01. deep joy

8/13/2019 01. DEEP JOY

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/01-deep-joy 1/13

By Bryan Wilkerson

Text: 1 John 1:1 –4; 1 John 2:24 –25

Topic: Are you experiencing the fullness of Christ?

Big Idea: We were made to live substantive lives in

Jesus Christ.

DEEP JOY

©2011 Christianity Today International

PreachingToday.com

http://www.preachingtoday.com/



8/13/2019 01. DEEP JOY


Deep Joy | Bryan Wilkerson | PreachingToday.com

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Sermon Outline

Introduction: Deep is good.No one wants to be shallow. Deep implies substance and value.

In this series, we’re going to focus on going deeper in our faith: deeper in our

knowledge of God and his Word; deeper in prayer; deeper in the Holy Spirit ;

deeper into Christlikeness.

We also want to get closer this year—to strengthen our relationships in this

Body of Christ. And we want to reach wider this year—to extend the love and

truth of Christ to our community and region and world.

We get the gist of John’s message in a couple of verses from 2:24–25,

especially as they appear in The Message translation: “Stay with what you

heard from the beginning, the original message. Let it sink into your life. Ifwhat you heard from the beginning lives deeply in you, you will live deeply in

both Son and Father.”

o Illustration: Each week we’ll read an imaginary letter from a

contemporary Christ-follower writing as if she or he had received

John’s letter in the mailbox that day. Marissa has been a Christian

since she was a child but now feels like something is missing from her

Christian life—the experience of joy that John writes about.

Jesus Christ really lived.The first thing John wants to tell us is that Jesus Christ really lived.

John is writing about 50 years since Jesus walked the earth. He is one of the

last living apostles and is writing to 2nd and even 3rd generation Christians

(people who never actually encountered Jesus).

After three generations, doubts start to creep in about who Jesus was.

The downside of being a 2nd or 3rd generation believer is that you don’t

typically have the kind of dramatic conversion experience a 1st generation

believer has; rather, you’re brought up with Jesus’ teachings.

So John writes to these 2nd and 3rd generation believers at this precarious

time in the life of the church to set the record straight. Jesus Christ really

lived: we saw him; we heard him; we touched him.

o Illustration: When iPhones first came out, they were hard to believe

until you saw and held one in your hands.

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In addition to the four gospels testifying to Jesus’ existence, we have several

remarkable non-biblical references to the life of Jesus Christ, and we have the

movement of Christianity itself.

We have really experienced him.The second thing John wants to tell us is that we have really experienced him.

Jesus Christ didn’t just live, John tells us, but he also changed our lives.

Notice that John says, “We have seen...we have heard...we have touched.” He

uses what’s called the perfect tense, which describes past action withcontinuing results.

John is saying that he didn’t just see Jesus; he experienced him. In fact, John

says, the experience is so real that Jesus has become our live: to know him is

to live.

o Illustration: Brett Favre’s entire life is football. He can’t imagine life

without it.

We can still see Christ work in our lives and in the world around us. We see

his handiwork in creation, as the green of summer gives way to the orange of

autumn. We witness his healing, transforming work in the lives of people

around us, and in our lives.

John was writing to people who called themselves Christians but for a variety

of reasons weren’t experiencing the fullness of life, the deepness of joy, that

was available to them in Christ.

Is it possible that you’ve always thought of yourself as a Christian but have

never actually experienced a personal relationship with Christ? Or is itpossible that you are a Christian, but you’re not experiencing the depth of life

and joy that John is describing here? Either way, this letter is for you.

We really want you to experience it too.Jesus Christ really lived. We have really experienced him. And we really want

you to experience him, too. That’s the third thing John wants to say to his

readers.

Look at verse 4: “We write this to make our joy complete.” John wants hisreaders and us to understand that his own experience with Christ will be

lacking something unless and until he can share that experience with others.

o Illustration: When you love a restaurant, you find gratification when

others go there and enjoy at your recommendation. You find even

greater gratification when you go to that restaurant with someone

else and enjoy it together.

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So it is with the Christian experience: it’s incomplete until we’ve shared it

with others.

o Illustration: Gary Burge says, “Christian community is...the common

living of people who have a shared experience of Jesus Christ. They

talk about this experience, they urge each other to grow more deeply

in it, and they discover that through it, they begin to build a lifetogether unlike any shared life in the world.”

ConclusionSo John’s first lesson in Living Deep is this: You know you’re living deep

when your greatest joy is experiencing Christ personally and sharing that

experience with others.

Sermon Transcript Story behind the sermon series (Bryan Wilkerson)This fall series was prompted by some listening sessions with congregation members the

previous spring. In conjunction with a vision and stewardship campaign, we asked folks to

tell us how the church could serve them better. One of the recurring themes was a desire to

“go deeper” in faith and knowledge of the Scripture.

With this in mind, we wanted to launch the new ministry year in September with a series

that would be exegetically strong and focused on personal spiritual vitality. For a variety of

reasons, 1 John seemed to fit the bill. The subject matter is simple and straightforward:

truth (right doctrine), obedience (right living), and love (right relationships). The cyclical

structure of the book invites deeper reflection on these themes. And the letter’s original

purpose was to strengthen and assure new believers.

We chose the title “Living Deep” in order to communicate that spiritual depth isn’t simply

about knowledge (a common misconception,) but about everyday life and relationships.

The challenge of preaching 1 John is that it is predominantly conceptual in content and

lacks an obvious narrative element. No persons are named, no specific problems or

situations are addressed, and there are few practical applications. (Several pastor-friends Ispoke with shuddered at the memory of preaching through 1 John!) In order to bring a

human element to the book and to create a weekly narrative, we introduced each week’s

message with a “Dear John” letter, written by an imagined contemporary person as if

responding to t hat week’s text . The diverse group of letter writers included a young adult

just getting a taste of “the world,” an active church mom who feels like she’s just going

through the motions of faith, a seeker from another culture, and an older saint wondering

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about his readiness to meet Christ. These were presented in video format so that each

week’s letter would reflect the writer’s unique and personal voice.

In response to some of the feedback we received from the congregation, the preaching was

a bit more textually-focused than in previous series. We unpacked the internal structure of

the letter, explored the struggles and situation of the original hearers, and leaned intolexical and grammatical elements more explicitly. This was well-received by more mature

listeners without overwhelming or intimidating seekers and new believers.

The final message included not only a video-letter introduction, but brief “notes” from each

of the letter-writers in the series, reflecting on their deeper experiences of faith. It brought

a personal and satisfying feeling to the conclusion of the series.

Deep is good.If there’s one thing that no one wants to be, it’s “shallow.” If there’s one kind of life no onewants to live, it’s a superficial life. A few years ago, there was a movie called Shallow Hal

about a guy who was so fixated on women’s physical appearances that he never saw or

cared about their inner beauty. No one wants to be a shallow Hal or a superficial Sue. We

want to be deep.

Deep is good, right? Friends want to have deep conversations. Philosophers want to think

deep thoughts. Coaches want to have a deep bench. Fans want their teams to go deep into

the playoffs. Investors are hoping for a deep recovery. Gardeners want their plants to have

deep roots.

“Deep” implies substance. If something is deep, it’s profound, it’s sufficient, it’s real, it’s

enduring. We want to be deep people. We want to live deep lives.

If that’s true for people in general, it is especially true for people who call themselves

Christians. No Christian wants to have a “shallow” faith. No church wants to be described

as, “a mile wide and an inch deep.” A few months ago, I saw a book advertised in a Christiancatalogue entitled, Deep Church. I ordered it, and the elders are reading it this fall. When we

asked the Grace Chapel congregation last year what they wanted from their church, the

thing we heard most was, “We want to go deeper.”

And so this year we are going to focus on going deeper in our faith: deeper in our

knowledge of God and his Word; deeper in prayer; deeper in the Holy Spirit; deeper into

Christlikeness.

We also want to get closer this year—to strengthen our relationships in this Body of Christ.

And we want to reach wider this year—to extend the love and truth of Christ to our

community and region and world. Deeper. Closer. Wider. These three words express our

vision.

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So as we cast about for a passage of Scripture to begin the journey, we found our way to the

book of 1 John. This little book tucked away toward the end of the New Testament is

actually a letter from the apostle John to a community of believers probably in Ephesus. It’s

a simple book. He doesn’t cover a wide range of topics, as Paul so often does in his letters.

John chooses to focus on a few simple truths and to drill down into them.

We get the gist of John’s message in a couple of verses from 2:24–25, especially as theyappear in The Message translation: “Stay with what you heard from the beginning, the

original message. Let it sink into your life. If what you heard from the beginning lives

deeply in you, you will live deeply in both Son and Father.” We took the title of our series

from that verse: “Living Deep.”

So with that goal in mind, we’ll be digging into John’s letter this fall. Each week we’ll

introduce the message with an imaginary letter from a contemporary Christ-follower

writing as if she or he had received John’s letter in the mailbox that day.

This morning we heard from Marissa, a woman who’s been a Christian since she was achild but is now feeling as though something is missing from her Christian life. She’s not

experiencing the fullness and joy that John writes about —at least she hasn’t for a while—

and she’s wondering if she ever will. Maybe you feel the same way sometimes.

Let’s read John’s opening lines again, and then consider what he might say to Marissa and

the rest of us:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which

we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our

hands have touched — this we proclaim concerning the Word of

life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has

appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard,so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship

is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to

make our joy complete.

This isn’t an easy passage to read or teach. For one thing, it’s a run-on sentence. Our English

translation breaks it up into four verses, but in the original language it’s all one thought.

For another thing, John begins the sentence with a series of dependent clauses and buries

the main subject and the main verb all the way down in verse 3. If John had written this for

a high school English class, he would have gotten an A+ for content and a C- for grammar!

Rather than try to untangle it verse by verse, let me suggest to you that John is telling us

three things in this opening paragraph of his letter.

Jesus Christ really lived.The first thing John wants to tell us is that Jesus Christ really lived. John was writing at a

very precarious time in the life of the early church. This letter was written late in the 1st

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century (probably between 70–90 AD) so it’s been about 50 years since Jesus of Nazareth

walked the earth. The first generation of believers, those who actually encountered Jesus,

have just about died off. John was one of the last living apostles. So he’s writing to what we

might call 2nd and even 3rd generation Christians.

By “2nd

generation,” I mean people who never personally encountered Jesus of Nazarethbut heard about him from someone who did. 3rd generation believers were those who

heard about Jesus from someone who heard about Jesus from someone who actually met

Jesus. You get the idea. After three generations, things can get a little ragged. Questionscome up. Doubts creep in: Did it really happen? Is it really true?

I’m curious: how many of you are 1st generation Christians? In other words, your parents or

grandparents were not Christ-followers. How many of you are 2nd generation Christians—

that is, your parents were committed believers, and you came to faith as a child or youngadult? How many are 3rd generation believers—both your parents and grandparents were

Christ-followers?

The good thing about being a 2nd or 3rd generation believer is that you have a rich spiritual

heritage—you grow knowing Christ and the Bible and the Christian life. That’s good. I’m

very thankful to be a second generation Christian. It gave me a head start on my spiritual

journey, and saved me a lot of grief.

The downside of being a 2nd or 3rd generation believer is that you don’t typically have the

kind of dramatic conversion experience a 1st generation believer has. You probably can’t

point to some powerful transformation or flash of insight. You just sort of grow into it. The

gospel, the church, the Bible—they’ve always been there for you. It’s easy for the wonder to

wear off after a while or to find yourself asking if it’s all really true after all, like Marissa,

who’s beginning to wonder if she’s really a Christian, and if she is, why it’s not as satisfyingas everyone says it should be.

Well, John is writing to people like that. They weren’t there when Jesus lived and taught

and died. They’re going on hearsay. Not only that, but enough time had passed that people

were beginning to mess with the message. Some were questioning the humanity of Jesus.

Others were questioning the divinity of Jesus. A particular strain of false teaching goingaround was that Christ wasn’t really human. He just appeared to be human. He appeared to

have a body. He appeared to die.

So John writes to these 2nd and 3rd generation believers at this precarious time in the life of

the church to set the record straight. Jesus Christ really lived. We saw him, he writes. By“we” he means not only himself, but any other apostles and first generation believers who

might still have been alive. We saw him heal the sick and multiply the loaves and fishes and

calm the storm at sea and raise Lazarus from the dead. We heard him, he writes. We heard

him say, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” and, “I and the Father are one.” We even touched

him, he writes. Maybe he’s remembering how he leaned up against Jesus at the last supper.

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Maybe he’s thinking of these post -resurrection appearances, when Jesus said to Thomas

and to all of them, “Touch me and see! A ghost does not have flesh and blood like I have.”

Remember when iPhones first came out? It wasn’t enough just to see them advertised and

to hear people talk about them. You had to actually hold one in your hands. When you met

someone who had one you said, “Let me see that.” What you meant was let me feel it, let mehandle it, let me see if it’s everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s the language John is using

here. We saw him. We heard him. We handled him. And we’re telling you, he’s everything

you’ve heard him to be.

And here we are, these two thousand years later, being asked to believe the same things.

We’re not two or three generations removed, we’re 50 generations removed! That’s a lot of

time for questions and doubts to creep in—for the message to be corrupted. So John would

say to us what he said to his first century readers: Jesus Christ really lived! We saw him, we

heard him, and we touched him.

We don’t have time for a lengthy discussion of the historicity of Jesus this morning, butneed to remind ourselves that we have compelling evidence. We have not one, not two, not

three, but four eyewitness accounts of his life and death and resurrection, each written

from a distinctive point of view, yet all telling the same story. We have more manuscript

evidence for Jesus than we do for any other figure of antiquity.

But in addition to the Scripture, we have several remarkable non-biblical references to the

life of Jesus Christ —the Jewish historian, Josephus; the Roman historians, Tacitus and

Suetonius; and Pliny the Elder.

We have the worldwide movement that bears his name—Christianity—one of the most

dominant and widely believed faiths on the planet. And then, of course, we have the factthat half the world marks time by the appearance of Jesus: BC or AD. Something happened

back there. Someone lived who was of sufficient stature and substance to have changed the

course of human history.

There’s certainly room to question and debate exactly what it was that Jesus said and did.

Every seeker and believer has to investigate the record for himself and come to his own

conclusions. But of this you can be sure, says John: Jesus Christ really lived.

We have really experienced him.The second thing John wants to tell us is that we have really experienced him. Jesus Christ

didn’t just live, John tells us, but he also changed our lives.

We need a quick grammar lesson to appreciate what John is saying here. Notice that Johndoesn’t simply say “we saw Jesus and heard Jesus and touched Jesus.” That would have been

the simple past tense—reporting a past action. What he says is, “We have seen...we have

heard...we have touched.” He uses what’s called the perfect tense, which describes past

action with continuing results. He’s not just reporting that something happened in the past.

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He’s reporting something that happened that continues to have an effect right up to the

time of writing.

An example: If someone says to you, “I saw Fenway Park,” all they’re telling you is that at

some point in the past they made visual contact with the ballpark. That’s the past tense. If

someone says to you, “I have seen Fenway Park,” that’s the perfect tense. They’re tellingyou that they not only saw it, but that the seeing of it has made a lasting impression on

them. The Green Monster, the white lines, the red dirt of the infield—they’ll never forget it.

They’ve been changed by the experience.

That’s what John is saying here. We didn’t just see Jesus and hear Jesus and touch Jesus. We

experienced Jesus, and the experience of seeing, hearing, and touching Jesus continues to

shape our lives. His words are still ringing in our ears. His works are still vivid in our

minds’ eye. Our nerve endings still tingle at the sense of his presence.

In fact, John says, the experience is so real that Jesus has become our life. Twice he says it.

In verse 1 he refers to Jesus as “the Word of life.” Not the word about life, as if Jesus’ wordsand actions have informed their lives. But “the word of life,” as if knowing Jesus is life itself.

He says it again in verse 2: “We proclaim to you the eternal life.” Jesus isn’t just a source of

life. He, himself, is life. To know him is to live.

Again, an illustration might help. Brett Favre is back for another season of football. Favre is

the quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings, who at 41 has come back from retirement a third

or fourth time, who hasn’t missed a start in 20 seasons, who still jumps up and down like a

kid on a playground every time he throws a touchdown. There are a lot of football players

in the NFL. Everyone one of them would tell you that football is an important part of theirlives—some might even say the most important part of their lives. But Brett Favre would

have to say, “Football is my life.” He can’t imagine his life—he can’t imagine himself—apartfrom football.

In a similar but much more grand and comprehensive way, John is telling us that Jesus

Christ is his life. The experience of seeing, hearing, and feeling Jesus Christ is for him life

itself —not just any life, but the life God has in mind for every human being.

Let me pause here and ask: Is Jesus Christ your life? Are you experiencing Christ? We haven’t

had the privilege John had of seeing, hearing, and touching Jesus in the flesh. But the point

of John’s letter is that this life, this experience of Christ, is available to everyone, everyday.

We can still see Christ work in our lives and in the world around us. We see his handiworkin creation, as the green of summer gives way to the orange of autumn. We witness his

healing, transforming work in the lives of people around us, and in our lives. We watch his

people go out into the world to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and bring good news to the

needy. We can still hear Christ speak through his Word, the Bible; through the still, small

voice of the Spirit; through the voices of people he places in our lives. And even though

Jesus no longer walks the earth, we can still feel him laying a finger on some sinful thought

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One more illustration: Let’s say you discover a great restaurant. The food is delicious, the

service is stellar, the ambiance is truly unique. As you’re driving home with your friend or

spouse you say, “That was one of the best restaurants I’ve ever been to.” That’s joy. Now

let’s say you tell some friends about the restaurant, and the next weekend they try it and

come back and say, “You were right! That’s one of the best restaurants we’ve ever been to!”

Well, now you have more joy, because someone you love has had the same experienceyou’ve had, and you can talk about it. But wait: let’s say that the next weekend the whole

group of you goes out together to that restaurant. You try everything on the menu. You

sample each other’s entrees. You share a couple of desserts and order another round ofcoffee and stay till the place closes. Now your joy is complete, because you have actually

shared the experience with people that you love.

So it is with the Christian experience. It’s incomplete until we’ve shared it with others.

That’s why it’s not enough just to go deeper in your faith. If you’re not careful, going deep

can become very self-centered, even self-indulgent. This life, this joy, was meant to be

shared.

Listen to what a commentator named Gary Burge writes about this passage: “Christian

community is...the common living of people who have a shared experience of Jesus Christ.

They talk about this experience, they urge each other to grow more deeply in it, and they

discover that through it, they begin to build a life together unlike any shared life in the

world.”

ConclusionSo John’s first lesson in Living Deep is this: You know you’re living deep when your greatestjoy is experiencing Christ personally and sharing that experience with others. That’s why

our vision for the year isn’t just to go deeper in Christ, but also to get closer to those who

know Christ, and to reach wider so others can come to know him.

If John were to answer Marissa’s letter about why she isn’t finding much joy in her

Christian life, I think he would ask her two questions, the same questions he would ask

each of us this morning. First: Are you experiencing Christ personally? Are you seeing him

work, hearing him speak, and feeling his presence in your life on a daily basis? If not, then

it’s time to go deeper. And this year we’d like to help you do that. The second question he’d

ask is this: Are you sharing that experience with others? If not, then maybe you need to get

closer to folks who know him and reach wider to folks who don’t. And this year we’d like to

help you do that, as well.

Last week I was away on a study retreat to get ready for this series. I had a stack of

commentaries on the table, and the first one I opened described the letter of 1 John as “a

loving and anxious sermon” written by a pastor who loved his people and wanted God’s

best for them. I was struck by that phrase “a loving and anxious sermon.” Maybe because

there was a lot I was feeling anxious about concerning our church. But as I sorted through

those things and spent time in John’s letter, I realized that the thing I am most anxious

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about, the thing I am most anxious for , is for everyone in this flock that we call Grace Chapel

to experience the fullness of life in Christ.

So my pastoral prayer for Grace Chapel this year, for every one of you, is that we would go

deeper in our relationship with Christ, get closer to our spiritual family, the church, and

reach wider to invite more people into the party. I’d like to ask if you’ll make this yourprayer, too. If you do, then your joy, and mine, will be complete.

For Your Reflection Personal growth:How has this sermon fed your own soul? ___________________________________________

Skill growth:What did this sermon teach you about how to preach?

____________________________________________________________________________

Exegesis and exposition:Highlight the paragraphs in this sermon that helped you better understand Scripture. How does

the sermon model ways you could provide helpful biblical exposition for your hearers? ____________________________________________________________________________

Theological Ideas:

What biblical principles in this sermon would you like to develop in a sermon? How would you

adapt these ideas to reflect your own understanding of Scripture, the Christian life, and theunique message that God is putting on your heart?

____________________________________________________________________________

Outline:

How would you improve on this outline by changing the wording, or by adding or subtracting

points? _____________________________________________________________________

Application:

What is the main application of this sermon? What is the main application of the message yousense God wants you to bring to your hearers?

____________________________________________________________________________

Illustrations:Which illustrations in this sermon would relate well with your hearers? Which cannot be used

with your hearers, but they suggest illustrations that could work with your hearers?

____________________________________________________________________________

Credit:

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Do you plan to use the content of this sermon to a degree that obligates you to give credit? If so,

when and how will you do it? ____________________________________________________

01. deep joy

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