Trivial Pursuits?

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, concerning the Word of life—the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us—that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full. (1 John 1:1–4)

The apostles first followed Jesus for all the wrong reasons—until an empty tomb changed everything.

Getting to Know John

We've begun a new series here in the New Testament book of 1 John. The word epistle at the top of the page means "letter," so this is the first letter of John. Last week we were introduced to its author. John was a follower of Jesus—one of the first—and not only a disciple but an apostle, which in the Greek means "one sent with a message." Jesus gave him the message and sent him out.

John was a Jewish man from the Sea of Galilee, probably about fifteen years old when he first began to follow Jesus. He was the son of Zebedee, the younger brother of James, and a partner of a fisherman named Simon, whom we know as Peter. Peter, James, and John were friends before they met Jesus and close after. One day Jesus told them to cast into the deep, and they hauled in the biggest catch of their lives—nets breaking, boats sinking. In the midst of it Jesus said, "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men." Luke 5 tells us they forsook all and followed Him.

A Letter With a Fourfold Purpose

When we come to this first letter, it is now about sixty years later. John, fifteen when he met Jesus, is now in his seventies—probably one of the only first followers of Jesus still alive. James had died long ago. Peter was crucified in Rome around AD 65. All of John's close friends were gone, and he writes this letter for a purpose.

One thing I love about John is that he tells us explicitly why he writes. In the Gospel of John he says, "These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name." In this letter he gives four reasons in three verses. First, "These things we write to you that your joy may be full" (1:4). Second, "My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin" (2:1).

Sin is a word that stumbles people in our culture. God has a perfect standard of rightness in alignment with His own nature, and anything that doesn't measure up is sin—it's missing the mark. Third, near the letter's end: "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God" (5:13).

So John's fourfold purpose is this: for our happiness, that your joy may be full; for our holiness—our wholeness, because we are broken by sin and Jesus makes us whole; for our hope, that you may know with absolute certainty you have eternal life; and for our perseverance, that you may continue to trust in His name.

We Need This to Endure a Broken World

We need joy, holiness, and a sure hope to endure the fallenness and brokenness of life. Every single one of us, every day, is confronted with and impacted by the brokenness of this world. Most of the news on the news is bad news, and that reminds us. Driving past an accident reminds us. Last Sunday night at 3 a.m. someone broke through that door and stole Anthony's guitar, some microphones, and other things—and that too reminds us of the brokenness of this world.

Philosophers, both secular and Christian, struggle with the malevolence in the world and how we can walk through life with a sustained joy, wholeness, and hope. John knew this. He wrote after six decades of commitment to the name and kingdom of God, through much hostility and hardship. Why would he do that? Because there is joy and holiness and hope in this message.

Why John Really Followed Jesus

But when fifteen-year-old John first heard "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men," I suggest he had no idea what it meant. Yet he left his family, his home, and the family business to follow Jesus. You don't take a life-changing step like that unless you think the outcome will be good. At some level he was seeking wholeness, joy, and hope, and something about Jesus made him think he'd find it.

I also want to suggest his understanding was a bit warped, and his motives were not the purest—and I can prove that from the Scriptures. We sometimes hold a high view of these men as super-saints, but they were teenagers. How many fifteen-year-olds do you know with deeply aspirational, righteous desires? Think back to when you were fifteen. So why did John and the others follow Jesus? For pleasure, power, prestige, and possessions.

For prestige? In Luke 9:46 and Luke 22:24 the disciples constantly argue about who would be the greatest. In Mark 9:33–34 Jesus asks what they disputed on the road, "but they kept silent, for...they had disputed among themselves who would be the greatest." For power? Simon the Zealot followed Jesus thinking it would empower him. And James and John, with their mother, came and knelt before Jesus asking that the two of them might sit on His right and left in His kingdom (Matthew 20; Mark 10). They wanted dominance.

Jesus even nicknamed James and John Boanerges—"Sons of Thunder" (Mark 3:17)—which a Greek lexicon renders "hot-tempered." The best example is Luke 9. As Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem, a Samaritan village refused to receive Him. "When His disciples James and John saw this, they said, 'Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?'" Jesus said no—but they were hoping He'd say yes.

You might wonder how that shows a desire for pleasure. Think like an eighteen-year-old. Why do young men join the military? Often it's the thrill—to "call down fire from heaven," to blow things up. And for possessions? When the rich young ruler walked away, Peter said, "See, we have left all and followed You. Therefore what shall we have?" (Matthew 19:27). They wanted a return on investment.

We Are No Different

So if you think Jesus' first followers were a super-spiritual, holy group, think again. They came to Him wanting power, pleasure, possessions, and fame. And here is point two: we think the pursuit of pleasure, power, prestige, and possessions will give us fullness of joy. We're no different than they were two thousand years ago. We believe that if we have happiness, dominance, greatness, and wealth, then we'll be happy. Is that not human nature? Is that not what our culture expresses everywhere?

If you dropped in from another planet into Southern California in 2019 and watched people like a good anthropologist, you would conclude that the chief end of man is the pursuit of pleasure, dominance, fame, and wealth. The Greeks called it hēdonē—where we get the word hedonism—and they were no different twenty-five hundred years ago. It is part of our broken human condition.

Yet these things don't bring wholeness. Ask anyone who has pursued and found them. Read Ecclesiastes: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." That book is a research project on hedonism. Solomon pursued power, possessions, and pleasure, and tried it all—and we've had that empirical data for three thousand years, yet we keep trying to prove him wrong. We need an enduring joy, a true wholeness that comes only by holiness, and an enduring hope to face the harshness of this broken world.

Palm Sunday: The Pursuit Seems to Peak

The seeming culmination of the disciples' pursuit happened on a Sunday we call Palm Sunday—the Sunday before Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. That morning Jesus sent two disciples to bring a donkey and its colt. They led the donkey down the Mount of Olives, just east of Jerusalem, into a massive multitude coming for Passover. People sang from Psalm 118, "Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord," laying palm branches on the ground.

Hosanna means "save now." The Jewish belief was that a Messiah—an Anointed One—would come as a politically powerful leader to destroy Rome and restore Israel as the kingdom above all kingdoms. So the crowd was proclaiming Jesus as that king. And standing right there by the donkey were John, Peter, and James, thinking, "This is it—greatness, power, and wealth. We'll be enthroned with Him by the end of the week."

But that week did not go the way they thought. It went exactly the way God planned, but not the way they expected. The disciples shared the same anticipation as nearly every Jew of the first century. That's why they argued about who would be greatest, why they asked to sit at His right and left, why they wanted to call down fire on His enemies, and why they were concerned about their reward.

They Came for the Wrong Reasons

Point three: many of us, myself included, must admit we come to Jesus for the wrong reasons. My mother handed me something this morning—a "prayer cloth" my brother-in-law received in the mail from some ministry. It's an 8½-by-11 sheet of paper, and they promise that if you send money, it will bring you health, wealth, and prosperity—there's even a picture of an Escalade and wads of cash, with a self-addressed stamped envelope to send your money back. Many people come to Jesus for the wrong reasons, and many preachers with big followings are selling exactly that.

On the Palm Sunday road, the disciples had a vision of what was coming, and it didn't happen the way they thought. Later that week, in an upper room, Jesus took bread, broke it, and said, "This is My body, broken for you," and took the cup, "This is the blood of the New Covenant." Then He said one of them would betray Him, and all of them would flee. "This is not how we thought it would go," they must have thought. Just days earlier the crowds had cried, "Hosanna!"

Then came Good Friday. I wonder what went through eighteen-year-old John's mind as he stood at Calvary watching Jesus be crucified. He had forsaken everything believing it would lead to greatness—and now all his hopes were nailed to a Roman cross. Don't you think he was in a moment of crisis?

The Scriptures confirm it. In Luke 24, two of Jesus' followers leave Jerusalem for Emmaus, utterly dejected. The risen Jesus joins them, unrecognized, and asks why they're so sad. They speak of "Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet"—past tense—"mighty in deed and word." Then: "We were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel." Their hope was gone. Jesus answered, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe...Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?" And beginning with Moses and the prophets He showed them that Good Friday was no mistake—it was God's plan from the beginning.

What Jesus Actually Died For

Like those disciples on the Emmaus road, we need to be reminded—point four: Jesus died for our eternal joy, holiness, and hope. He did not die for your earthly prestige, power, or money, as some men on TV in their snazzy sneakers proclaim. This is the message we call gospel, good news, and it leads to a sustained joy, a persistent holiness, and a permanent hope.

Jesus makes us holy—what we try but cannot do for ourselves. He brings total wholeness, and only then can we have a persistent joy and a permanent hope. If your joy depends on making yourself right, you're sunk. If your hope of being with God rests on your good works, you're toast. When I ask people, "If you died tonight, do you think you'd go to heaven?" they say, "I hope so"—but it's wishful-thinking hope, like hoping the Padres have a great season. Jesus wants us to have an absolute, certain hope. If your wholeness depends on health, wealth, and prosperity, you're setting yourself up for collapse.

The Empty Tomb Changed Everything

So how is it that after John saw Jesus on a Roman cross and laid in a tomb, sixty years later he's writing that our joy may be full, that we may have certain hope of eternal life? Why didn't Good Friday obliterate his hope? Because that tomb was empty three days later, and he saw it. Something changed. It was no longer about power, greatness, wealth, and pleasure, because his hope was built on something else entirely.

Point five: Jesus rose to secure our trust in His name. The fact that John, sixty years after watching Jesus be crucified, is still trusting and hopeful for eternal life is proof that he saw the risen Lord Jesus, and everything changed—his entire motivation for following Jesus changed with the empty tomb. That's why he could write, "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life."

Jesus is divine. He died on a cross, was buried, and three days later rose from the dead. As we trust in Him, we have eternal joy; we are made holy and righteous because of His finished work—that's why He said, "It is finished"; and we have a hope that endures. The cup and the bread of communion remind us of these things. This is why He said, "Do this in remembrance of Me"—His body broken for us, His blood shed for us, so that we could have eternal life, be completely righteous, and have a hope of eternity.

Closing Prayer

Father, every one of us, when we first begin to follow You, is challenged by the reality that we may come to You with the wrong motivations. But hopefully, when we meet You, the risen Lord Jesus, everything changes. Jesus, You came to make us righteous as we trust in You; You deal with our sin, and not only make us holy but make us whole. We were broken, but we have been made right by You, and because of that we can have fullness of joy and a certain hope. Help us learn to persevere in our trust in You, even though we are so impacted by the brokenness of this world. Remind us, Lord, that following You is not a trivial pursuit. Amen.