1 John 1:1 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. 3 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. 4 We write this to make our joy complete. 5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all …

Any of you who may have completed two years of Latin (a possibility with this age group) are probably familiar with the opening line of Caesar’s 58 AD writing, “Gallic Wars” – “Gallia est omnis divise in partes tres.” “Gaul is divided into three parts….”] Caesar was quite a guy (not just because he could speak Latin!), but, really, he was not only an Emperor (who many worshipped as God) but also a real warrior – finally conquering most of the known (what we called) civilized world – all of Europe (Gaul), England, parts of Africa and the Near East. And he brought back prisoners from all these regions and paraded them through Rome in huge victory celebrations. But probably more well known than Caesar’s “Gallic Wars” is a quote earlier attributed to him by Plutarch – reportedly in a speech Caesar made to the Roman Senate – where he, describing his great victories he stated, “Veni, vedi, veci.” “I came, I saw, I conquered!”

Our text today is written by a contemporary of Caesar’s – John the son of Zebedee. And this record that we have here, called the “1st letter of John,” has a tone very similar to Caesar’s pronouncement to the Senate: “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 … concerning the Word of life … The life appeared; we have seen it -- and testify to it, -- and we proclaim to you the eternal life,.” Caesar’s writings, The Gallic Wars was a very good history of his victory over the world. And in the just same way, John is giving us a careful, objective history of Christ – following his resurrection – that is, Jesus victory over the world – and not the world only, but his victory over sin, death and Satan – the ruler of this world.

The Bible, God’s Word, is subjected to and will stand up under any and all critical, historical examination. It is an accurate history book of salvation -- the OT and the NT – which tells us how God himself first created the world – then came into the world incarnate in the God-Man Jesus Christ – and it tells how this Jesus saw/experienced all the evil and the suffering going on in this world. And then, how he conquered sin, Satan and death -- for us: He came, He saw, and He conquered!

Here John testifies to these events – as do all the Gospel writers and writers of the NT. Our Bible is a miraculous testimony to Christ – there being a unity and an agreement throughout both Testaments regarding Christ and salvation – and God himself challenges u to examine His Word – "You search the Scriptures … these are they which testify of Me.” (Jn 5:39)

And when we search, we find it full of such accounts as John gives here – accounts of things the writers had seen, and heard, and touched personally – regarding Jesus Christ. As Paul writes: 1 Cor. 15:4” … he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.”

Starting in the O. T. the prophets proclaimed (“Thus saith the Lord…”) these things that John describes – and even though they did not fully understand their own prophesy (1 Pe 1:10, 11) – the events came to pass exactly as written and prophesied! Luke writes in Acts (3:18), “What God foretold by the mouth of the prophets: that Christ should suffer, He thus fulfilled.” And Jesus, after appearing to the two disciples on the road to Damascus and talking to them, they said “did not our hearts burn when He opened the Scriptures (OT prophesy) to us.” Jesus confirmed this when he later appeared to the group of disciples in the upper room, saying (Gospel, Lk 24:44), “"This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms." Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures…” Here Jesus himself testifies that the OT is correct, and that it points to Him as the Messiah.

The Scriptures serve exactly the same purpose for us today. The Holy Spirit “opens the Scriptures” to us -- opens our hearts, that we might understand and believe that Jesus is the Messiah, our Savior. The Psalmist writes (119:105), “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and light unto my path.” That is why we must be, why we are, so attentive to God’s Word in our lives – our worship our Bible study, our home devotions…

Well, what did the disciples find in these “opened Scriptures?” What do we find? Certainly very much!! Let us take a few categories, passages from Scripture, and look at them. [Here, in the last 24 hours of Jesus life, we find 24 prophesies fulfilled.] Here are a few of them:

Law of Moses, Gen. 3: 15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel." First prophesy, though certainly veiled to Adam and Eve, but now clear to us -- of Christ (enmity) coming between Satan and man, and of Christ’s heal being bruised (his death on the cross), and Satan’s head eng crushed (Christ’s resurrection and his victory over sin, death and Satan.

Ps. 16: 9 “Therefore my heart has been glad, and my tongue has rejoiced: moreover, my flesh also shall rest in hope. Because You wilt not leave my soul in hell; nor will You allow Thy Holy One to see corruption.” A prophesy of Jesus resurrection and our hope of the resurrection.

Job 19: 25 "And as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, And at the last He will take His stand on the earth. "Even after my skin is destroyed, Yet from my flesh I shall see God; Whom I myself shall behold …” Again, a foretaste of ours and Christ’s bodily resurrection in the flesh our of eternal life with Christ when He comes to take us home.

Excerpts from the prophet Isaiah, Chapter 53:3 He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed … (Such a clear description of Christ’s betrayal, suffering and death) 10 Yet it was the will of the LORD to bruise him; he has put him to grief; (and) when he makes himself an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand; 11 He shall see of the travail of his soul, {and} shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. … He poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors: yet he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” (Again, what a clear description of the purpose, the result of Christ’s atoning death – the forgiveness of our sins, that we might have eternal life with Him.) Later on in the Scriptures, the prophets even declared the birthplace of the Messiah. Micah 5: 2 "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”

These are familiar passages to us and these are surely some of the very writings of Moses, the Psalms and the prophets, that Jesus “opened up,” explaining them to the disciples and his followers. He would say, “It is I” (echoing the words of Moses and his declaration in the Garden of Gethsemane.) “It is I. I have defeated Satan, as Moses wrote. I am raised for the dead (as Is said). Here I am in the flesh (even as Job said).”

‘You few – John, Peter, Thomas, you other guys – you few get to see me now, ahead of “My time” – so now you can go and tell others about me. I’m going to go now (in the flesh) – I’m going where you can not follow me right now – but I am going to prepare an eternal place for you to join me in the Last Days – And I will come again – just as prophesied – to get you and to take you with me! It is as Isaiah said, (paraphrased) “I suffered and died for you – that you may have eternal peace and victory.” 

Today we have the same witness in the Scriptures as the early disciples. The same knowledge and the same assurances. We are called to search the Scriptures – Old and New Testaments – each pointing to and explaining the other. There to see the prophesies’ of God and the inspired, eye witness accounts of their fulfillment. I would like to quote to you a Bible scholar’s (that is another Bible scholar..?) reflections on these accounts. I have used this quote before in a paper I presented on the same topic.

F.F. Bruce, a foremost contemporary expert on the Dead Sea scrolls, professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester, England, writes: “The earliest researchers of the gospel knew the value of … first-hand testimony, and appealed to it time and again. ‘We are witnesses of these things,’ was their confident assertion. And it can have been by no means so easy as some writes seem to think to invent words and deeds of Jesus in those early years, when so many of his disciples were about, who could remember what had and what had not happened. Indeed the evidence is that the early Christians were careful to distinguish between sayings of Jesus and their own inferences and judgments. Paul, for example, when discussing vexing questions of marriage and divorce in I Corinthian 7, is careful to make this distinction between his own advise on the subject and the Lord’s decisive ruling, writing: “I, not the Lord,’ and again, ‘Not I, but the Lord.’” “And it was not only friendly eye witnesses that the early preachers had to reckon with; there were others less well disposed who were also conversant with the main facts of the ministry and death of Jesus.

The disciples could not afford to risk inaccuracies (not to speak of willful manipulation of the facts), which would at once be exposed by those who would be only too glad to do so. On the contrary, one of the strongest points in the original apostolic preaching is the confident appeal to the knowledge of the hearers; they not only said, ‘We are witnesses to these things,’ but also, ‘As your ourselves know.’ (Acts 2:22). Had there been any tendency to depart from the facts in any material respect, the possible presence of hostile witnesses in the audience would have served as a further corrective.”

What all of this is saying to us today is that, in spite of the newly found, so-called “Gospel of Judas” or the popularity of the fictional books The DaVinci Code, The Real Jesus and all of the other critics who have been attacking Christianity, not just today, but down through the centuries: There is still a place to turn for truth, for help, for the one thing necessary in life – and that is Jesus Christ. And that place is the Bible, where Jesus -- his life, death and resurrection for our salvation – that is His victory over sin, death and the devil – is continually revealed to us.

We all have the same needs as Adam, and the disciples and all sinful men. We still have our doubts, And we still live in a world that is more and more hostile to Christianity – a world where Satan the Prince of Darkness and Deception reigns. We see the web that he has woven – a web of sin and suffering and trouble in the corners of every country, every home, every life. I know your condition, even as you know mine – because we are the same. We have the same fears, doubts, guilt, sin, and worries – the same as our spouses, children, neighbors, and the disciples. As Scripture says, we are by nature lost and condemned creatures – seeking help – looking for a way out – some way – Some One to save us from Satan and ourselves. Well, we have found the Way – the One , who has redeemed and delivered us!

In all Truth, John has the answer for us and for all mankind: “We have seen Him. We have touched him. We have heard Him.” He is real. He is alive. He came, He saw, He conquered! And now He is ours – He is yours! Jesus, Savior and Lord -- and the free gift of eternal life. And in this text John also invites us to enjoy this fellowship of the Apostles with The Father and the Son – in whom there is not darkness, but rather light and joy and celebration. John says: “This we are writing that our joy may be complete.” Their joy was in sharing Jesus Christ with us, with others, that we too may be joyful in this Christian fellowship – as we celebrate together with our fellow redeemed brothers and sisters.

And now our joy may also be made truly “complete” when we share this message of Christ and salvation with others. Let us now go forth and be truly “Joyful” in the Lord.

Amen.