Good evening. Welcome to Mars Hill. My name is Mark, one of the pastors here at the church. We’re gonna start a new series. Technically, this week I guess is the introduction and the beginning too. We’re gonna be going for the duration of the fall and the winter through the Book of Revelation; we’re gonna be taking one specific theme and tracking it through the book, and that will be the issue of worship. So tonight, I wanted to introduce that book to you by letting you get to know the author, a kid named John who was like a kid brother to Jesus and arguably the closest friend that Jesus had while he was here on the earth. So I’ll open us in prayer. And to follow along tonight you’ll need your notes; thereafter, you can just bring your Bible and well be in the Book of Revelation. I’ll be covering a lot, a lot, a lot of New Testament in one fail swoop tonight.

Lord Jesus, we pray that as we study tonight that we would see you, that we would love you, that we would follow you as John did. That we would be friends of yours who spend our days enjoying your company, trusting your words and following your example. We thank you, Lord God, for this dear and faithful brother who serves as a great example and a great leader for us all tonight. God we pray that we would be able to follow the principles that he followed in his relationship with you. And we ask that in your good name, Amen.

It says in Hebrews 13:7-8, this great little section of the New Testament, it says that leaders are those people that we can look at their life, we love the outcome of the way of their faith, we appreciate who they are and how they conduct themselves, and we aspire to be like them; we really find something in them that’s noble and good. Then it says in verse 8 there that, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” And basically these two concepts go together – that God never changes and neither do the principles of faithful people that follow him. And so it’s good for us to find examples and mentors and friends who have walked with God faithfully, and then study their life, learning from their example so that we can go the same direction that they did and have the same outcome in our life that they had in theirs.

That’s why we encourage you here to read biography, to read history; and tonight we’re gonna do a little biography and history for a guy named John. I’ll start with the story of Jesus and try and get you a good indication of this guy’s heart. Because part of it is as we get into this issue of worship that we’re gonna be studying for the fall, this is such a hugely debated issue in the church and in particular through the Book of Revelation. No one agrees what this thing is about; there are a million perspectives. I’ve blown out three or four Master’s degree courses just on prophecy and on this particular book. I’ll tell you, the teams are everywhere, and they’re all over the place arguing about things that don’t matter and haven’t even happened yet.

One of the things I want to do is I want to introduce you to the author, John, so that before we get into the book, you have a good indication of his heart and what he was seeking to accomplish, and you don’t get distracted by all the details in the book. And when we talk about worship, what we’re talking about is ascribing to God his Word. And doing that in two ways – the New Testament speaks to this in two ways. There’s a corporate sense of worship, where we all get together and we honor God, we love God, we serve God, and we sing to God collectively as a community. That’s where in Ephesians and in Colossians, in the New Testament, we’re told to sing and make songs and hymns and spiritual songs and make music in your heart to God. He’s writing that to the church; that’s part of worship. Part of worship is also not just when we’re gathered together but when we’re scattered apart.

Romans 12 says to “Offer our bodies as living sacrifices, Holy and acceptable unto God.” That’s our spiritual act of worship. So the way we spend our money and eat our food and the words we choose to speak and not speak, the way we conduct ourselves with friends and family and employers and employees and classmates and life, that’s our worship as well. Worship is what we do together; worship is what we do when we separate. And as we get into worship, I think one of the best examples of a worshipper for us is John, the writer of the Book of Revelation. Here is a guy who arguably loved Jesus more deeply and devoutly than anyone that has ever lived. And his life is an amazing, amazing story.

We’ll start with Jesus. Jesus is God; we see in Isaiah, we studied it a few weeks ago, that he existed eternally, without beginning or end, and he sat in the Heavenlies, and there he was worshipped by angels day and night who cried out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.” In John 12 right around verse 40, 41, John tells us that that was Jesus seated on the throne that Isaiah saw 700 years before Jesus was even born here on the earth. God, then knowing that we had sinned against him, that we had run from Him, that we abandoned this relationship with Him, God cared for us and God loved us and God knew that we would never make our way back to Him, that we would never find our way back into Him. And so God instead initiated with us and God came pursuing with us.

And this great God, Jesus, who has existed eternally on a throne to be worshipped, came, according to Philippians 2, in utter humility. The story of the Bible is kinda peculiar really; God becomes a man, He’s born of a teenage virgin. No one really believed that. In a dumpy rural town, something like Omak or Washtucna, you know? Concrete or Granite, one of those towns we have named after a road surface – a really bad town. God gets born into a dumpy rural town to a teenage virgin mother that everyone thinks is a tramp and a father whom everyone thinks is an imbecile. At His birth, we see worship occurring; we see angels show up and sing. We also see the shepherds come in from the field to the place of his birth and worship Him.

A short time later, the Magi, these Wise Men from the East, these astrologers, showed up at his home when he was a young boy and bowed down and worshipped Him and gave Him gifts. That God came to earth in this humble, simple, unexpected way. But even in that humble state, He was still met with worship and adoration. God then spends the first 30 years of his life doing probably what you do; growing up. The Bible says “He grew in wisdom and stature and favor with men and God.” He grew up, went through puberty. Imagine that. If you were God, would you skip Junior High? I would. I would skip Junior High all together. I would skip that whole middle; I would go right from infancy to manhood. Everything about the half-beard and the weird voice and the annoying acne – I’d skip the whole thing. God didn’t.

Being fully human, God goes through all life transitions of a normal human being. He spends actually 90% of this life working his job, going to school, studying, whatever the rest of you are doing. Blue collar guy, dad’s a carpenter, dumpy rural hick town, everybody thinks His mom’s a tramp. That’s God. At about age 30 – Jesus was a couple years younger than me – He actually begins calling to Himself followers and disciples. And this is peculiar, because when we think of learning in our culture, you pick a school and you go to the school and the school is filled with teachers and each teacher lectures at you for about an hour. But for the most part, you really don’t get to know your teachers – there’s no relationship there.

John is the one whom Jesus loved. I’m sure in your calculus class at the U of W, none of you heard that. You’re the pre-trig student that I love. There’s not that kind of intimacy and respect; you’re in Communications 101 with 1200 people – there’s no real relationship there. No one knows your name, your professor couldn’t pick you out of a police line up. You don’t exist, you’re a number. But in that day, you didn’t pick a school, you picked a teacher. And you would devote yourself to that teacher. So you didn’t go to school, you went to a teacher. And the teacher would pick a small number of students most of the time and they would live in fellowship and community with you.

Jesus picked his disciples. He did so after a night in prayer in which He and the Father were certain who should be chosen. One of the men that He chose was a man named John – a young man. John ended up being actually the youngest of His disciples and John was appointed to be also an Apostle. And John responded with a willingness and an eagerness to learn from Jesus, to live with Jesus, to be like Jesus. That’s why he called Jesus Rabbi – He was his teacher. What happens then is John’s whole life transitions with this meeting of Jesus, like it has for many of you. Jesus takes John and for the next three years opens his whole life to John. John was there for all of Jesus’ teaching. It’s amazing – if you read the New Testament Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – you read about all these wonderful teachings and parables and all these teachable moments that Jesus captured. The beauty of it is that John was actually there.

When Jesus was telling a story, John was hearing it from the mouth of Jesus; he was literally taught by Jesus. John was also present for the miracles of Jesus. Whenever Jesus walked on water or took a little boy’s lunch and fed a multitude with it through a miracle, or when Jesus would bring people back from death or he would heal those who were sick and blind and infirmed, John was actually present as an eyewitness in on the action, seeing it all firsthand. And John also had the privilege of worshipping with Jesus. Being a good Jew, Jesus would have gone to the feasts and the festivals and the Sabbath observances, and John would have been present there with him worshipping. And John gets three years of intimate times with Jesus- breakfast, lunch, dinner, casual informal time, doing chores, doing work, making meals. There were certainly days where John would wake up and Jesus would have been cooking breakfast and they were buddies.

Jesus and John were so close and such good friends that John had access to Jesus anytime he wanted. The relationship grew so intense that what we read is that Jesus really loved John like a kid brother. We’re told twice in John’s Gospel that he was the one whom Jesus loved. Now Johns says it in a very humble way. He says, “And the one whom Jesus loved,” and he’s talking about himself because it sounds kinda pretentious, right – I wrote a book and I was the one Jesus loved. Judas, he was a bum, Peter had a big mouth, me, I was Dad’s favorite; that was me. He says it that way and for me, I don’t know about you guys, when I was a new Christian I kept hearing about Jesus loves you, love Jesus. And every time I heard it it sounded like me and Jesus were prom dates, quite frankly, and it never sat very right. Which one of us is gonna lead, you know, as we dance and gaze into one another’s eyes? The whole thing felt a little weird to me.

Love Jesus, love Jesus, love – yeah, whatever. I like Jesus. I know Jesus. I believe Jesus. And I trust Jesus. The way you’re talking about loving Jesus, though, makes me feel a little uncomfortable, if you know what I mean. But then you start reading and you realize that Jesus and John have this relationship of love and through the New Testament, John is the one who has the most clear insight on love; the Gospel of John, the letter of First John that he wrote – great instruction on love. And he loved Jesus and Jesus loved him, but their love was more like a big brother and a little brother. And that I got. John helped me a great deal as a new Christian; oh, I love Jesus like a big brother, like a son loves his dad, like a little kid brother loves his big brother. That I get – that makes sense to me. I can get my head around that.

That’s what it says that Jesus loved John. Of all the things that could be said about you wouldn’t that be the best? Jesus loves me. It’s the great kid song and it’s the most important thing; to have this loving friendship. And for me, I look at my – I was thinking about it this week, I was looking at my sons thinking, I wonder if that kinda wasn’t how it was between Jesus and John. Like my oldest son is Zach, he’s four; my youngest son, Calvin’s almost two. And they’re inseparable buddies. Breakfast, hanging out, peeing in the yard; just all of their life is integrated. They do all these important things together, and they’re buddies and there’s love and there’s affection. And that was the kind of relationship that John had with Jesus.

Jesus calls John to be with him. Because of that he’s very close to Jesus and he actually becomes one of the most trusted men in the entire earth for Jesus. Jesus has this multitude of people that he teaches; sometimes it’s upwards of 20,000-25,000 people. He selects an inner core of about 12 people that he designates as apostles. Out of those he hand-selects three, his inner-circle of leaders. For those of you that are in sports or in business or in ministry, you’re leading an organization, you know that there’s a lot of people that you deal with. There’s a small leadership team that you entrust yourself to, and there’s always a team within a team, a handful of people that really you trust the most and you spend the most time with because the success or failure of what you’re endeavoring to accomplish is contingent upon that.

Now those three were Peter, James, and our buddy John. Because of that, there were occasions when the other Disciples weren’t privy to be with Jesus, but John was. One was the Mount of Transfiguration. Jesus leaves some of the Disciples behind; he takes Peter, James, John – takes the three – they go up to a mountainside. What happens there? Who shows up? Moses and Elijah. What a great day. If you’re a Jew and you get to have lunch with Moses and Elijah, that is a great day; that’s a huge day. You’ve got the law and the prophets right there. Moses died; Elijah was just taken up to Heaven in a flaming chariot. John’s there – he’s there with Peter. It’s kind of a funny story. You read it – throughout the New Testament Peter’s the chatty one, he’s always chatting.

John, he’s more the contemplative, he’s like the mystic of the New Testament; he observes, takes it all in, prays, ponders, meditates and then teaches. Peter, he sort of thinks out loud, sometimes to his own demise – kinda big mouth. And it’s interesting because Peter jumps in and starts talking, John doesn’t say much. And he says, “Oh, it’s Moses and Elijah and Jesus is there in Glory.” It tells us in Philippians 2 that he emptied himself, he sort of veiled his glory. But on the Mount of Transfiguration Jesus shone forth in Glory. Oh my goodness, there’s God, Moses, Elijah, Peter. Peter, being such a heart-felt guy, thinking about everybody else says, “Hey, we could build houses, we could all live here.” He’s thinking this would be great – we’d have a cul-de-sac; we could have Moses and Elijah and Jesus and me. I get my wife, my kids; my kids could play with Moses’ kids – that’ll be great, that’ll be great. We could all home school co-op; this will be wonderful. Stay on this mountain, forget everybody else.

John was there. He saw Jesus’ unveiled Glory, he saw Jesus hanging out with Moses and Elijah come down from Heaven because he was in the inner circle of three. He also was there at this wonderful occasion where when it came time for the Last Supper, who did Jesus send into town to set up the final meal before his murder? Peter and John. John actually – you see all those paintings where there’s Jesus and all the Disciples? The guy who sat that table was John. The guy who prepared that meal was John. He was there, actually there. It’s curious to me, because in our day it’s very popular among scholars, it’s very popular among Bible critics to say oh, everything New Testament is myth and folklore and legend; it’s not. John tells us in his letter, 1 John, he says, “What we’ve seen with our own eyes, what we’ve touched with our own hands, what we’ve heard with our own ears,” this is what we’re talking about. It’s not myth and legend and folklore; it hasn’t accrued over centuries and decades. It’s something that we were there for.

“And what I’m speaking,” John says elsewhere, “is the truth and my testimony is true.” John was there at the Last Supper, the very last meal that Jesus ate with his friends, the meal that we celebrate at Communion each week here. Where did John sit? He sat in the seat right next to Jesus, the place of friendship. During the course of the meal, Jesus made this terrifying announcement that one of the men who was present eating the meal with him was going to betray him. My guess is that all the Disciples looked over at John with that look – basically, why don’t you ask him who it is. Because John is Jesus’ dearest friend. And John leans back on Jesus and asks him, is it me? Who is it?

John wants to know who’s going to betray Jesus. Jesus is loved so dearly by John, that when John hears that there will be a betrayal he is the first to inquire of who is going to be the betrayer. It says that they eat their meal, he breaks bread with Jesus, he sits next to Jesus at the seat of friendship. There’s a small fact in Matthew’s Gospel that is very very interesting; it tells us that then something happened before they dismissed the meal. What did they do? They sang. They sang. It says they sang a hymn. At the Last Supper, John sat the table; at the Last Supper John was the one who was most concerned about who betrays Jesus. And at the end of the meal it was John who harmonized in song with Jesus. Can you imagine that? It says in Zephaniah 3:17 that at the end of time, you and I who know God will be in the presence of God and that God will rejoice over us with singing. I can’t wait to hear God sing.

John sang with Jesus. There have been many arguments through the history of the church; where should we go to get our primary insight about worship? Should we go to the Book of Leviticus, the Old Testament, should we go to the Book of Psalms? I would make a strong argument – John. That’s gonna be my argument through Revelation, John. Anybody who was Jesus’ best friend, there for all of his life and harmonized with him in worship, that guy has something to say. Did you know that your God sings, did you know that your God is a poet and a musician? Did you know that your God is not only creator but creative? John knew that. They’re dismissed from the Last Supper, Jesus goes to the Garden of Gethsemane – this is this place where he’s going to be in solitude for prayer, knowing that he’s going to be murdered very shortly. He calls the disciples to an evening of prayer and he brings John as one of his inner-trusted circle closer to him than the other disciples.

John would have had the vantage point that, as Jesus prayed, preparing himself for his own murder, he was so consumed with the passion of the Cross, that Jesus – we’re told in the Bible – actually sweated blood. John was close enough that he actually witnessed it. He would have actually seen Jesus Christ, his God in human flesh, sweating blood. Then you know the story; then the soldiers come with who? Judas. Judas betrays Jesus, in fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy, for 30 pieces of silver – from Zechariah. He betrays Jesus Christ with a kiss. Imagine being John, Jesus’ dearest friend, most loyal, devoted kid brother disciple. And who shows up to betray Jesus but Judas, the guy who kept the books and had been stealing the money. It’s curious because God loved John, God loved Judas, God lived with John, God lived with Judas. John was faithful, Judas was faithless. And it really doesn’t have anything to do with how Jesus treated them. It really was an issue of the heart.

I would just ask you tonight, where’s your heart? Is it there with John, loving Jesus? Is it there with Judas, conspiring against him but pretending as if you’re a friend? That moment of betrayal must have absolutely crushed and killed John. You think about it. Who are the people that you love the most, that you spend the most time with, the people that you devote yourself to. These are the people that your life and time and meals are integrated together. And what is it like when one of them should absolutely betray another and you’re a witness? That was John. They arrested Jesus, falsely accused him of some things he did not commit; he was sinless and never committed anything worthy of arrest or incarceration or punishment or retribution. They ran him under the cover of darkness in the middle of the night through a series of false trials. Who was it who followed Jesus from trial to trial and place to place, likely staying up all night just to do so? It’s John.

John’s there at the false imprisonment. John’s there at the false arrest. John’s there at the false trials. He sees it all first-hand. You know the story; they take Jesus, they beat him mercilessly. John witnessed that. They ripped the flesh off of his back from a brutal beating, they took an enormous crossbar and laid is across his shoulders into his exposed bleeding flesh. They made him carry his own crossbar as he was mocked and spit upon; he’d been stripped naked and humiliated. They pressed a crown of three- to four-inch thorns into his head in mockery. There was an opportunity for one of the prisoners that was going to be executed on that particular day to be released and one of the political leaders asked the crowd that had gathered which man they would like released – Jesus or a few thugs and criminals, like Barabbas. And the crowd shouted out and screamed out for the execution and the murder of Jesus and the release of a criminal named Barabbas.

And John was there in that crowd. And I can certainly assure you that when they asked if Jesus should be released and the crowd was yelling with their voice in vote, that John was screaming with everything he had for the release of Jesus, when his voice was drowned out by the multitudes. And there John stood, weeping bitterly, knowing that the death of his friend – his God – was imminent. They crucified Jesus between two thieves. Where’s John? He’s at the foot of the cross. For so many of us it is so easy to take the crucifixion of Jesus as a theological statement. For John, it was a moment in time when he witnessed the execution of God. He was there watching his dear friend Jesus struggle for breath and life as the crowd shouted out for his murder and as he bled bitterly.

What was Jesus doing on the cross? Who was he looking at? John. John. Can you even fathom being John in that moment? Who do you love the most? And can you even fathom seeing them in that public shame and spectacle? Who was near John? Mary, Jesus’ own mother. As he’s being crucified, Jesus looks down and he appoints John to look after his mom. I tell you this, when you’re being murdered before a blood-thirsty crowd unjustly, and your greatest concern is that someone would look after your mother, whomever you appoint to look after her, that is your very best and most trusted friend. That’s John. Jesus says, “John, you look after her.” And “Mom, you love him like a son.” Can you even imagine the inability of John in that moment even to breathe through his tears?

At that moment, I would suspect that John embraced Mary, probably holding her up because she was incapable of even enduring the witness of the murder of her son. How many mothers are in this room? And that’s the last thing you want to be present for, is the public execution of your own innocent child. John is there, looking at Jesus. John is there, hearing the crowd cheering. John is there, holding Mary together. And John is there, coming apart himself. That’s John. John is there at the cross looking at Jesus when he hears Jesus Christ cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus quotes the Psalms, John hears it and in that moment, all of John’s sin – past, present, future – were placed upon Jesus and John was there to see the Father turn his back on the Son.

That intimate fellowship between God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit that had been unbroken forever was for a moment severed as Jesus Christ took upon himself all of John’s sin, all of my sin, all of the sins of all of God’s people. And Jesus Christ, in that moment, paid the penalty for sin, which is death. John heard Jesus cry out, “Father, forgive them.” He was speaking of you and me. And he heard Jesus speak his final words in triumphant victory that “It is finished.” He gave up his Spirit and he breathed his last is what the Bible says. And for John, this is something that he saw with his own eyes through his tears. He saw Jesus most certainly die. He saw the Roman soldiers thrust a spear through his side, puncturing his heart sac so that water and blood co-mingled and flowed forth. He sat there and watched Jesus be taken down from the cross and wrapped up in upwards of 100 pounds of burial linens and spices.

He was there for the funeral procession with Jesus’ mother and brothers, disciples, friends, family; people that previously couldn’t walk, but they were walking to Jesus’ funeral because he had healed them. People who were previously blind but now could see the corpse of their God, because he had touched them. The Bible tells us that then Jesus was laid in a tomb, the tomb of a very rich man. Back in Isaiah chapter 53 a promise had been made 700 years before the birth of Jesus that Jesus would die, that he would be laid in the tomb of a very rich man. It says, in fact, that he would be buried with the rich in his death. Jesus himself, though, was poor; in fact, he was homeless. He depended upon the kindness of friends. And there was a secret disciple, a man named Joseph of Arimathea, who was a very affluent and wealthy man, and he gave Jesus his own private tomb as a gift.

And Jesus was buried with the rich in this death and a large stone was rolled over the entry to the tomb. Roman soldiers were put on guard to protect it from looters and robbers, the Roman seal was placed upon it, ensuring that anyone who should seek to enter that grave would be killed. This was a Friday. And John spent the next few days in utter emotional devastation. Have you ever lost somebody that you loved? My grandpa George died when I was a kid. I loved my grandpa George with all my heart. There’s still this gaping hole from his absence. My wife and I are so close that I don’t know where I stop and she starts. The Bible says we should be one. We’re there. If I lost her, I don’t even know what I would do, I don’t even know who I would be.

Jesus loved John, John loved Jesus. John had given three years of his life to Jesus. That was his dearest friend. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, prayer, singing, chats, walks, work. That’s his buddy, that’s his big brother, that’s his God. And he’s dead. Sunday morning – it’s the reason we gather on Sunday – word comes that the tomb is empty, the body is gone and they can’t find Jesus. Who’s the first at the tomb? John. The one whom Jesus loved outran Peter. He was the first at the empty tomb. The women had gone that morning, they saw the tomb had been opened and that Jesus’ burial cloths were laying there. They went, told the disciples, John runs. You can imagine just the thoughts that are flooding his mind as he’s running to the empty tomb; is he alive, did they steal the body, have they desecrated him? What is happening?

He runs, sprints as fast as he can to the tomb. There he sees the body is gone, the burial wrappings are laying there, the angel says that he has been risen from death, and John is now wondering where is Jesus. Who’s the first person on planet earth to recognize Jesus risen from death? John, his best friend. John was the first to recognize him. For people like Thomas that doubted the resurrection, wondered if it was really Jesus, Jesus showed Thomas his scars, proving that he was God. And Thomas fell down to worship Jesus, crying out, “My Lord and my God.” And the beauty of it is that John was there. He saw Jesus appear to crowds of up to 500 at one time, 1 Corinthians 15 says, proving that he had risen from death. He saw the disciples transform from sort of a rag-tag bunch of moderate cowards to men who would die for their convictions, gladly. He heard Jesus’ final words of commissioning, that they were to take the Good News of his life, death, burial, resurrection for sin into all nations of the earth, and then he saw Jesus ascend into Heaven. He was there.

John continued to do exactly what Jesus had commissioned him to do. He was a teacher, he was himself a Rabbi, he was the one who trained the majority of the pastors in the early church. John lived the most amazing life. Early on, with the church, the church grew very quickly, particularly in the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was a nation that had grown through military might, had dominated and overtaken other nations and cultures and people. It was the most powerful nation in its day. Because of that, it was very multicultural, pluralistic, lots of nations, races, language, people groups. The Roman government didn’t care what your religion was or what God you worshipped; they would allow you to get together in smaller groups that were like guilds or trade unions, oftentimes tied to your vocation. So there would be one for metal workers and one for farmers, one for bankers. You would gather together. It was their version of a social service and welfare net. You would give money to this group. There would be a common pool. They would help you throw your wedding and your funeral; they would be there for the birth of your child. They would have meals together and celebrate festivals together and holidays.

And they would select a God that represented their group and they would worship that God. And there were an endless number of these kinds of clusters and groups throughout the Roman Empire, all worshipping different Gods. And the government didn’t mind, providing one thing; that you still worshipped Caesar as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. As long as you still considered the Roman government and its leaders as above your God and above your religion, they had no problem with you. The problem with Christians was, however, they started meeting in these little groups and all of a sudden the government started to find out that lots of groups were worshipping the same God, named Jesus. And they wouldn’t declare that there was any King of Kings and Lord of Lords and God of Gods but Jesus, and they wouldn’t bend their knee to the Roman government.

And when there were opportunities for them to either deny their God or deny their government, they were happy to deny their government. And so persecution began. Because Christians were unwilling to have Jesus be just another God on the menu of options in a tolerant society like our own. And so persecution came. There were two particular times of persecution that John lived through and led the church through. One of the most brutal was from a man named Nero. Some of the New Testament letters, like 1 Peter and its theme of suffering, are written specifically to Christians suffering. Nero was insane, he was a mad man. He had murdered some of the women who loved him most dearly and had helped raise him. He was so blood-thirsty and addicted to power and narcissistic and all-consuming, but he mistrusted and distrusted everyone. He would murder them even if they loved him very dearly and were family.

He was such a megalomaniac, that upon one occasion a fire started in a particular section of Rome and it started to spread through the city. And rather than sending out the fire department, he let it burn for a few days. His hope was that the whole city would burn to the ground and that he could rebuild it, naming it after himself, erecting huge altars in his own commemoration and idolatry. And he would go up to his tower in the evening and he would watch his city burn to the ground. Well the citizens obviously were very angered by their leader and his inability to execute remedy on their behalf. And so a mob rose up that was storming the gates of his castle and wanting his head on a platter.

Knowing that he needed to cover himself and to blame this on someone, he decided that he would pin it on the Christians. Oh, their God they say is a consuming fire and that he will judge the world with fire and that hell will have flames; it must be the Christians. All of a sudden, the fury of the Roman citizenry was turned on the small fledgling communities of Christians. Persecution broke out. It was not uncommon in that day for them to take you and me and our brothers and sisters to wrap us up in wild animal skins and throw us to animals, so that we would be literally eaten alive for sport. It was not uncommon for brothers and sisters in Christ to be drawn and quartered where they would take each of our limbs, they would tie ropes around our arms and our legs, they would affix those to four horses, whip the horses, send them in four directions, dismember us and leave us laying there alive, but dismembered, asking us if we would like yet to deny Christ.

And Nero himself, for his large state galas and parties, would take us and wrap us in pitch and resin, he would run us through with a stake so that he could elevate us into the air; he would light us aflame and we would be the torches that illuminated his state dinners and parties. The young women who refused to deny Christ, many of them were raped repeatedly, tormented, disfigured, and if they eventually did not deny Christ, they were murdered. John lived through two series of brutal, brutal martyrdom and execution. They tried to kill John – they killed all the disciples except for John. Judas killed himself, everyone else suffered, and they tried to kill John but he didn’t die. In fact what they did, they took and they boiled him alive. Unless God’s Spirit has preserved him, which I am not certain that he did, John probably lived the remainder of his life covered in scars from the burning and scalding of being boiled alive.

When he didn’t die, what they decided to do then was send him off into exile, loneliness, all by himself, to a place called Patmos, which is present day Turkey. We’ll get into it next week. That’s where he is in Revelation chapter 1, and that’s how he got there. When Jesus came on Sunday morning to spend some time with his pastor, who had been persecuted and was separated from his church. After time, John was released from exile, he came back. What do you think he did? He kept preaching. It was not uncommon in that day for Christians to be stacked just alongside of the road maybe this high; naked bodies, men and women, murdered and slaughtered, raped and maimed. Bodies not even given a decent and proper burial. That was John’s congregation.

See, some of you I had the privilege of leading to Christ. Some of you I’ve had the privilege of discipling. Some of you I’ve had the privilege of officiating your wedding or being there when your child was born. John was a pastor; it was not uncommon for him on his way to work, or on his way to church, to pass by a stack of bodies and start seeing members of his church – people that he had led to Christ, people that he prayed with the day before; people that he had just officiated the wedding of, people who had just given birth and their children. John kept preaching. He would get up on Sundays in his church and he would likely read the list of the people who had died that week, and then he would talk about the goodness and the love and the grace of Jesus who takes away sin, and the resurrection of the dead for those who believe so that there is a life beyond this life.

And then he would call people to respond and place their faith and trust in Jesus, and people just like you would place their faith in Jesus, knowing that that gave them a strong possibility that in the ensuing weeks, they would find themselves naked, murdered in that same stack of bodies out in the street. John continued his ministry until he was 100 years of age; a 100-year-old man. He wrote five books of the Bible; the Gospel of John, the letters of 1, 2, and 3 John, and the book we’ll be studying beginning next week, Revelation. It didn’t matter what they did to John, it didn’t matter what they did to Christians. It didn’t matter how the persecution came, John kept talking about Jesus.

Some people have foolishly said, “Oh, the writers of the New Testament, they made that stuff up.” My question is why. What is in it for John? Boiled alive; everyone else murdered, everyone you love stripped naked, murdered, stacked in the street. You die in poverty and shame. You don’t do that unless you are irrefutably convinced that what you speak is the truth. And it was the truth and John was there for the life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. And he heard Jesus tell him, “Preach Good News about me.” And John did until he was 100 years of age. When John got to the point where he was so old and sickly and decrepit that he couldn’t even walk down the aisle, he couldn’t even get up the stairs to get on the stage, he still preached on Sundays.

The young men in the church literally would pick him up and carry him to the front because he couldn’t walk there. They would sit him in a church because he couldn’t stand up. And as an old man, he would tell stories about Jesus. You get that tone as you read the letter of 1 John. He said, “My dear children.” John’s church wasn’t, in many ways, unlike our church. John was the old man who had been with Jesus and was 100 years old and had many stories to tell. And the church that he was working with and writing to was filled with new people and young Christians and young people who weren’t there during the time of Jesus, weren’t eyewitnesses. This is second and third generation, fourth generation faith. And so they’re looking to John: “John, what was it like when you had breakfast with Jesus? John, what was it like when he talked? Was he a good teacher? What was his voice like? Was he a baritone, was he an alto? What was it like, John? When he healed that little girl, how did he look at her?”

And John would sit in his chair and he would tell stories about Jesus to all the young people and new Christians. And John would always close his sermons in the same way. He would simply look at his congregation and he would say, “You are the children of God, and Jesus wants you to love each other.” Your life matters. You meet Jesus, you have no idea what he’s going to do with you. I know that some of you are here and you say, “Well, my life has trial and strife and suffering.” Perhaps. I believe that the one thing that kept John on track until 100 years of age was that he knew that Jesus loved him. And he loved Jesus. And if you want to strip all the theology and all the arguments out of all of our faith and just get right down to the bottom line, it’s that God has loved you in Christ and you should love him back.

That is worship, that is what we do collectively, individually. That’s what we do gathered, that’s what we do scattered. The beauty of it is this too. John gives us these great words. He says “That God demonstrates his love for us in that when we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” That “No one has a greater gift to give than to lay down their life,” he says, “for their friends. Jesus Christ wasn’t just friends with John; he desires to be friends with you. Jesus Christ didn’t just love John, he also loves you. Jesus didn’t die just for John’s sins, he also died for yours. The most important thing in all the world is that we would love Jesus because he has loved us. And I know sometimes it is so easy to over-complicate your faith, to get bogged down in all kinds of theology and arguments and trivia and ministry. The bottom line is you and Jesus. John never lost sight of that.

I know that for many, it can become an academic game, and you hide behind reasoning and theology and doctrine, and that there’s this attempt to take Jesus from a person to a concept so that you can manage him. I would just admonish you; following the example of our brother John, receive the love of Jesus that will take away your sin, love him back as a person. Be his friend, and spend all of your days with him and for him. And my prayer is for each of you – many of you are like me; fairly young, still have many years to live. John started young, with many years to live. My prayer and goal and hope for us all would be that we would see 100 years of age, and that we would sit on chairs and we would tell stories about Jesus and our life with him.

And that the second and third and fourth generation would love him too. And it begins with you loving Jesus as a friend and walking with him faithfully now so that you have stories to tell them. I want to give you a chance to respond to Jesus. I’m gonna call the band forward at this time, I’ll call the Communion servers at this time. When you are ready, you’re welcome to respond to Jesus. Some of you it needs to be with repentance of sin in faith; you need to become a Christian. You need to turn from sin and turn to Jesus. For some of you it’s a time of great gladness and joy and gratitude and it gives you an opportunity to reflect on your life as we reflected on the life of John. And to see the ways that Jesus has loved you as a friend and how he has called you to himself by name, as he called John.

And when you’re ready, we can partake of Communion, which is celebrating Jesus’ body and blood shed for our sin. And when you do so, I want you to remember your sin but I also want you to remember that the tomb is empty; that Jesus is alive. That John saw him crucified, but John also saw him resurrected, John also saw him ascended, and in Revelation you will see Jesus was seen by John in exaltation, being worshipped. And so we end our service with Christ, not just crucified, but risen and exalted and singing to him in joy. And you’re welcome to come forward and partake, if and when you are ready.

Lord God, we thank you for this great life of our dear friend. God, we worship you and not him, but we certainly learn from his example and we follow in his leadership. God, I thank you that our Bible is filled with jars of clay, frail humanity, simple, regular folk who are just living their life when you called them. And that because of the power of your spirit and the truth of your Word and the grace of your nature, their lives were utterly transformed. God we thank you that John was faithful. We thank you that because of his faithfulness we have Scripture to read, we have a church to meet in. God it’s my prayer for us all that we would love the same Jesus that he loved, that we would be friends with you, Lord Jesus, as he was.

That we would have our breakfast, our lunch, our dinner, each of the moments and days of our lives with you. That we would have our eyes opened to see all of the good things that you have brought to us and the ways that you’ve instructed us. And Lord Jesus, may you keep us all faithful to be worshippers and followers of you. May we all live to see 100; may we sit on stools and may we just tell stories to little kids about how great you are, and encouraging them to love you as well. We love you Lord God, and we come to you in Jesus’ good name. Amen.

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