And that's too long, but we've studied other books, don't
we? The same thing. 1 John 1, what a book. And I intended to go through
the first four verses only and then deal with beginning with
verse 5 to the end of the chapter on Wednesday, but couldn't hardly
get past verse 1. Look at it, 1 John 1, that which
was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have
seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, our hands have
handled, of the word of life, read on, for the life, the life
was manifested, we have seen, and it is in italics, meaning
there's just not a word to describe. and bear witness and show unto
you that eternal life which was with the Father was manifested
unto us. That which we have seen and heard
declare we unto you that ye also may have fellowship with us.
Truly, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son,
Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto
you that your joy It may be full. If you don't need a glowing introduction
to this, that was it. The Word speaks for itself. He
called it the Word of Life, verse 1, the Word of Life. You know,
people reveal their ignorance of God, the Son of God, the Word
of God, when they speak of this book as merely a book, a powerful
book. People say, this is a powerful
book. Well, they say that about other books. I read a book and
it's powerful. There's no power in things. There's no power in this book. It's just words on paper. God's Word is His power. The
only way this works powerfully on us is if God, the Holy Spirit,
speaks to us. You know it's true because you
can read it and read it and read it. It has no power on you at
all, no effect on you at all. I do the same thing. I read it
all the time and I no sooner quit reading it, I forgot it
all. But now if God speaks to you, And this is why I say, I hope
and pray that this right here is more than a Bible study. It's
no profit just to have a Bible study for information, to learn
things, to learn facts, to learn these things in our head. That's
of no value. But if God speaks to our heart,
because out of the heart are the issues of life. With the
heart man believeth unto righteousness. If God speaks to our heart, He
must speak. This is His voice if and only
when He speaks to us. And so that's why I tell us,
and I remind myself also, in reading this book, don't merely
read it for the sake of reading it, but ask the Lord. Before
you read it, while you're reading it, ask the Lord, Lord, speak
to me. I need for you to speak to me
through this Word. I need for you to teach me. I
need for you to show me, lead me, guide me. Or else it's just
a book, a book. Now the fact that Christ is called
the Word, That's what he's called it, the
Word. In the beginning was the Word. We're going to look at
John 1, one of your favorites. This is the same, isn't it? It's
like reading John chapter 1. You say, John wrote that too. Yes, he did, but no, God wrote
it. Christ wrote it. The fact that Christ is the Word
tells us that we have to see Him. We have to hear Him. He
has to speak to us through it. We don't get anything from it. He said here in verse 1, the
very first word, he is, I don't want to say trying,
God doesn't try to say anything. John is not trying to say anything.
And yet, he is speaking of the incomparable, or that is the
one who cannot be compared to anyone else. He is speaking of
the incomprehensible. Are you impressed with that?
That is, we cannot understand, we cannot comprehend. Flesh cannot
comprehend God. So he's declaring one who cannot
really be put into words. And he says, that. That. Which was from the beginning. that which was from the beginning.
When the angels announced the birth of the Christ child, Isaiah
7 says, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son. A virgin conceive? It's not possible. No, with men
it's not possible. With God, a virgin did conceive. This is the woman's seed. A virgin
did conceive and when The angels came to announce His birth. You
know how they referred to Him? There's never been anything like
it. There's never been one like Him. There's never been. And they said, that holy thing which
is in her is called the Son of God, the only begotten. The only
bodily image in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead
in a body. The creator of the world made
himself a body. A body hast thou prepared me,
he said. He made himself to be flesh. He who is God is spirit became
flesh. Oh, great is the mystery of godliness. It's still a mystery. I'm trying
to explain the unexplainable. Declare the undeclarable. John
simply said that. He who created the world, and
this is why men didn't believe Him then, and this is why men
don't believe Him now, they just call Him Jesus. But those whom
He has revealed Himself to, they see Him like Thomas, as my Lord
and my God. But that man is none other than
God manifest in the flesh. That passage in 2 Timothy 3.16,
great is the mystery of Godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. And it goes on to say that he
was seen of angels. Oh my, that's 1 Timothy 16. Seen of angels, the angels. When they saw him born, they
knew who this was. They had worshipped him for millenniums. And all of a sudden, what's he doing? Look at this. That holy thing, that holy one,
that. John says, that. In our text,
he says, that which was from the beginning. We've heard him. That which was from the beginning.
How does the Bible begin? In the beginning. In the beginning,
God, as John chapter 1 began, in the beginning, the Word was
made flesh. I mean, the Word was with God. Christ is God. Revelation 1 begins
this way, Revelation 1, this is the revelation of Jesus Christ. And then over in nearly the end
of the book of Revelation, so from the beginning of the book
to the end of the book, in the end of the book he says, I am
the beginning and I am the end. The first words in the Bible
are in the beginning. The last two words are the end. Christ said, that's me. The first,
the last, the beginning, the end. That which was from the
beginning. How many times have You heard
this. I first heard it from my pastor
and you continue to hear it from me. That the Old Testament is
saying someone is coming. Someone is coming since man fell
and Christ came to the first sinners in the garden. It was
Christ who came and spoke to Adam and Eve, the Word. The same
one that was in the beginning who created all things by His
Word. in chapter 1. It was Christ who
came and told those two sinful human beings, someone's coming. The woman's seed is coming. In
all those books through Malachi, someone's coming. Then the Gospels
say, the Gospels begin this way, the generation of Jesus Christ. When Christ came, the Gospels
say, He's here. He's here. The epistle and the
revelation say, He's coming again. The end of the revelation, He
says, Behold, I come quickly. I'm coming quickly. You can make
a short work of this thing. So that's who, that is who this
Bible is about, the book. Not what, but who. Paul said,
You know, Paul knew the Bible. Saul of Tarsus knew the letter
of the law. Saul of Tarsus could quote scripture. He didn't know God. He didn't
know Jesus Christ. He didn't know what the Bible
was about, or rather, who. And when Christ came to him,
when did he find out? The truth. When did he find out?
When did he know God? When did he know himself? When
did he have light? When did he have an understanding?
It's when Christ came to him personally and spoke, Saul, Saul. And then Paul went from knowing
what he believed to who? He said, I know whom
I believe. My pastor used to always say,
you don't arrive at Christ through doctrine, or that is, you come
to a knowledge of the doctrines of grace. No, sir. You arrive
at doctrine through Christ. Once you meet the Lord Jesus
Christ, everything clears up. Once God speaks to you through
His Word, I am that I am, you realize He is God in you. You
didn't know Him before. You thought. He was a God that
you had to let meet God. You thought, we thought that
He was just Jesus and He was hoping, wishing, planning, wanting,
just hoping so much you would let Him into your heart. But
when He came to you and gave you a new heart, life from the
dead, didn't you found out? You're in His hands totally to
do with as He pleases. This is the Lord, Jesus Christ. I didn't know him. Sol of Tarsus. Thought he had free will. Then
when the Lord came to him, he said, Lord, what will you have
me to do? See, life is in knowing a person. He that hath, not doctrine, but
a person. And when you finally meet the
person, when he speaks to you, Look unto Me and be ye saved,
all the ends of the earth, for I am God. Do you like that verse?
Elizabeth, I'm talking to you. Do you like that verse? When
He speaks to you, I am God and I've chosen you that you might
know Me, that I am He. Everything clear, sir? No more
argument? Who chose who? Are you kidding?
Are you serious? Is man dead? I was. I don't know about you. We're
going to look at Levi in the next message. He's sitting there
counting his money. If Christ hadn't come to him,
spoken to him, he'd have died counting his money. He knew. He knew it. And you know, you really can't
describe salvation, can you? Try to tell people what the Lord
did for you, and you can talk to them all you want, but if
they haven't experienced it, they don't understand it. My
wife, we went out to dinner with some people. Some neighbors invited
us. They kept inviting us and inviting us, and so we did. We
went out to eat with Republicans and Senators. And we were sitting
there, and I got up to use the restroom, and I came back, And
about that time I heard her talking about me, and she was talking
about how the Lord revealed Himself to me. And isn't that the language
we use when we talk about how the Lord saved us? He revealed Himself to me. What
do you mean? Did He see a vision? Did He come
to you in the night? Paul wrote it in Galatians 1,
didn't he? He said, when it pleased God who separated me from my
mother's womb and called me by His grace to reveal His Son in
me. And that's not something you
can describe. Do you understand what I'm saying?
And when the Lord revealed Himself to so and so, the world doesn't
understand that. They will if He reveals Himself.
Oh, now I see. I didn't see, now I see. Why? Because like Bartimaeus. Who gave you, like the man of
John 9? Who healed you? He did. Once was blind, now I see. That. I may not get past the first
word. That. Which was from the beginning.
In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word
was God. The same was in the beginning
with God. And all things were made by Him.
Without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was
life. The life was the light of men.
And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld
His glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace
and truth. We beheld His glory. This is
what John, or rather who John is speaking of. He's talking
about a person. That one of whom the Scriptures
speak, that one of whom God only spoke out loud a couple of times
and He spoke of one thing, that holy thing, that holy one, His
Son, and He told the whole world one thing. God told the whole
world one thing then and He tells the whole world one thing now.
This is My beloved Son. Hear Him. Stop listening to everyone
else. This is the Word. You want to
know God? This is the only way, this one, this Christ. You want
to know yourself? You want to know the truth? There's
only one way, only one way, one truth, one life, one way to have
life. This is not a how-to either.
Hope and pray to the Lord in this very room. The Lord has
not spoken to you yet. Minnie and I were just talking
about this on the way over here. Hope and pray. She has such a
burden for our children and she gets animated and so do I. Why? Because we want them to hear.
But they're not going to hear until God is pleased. But buddy,
when He's pleased, they're going to hear. that which we have heard." See,
faith comes by hearing. This is how life begins. Faith is really another word
for life, eternal life. I've told you my story so many
times, but this is my story. Do you like to tell your story?
Well, I love to tell my story. If the Lord has done something
for you, you love to tell people about it, don't you? Well, this
is my story, okay? I'm the preacher's kid. I hear
message after message after sermon after sermon. I go here, I go
there. I didn't want to go there. My parents took me there. And
I thought it was cruel and unusual punishment to make me listen
to all this preaching. But they knew it. Well, I did
not know. They knew that the Gospel, the
Scripture was the only thing able to make me wise unto salvation. That the only way I was going
to hear from God is through His Word. So they took me. They took
me. Asking, begging, pleading with
the Lord. Speak to our son. My dad was
the most powerful preacher on earth at the time. And he couldn't
do it. Because I heard message after
message after message. I've got to say it. You know, year after year, message
after message, sermon after sermon, I heard, my dad, that's my dad,
that's my dad, that's Henry Mahan, that's my dad, I'm his son. But
I didn't hear a thing. And amazingly, this is the way
the Lord often does things. I went with a couple, the Lord
was working on me. My pastor used to call it grace
before grace. I think other people saw it before
I did. But anyway, I went with a couple
in the church and they had a young son near my age and we went to
Danville, Kentucky. My dad was preaching for, I think
Don was there, maybe not, maybe the man before him. But he was
preaching in a meeting in Danville, Kentucky. All right, I heard
all these messages at 13th Street. Is this familiar to anybody? You've got to go somewhere else.
I went down there, okay, I'm sitting there and my dad is the
speaker. He spoke to me. I had to go all
the way down there. Kind of like Lydia had to leave
Asia or Bithynia to go to Philippi. I was sitting there and I was
the only one in the room. I was the only one in the room.
And it wasn't my dad. I was not even looking in the
face of my dad. The Lord was speaking to me like
an arrow piercing my heart. He's talking to me. And that's
what He's got to do for all our sons and daughters, doesn't it,
Brother Matt? That's what He's got to do for all our unsaved spouses
and parents and children and grandchildren. That's what He's
got to do. So that's what we pray. Lord, make them hear. Would you speak to them? I've
spoken and they won't hear. Would you speak? That which we've
heard, which we have seen with our eyes, You know, John, in a sense, he
is trying to tell us what can't be told until you see it for
yourself. A woman at the well, she heard him and she finally
saw who he was. She dropped her water bottle.
She went running home. What did she say? Come see a
man. You can try to tell people. Come
see. Come hear, that is. See His glory.
We've seen His glory. That's what I just quoted to
you from John 1. As of the only begotten, we don't see with these
eyes. Our Lord is seated in the heavens. He's invisible to the
eye, naked eye. But I see His face on every page,
don't you? I see His glory. I see Him. I see Him. The heavens declare
His glory. The firmament showeth His handiwork.
Day unto day I hear His voice. Day unto day utter His speech.
The world says it thundered. That's what they said when Saul
of Tarsus heard Him, didn't they? They just thundered. No, Saul
heard His voice. And when it thunders, I hear
His voice too, don't you? The voice of the Lord, Psalm
29, full of majesty. One time, my daughter was about three years
old, standing in her window. She's 35 now. My, my. Yesterday, she was standing in
her little window. I'll never forget it. I kind
of love that girl, you know. She was standing in her window,
and there was a thunderstorm outside. She was standing there
in that little silhouette, looking out there outside, had a little
doll baby in her arm. She said, and it thundered, she
said, I see Him. I said, who honey? God. In her little childish way, out
of the mouth of babes and succulents, the gospel has thundered forth
in my presence at times and only then And then only do I see God. I see. I see. He is God, isn't
He? I see myself. I see Christ. I see the world for what it is.
Like the ark of Noah. It was one-winded, right? One-winded. Only one source of light. Only
one way you could see out, see clearly. You're on the inside.
If you're on the inside, Looking out, you see things clearly as
they are. What did you see? If you were
looking out that window at the world, what did you see? What
would you have seen, Brother Wesley, had you looked out the
arc of that window, that window of the arc? What would you have
seen? A world perishing. And then you saw clearly with
your mind's eye, you understood clearly with your heart, thank
God I'm in this ark. Thank God I'm not outside. Thank God who put me in this
ark, who revealed Himself to me, who put His fear in me, who
gave me an understanding of Him and myself and my need of Christ.
Oh, I want to win. This is why Paul said, I want
to win Christ and be found in Him. And this is the window,
this is the light, Christ is the light. We look at this world
through the eye of God clearly, the light of God, and we see
clearly it's a perishing world. It's just a dying world. That which we have looked upon,
verse 1, we've looked upon it. The word means gazed. Couldn't
take their eyes off of it. They couldn't take their eyes
off of it. That which we've gazed upon, looked upon. They saw Him. When they finally saw Him...
You know, many saw the miracles. But they saw no beauty in Him
that they should desire. They didn't see themselves. They
saw the miracles. They were amazed, but they didn't
follow Him. They didn't leave everybody and everything. These
disciples did. Oh, they saw Him. They saw Him
heal. The blind? They saw Him heal
the lame? They saw Him heal lepers? They
heard Him command fish? Stop the ocean. Stop the wind. Stop. And it says they gazed on Him
and they looked at one another and said, what manner of man
is this? They saw him walk on the ocean. They saw him raise the dead.
And I've seen all of these things a little bit. I've seen blind
people in this room suddenly have their eyes open.
Deaf people, their ears open. Lame people, had no faith whatsoever,
begin walking. quickened, raised up, and began
walking and following Christ. I've seen lepers, sinners, changed. And it goes on to say, and I'll
close with this, our hands have handled the word of life. Now if you love somebody, you
can't keep your hands off of them. You know, if you love somebody,
you want to touch them. You want to touch them. I'm kind
of touchy-feely. If you love somebody, you've
got to touch them. You want them to touch you. You
want to embrace them. You want to hug them, don't you?
You want to feel their hand. You want to feel their arm around you.
You want to put your arm around them. John is called the disciple
whom Jesus loved. Every time you'd find them together,
John would just kind of snuggle up to the Lord. Kind of like
a dog, you know. Your dog loves you. He's going
to be around you. He saddles up to you, you know.
Well, Sophie, my second granddaughter, is one of these touchy-feely.
If I'm sitting in my chair, she's going to come sit in my lap.
She's nine years old now, nine years old. And she wants to sit
in my lap. Do I let her? Oh, my. I hope
when she's 19, She'll want to come sit in my lap. That's love. And the Gospel talks about whom
you lay hold of. If you hear this Gospel and you're
a sinner, you're going to grab hold like Jacob and say, I will
not let you go until you bless me. Don't let go of me. I don't want to let go of you. I'm afraid. If you love the Lord, you lay
hold of this Gospel with the eye of faith, with the hand of
faith, you embrace this truth, you love Him, you love His people,
you love His Word, you love His Gospel, that's because it's the
Word of Life. Life has begun. I was going to
have you turn to John 6, but I closed. Our Lord was the greatest preacher
ever, wasn't He? And many heard Him preach and
left. Why? He didn't choose them. He didn't speak to them. Right?
But whoever He chose, He spoke to effectually, created life. They heard Him. They dropped
everything. They followed Him. And they fell in love with Him.
And they couldn't keep their hands off of Him. Bless God. He'll never take His hands off
of us either. But some of them, it says, walk no more with him.
This is too hard. I don't believe this. Our Lord
talked about his sovereignty, talked about no man can come
unto me, and said the Father which sent me, draw him. We don't
like that. I'm the bread of life. If you don't eat my flesh and
drink my blood... I don't understand. I can't fully comprehend it. I can't really even describe
it. But I just know He's given me a hunger, a thirst. He's given
me this life, and He created it through the Word. And I've
got to have Christ. Let me sum it up. Here's life.
Here's where life begins. You've got to have Christ. You've
got to. You've got to have this Gospel.
You've got to have this Word. And you drop everything and everyone
for Him, to hear Him. It's not just a formal ceremony. It's not just a Sunday go to
meet. This is life! That's what Simon
Peter said. Our Lord said, okay, will you
go away also? Everybody else is leaving. They've
had enough. Simon said, to whom shall we go? Thou hast
the words of life. And we believe and are sure. We don't just believe it, we
know it. You're the son of God. And you know what our Lord said?
I chose you. That's why. Now is that your
confession? Is that your need? Have you heard
Him? Have you heard Him? Have you seen something of His
glory? Have you looked upon Him with amazement? Amazing grace. Brother John was talking about,
he was sitting in the back seat telling us, I'm just amazed. He kept talking about, just amazed
that the Lord would choose me and reveal Himself to me. Is
this gospel amazing to you? You laid hold of him, don't want
to let go, don't want him to let go of you, and you need him
more than anyone or anything else, do you? Is that true? In
life, you have life. He that hath the Son hath life.