I’d like for us to turn this morning to Mark 1, verses 16-20. This is where the Lord is walking by, and He calls some of His disciples to Himself.
Mark 1, starting in verse 16:
And as He, that is, our Lord Jesus, was going along by the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen.
And Jesus said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”
And they immediately left the nets and followed Him.
And going on a little farther, He saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, who were also in the boat mending the nets.
And immediately He called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and went away to follow Him.
Let’s pray.
Lord, we do rejoice this morning as we have had this great privilege of taking Your table with saints here and throughout this earth. Lord, there is always a freshness in putting You in remembrance. Lord, we are so grateful for Your love that has touched us.
And Lord, we are thankful too for the provision of Your life that continues with us. Lord, we are thankful for the provision of Your Holy Spirit. And Lord, we are thankful that You have made every provision for us for this time. Lord, by faith we enter into it.
We are thankful, and we declare that Jesus Christ is Lord over this time. And Lord, as we look into Your Word, we want to be those that are really feasting upon Your Word, Lord; having an ear to hear what the Spirit says to the churches, knowing how we are to live in these last days, and allowing You, in a wonderful way, to meet, strengthen, and encourage us as we press on in You. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Lately, I have been considering the life of the Apostle John. I was going to do more or less an introduction this morning, and, Lord willing, in the future we will continue on looking at his life and ministry.
Many have called John the apostle of recovery. And when we think of that matter of the apostle of recovery, how does he get that name? Why was it even needed during his time? And why is it so necessary in our time?
Quite often in Scripture, ones get their name by the way we are first introduced to them. John is called that apostle of recovery because we are introduced to him in these verses where he and his brother are there mending nets. They are recovering those nets back to their original purpose and usefulness.
The nets obviously needed some repair. They were not useful. So John was there, bringing those nets back to their original purpose and use.
We also see in this how Peter was there casting nets. Later on, if you think about the Apostle Paul, Paul was a tentmaker. When you think about these three apostles, some say they are kind of the primary main spokesmen for the Lord during that first century.
We see how Peter, in the casting of nets, brought many into the kingdom of God through the casting of the net of the gospel. Many were brought into the kingdom of God.
We see how Paul was a tentmaker. Much of Paul’s writings focused upon that tent, the house of God, that we could be a holy habitation fit for Him, loving to live in the house of the Lord.
And John, in the mending of the nets, is recovering the people of God to His original purpose. We see how God calls and uses each of these in a unique way.
There are many similarities in each of their lives, just as there are similarities in every believer’s life. But there is also a uniqueness. There is a diversity we see within these brothers.
Sometimes we are not too comfortable with diversity. We like things to fall into little patterns, for things to be very similar, and then we are more comfortable with that. But if you look at Peter and Paul and John, they are very unique brothers.
Others refer to John as the apostle of love. You can refer to Paul as the apostle of faith. Peter is the apostle of hope. And how do you have one without the other? The fullness of that is who we see in Christ.
Also, when we look upon these three brothers, we see diversity in calling. When the Lord called Peter, He said, “I’m going to make you a fisher of men.”
When He called Paul, He said, “I’m going to send you to the Gentiles to declare this glorious gospel.” In their initial calling, there was a very specific path that they knew from the beginning, the way they were going to walk.
There is no such thing with John. There is no specific calling, but we know God called him and had a purpose for his life. And I think sometimes that can be helpful for us, because oftentimes we want to know what our calling is.
Sometimes we might know. The Lord says, “This I want you to be doing.” Other times, we find out our calling as we simply follow Him. This is what John did. John followed the Lord. He beheld the Lamb of God and entered into becoming this apostle of recovery, this apostle of love.
So again, we do not like diversity; we are uncomfortable with it. But we see how the Lord, in His unique way, knows each and every one of us and has a way that He wants to work the beauty and glory of His life in us in a very specific way.
When we think about these three brothers, each having that unique ministry, all throughout church history these three ministries are going on together. That call of the gospel is always going out. The call of building is always there. And then there is that call of recovering back to God’s purpose.
But we also notice throughout history that one of those might have a little more prominent place during certain periods of time or among certain ones. This is where we see the Apostle John at the end of the first century.
The people of God at the end of the first century had entered into a place of weakness and declension. We are thankful how, at the very beginning, we see in the book of Acts that the church had a beautiful, healthy, glorious birth.
The gospel was going forth, and many were added, and it was a beautiful place. But tragically, as we come to the end of the first century, we see how the people of God are in a place of needing to be recovered back to what God originally desired for them to be.
As you look at some of the last letters that are written concerning the condition of the people of God at the end of the first century, you see Paul writing to Timothy in 2 Timothy. How does he describe the church? He talks about an outward form, with very little inward reality.
He says it is a large house, but there is great mixture. There are vessels of honor and vessels of dishonor. This was not God’s original purpose.
We see how, in Hebrews, as we have been studying, Hebrew believers had a wonderful beginning. Because of various circumstances, they were starting to drift away. They were starting to neglect so great a salvation. They were starting to throw away their reward. They were shrinking back.
And the Lord raised up one to bring them back to what He desired. Even John, as he writes and transcribes the Revelation of Jesus Christ in Revelation 2 and 3, shows us the condition of the churches there. Many of them were in a weakened condition.
So this is the time when John was raised up, toward the end of the first century. And the cry at the end of the first century is a cry that has gone down through the ages.
Actually, when the brothers were praying this morning, Jerry prayed this cry:
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
And that is the challenge we have: having that ear to hear what the Spirit is saying to us in the days and times that we are living in. Do we hear?
We are very thankful how the Lord raised up a John at the end of the first century. If we are not careful, we can lose perspective on when John’s public ministry was actually occurring through his Gospel, his epistles, and Revelation.
They were actually written in the nineties. They were written much later than anything else. If you read through the four Gospels, you can think all four of them were written at the same time. But actually, John’s Gospel, his epistles, and Revelation were written in the nineties, much later.
It was when the people of God were in this weakened condition. And how did the Lord use John to bring the people of God back to Himself? What was John’s burden? What was really the thing upon his heart?
Well, let us look at the introduction to his Gospel and also the introduction to his epistles. Turn to John 1.
John 1:1. We have familiar verses, and actually, sometimes when things are familiar, that can make them a greater challenge to us.
I am going to give you a little hint on what John’s burden is. There is the hymn we just sang. It says, “There’s a Man in the glory whose life is for me. His life in the glory, my life must be.” And that hymn ends that that Man in the glory is expecting to see His life in the glory lived out in me.
The key word in John’s life and ministry is life. So just notice it, even as we start reading some of the introduction to the Gospel.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being by Him; and apart from Him, nothing came into being that has come into being.
In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.
In Him was life. From the very beginning, we see what John is upon. He is bringing us back to focusing upon the life of our Lord Jesus Christ and the essentialness of us knowing that life and living by that life.
And he wants to have it settled within our hearts. Look at the end of the Gospel of John. If you turn over to John 20, I appreciate John’s writings because John tells us why he writes something.
I appreciate that because sometimes people write things and you have no idea why they wrote them. You get a text, you get an Instagram, you get an email, you get something, and you look at it and say, “Why did they send that? What’s it all about?”
Well, praise God, John tells us, because he knows we are kind of dumb. So he lets us know, just in case you missed it: “This is why I wrote this Gospel.”
John 20:31:
But these have been written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that by believing you may have life in His name.
By believing that Jesus is the Son of God—the simplicity, the testimony of that—and believing, we have life in the wonderful name of our Lord Jesus.
In a similar way, we see John introducing his epistles. If you turn over to 1 John 1, verse 1:
What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have beheld and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life—
and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us—
what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.
Praise God. Again, John is there with this matter of life, focusing upon the life of our Lord Jesus.
Again, in his epistle, he tells us why he wrote it. If you go back to 1 John 5, he makes it very clear why he is writing these things.
He says in 1 John 5:13:
These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life.
And that is not just a mental knowing. That is an experiential knowing, that you can have it settled within your heart—that you may know that you have eternal life.
There is a quality of life. When we talk about eternal life, we are not speaking about quantity of time. Eternal life speaks of a quality of life that we have in our Lord Jesus.
This is really what is upon John’s heart. When we look at the ministry of the Apostle John—that ministry of recovery—what was being recovered?
He had a simple burden: that our Lord Jesus Christ would have His rightful place and authority in the lives of each believer and in each assembly. He wanted the Lord to have His rightful place of honor.
Brother Sparks, when he spoke of recovery, said that when we are speaking of recovery, we are talking about the recovering of the testimony of Jesus. We have this desire that Christ have an ever-increasing fullness in the lives of His people—an ever-increasing fullness in the lives of His people.
It was life that was being recovered. They had fallen into so much of the outward form of being religious, and John was waking them up to say, “Hey, we need to come back to have this life of our Lord Jesus lived out in us, expressed through us in a living way.”
It is His life, His headship. It is all in Him.
John was not burdened that a teaching be recovered, because in Christ we will have the teaching. He was not writing about certain doctrines being recovered, because in Christ we will have those doctrines.
He was not writing to try to straighten out the form or government of meetings, because in Christ we will have that. Where His life is there, we have that of Him.
He was not trying to improve our prayer life, our worship life, our fellowship, or our service. No, because when we are in Christ and we are living in His life, we have a heart of worship. We have a heart of prayer. We have a heart of fellowship. We know how to serve.
We get it backwards sometimes. We can focus on some outward things, but we do not get back to the origin of it. The key of it is life, and this is what John brings us back to.
Again, John is not focusing upon having a certain type of experience. But praise God, when we are in Christ and living in Him, we will have many experiences of Him. Praise God for that.
Oftentimes, when we think about something being lost, we think of just returning and getting back what was lost. And that is true. Like in Luke 15, it speaks about how they lost the coin and got the coin back. They lost the sheep and got the sheep back.
But really, when John is speaking of recovery, he is going so much further. It is not only recovering that which was lost, but also clarifying our vision, getting us back to God’s original heart and purpose for why He caused us to be born again.
It is getting us back to His original purpose and bringing us back to His vision. In this, John is always reminding us—and we need to be reminded of this—that when we are speaking of vision, vision is a Person. Vision is the fullness of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Oftentimes people get tired of talking about vision, and I understand that. Because as soon as you remove Christ, the Person of Christ, from vision, you have just got a sledgehammer to beat people up with.
What we need to see is that when Christ, when the life of Christ, is taken out of vision, it is really not vision. It is simply doctrine or teaching. It is lifeless. It is the letter. The letter kills; it is the Spirit that gives life.
But when the Spirit and life are in this matter, when we see Christ in His fullness, then it is different. When you are close to someone and get to know them, you see the fuller picture of who they are. You see their heart, their desires, their purpose, where they are going, and what they want to be doing.
As we come to know Christ in this way, in His life, we understand His heart. We understand His heart for the lost. We understand His heart for the house of God to be built. We understand His heart for the bride to be made ready.
All of this is seeing the fullness of His life. It always comes back to Christ.
When we get away from taking nothing other than Christ in the fullness of who He is, then we end up creating systems and doctrines, outward forms, and very little inward reality.
This is what God was so jealous for in that day: that the people of God in the first century would return to living daily in the reality of His life and in the circumstances they found themselves in.
This was the call that John had upon the people of God. John, as he was crying out to the people, says in 1 John, “It is the last hour. Wake up.” And how we are hearing this too in these days.
As we see this message from the Apostle John, we see how it is a great challenge for us in our days too. Whenever the people of God are in a weakened condition—and this was the condition John found himself in—it is a great challenge.
A general characteristic of when people are in a weakened condition is that they do not know their true condition. They think everything is fine. Everything is going along, but they do not know the reality of it.
It is beautiful throughout the Scriptures. We just finished, in our daily reading, going through Kings and Chronicles, and it is amazing to see the mercy of God—how He sent His prophets over and over again to His people.
Time after time, we see the prophets of God going, and sadly, quite often they are not responded to. It is interesting, as you think about the prophets. It is a little bit of an indicator when you are studying.
When everything is going well and the people of God are on course, there is no need for a prophet. Everybody is in their rightful place, everybody is about what they should be doing, and they are going on in life. There is no need for that prophet.
In general, you do not see them. Think about David, for example. In David’s life, when everything was going right with David, we do not hear about a prophet. But all of a sudden, sin enters into David’s life, and you hear about the prophet Nathan rebuking him.
We see these prophets raised up. It is sad how the Lord always has to send those prophets, but it also shows His love and His tender mercy to all of us.
Quite often throughout Scripture, the people did not have that ear to hear what the prophets were saying to the church. Are we hearing in this hour? We are hearing much about being prepared, being ready. Are we really responding to that in life and allowing Him to meet us?
If you look at the end of the Old Testament, the people in Malachi did not know their true condition. As the Lord is calling out to them to return to Him, He says, “You have despised My name.” They say, “How have we despised?”
“You have wearied Me.” “How have we done that?” “You have robbed Me.” They say, “How have we done that?” They even say, “How have You loved us? If You loved us, we would not be in this bad condition.”
You are in a bad condition because you neglected God, but they did not even see it.
Like at the end of the New Testament with Laodicea, they say, “I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing.” The Lord says, “Oh, you do not see. In reality, you are wretched, poor, blind, and naked.”
Do we really see? Are we having that ear to hear when the Lord speaks to us on our true condition?
Sadly, as you look among many of our brothers and sisters today throughout this earth, many think it is okay. Everything is going great. They can have their big meetings and big buildings, loud music and great crowds, and feel good.
If you look at them, if we fellowship with them, they have hearts for the Lord. They have hearts for the Lord, but they think everything is okay. There is a touch of Christ and an aspect there that they have not fully seen.
How we need to have that, seeing Christ as our standard.
We have to not only look at our so-called brothers and sisters and say, “Are they walking in life?” We have to bring it down to ourselves. Are we walking in life? Do we really know the life of Christ within our daily lives?
We can deceive ourselves. We think, “Oh, I go to the Lord’s table meeting every week. I go to prayer meeting every week. I go to various Bible studies. I am going to the conference.”
Brothers and sisters, coming to the Lord’s table, coming to prayer meeting, and going to the conference does not mean you are spiritual. But if we are spiritual and have His life, we will do those things.
Doing the outward does not mean that we have His life and Spirit within us. But if we have His life and Spirit within us, we will be at the Lord’s table every time.
When we have that life and Spirit within us leading us, we will desire to be praying, because we see it is not about us; it is about Him. We will desire to gather with the people at a conference.
Outwardly, everything can look the same. It is an issue of our hearts. What is our heart condition?
We need to allow the Spirit of God to honestly search us as we are in this last hour—to search us and awaken us. Where we have departed from that, would He bring us back to walking in a fuller and greater expression of His life?
When we say that we are in a weakened condition, sometimes we can be very absolute. But we are in a weakened condition, and also we are very thankful for all the Lord has done for us.
We are thankful for our so great salvation. We are thankful for the fellowship we have. We are thankful for the opportunity to take the Lord’s table every week. Thankful for the conference. We are thankful for so much.
But there is still so much more. Sadly today, because of the battle of life and everything that goes on, we have neglected the much more, and there has been a settling down.
This is what happened in Hebrews. The battle became too great. They started drifting back. Sometimes we can drift away. Sometimes we can be distracted by things.
We can be distracted by so many things in life. We can become weary. We can become offended. We can become tired. We can just become passive: “Let others do it.”
But this is the cry that the Lord has through the Apostle John, and it is the cry He has for us. At the end of the first century, there was a great need for the revitalization of the people of God. In the days we are living in, there is a great need for the revitalization of the people of God.
Let’s make the people of God great again.
Let’s keep the focus, as John has mentioned. Let’s keep the main thing the main thing, and make the people of God great again. All right? No hats or T-shirts, okay?
But praise God, in His great love, He continues to call us back to Himself. We continue to see how, even as He says in John, He loves us to the uttermost. Through all this, it is a call of love, wooing us back.
This is why we can be so encouraged by John. Because we see in the midst of every problem and situation, God always has one answer, and it is His Son. He always brings us back to His Son.
What was the writer of Hebrews? What is the answer there? Consider Jesus, looking off unto Jesus. As we fix our eyes upon Jesus.
And Timothy, in the midst of so much going on outwardly—what did he say? “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.” This is the call.
The way of recovery, the call of recovery, the goal of recovery, is all the Lord Jesus Christ having His rightful place in our lives individually and together. This is what we are all about.
Sometimes we find that can be too simple for us. We have mentioned before how the Lord is desiring us to return to this place of simplicity, purity, and devotion to Christ.
Sometimes when we talk about recovery, we feel like we have got to do all this. We have got to get this teaching right. We have got to get this right. We have got to get that right. Fix this, fix that. No.
Simply return to Him and allow Him to show us more of Himself. Because when He shows us more of Himself, it brings things into perspective.
That is what we see within John’s heart and John’s life. John had that childlike trust in the Lord, where he knew the One who first loved him.
As we consider John, I would like to just look at John and the person of John first today.
When we are thinking of John, I have gained a greater appreciation for John. You always know John is the apostle of love, and sadly today, love is so misrepresented. But we see in John the truth there.
As you look at John, I was thinking about looking at his person and his life—John the person, John the ministry—but in reality, it is all one. His ministry is his life. His life is his ministry. It is not two separate things.
When you look at John the person, you see all the aspects of his ministry. When you look at his ministry, it came out of life.
Remember in 1 John where John said, “Test the spirits”? Is that just a nice theological statement, or did that come out of John’s life? It actually came out of John’s life.
Remember when some were rejecting our Lord Jesus, and what did John want to do? He wanted to call down fire and strike them dead. The Lord said, “You do not know what spirit you are of. It is a different spirit.”
John learned, “Ah, you have got to test the spirit.” So when he is ministering, when he is writing these things, they are coming out of life with the Lord.
It is not sitting down and doing some study and coming up with thoughts. Out of his life comes his ministry. That is what the Lord is jealous for. He is wanting His life to be expressed among us.
For all of us, not to have these dual lives between our life with Him and the rest of our life. It is one life. That is what He has called us to. That is what you see in John.
As we look at John, at first I wanted to consider his family. John is really the only disciple that we know whose whole family is known.
Now, in Peter, we have a reference one time to a mother-in-law, and we know Andrew was his brother. We do not know anything about Peter’s mother or father. But if you look at John, his whole family is mentioned, and I believe that is for our instruction. I believe it can be helpful for us when we consider John’s family life and his home life.
We know, as we already read there in Mark 1, that he is referred to as one of the sons of Zebedee. His brother was James. James ends up being martyred over in Acts 12.
His father, Zebedee, was a fisherman—a pretty successful fisherman—and his mother was Salome. Some actually say that she was the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus.
If you compare some verses in the Gospel of John with some other Gospels, you can kind of get an image there that she might be the sister of Mary. You cannot be absolute on that, but it is a reasonable assumption. You cannot say it is so, and nobody can tell you it is not.
But this is a thought that you can have as you fellowship about it.
Just think about John’s father, Zebedee. Now, how many have heard a sermon on Zebedee?
Not a lot of sermons on Zebedee’s life. I think this guy is wonderful. He is one of the most underrated men in the New Testament, and maybe in all of Scripture.
If you look at Zebedee, he was a very successful fisherman. We do not know how many boats he had, but he had servants. That shows that he was successful and very prominent within the community.
We know that he and his family knew the high priest down in Jerusalem, so that is an element of prestige. He was connected. He had a good life. He was not just kind of a hand-to-mouth type of fisherman; it was a very successful business.
I really think that Zebedee had a relationship with the Lord. When the Lord Jesus came along and called his two sons, and particularly John, to follow Him, they immediately left their father, and their father did not say anything. He just let them go.
If you are in business and you have your sons working for you, and somebody says, “Hey, come follow Me. I do not know how you are going to support yourselves. I do not know where we are going, any of this or that, but just come follow Me,” the father might say, “Wait a minute.”
“Son, you need to stay here. This is a good business. If you stay here and work, one day you can take over the family business. Your kids will have a much better life. You can send them to better schools. They will not have to fish.”
Oh, no, no. We can see how the natural mind starts to think in this. But we see within Zebedee there was no argument. He let his sons go.
His focus was on his sons serving the Lord. He was not worried about himself or their own worldly gains.
As you look at Zebedee, we think about ourselves. What do we want for our kids? What do we want for our children, our young people? Are we more focused on their success in business or in school, or on their serving the Lord?
It is wonderful to have an education. It is wonderful to get a good job. We are not saying that. But what is the priority in life? The priority is serving the Lord.
This is what Zebedee understood. Even though he was probably very dependent upon his sons in this business, they were working for him. They were mending the nets. They had grown up in it; they knew this business by heart. It was in their blood.
Yet they just left. He lost two valuable employees. Yet he was not thinking about himself. He wanted them to serve the Lord. His heart was for that.
That is a wonderful testimony of a father. That is why I think Zebedee’s testimony is so overlooked and undervalued. He really gave his children to the Lord.
Also, his mother Salome—there is no indication that she tried to stop them either. As you look at her life, we really do not know if Zebedee died, and maybe she sold the business, but at some point she started coming along with the Lord also and following Him.
We see how she was one of those women who was caring for the Lord throughout His life. She was there at Calvary. She was there at the tomb, a witness of the resurrection. She was there in that upper room. She was there in that testimony. She had that heart for the Lord.
We see from Zebedee and Salome that John had a good home environment. He had an environment where, because of his parents’ relationship with the Lord, he was provided with a solid foundation in life.
They encouraged him in such a desire. So when John the Baptist came along, and he heard John the Baptist, he was with John for a while. The sons’ hearts were being prepared for this.
This speaks of the influence we have for our children, the influence we have for our younger brothers and sisters.
Salome and Zebedee, as they were training their children to serve the Lord, had no idea how they would serve, where they would serve, or when they would serve. It might have been that they served within the fishing business their whole life. They did not know.
But they knew the essential, vital nature of preparing their sons and daughters—their children—to serve the Lord. That was the primary focus.
As it turned out, they ended up following the Lord. But when they were training up these children, they did not know that. We, in hindsight, see the whole picture. They did not know.
That is where we really see the value of training your children, directing them to the Lord. Then when the Lord calls them one way or another, praise God, they are prepared. There is a readiness there to keep Him as the priority of their life.
The family prepared John in such a way that when he heard those life-changing words, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” he responded.
These words governed John’s life in spite of all the circumstances that he went through. In spite of everything that John went through, those simple words, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” governed his life.
By beholding the Lamb of God, we will see within John’s life, as we consider it more in the future, how John gained an increasing and progressive revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He first saw Him: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.” Praise God. How did John finally come to see Him in Revelation? He saw that eternal Lamb upon the throne.
There was a greater and expanding vision that John saw of our Lord Jesus, simply by beholding the Lamb. That was what had captured his heart. He kept his eyes upon the Lord. He followed Him.
As he followed the Lord, he had that greater and greater revelation. We are thankful for John as he went through life. He left his family. That was not an easy thing, but he immediately left.
Then he was trained by John the Baptist, this man of God, but he immediately left him for our Lord. Sometimes—and we will consider this more later—we can stay closer to a man of God than we can to the Lord.
John followed the Lamb. John the Baptist was there for a season; John the apostle continued on following the Lamb.
He denied himself, and he came under the discipline of the Lord. When the Lord told him that he was of the wrong spirit for wanting to call down fire, John got it. He was discipled. He was disciplined. He learned from the Lord.
We will see the many lessons that John learned in his life.
John stood with our Lord Jesus at His trial. He was already in the house where that trial was going on, and he was the one who helped Peter get into the courtyard. John was there, identified with Christ.
He was there at the cross. Everybody else had deserted Him. One had betrayed, one had denied, and others had deserted, but John was right there at the cross.
The Lord said to John to take care of His mother. He looks down at John and says, “You take care of Mom for Me.” This is where John was.
John kept going after his brother was martyred. John and his brother were close, obviously. They had grown up together, fished together, and served the Lord together. Then his brother was martyred.
That could take us out unless our eyes are upon the Lord. I am not saying John took it lightly or that he did not suffer, but the Lord carried him through it.
The Lord continued to carry John through over fifty years of hidden ministry. There is about a fifty-year gap from when we last see John until we hear from him again in his Gospel and his epistles. But for fifty years, he is utterly hidden.
That is painful to the flesh. John was hidden from man, but not from God. God kept him through.
He had this personal relationship that enabled him to continue faithful. Then, at that old age when the Lord called him, he was prepared. He was ready.
He came forth as that voice, crying out for the Lord to recover, to bring people back to Christ. He continued to see more and more of the fullness of Christ, as we mentioned in Revelation.
John knew the Lord in a very precious way. But then, in Revelation 1, when he saw that One like the Son of Man, he fell on his face as dead. He had never seen Him like this before. This was the resurrected Lord, and he fell down as dead.
John continued to see more and more of Christ. He never allowed himself to become satisfied and say, “I have seen enough.” No, he was always wanting more.
It is similar to Paul’s testimony: “That I may know Him,” more and more, pressing on like that.
As you think about John, John, through following the Lord, learned more of Him—this greater and increasing revelation.
A key word with John is abiding. He was abiding. He was living with the Lord in His presence and allowing the Lord to show him more and more of Himself. That is so vital. These are things we need desperately in this last hour.
If you stop and think about it, John gives us the most panoramic view of our Lord Jesus Christ than anybody else.
John shows us our Lord Jesus Christ in eternity past in that Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word.” In the beginning.
Then we see Him through the Gospels, and then we see John presenting our Lord Jesus in eternity future, that New Jerusalem. There is that Lamb.
That is a grand panoramic view that nobody else can show us of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is what John gained by simply having that time and place of communion and fellowship, beholding the Lord, allowing Him to speak to him in a greater way.
John saw that God’s heart and purpose, from the beginning to the end, never changed. We have heard it said many times: origin determines destiny. The beginning governs the end.
That is why he takes us back to the beginning, because that is the principle. That is the government. The Father was jealous for His Son to have that place of preeminence.
We see it all through Scripture. We see it summed up in Revelation. We have this beautiful, panoramic, comprehensive view of our Lord. That is what we see in the life of the Apostle John.
When you really stop and think about it, all that the Lord showed John, by His grace, he was able to pass on to us. It is amazing. It is amazing all that John comprehended and was able to pass on for our help, our admonition, and our encouragement.
This message of John was vital at the end of the first century, and it is so vital in these days: that our Lord Jesus have His rightful place among us individually and together.
The key to John was simply life—the life of our Lord Jesus. It does not get much simpler than that.
But in this late hour, do we have ears to hear what the Spirit is saying? Praise God, through this life and ministry of the Apostle John, may the Lord open our ears.
We are thankful for what we have seen of Christ. But Brother Sparks uses this little phrase: “May the Holy Spirit touch our hearts and shatter any spiritual contentedness, that we may see more of the fullness of Christ.”
We can become spiritually content. We see a small measure of Christ, and we become content with that. Now, a small measure of Christ is a great thing. A small measure of Him is beyond anything we can think of. But there is still so much more.
This is why I appreciate not being content with the things of the world, but also recognizing spiritual contentedness: “I have seen this.”
Praise God, John saw the Lord as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, but he did not stop there. Later on, he saw Him as that High Priest. On and on, he saw more and more of the magnificence of Christ.
He saw that desire for that bride to be made ready. He was simply bringing the people of God back to Himself.
The more the Lord delivers us from spiritual contentedness, it enlarges our vision of His heart and His purpose. It brings us back to be the people of God that He has called us to be, to be the testimony that He has called us to be.
Or, to put it in a phrase we are using more simply: the more we keep our eyes upon Him and allow Him to be working within us, we are a people being made ready.
We are a people that are hastening His return.
So, as we consider the Apostle John, I pray that we could really allow the Spirit of God to touch our hearts.
As we look at John’s life and ministry, John does not have new teaching. There are no new doctrines. There are no new theological discourses or anything. He brings us back to life.
In that life, we see that we have all the teaching, all the doctrine, all the vision that we need to press on to the end. So may the Lord help us and prepare our hearts in this day and time.
Let’s pray.
Lord, we are thankful for the precious treasure of Your beloved Son. Lord, we see the price that was paid as we took this table this morning. We were reminded of it.
Lord, we are those that really are desiring within our hearts not to be settlers in this place, not to just be content, not to go through the outward, but really to allow the life of our Lord Jesus Christ to burst forth within each of us.
Lord, that we could be the people that You are desiring us to be. You are simply desiring for the life of Your Son to be seen among Your people.
As we give ourselves to You, Lord, we want You to be really working within our hearts and lives, and we want to be cooperating with You.
Because we have this desire to be the people being made ready, and to be that people who are hastening Your return. In Thy name we pray. Amen.