1 John 1:1-4 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; 2 (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) 3 That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. 4 And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.

The Apostle John wrote more of the New Testament – by word count – than any other Apostle. Last Wednesday we started looking at the Gospel of John (chapter 1 verses 1-14) where John spoke of the Incarnation of Jesus. The word “Incarnation” means to “come from a higher state where you are God into a lower state where you are perfect Man”. Only Jesus is in this unique state. We found out in

John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Jesus Christ (the Messiah) is “the WORD that was WITH GOD, and the WORD Who WAS God”. Jesus Christ was with the Godhead from the beginning. We saw that Jesus Christ is also CREATOR God. “All things were made by him”. John said this in two different ways so that we can understand that Jesus is not just ASSOCIATE Creator, He is THE Creator of all things.

This Creator, this God Who made all things in six days, Who made all things “very good”, this God came to earth. He interjected Himself into the Creation proper. Why would God the Son become incarnate, lower Himself to be part of His creation?

Because “You Do You” Doesn’t Work.
It Is The Devil’s Lie.

One of the things I hear over and over on television shows, in the media news, and on the internet is “You do You”. People say this phrase as if it’s a new thing that someone made up, but it’s not new. Writer Colson Whitehead wrote an article back in March 31, 2015 entitled “How ‘You Do You’ Perfectly Captures Our Narcissistic Culture”. I like this paragraph:

“You will recall the fable of the Scorpion and the Frog. The Scorpion needs a ride across the river. The waters are rising on account of climate change, or perhaps he has been priced out of his burrow, who knows? The exact reason is lost in the fog of premodernity. The Frog is afraid that the Scorpion will sting him, but his would-be passenger reassures him that they would both die if that happened. That would be crazy. Sure enough, halfway across, the Scorpion stings the Frog. Just before they drown, the Scorpion says, “Aren’t you going to ask why I did that?” And the Frog croaks, ‘You do you.’”

This is exactly the problem with the concept of “You do You”. It makes “You” out to be god, or a type of god. When “You do You”, it becomes self destructive to society itself. It is “You do You” mentality that is erasing the police and bail for criminal acts. It is “You do You” that is causing local churches to normalize sexual sin. It is “You do You” that is secularizing our nation.

“You do You” is also killing people. Over the last few years there has been a rise in suicide rates among 15-24 year olds. These “deaths of despair” are many times brought about by alcohol or drug poisoning. Social media does not help us, by makes us more alone. Humans were not designed by God to be alone. God created Adam, and not long after that created Eve so Adam and Eve would have fellowship with one another, and fellowship with God. The phrase “You do You” may not have been uttered by the serpent in the Garden of Eden, but the thought is there. Listen to what that old serpent the Devil says:

“Go ahead and eat that which God forbade. You shall not surely die. God knows that in the day you eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, your eyes shall be opened. You shall be like gods!
You’ll know good and evil!”
(paraphrase of Genesis 3:4-5)

Doesn’t that sound like “You do You”? It won’t hurt you. If God loves you, He wants you to be happy. Just do whatever makes you feel good. Do your drugs. Seek sexual pleasure with who you want. Ignore what the Bible says – it was written by old men who have long since died. Nothing matters in life BUT YOU.

But that’s not true.

When John wrote the Gospel of John (under inspiration of God, 2 Timothy 3:16), He wanted us to see how God stepped away from His Throne and came down to this earth to show us how to live. When John wrote 1 John, the intent of the Book is thus:

1 John 1:4 And these things write we unto YOU, that YOUR JOY may be full.

John 1:16 (KJV) And of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace.

Joy does not come automatically to the Christian. It is God’s desire that we have fullness of joy as believers. How do we have fullness of joy? We imitate Jesus.

Jesus Lowered Himself To Us To Show Us
The Love Of God

1 John 1:1 That which was from the BEGINNING, which we have heard …

When John spoke of the Word being “in the beginning with God”, he was speaking of something he had never seen, but had heard from Jesus. John was not there with God the Father and God the Son as the world and our solar system was being created. But John was with Jesus “from the BEGINNING” of Jesus’ earthly ministry.

John, along with all of Israel, looked for the coming of the Messiah. Israel hoped that the Messiah would come and free Israel from Roman bondage. But Israel was in greater bondage than Roman bondage. Israel was in bondage to themselves. Israel believed in the devil’s doctrine, “You do You”. God had told Israel:

Deuteronomy 28:1 (ESV) If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all His commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth.

God loved His people. He saved them from Egypt so that they could “worship the God Who saved them” (Exodus 8:1). God calls His people to “worship Him in the wilderness” (Exodus 7:16). God did not save Israel so that they could be just like the rest of the world. God saved Israel so that they could worship God, and have fellowship with God.

When God became Man, He did not seclude Himself away in a palace. Where did God put Himself? Right where sinners were. Where the lowest person was.

We could not reach God, but God could reach us.

The High Priest went into the holy of holies after covering his sins with the blood of a blemishless animal. He went into the presence of God cleansed, wearing specialized clothing, and following prescribed formulas. Why is this? Because God wanted to emphasize that our sins separate us from God. God spoke in the Old Testament:

Isaiah 59:1-3 (ESV) Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; 2 but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. 3 For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies; your tongue mutters wickedness.

God is holy, just, and righteous. God is without sin. Man, however, believes in “You do You”. When God became Man, He did not do “You do You”, but He lowered Himself so we could HEAR Him. He sat with us so we could SEE Him. He allowed us to touch Him.

1 John 1:1 that … which we have HEARD, that which we have SEEN WITH OUR EYES, which we have LOOKED UPON, and our HANDS HAVE HANDLED …

The IMMORTAL became MORTAL. But He did not go to a Palace, but to parlors and homes everywhere. The Pharisees couldn’t understand Jesus, because they thought that only sinners sat with sinners. They asked,

“Why does {Jesus} eat with TAX COLLECTORS and SINNERS?”
(Mark 2:16, ESV)

When God the Son heard this, He said to these confused people:

Mark 2:17 (ESV) … “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Illustrate: Let me see if I can simplify this. When you go to take a shower, do you go off and clean yourself up before you take the shower? No! You are dirty, so you come to the shower and allow it to clean you up. So it is with Jesus. Jesus came to heal us. Jesus came to cleanse us. Jesus came to save us.

God the Son did not segregate Himself from sinners, but came down and sat with them, reasoning with them from the Scriptures. Just as He did when He was twelve years old and in the Temple, Jesus “listened and asked them questions” (Luke 2:46).

You will NEVER find a place in the Scripture
where Jesus minimized sin.

Sin is a horrible thing that God came from Heaven to save us from. When Jesus healed the crippled man by the pool of Bethesda, our Lord told him, “Get up. Take up your bed and walk. But then Jesus said:

“You are now well. SIN NO MORE, that nothing worse may happen to you”
(John 5:14, ESV)

What is Jesus implying? It is that SIN – the desire to “You do You” – brings sickness upon us. It can cripple. It can kill. Sin destroys lives. When Jesus spoke to a woman caught in the act of adultery, by His actions He chased away the self righteous.

Beloved, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We cannot fix what ails us. However, Jesus can fix us. After Jesus chased off the self righteous, He told this woman:

“I do not condemn you; GO, and from now on SIN NO MORE”(John 8:11)

He doesn’t say “You do You”. No. Jesus says, “You do GOD. You do what GOD says!” John tells us:

1 John 1:3 That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.

We cannot have fellowship with the Apostles, nor with God, unless we approach fellowship through faith in Christ. John will tell us later in this Book:

1 John 5:11-12 … God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.

We can only appropriate life as God intended
it by appropriating the Son as our own.

Without Jesus, our status before God is that our every work is unclean and unworthy.

Isaiah 64:6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

What Is My Hope And Joy?
Jesus Is BOTH My Sinbearer & My Risen Savior

My hope and joy is not to hear “You do You”. It is first of all to acknowledge that – left on my own – I am a sinner, lost and undone. We read:

1 John 1:8 If we say we have NO SIN, we DECEIVE OURSELVES, and the truth is not in us.

We all can so easily fall into sin. We do not rely on ourselves, but on Jesus. We realize that our “You do You” mentality is wrong. We stop trying to be our own God. Jesus is the Word of Life (vs 1). We come to Him, and CONFESS our sins.

1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Word Study: The word translated “CONFESS” is the Greek homologéō, {pronounced hom-ol-og-eh’-o} which means “to agree with God, to assent to the truth as God has presented it, [by extension] to agree with God that you are guilty”. This word is used frequently in the Scripture. Jesus said:

Matthew 10:32 Whosoever therefore shall CONFESS (homologéō) me before men, Him will I CONFESS (homologéō) before My Father which is in Heaven.

Luke 12:8 Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall CONFESS (homologéō) Me before men, him shall the Son of Man {that’s Jesus} CONFESS (homologéō) before the angels of God.

When you REPENT, and turn away from “You do You”, giving yourselves to Jesus, He FORGIVES you from all sin in the eyes of God. He also CLEANSES you from all works of evil. Those who belong to Jesus, walk with God.

I used to have a picture that was given to me of the place where the Twin Towers in New York City used to stand. On September 11, 2001, Muslim terrorists took control of two aircraft, and flew them into the Towers, destroying the building and killing thousands. The picture that was given to me was a fenced off area where the Towers used to stand, and a monument called the World Trade Center Cross stood there. Though Atheists tried to get rid of that Cross, it is still – to my knowledge – in the National September 11^th Memorial and Museum. That’s interesting, don’t you think, that in even New York City, one of the most liberal cities in the world today, the only comfort that any can draw from 9-11 is the Cross of Christ!

The Cross is in the heart of mankind. It is written into our DNA just as surely as our height and natural hair color is. We instinctively know that the Cross was necessary. The Cross itself stands as a proof that Jesus Christ came as sinless Man to die for our sins. Since spiritual and universal death came on all creation because of Adam’s sin, it required that a Second Adam make payment for what the first Adam did in offending God.

The Bible says:

1 Corinthians 15:21-22 (ESV) For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

The first Adam, a flesh and blood creature made from the dust of the ground, caused all humanity to fall into sin. A Second Adam, Jesus Christ – sinless and perfect – would come in the flesh and make payment for our sins.

Romans 8:3-4 (ESV) For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

God lowered Himself – in the flesh – to make payment for our sins. Now that we have believed on Christ we are saved – and are expected to walk as Children of God.

1 John 1:5-6 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:

You are not saved by your works. But if you are a Christian, you are saved by the Blood of Christ. You are saved to walk – NOT in the darkness – but in the light of God. God’s way is not “You do You”. God’s way is, “You do JESUS. You IMITATE GOD”.

This is why we come to Church. We come to Church to praise God. We come to Church to learn a deeper walk with God. Then we leave Church and practice walking as Jesus walked. Dr. Thomas L. Constable writes in his commentary:

“If I were to boil down the message of this epistle into one sentence it would be this. Fellowship with God is the essence of eternal life. Both the Gospel of John and the First Epistle of John deal with eternal life. John wrote his Gospel so his readers might believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that believing they might have life through His name (John 20:31). John wrote this epistle to Christians so we might enter into the fullness of the eternal life that we possess (1 John 1:3; John 10:10). However the subject of this letter is not eternal life but fellowship with God. Fellowship with God is the essence of eternal life (1:3-4; John 17:3).”

That is a wonderful summation: Fellowship with God is the essence of eternal life. Modern evangelistic thought has produced a byproduct of Christianity that professes Jesus but does not live in Jesus … and this is a travesty. If our Christianity has absolutely no impact in our real world, then what value is it? Is this the type of Christianity that Christ taught? No, it isn’t.

Jesus Christ gave us a pattern of life that He first of all modeled for us. The Christian lives their life surrendered not to self, but to Christ. You will never be joyous as Christ wants you to be until you are walking with Him day by day and moment by moment. Pastor R.A. Torrey wrote:

“If we try to fight sin in our own strength, we are bound to fail. If we just look up to the Risen Christ to keep us every day and every hour, He will keep us. Through the CRUCIFIED Christ we get deliverance from the guilt of sin, our sins are all blotted out, we are free from all condemnation; BUT it is through the RISEN Christ that we get daily victory over the power of sin. Some receive Christ as a sin bearer and thus find pardon, but do not get beyond that, and so their life is one of daily failure. Others receive Him as their RISEN Savior also, and thus enter into an experience of victory over sin. … There is nothing more important in a right beginning of the Christian life than an unconditional surrender, both of the thoughts and the conduct, to Jesus. Say from your heart and say it again and again, “All for Jesus.” Many fail because they shrink back from this entire surrender. They wish to serve Jesus with half their heart, and part of themselves, and part of their possessions. To hold back anything from Jesus means a wretched life of stumbling and failure. The life of entire surrender is a joyous life all along the way.

May God lead us as His Church to live our lives daily for Him and through Him. The fate of our country depends upon our surrender. Amen and Amen.