If you have been in attendance at any point during our study of 1 John, then you will be aware that the theme of 1 John is fellowship. Fellowship with God and fellowship with His church. This is what we were saved for; fellowship, or communion with God and with His body. Fellowship is one of those old fashioned words perhaps. It is part of the proper name of our church. And we chose that name because it encompasses the full spectrum of the purpose of the church better than simply the word church, which in most people’s mind

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  I think it was last Sunday that I kind of threw out a surprise question to the congregation. The question concerned whether or not you could say that your life was a living testimony to the transforming power of the gospel. I don’t often ask for a raising of hands in our services, so perhaps I caught everyone off guard. Because the response was from just a half a dozen people or so, until I said that I expected a lot more affirmations, and then a few more people belatedly raised their hands. Now my purpose this morning is

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As we have studied 1 John, we have looked at various aspects of Christian fellowship. We have discovered that God created man for fellowship with Him. But as we progress in our fellowship with Christ, the natural result that is going to develop will be love. Love is the natural progression of fellowship. Just as in human relationships, when a man and woman come to know one another, and they have a relationship, the natural development of their continued dating, or fellowship, will be that they fall in love. So it is in our relationship with Christ. We come to

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  When you hear someone speak of a doctor’s office, they often refer to it as a place where the physician practices medicine. And we understand what that means, don’t we? It doesn’t mean that the doctor is practicing medicine as a means of learning medicine. None of us would trust our health to someone who wasn’t already a doctor, but was just someone who was practicing to be a doctor. We understand that it means a doctor is practicing what he has already been trained to do. He practices what he is. The dictionary defines practice as the exercise

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As we pick up again where we left off in our study of 1 John this week, it’s important that we are reminded who John is writing to. And he tells us in 1John 5:13; “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” So he is writing to Christians, that they might have the encouragement and assurance of their salvation and sure hope of eternal life. And in that context, we should look back at vs.29 of the last chapter, and

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As we have learned so far in our study of 1 John, the Apostle John has been teaching us about the nature and essentiality of fellowship. That God did not send Jesus to die on the cross just to save us from hell, but to woo us to intimacy, fellowship, and communion with the living God. And so to this point we have studied the basis of fellowship, which is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And then we saw the proof and progress of fellowship, then the evidence of fellowship, and the process of fellowship, which is maturity. Along

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As we have seen in our study of 1 John so far, John has been writing to the church that they might not only know God, but that they might have fellowship with God. Fellowship is intimacy, it is communion, it is having the life of God and the light of God in you. Fellowship with God is the way to complete joy. It is the way to life, abundant life, even eternal life. And fellowship, John says, produces love for God. That is the result of fellowship; that we come to love God, even as He has loved us.

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  We have been studying the doctrine of fellowship so far in our exposition of 1 John. We have seen that God designed us for fellowship with Him, and He desires fellowship with us. But as we have learned, before we can have fellowship with God, we must first have a relationship with Jesus Christ. Jesus manifested Himself to the world so that we might come to know God. Hebrews 1:3 tells us that “[Jesus] is the radiance of [God’s] glory and the exact representation of [God’s] nature.” But God desires more than just knowledge of Him. He desires fellowship

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If you are a regular here at the Beach Fellowship, then you will know that I do not normally try to accommodate the holidays with topical messages. It is our practice to preach verse by verse, and we are in 1John 2 today by the providence of God. So I hope that will not be discouraging for any visitors that might have come expecting a normal “Easter” message. That being said, however, I do want to make one association from our text at the outset, which has to do with the theme of Easter – that is the resurrection of

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