Make Every Moment Count

What does it look like to connect with Jesus Christ?

1 John 1:1-4 shows us.

The other apostles were dead, but John remained—the last living intimate friend of Jesus. The aged apostle was living in Ephesus, a port city Paul first evangelized four decades earlier. John regarded the Christians in every town within a hundred miles as his personal responsibility, and now a clique of pseudo-Christian teachers was wreaking confusion in John’s flock. His response was a letter sent to each church in the province of Asia, the letter we call 1 John.

John probably wrote this epistle around 90 AD, sixty years after Jesus’ crucifixion and perhaps twenty-five years after Paul’s and Peter’s deaths.
During Jesus’ lifetime, John was one of the three disciples closest to Him (Luke 8:51; Luke 9:28). When Jesus died, He entrusted His mother to John’s care (John 19:26-27). In his Gospel, John called himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 13:23).

Popular mythology has sometimes painted John as a kindly old saint, like Santa Claus. Kind he may have been to his flock, but he had another face. Mark tells us that John and his brother James were known as the “Sons of Thunder” (Mark 3:17). They once offered to call down fire from Heaven upon some Samaritans who snubbed Jesus (Luke 9:51-56). Jesus rebuked this zeal, but we can sense a sanctified Son of Thunder behind many passages of 1 John (1 John 1:6; 1 John 2:4, 22; 1 John 3:9, 18; 1 John 4:5-6, 20; 1 John 5:10).

John jumps right into the subject he wants to cover. There is no greeting and no acknowledgment. What he has to say is of unparalleled importance; he must get right to the point: God’s Son has come to earth so that we might connect with Him.

Read 1 John 1:1-4;

Here’s the truth about connecting with Jesus:

► Don’t miss an opportunity with God because you are too busy looking at what God is doing in someone else’s life to see what God is doing in your life.

Jesus Christ came that we might connect with God and with His Son Jesus Christ and with one another.

There is a sphere in which God works alone, and in which we can have no co-operation, no fellowship with him. In the work of creation; in upholding all things; in the government of the universe; in the transmission of light from world to world; in the return of the seasons, the rising and setting of the sun, the storms, the tides, the flight of the comet, we can have no joint unity, no co-operation with him. There God works alone.

But there is also a large sphere in which he admits us graciously to a co-operation with him, and in which, unless we work, his will is not done. This is seen when the farmer sows his grain; when the surgeon binds up a wound; when we take the medicine which God has appointed as a means of restoration to health. So it is in the moral world. In our efforts to be saved and to see those we love saved, God graciously works with us; and unless we work, the goal is not accomplished. This co-operation is referred to in such passages as these:

“We are labourers together with God,”

1 Corinthians 3:9

“The Lord working with them,”

Mark 16:20

“We then as workers together with him,”

2 Corinthians 6:1

“That we might be fellow-helpers to the truth,”

3 John 1:8

You can miss an opportunity with God because you are too busy looking at what God is doing in someone else’s life to see what God is doing in your life.

This is true in my own life. I am weak in this area. I compare myself too often with other pastors. I compare my church too often with other churches…

You serve an eternal God that is infinitely wiser then you are. He is eternally more powerful and He knows how to help you when you are in need.

► Some people miss their opportunity with God because it is easier to follow a person than it is to follow God.

1 John 1:1-2

So people have these pastors that they look up to and rely on them more than they rely on God Himself. Don’t’ do that here at EC.

That word manifested is the Greek word,

Romanized phaneroo
Pronounced fan-er-o’-o

It means “to appear” or “to be made visible”.

When manifest is used in the sense of an unveiling or revelation, it suggests that a new thing has come to light, that something never known by man before is made known. Some mystery has now been revealed. It is something that cannot be discovered by man’s reason or wisdom. It is a mystery that is hidden from man and beyond his grasp.

The eternal Jesus who existed in eternity with the Father, the invisible Christ, was born, became visible, and lived and moved on this earth.

in verse 2. John is saying, “I saw Him. I actually saw Jesus with my eyes.

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:14-15

And what is the verse that follows those?

John 3:16;

You or I have never seen Jesus with our eyes, but John did. This is what authenticates the New Testament. Jesus Christ was seen by eyewitnesses.

Some people may say, “Well, they had a hallucination.” John takes care of that with the next statement in verse 1. “We have seen with our eyes . . . we have looked upon.” The word look is

Romanized theaomai
Pronounced theh-ah’-om-ahee

It’s the word from which we get our word theatre, and it means more than just a glimpse. It means an intense gaze. When you go see a movie at the theatre, you gaze at the screen for two hours or more. Today, 3-D is so popular. Why? Because it makes the theatre experience so real that you long to stare at the screen.

If you want to see Jesus today, you have to give Him more than a passing glimpse. That is why the Bible encourages us to be still and know that He is God. How? By sitting quietly before Him. By focusing on Him through prayer. By blocking out all distractions around us.