The Village Church
Anchored in Jesus - Audio
If you have your Bibles, please open them to 1 John chapter 1. You're going to be looking at the first four verses, 1 John chapter 1 beginning in verse 1. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest, and we have seen it, testified to it, proclaiming to you the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was made manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And I write these things to you, so that my joy may be complete, as high as holy word. A few weeks ago, the legendary college basketball coach John Wood didn't pass away, most of you may know who he is. He won an amazing 10 college basketball championships in 12 years, 10 of them, that's amazing. Not only that, he touched the lives of many people with his character, with his ideas, with his values, people loved him. They admired him, some probably even worshipped John Wood. They have heard his messages, committed his quotes to memory, his players and many others. They have seen with their own eyes the kind of man he was in the life that he led. They watched him practice what he preached, and they were touched by this man, and his message, his philosophy on life is now proclaimed by others, his disciples, so to speak, proclaim his view of life through books, articles, personal testimonies. He had a great impact on lives of people that came in contact with him, coach John Wood. And over the past few weeks, as I listened to his former players and those who know him talk about him, I wanted to myself, what kept him grounded? What kept him anchored in life, because he was a successful man. What kept him anchored through the peaks and valleys of life? And what I learned is that his foundation and his anchor was not glory, it was not the success, and no one talked about that. And so in his book, they called me coach, this is John Wood and his book, his autobiography, he says this. He said, "I have always tried to make it clear that basketball is not the ultimate. It is a small importance in comparison to the total life we live. There is only one kind of life that truly wins, and that is the one that places faith in the hands of the Savior." The coach, John Wood and the legendary coach, he was grounded in his Savior, anchored in his Savior, a life that truly wins places faith in the hands of Christ. And like him, you and I should be anchored and grounded in the same thing. And this is what 1 John chapter 1 verses 1 through 4 reminds us of, we need to be reminded of this. Why? Because man, to be honest, our memories are like silly putty, I mean, you know, we forget. I mean, you're going to forget what I say this morning when you go to lunch, probably, if the spirit isn't moving. So we constantly have to preach the gospel to ourselves. We constantly have to be reminded that we have to be anchored in Jesus. Pray with me. Father God, you are our anchor, you are our foundation. And no one needs to be reminded of that more than me. This is not my righteousness, this is not my peace. Man's praise is not my peace. My ministry is not my peace, Christ is, and the same is for all of us, Lord. We all should be anchored in Christ, and I pray that your spirit will take what is preached and apply it to our hearts because if he doesn't show up, nothing happens. It's the spirit, Lord, come and apply the word to our lives and Christ in my prayer, amen. So anchored in Jesus, this is what you are if you know him. And he's a permanent anchor, it's not temporary, he provides us with stability and confidence. He is the first, what, he's the first, he's an anchor of life, the word I mean by that. Verse 2 says, "Life has appeared, the word of life has appeared, and I have seen it. We proclaim to you the eternal life which is what the Father has appeared to us. This life is eternal, Jesus is eternal." The word says that he proclaim, that was from the beginning. What does that mean? What is from the beginning? What is he talking about? He is saying that Jesus existed before creation. He was with the Father. He is not a created man. He has no beginning. He has no end. He is everlasting. All of life flows from Christ, what does the gospel of John says? The word was with God, the word was God, he was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made, and without him nothing was made that has been made. And in him was life, and that life was what, the light of man. This is Jesus. The Son of God who is the radiance of God's glory. The exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. It's Jesus. And one Christian says, "To change the corruptible, you and me, into incorruption, was proper none to none other than the Savior himself." Jesus changes us to incorruption, the Savior. Only the image of the Father can recreate in us the likeness of that image. Only Jesus can do that, not us. So Jesus is what? He is God. He is divine. And next, John says, "This eternal life was manifest to us, that which was eternal has also appeared." What does that mean, Alex? It means Jesus came in the flesh. That's what it means. The eternal Son of God became man. He took to himself a true body. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the womb of the Virgin Mary. He was born of her, and yet without sin. The gospel of John says, "The word became flesh, it made its dwelling among us." And Jesus was heard by people, he was seen by others, he was touched by others. He was real. The eternal Son of God became visible. And the author of Hebrews says, "That since us, you and I have flesh and blood, he too shared in our humanity, that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is the devil, and free those who all their lives are held in slavery by the fear of death." He had to be made like his brothers in every way, why in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest and service to God, that he might make a torment for the sins of the people. Jesus is human. Jesus is a man. This is what John wants us to know about Jesus. This is what he wants his readers to know about Jesus, that he is God and he is a man. And why is that important? In 2010, why is that important for you? Because what he does on the cross throws out of who he is. You understand that? Who he is, calls me for what he did on the cross. work, his death, flows out of the fact that he's God and man. See, we live in a time where, in which people know more about famous people like John Wooden and other things that they do that save you. You know about your favorite athlete, your favorite preacher, your favorite author, your favorite sports team, your favorite singer, or your favorite rapper, your favorite actor, or actress. We know about these people. We know about their lives. We read about them in the books. We watch TMS, whatever it's called, and keep up with the people. I've got to name them, so I think it's TMS, whatever it's called. We watch it. TMS EC, there you go. Even the preacher's wife know what it is. And we keep up, don't we? But when they come to knowing certain things about Christ, our attitude changes. No excitement. We can become cynical. We can become distrustful. See, we only want to know certain things about Jesus that are less confusing things. All we just want to know is what he did for us. He died from a cross that's very important. But when it comes to things like Jesus is both God and man. He's like, well, I don't want to know about that, Alex. I mean, why is that important? Well, how is that going to help us take the gospel to the nations? How is that going to help us fight off, fight in the broken world, or take the gospel to a broken world? How is the fact that Jesus is both God and man, how is that important to the gospel? How is that important to what we do and how we live? So some of us brush it off. It's not that important. That kind of thinking only works in the world in which everything always operates the way it should. Does life operates the way it should all the time? But people always believe that things that should believe all the time. And even in the church, things don't always operate as they should, even within the church. And people don't always believe that things that need to believe to be in the church. That's just a nature of life. John understood this. And he wrote this letter to a church in which false teachers, members of the church, came to church every day, probably taught son in school with teaching things that were not true. Good people problem, but they were teaching things that were not true about Jesus and about the faith. See the word of God is powerful. Do you know that? Powerful. This is powerful. And what can this do in the hands of wicked people? What can this do in the hands of false teachers or the gospel? It can ship great lives is what it can do. Do you understand? Just look at history. Jim Jones. I just need to say his name. Jim Jones. Look at history. We live in a world where people say, I believe in Jesus, but I don't believe in Jesus the same way you believe in Jesus. I believe in Jesus, but I live in my own rules, my own standards. I believe in Jesus, but I don't believe he's the only way to heaven. But I believe in him. I believe in Jesus. But I really don't believe he was born of a virgin. Come on. That can't be true. I believe in Jesus, but man, I show hate certain types of people, certain types of people. I can't stand him. I hate him, but I believe in Jesus. I even love him. I believe in Jesus, but I don't really believe he actually died up on the cross and rose from the dead. I mean, that going to be idiot. I don't believe in that. He was a good man. He was a good teacher. I believe in what he taught. I believe in Jesus, but I don't believe he could be a God and man. We live in a world where everything is relative. Everything is relative. And against what? We have people who say they're Christians and they have a relative faith. I believe in Jesus, but there's certain things I don't believe about him, and that's okay. Me and Jesus can still be cool. So Jesus becomes whatever it is you want him to be. He becomes really the Jesus on the shelf. He is what you want him to be. You see, all for the sake of spiritual correctness or spiritual oneness, we can have a tendency to say, let's just agree to disagree within the Christian body. Let's disagree to disagree. See, at times, that is correct at times. You can do that at times, because no church, no denominations, we got tons of church and tons of denominations in this country. And we ain't going to agree on every single thing. We ain't ever going to agree on every single thing, but when it comes to the foundational stuff of our faith, we have to agree. If Jesus went down across, and we're all going to help. Okay, how many people we help? It's important that when we share Christ, we got to present Him for who He is in the Bible. He died upon the cross. That's right, but He is God in man too. He can't know Him if you don't know who He is. How are you going to grow your relationship with Him if you don't know anything about Him? Oh, who He is? That's the man. That's God. I'm all about unity. I love unity. I love reconciliation. I love taking the gospel to the masses, and I love seeing people freed from stuff. I love that stuff, but the foundation cannot be to work. It has to be Jesus. Everything has a foundation. Everything has an anchor in which it is grounded into, and for us, and for our life, and for what we do, it has to be Jesus. The old hymn says, "On Christ, the solid rock we stand, all other grounds." Or what? They are. If our foundation is the work, same can stand. If you think the foundation of this church is me, then you're going to sink. The church is going to sink. It ain't me. It ain't my preaching. It ain't our gifts. It ain't our money. That stuff that's same can stand is Jesus. All the time, all the time. They don't ever change. Husbands are soon to be husbands. Tell me, if your mother believes something about your wife that was not true, are you going to tell her, "Mom, let's agree to disagree about my wife." Are you going to tell your mom that and let her continue to believe things about your bride that you love, and it's not true? Believe what you want to believe, Mom, but we agree to disagree and let her continue in those false beliefs about your wife, which will hinder their relationship. You see, because you love your bride, because you respect your bride, and because you love your mother, you will lovingly tell your mother that stuff is not true. Here is, this is my wife. This is who she is as a person. This is who she is as a mother. This is who she is as a wife. And this is who she is. What you will believe in is not true. You see, if you love Jesus and if you love other people, then you're going to want people to have the right view of who Christ is. You're not going to let them continue to believe things that are not true. If you love Him and if you love them, do you agree with that? You should, if you love Him. You want people to have a biblical understanding of Jesus. Why? Because the understanding of Him impacts your relationship with them. If a person believes they can use their salvation, what kind of relationship they're going to have with Christ? I got to always follow the rules. You see, that impacts the relationship with them. They have no freedom. They always feel condemned. And if you love that person, you'll point to them, no. In Christ, you are anchored. You are anchored. Even though you still struggle with sin, He still loves you. As far as the Jesus from the West, so far has to remove your transgressions from you. That's what that person needs to hear. And if you love them, we'll tell them. See, throughout this letter, John, he always refers to his readers as dear friends, dear children, because he wanted to give them assurance. He loved them dearly. Give them assurance of their salvation. At the same time, he wanted to deal with those false teachers too. See, he just didn't assume everything was okay. He didn't assume that everyone was doing fine. He wanted to make sure that we're doing fine. And so he wrote this letter to check in on them. How are you doing? My friends, my children, how are you doing? You see, for John, Jesus was the anchor of life, anchor of his life, but Jesus was also the anchor of John's testifying and proclaiming of the gospel. That's what he's doing in this letter. He's proclaiming the gospel, testifying to the gospel, to his brothers and to his sisters. He says, "We proclaim to you what we have heard, what we have seen, what we have looked at, and what we have touched," gets served in the Word of Life. The Word of Life appeared to John, to the disciples, and they testified to it. They were our witnesses to Jesus' ministry, to his life. And in return, they started to proclaim and testify to that. But the things they saw are witnessing Christ. One Christian says, "The ministry of the apostles involved both the testimony and proclamation. In order to testify, their apostles must have seen and heard Christ for themselves. And in order to proclaim, they must have received a commission from him." What was that commission that received? It was an authority to preach the gospel to nations, to be a witness for Christ to the nations. The anchor of the gospel, the anchor of the testimony and proclamation is Christ. He is always the sinner. It's always rooted in him. He is the sinner of the message. He is the content of the gospel. Jesus, both God and man, at the same time. Jesus, our demon, our sustainer, our refuge, our comfort, our righteousness, our shepherd, our advocate, our brother, our prophet, our priest, our king, our God. Jesus, he is the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through that Jesus. There is no other name in the heaven given by which man can be saved. That's Jesus. And he says, "I have come so that you may have life and have it abundantly." Do you want it? Do you have it? You can have it if you don't have it. Do you want it? So the gospel is not just for those who don't know Christ. This is where I had to learn, when I first became a believer. I always thought the gospel was just for those who didn't know him. But God has shown me over these years that it's for me as well. I never get to the place where I don't need Jesus. I never get to the place where I don't need grace. I always going to need the gospel, all the days of my life. And I always forget it, all the time. Because I'm a sheep. I'm easily led astray. Easily discouraged. Easily knocked off track. And when I am, I need my brothers and sisters to love me enough to say, "Alex, I don't want to assume everything is okay, but are you okay?" Are you still believing? Are you still holding on to the truth? Because like the apostles, we all have a testimony. We all share the gospel. Has Jesus made a difference in your life? Has Jesus made a difference in your life? Is the gospel real and true? Yes. So proclaim it. Share it. See, we often feel that we don't have anything to offer to kingdom. What can God, how can God use me? I don't have anything to offer. And you're right, we don't have anything to offer. But it's the power of Christ's enough that we offer. It's the power of Christ working in us. It allows us to do the things that we do. And that's what we share with people. That's what we share. I don't have all the answers, but this is what Jesus has done for me. And He has done a lot for all of us. We shouldn't have some things that we have, but we have it because God is good. And so we have the love one another enough to just to not make assumptions, but they're doing okay because they look good on the outside. No. No. I can show you whatever I want to show you, unless you jump into my life and ask me the hard questions. How are you really doing, Alex? It's easy for me to come up here and preach as if everything in my life is okay. Anyone can do that. But you need love, you're me enough. I need love you enough to take it to the next step. Are you really okay? Are you really doing fine? And I need to be able to receive that as well. And so do you. Allow other people to ask those questions of you to speak truth into your life. A couple of weekends ago, we saw Joaquin, I saw a movie, it was a Ted jerky movie, and it's called Everyone's Fine. I don't know if you saw that. It was a touching movie. And when you get into the movie, you realize everyone's not fine. The title's kind of deceiving. And so the movie follows this widow whose wife just passed away. And his kids, they all bailed out on the family reunion they were going to have. And so he was going to go out on this trip. He was going to visit all four of his kids. And so he sends out on his journey. He goes to New York to visit his son who's an artist. And then he's going to go to Chicago to visit a daughter who's an executive. And then he's going to go to Denver who visit his son who's a conductor. And then he's going to go to Las Vegas to visit his other daughter who's a dancer. And what he learns on this trip that none of their lives are what he thought they were. None of them are doing fine. You see, what he learned is that his wife and his kids always told him they were doing fine. And he never really followed up with that. He just took it at face value until he saw firsthand. That was a mistake. They're not doing fine. They're not doing fine. And that's what happens when you get inside each other's life, you realize we all have issues. You're not the only one. And the reason you think you're the only one because you don't, you're not involved with other people. And when you get involved with other people, you realize we're all in the same boat, brothers and sisters. We're all in the same boat. We have to love one enough enough to get in the boat together, to live life together, to see first hand. Don't have a relationship that's built on assumptions. You got to have one that is anchored in Christ, a fellowship that is anchored in Christ. You see, John says that what we have seen, we proclaim to you so that you may have fellowship with us. Indeed, our fellowship is with God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. See, the reason he proclaimed the gospel and it's proclaiming it to his readers and to us is that he want to make sure we have, we are fellowshiping with God, living in fellowship with Him, living in relationship with Him. Jesus said in John 17 and 3, this is eternal life. That they know the only true God and me, Jesus Christ, whom you have said. Jesus is the anchor of eternal life. He is the source. He's the anchor of your testimony, your story, your proclamation of the gospel. He's the content and He's the anchor of your fellowship with God and your fellowship with one another. He's the foundation. And what is fellowship? It's an intimate relationship. It's communion. It's your created purpose. So we talk in the ministry, we talk, Mark talks a lot about our created purpose. This is one of the things I love about Mark. He understands the gospel. You were created to be in fellowship with God and every day, every week, you forget it. You always think he got to work for it or you always think you got to keep it. You were created for that. Christ is, that is what Christ has given you. That's why He came. That's why He came because sin is what prevented us from being in fellowship with God. So Jesus Christ, the God and man came to fulfill what was necessary so that we can be back in fellowship with God. That's what He did. Do you want that? Do you have that? It's free. All you got to do is just receive it. How? Just crowd the God, admit that you're a sinner. So receive God, receive Christ in your heart. And if you already know Him, are you growing in it? Are you growing in Christ? Do you love Him? Do you spend time on His Word? Do you spend time in prayer? You see, our freedom, the freedom that Christ gives us is a freedom to know God. Do you see what I'm saying? That's freedom. Our freedom is tied to the purpose. Adam, before the fall, it was a perfect relationship with God. His created purpose. Sam hindered that. Christ came to restore that. And so now you can live for God and know God despite your continued battle with sin. Sin cannot hinder that because Christ paid for it. You get to repent of it now. And you can actually know the Father, love the Father. That's freedom that you can live for God despite sin. Does that excite you? Do you love that? That when God sees you, He sees Christ's blood over you. And basically, imperfect people can be in a relationship with a perfect God because imperfect people have been covered in perfect righteous blood. That is who we are, all the time, all the days of our life. And we can know God being fellowship with Him and with other people and with each other. Because I said this a while back that God brings us into Christ, brings us into the body. That's what He does when He saves a real part of a body and we need one another. And He loves unity within His church, more so than breaking fellowship because we can't get along because we're not willing to forgive, not willing to be humble before one another. And we'll talk about this later, you know, as we this summer, but if you love God, if you love Jesus, you're going to have to love His people. And in saying I love Jesus, but I can't stand the church where you're saying, when you say you can't stand the church, you say you can't stand God's people. That's what you're saying. You can't say that. You can say, we're not getting along right now, but I want to reconcile how fellowship with Him. There's a connection. None of us are long rangers. It's not just you and Jesus on the island. It's you and Jesus and everybody else too. You're not alone. It's a body. It's a community. And I want us to fight for our unity here. Love one another enough to say, ask the hard questions. Are you doing on cowards? Are you still believing the gospel? If not, here's the truth. Here's what you need to believe. Because all other rock, all other rocks are sinking sand. Every Tuesday morning from 8 to 9, you know, we have a harvest ministry, worship service here. And it's a service in which we, you know, folks from the Lincoln Village ministry and our friends from the community, we get together and we sing old spirituals. And it's a great, sweet time. And we have a short devotional. And it's a real good time of fellowship. If you haven't came, you need to come to at least one. It's every Tuesday from 8 to 9. And one of my friends, we call him Pap. And he does a lot of singing. And one of the songs, he does really reinforces what I'm talking about here, and about the fact that Jesus is the anchor. Listen to these lyrics. It says, "Well, I told the good Lord, I wanted a religion. A religion that will always stand." You know, he took me to a band of angels and he connected me to that band. And he said, "You're rooted." He said, "You're grounded." He said, "You're hidden, dead and buried in my Jesus." Oh Lord, I'm rooted. I'm grounded. And I will never die no more. That's the gospel. Let's pray. Father God, I praise you that we're rooted. I praise you that we're grounded. I praise you that we're hidden, dead, and buried in our Jesus, all the days of our life. And that when you see us, you see his blood over us. And that even though we struggle, even though we're going to struggle with sin, we leave here. We can still know you. And you have given us repentance so that we can repent of those things. I pray that you protect us from the evil one this week. I pray, Lord, that you will give us a heart spirit that will love Christ more than we love all the days in our life. We will love him more. And I pray, Lord, that Spirit, you will help us to let go of things in our life, in which we say Jesus cannot have, and that we will freely give it to him. Wherever that may be, we all know what it is. Spirit, loosen the grip, let Jesus have it, and Christ in my prayer. Amen.
Anchored in Jesus - 1 John 1:1-4