what God is extending to us through his word, it is truly a glorious thing to be pondered and to be visited and to be meditated upon. We should find ourselves, behold what manner of love the father has given unto us. We should walk by our children, behold what manner of love the father has given unto us, that we should be called the people of God, that we should carry his own name on us. John says that he wrote the letter so that our joy would be full, not partial, not inferior, not second rate, but that we would have full to the brim, complete and total joy. The terminology there, full, that our joy would be full, means lacking nothing. It means the top extreme degree of joy that is possible to have. That is the kind of joy that the Godhead enjoys. That is the kind of state that the Godhead rests in, pure and complete bliss, and that may come to us. He wrote the letter that we would abstain from sin and love the world and its enticements less and less until very little, until none at all. That we would prefer walking in the light and communion with God over petty sin. He wrote the letter so that we would change in regards to our relationship with sin. He wrote the letter so that we would know with full assurance that we have eternal life. That is very important for us. Sin removes assurance. Sin chips away at your assurance of salvation. Do it long enough, stay rebellious long enough, and you lose all the benefits that are extended to you. You're still saved. No one will pluck you from his hand, but you may lose all of the pleasure of the relationship that God has established with you. So the letter is written that we would know that we know him and gain full assurance. That will be impossible while clinging to sin. You cannot know that you know him and develop this comfortable, loving assurance. This sort of confidence in God will not come to you as long as you cling to sin. There cannot be a shared state there. And so the letter was written to give us assurance, which is probably, by consensus, the theme of the book, really. The fact that he mentions that we would have full joy and then at the end concludes that we would have assurance, that we would know that we know him. They're very related. Joy is very related to the other. And that he wrote it that we would believe on the name of the Son of God, that we would have full belief, and that we would lose unbelief. That's why he wrote the letter. And that's what I wanted to lay out to you. I believe we're probably at time. I'm not really sure. I personally don't care, but we have a nursery and there are people over there. But let me say briefly, I believe I can say this briefly, just a kind of a few notes in closing. You will probably bump up against the idea that because John isn't named or doesn't sign the letter, that it wasn't written by John. It really is silly foolishness. John never mentions himself. When he writes in the gospel, he says the disciple whom Jesus loved is how he calls himself. He names the other Peter and James and the disciple whom Jesus loved. He is very humble. He was very intimate with Christ. You'll hear that he was in the bosom of Christ at this last supper. And what that means is they arranged themselves. They would lean on a couch into the table, and John was placed in what would be considered by culture the prominent position, laying here right next to, right in the chest of Christ, not on him. That would be impossible to eat. And then subsequently, they were stacked that way. He had these privileges, John did. He was singled out to be at the transfiguration of Christ. He heard with his own ears, peace be still, and felt the ocean subside and the storm subside. John was a very direct witness of Christ at the transfiguration when the cloud enshrouded the high hill that they had gone to. John heard with his own ears, and we forget these things, but John heard with his own ears the very voice of God speaking about the pleasure that he had in his son. This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye him. I think John probably heard ye him. That is a rare... Can you imagine the very voice of God? John had a lot of very direct experiences that were very unique to him, even more so than some of the other disciples in the way that he was singled out to have those experiences. He stood at the cross with Jesus' mother Mary, and before passing from life to death, before giving up his life for the sheep, the concern of Christ there to say, woman, behold your son. He wasn't gesturing. He was saying, son, behold your mother. And it says that John took her into his home from that day forward. So he arranged an adoption for them. He would provide for his mother, and John would gain another person in his home of the kind and quality that Mary was, a righteous woman and a blessed woman. John witnessed in his gospel, it's the, I believe the only gospel where this is witnessed, that he witnessed when Christ was pierced in the side to accelerate his death, he saw the water and the blood come out, the plasma and the blood sort of as separate things gush out and pour out at the foot of the cross. He was not missing the symbolism of that. And it stuck with him and grew in his mind to become this sort of phrase that he brings back here in John. We'll study it at some point. They became tokens. The water is in reference to the baptism of Christ at the start of his ministry. The blood is the sacrifice of Christ at the end of his ministry. But to John they become, he's the only one that really uses the, that pairs those two things together, the water and the blood. They become tokens of the promise of, they become like as good as God's swearing and promising to do, to bring about the salvation of his people. Very interesting. But what I'm leading up to is just to say, John was a direct witness to all of this. And so you might be tempted to think that because he was able to see it and hear it and handle it, that for going through all of those experiences, he and his faith would have been at some greater advantage than we have, right? So you might conclude, well, we live in 2023, 2,000 years removed from all that. We're never going to get to handle, taste, touch, be with, experience the way that they did. But there is no disadvantage ever established in the scriptures for someone who did not get to directly interact with God. Moses interacted very directly with God, spoke with God, had held conversations with God, was incredibly blessed to see the passing of God sort of as he was kept by God's hand in the cleft of the rock. He experienced some incredible movements of God, wars carried out. He saw miracles. He saw Egypt cast down, all in person, all personal conversations between Moses and God. And he knew out of those experiences that it was important to obey God and to love God. And Moses commanded many times or was the voice of the command many times, love the Lord, your God, obey the Lord, your God. But David, King David, never, as far as we know, never had any real, I mean, I couldn't think of any. I did a little research and couldn't really find any direct experiences where David spoke with God and God spoke back to him. No burning bushes, no such things. But David developed an intense love for God. He developed an incredibly intimate relationship with God as he details in his songs and as we know from his life. So I just wanted to clarify here that we're not at any disadvantage. The apostle certainly doesn't see it so, because he says that our joy can be full. So there is no disqualification because we live in the age that we live in. It was through his commitment and devotion to inquiring after and meditating on and obeying, truly loving God's commandments and laws and testimonies and precepts, God's word, that David came to love the very name of God. There are a bunch of references here, but I'll just say that it wasn't David's direct interactions with God, but rather his acquaintance with God through God's word that taught David to love God. And what a world of pleasure it opened up to David. His meditations and his ponderings and his musings opened up just incredible thoughts, grand thoughts. It unlocked his poetry and his music by the inherent power of God's word. I will remind you and the gift of faith that comes by hearing the word of God and by the direct ministry of the Holy spirit of God who enlightens our eyes. We too, each of us may also enter into the same fellowship with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ, as Moses did and as David and Paul and Peter and John and countless other direct witnesses have been able to enter into. The word of God gives you an access to God that is just as good as direct interaction with God. Such is the masterful design of God's word and such as the power that lies inherent in it. Clean your hands. It will come up over and over and over as we study the book. Clean your hands. Stop the sinning. Walk in the light. No one who hates his brother can claim to love God. For how can someone who has not seen God love God and yet who has seen his brother hate his brother? It can't be done. It's not true. There is falseness there and so on and so on. If you would let me bear on upon you a little bit more as I ask you to reread John at least another time or two this week before we get into the study of it. I think it would benefit. I know it benefited to read ahead. I think it will benefit to read again as soon as possible. I would challenge you to take the 20 minutes to just move your way through the book and give it some thought and consideration. May God bless our study as we go through it. Please know that all of the potentials of relationship and communion with God and the brethren are available to you just as they were before through pursuing God in his word. Let's pray. Our father, we thank you for your word. Thank you for what you have laid out for us to know, what you've communicated to us. You have truly shown your acts and your mighty works to Moses and the people and to us through your word. Thank you, father, for all that we find therein. We do pray, our God, that we would be humble before you, that we would come to your word with great expectation of finding in it true treasure, true guidance, true light, and that we would come anticipating to increase the quality of our relationship with you, the quality of our relationship with one another. It is possible. It is available, but we will need to cast off sin. We will need to love the world less and less for our relationship and the quality of our communion with you to grow more and more. Help us, father. Help us to see the truth contained within your word. Help us to react to it by taking up the challenge and giving a hard pursuit after your truth, after a friendship and a love with you that is possible through loving your word. We do pray, father, that you will find pleasure in the rest of our service before you, and even now as we stand to sing, we pray, our God, that you will be pleased with the sound of our voices, but that our voices would ring in harmony with our hearts. In Christ's name, amen.