Randy Harris 7-13-25

So a large percentage of Christians in the history of the world didn't have a Bible, nor would they have been able to read one if they'd had it.

So I'm going to do is invite you to join all of them. I'm going to spend half of my sermon preparing you to hear the gospel, and you're going to hear it straight from the text.

And I'm not going to have you stand up.

I'm going to ask you to put your Bible away.

I'm going to ask you to tune your ears and your hearts to hear the good news from a text from which it explodes.

Now, I thought, okay, trying to get people prepared to really listen to a text they've heard before, that's kind of cool.

I thought not very long ago, somebody gifted us some expensive athletic shoes that we could share with our casa kids. And, you know, teenagers can be kind of particular. So I wanted to look at the shoe I was going to give him before I gave it to him. And I went and looked at it, and I thought, that's cool. And then I thought, well, that can't be good if I think this shoe is cool.

I mean, one could hardly give a worse endorsement to a shoe than that. But it turns out it was. I'll let you be the judge whether this is a cool way to preach or not.

I'm going to show of hands. How many of you, if you had to this afternoon, could by yourself, change the oil in your car?

Okay. Few of you could.

I wasn't raising my hand.

Not a lot of things you can do to a car under a shade tree anymore, are there?

I taught philosophy for years, and I had some students who were interested in it and some students who weren't.

But I always thought, you know, if they had to go out and change the oil in their car that afternoon and I was teaching them how to change that oil, they'd be leaning in and paying attention, and somehow Aristotle doesn't hit them that way.

It doesn't occur to them that they need to be leaning in, because this could really matter.

Oh, this text matters.

It's one of those places in the Bible where the whole gospel explodes in a few verses. That's not true of every passage of the Bible. A few passages where there's not much of an explosion. In fact, there's a few duds, but this is one of those places where it explodes.

What's your favorite favorite rock song? Everybody's always surprised when they hear what mine is. My favorite rock song of all time. Is Radio Gaga by Queen. I think it's the greatest rock song ever.

I do.

If you didn't know what to do, you need to educate yourself this afternoon.

It is a lovely nostalgic reflection on radio.

It's this wistful longing for the time when you got your news from radio and and you heard your music from radio and radio taught you everything that you needed to know. But now radio has become background noise.

It's a beautiful, lovely song and I sometimes wonder with the ubiquity of the Bible, having it all the time, whenever I want it, I somehow made it background noise.

I may be reading it but sometimes I'm not really, really listen.

The text I'm getting ready to have you hear is extremely repetitious.

Repetition happens for two different reasons. Number one, we do repetition because we want to make a point over and over and over again. It's important and it's so important it needs to be repeated.

Second, repetition happens because we don't remember that we've already said it.

Third, repetition happens because we don't remember that we said it.

But I have no doubt that in this passage repetition happens because he keeps leaning into sort of fundamental gospel concepts and he knows he can't say it too often.

Are you ready to hear the text? Okay. Part of my goal was to get you so frustrated he's like he's never going to get to it. Are we there yet? Are you leaning in?

I'm going to mostly quote it to you but the reason I got my cheat sheet here is because you make me nervous.

Back when I was. This is part of my delaying tactic. I'm trying to get you to lean in.

Back when I was much, much younger I decided that I was going to memorize the New Testament. Now it turns out I didn't do that. I got distracted by like the Brady Bunch and the cardinals, some other things. But one of the very first passages that I memorized was this one out of one John. And I think I don't remember what that 16 year old was thinking but I think it was something along the lines of this chapter is short but since it has become one of those passages, it's interesting that when Shane sent us the invitation to preach, I think he told us all the same thing.

He didn't give us any clues except to do something about Jesus.

And you know, if last week Tara didn't preach from the gospels, she preached from Romans and today I'm going to preach from First John because it's not just the gospels that are About Jesus. The whole New Testament is bearing witness to Jesus Christ. And this is one of the great Jesus passages of all time. So I do have it memorized, but you make me nervous, so I'm just going to make sure I don't get too lost. Are you leaning in?

That which was from the beginning, which we've heard, which we've seen with our eyes, which we've looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared. We've seen it, we testify to it. We proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim what we have seen and heard so that you might have fellowship with us.

And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. We write this so our joy will be complete.

This is the message.

God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

If we claim to have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. And the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves. Truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar. And his word has no place in our lives.

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.

But if anyone does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense. Jesus Christ, the righteous one. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins. And not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. We know that we have come to know Him. If we obey his commands. The man who says, I know him, but does not do what he commands is a liar.

And the truth is not in Him. But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in Him. This is how we know we are in Him. Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.

That's the whole gospel. Okay, let me stay out of the way of the text, but just point out a couple of things that this text does.

The writer is very intent in talking about the Jesus that they've seen and heard and touched, which is to say all of our convictions as Christians belong, first of all with the notion that God came in the flesh. Really, really, really, truly.

When I was teaching freshman Bible at acu, I would always start the same way, okay, Jesus can't be just anybody you want him to be. He already is somebody.

And there is a tendency to be rather than conformed into the image of Jesus Christ, to conform Jesus to our image.

And the writer wants to make sure we don't do that. It's the Jesus that's presented in the gospel texts that we have come to believe in.

Jesus has already done something, but he's not content just to talk about what Jesus has done. He wants to talk about what Jesus is doing.

What Jesus is doing is this. He is purifying us from all sin. Now, I probably started at the wrong place today. What I should have said is, okay, I have gospel for you. I have good news for you, but only for some of you.

Those of you who sin, There is no good news until you're ready to say, okay, I sin.

I probably told my Bible class this story. I was working with somebody one time, and he had done some things that I was quite appalled by. And I was really struggled. And I knew my duty, but I wasn't feeling it.

So I had a therapist friend who was in town, and so we had a meal together. And I thought he might give me some therapeutic trick to make me feel better about my ministry towards this person. But unfortunately, I picked the wrong therapist.

I picked the one who, among other things, does not have the gift of tact.

And he looked at me and he would say, he smiled. I would swear he smirked. But that may be him. Matter of perspective.

And he said, do you believe the gospel that you preach?

No.

What's your point?

Is the problem is you think you're better than he.

I've heard you preach that we all sin, but you really think his are worse.

That's the problem.

Love a therapist who does theology.

He's right.

And just to make sure that we don't miss the point, he says it twice, three times, really, in different ways. If we claim we have no sin, if we say we have not sinned, if you think you haven't sinned, there's no gospel in this passage. There's only gospel in this passage for people who are ready to say, okay, I cannot do it on my own.

And what the writer wants us to do is to take our sins seriously, because that's the only way we can take our forgiveness seriously. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Okay, for the three or four Greek nerds out there. Yeah, that's one of those verbs. It's a continuous action verb.

There's no really great way to translate that in English. You can translate it in Arkansan.

He's a purifying you.

That's what he's doing.

He's constantly purifying you from all sin.

Now that's gospel.

It's not that Jesus just did something. He did. We've seen, we've touched. It's that Jesus is doing something in this moment.

He's on his knees, taking my case to the Father, purifying me from all sin.

As attorneys go, that's an excellent one.

But he wants to make sure that we don't miss the point.

And that is the claim to be in Christ, the claim to be in fellowship with God. The one and only evidence of that is not that we're sinless, but that we are walking as Jesus did.

He says, anybody who claims to be in fellowship with God but isn't walking the way Jesus did is a liar. The truth is not in him.

It's what we do.

My I let things get a little complicated. Sometimes I think my. I think my head world is more complicated than most people.

I've spent years tying myself up in knots.

I'm also one of those people that thinks that doubt is a very useful thing.

My favorite line from Milton's Paradise Lost is the one by which I have tried to live my life. Suspicion sleeps at wisdom's gate.

I'm suspicious when people have all the answers, when they have the easy answers, when they're always right. And the person that I'm most suspicious of me.

And some days back when I was working for a living, that could be a problem because I'd be scheduled to teach a Bible class that morning, and I wasn't sure I believed in God.

What do you do today?

And it's this passage that tells me what to do when I'm utterly confused. The decision is this. Today I'll do my best to walk as Jesus did.

And it's amazing how that gets you through life.

The one decision that's made permanently and completely is every day I'm going to get up and I'm going to walk the way Jesus did. And it's not going to be perfect. Anybody who claims to be without sin is a liar. But Jesus is going to be in my defense, and he is going to be constantly cleansing me from sin. And that is in a few verses.

The whole Gospel of God. It's the good news.

As I fumble forward trying to follow Jesus, he's always about the purifying.

So here's the story. You can put it in the believe it or not category. In fact, I will cloak the story so you don't have to believe it.

I'm doing Lent.

I decided to do practices for Lent that I don't ordinarily do. I used to give things up for Lent. I really don't do that anymore. When I would give up sodas, all I could think of on Easter was soda rather than the resurrection of Jesus. He just seemed off.

So what I try to do now is adopt a spiritual practice that I might not do all the time. And I was praying on my face, which is not something I normally do. So every day for Lent, I'm praying on my face, and I don't know whether I'm awake or asleep. That'll make it easier for it to go down for you.

And Jesus shows up, and he's wearing tennis shoes that aren't cool.

And I'm laying on my face, and I see his feet. And he lays down beside me, and this is very disconcerting. I don't know if I'm asleep anyway.

I cannot have the King of the world laying on his face beside me. I can't do that.

And so I told him, I cannot lay here with you.

And the King of the world giggled, said, you're not laying here by me. I'm laying here by you.

Turns out that's not the same thing at all.

Would you stand?

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and give you peace. To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy. To the only God, our Savior. Be glory and majesty, dominion and power through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages now and forevermore.

World without end. Amen.