God With Us

Have you ever checked out this man named Jesus?

1 John 1:1-4  We proclaim to you the One who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw Him with our own eyes and touched Him with our own hands. He is the Word of life.   

2  This One who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen Him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that He is the One who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then He was revealed to us.

3  We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.  4  We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.

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If you are not a Christ follower then maybe you don't know why some people are or maybe you don't understand why they or why they call themselves Christian. Could Jesus really be that big of a deal?

John was one of the guys that spent all of his time with Jesus every day for three years. John tells us that the reason that he wrote all of this information down was because he knew the truth about Jesus and he wanted to share it with us so that we could decide for ourselves. If you consider the facts then you will realize that Jesus was not an ordinary man, he wasn't a madman and he wasn't a big fake.

John 20:30-31  The disciples saw Jesus do many other miraculous signs in addition to the ones recorded in this book.  31  But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in Him you will have life by the power of His name.

John wants us to know that he was there and he had personal contact with Jesus, he saw what he did, he heard him teach and he touched a real physical body. John was there for the Sermon on the Mount, he was there when the demons obeying his command and be looked on as Peter walked on the water with Jesus. John believed and he wished that his readers might have the same experience that he had so they would have the same belief, the same hope, and the same joy that he had.

John 1:1-4  In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.  2  He existed in the beginning with God.  God created everything through Him, and nothing was created except through Him.  The Word gave life to everything that was created, and His life brought light to everyone.

John's testimony tells us that Jesus is God and as God he has always existed, he took part in creation, he is the giver of our first life and he is the one that made eternal life possible. What an incredible thought to realize that Jesus was with God, he left heaven to get to know us better, he shared in our hurts and our struggles and he revealed himself to us so that we could know God better and secure our eternal destiny.

You Need To Decide
Matthew 16:15-17  Then He asked them, "But who do you say I am?"  16  Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."  17  Jesus replied, "You are blessed, Simon son of John, because My Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being

The people that really knew the truth about Jesus came to him from very different backgrounds. There were tough guys like the fishermen that dropped their nets to follow him, there was a zealot that was fighting to overthrow the oppressive Roman regime. There was ruthless tax collectors, scholarly Pharisees and oppressed women.

One day Jesus gave his disciples a pop quiz to see if they had come to the right conclusion about his identity. They had the advantage of direct access to the teacher, they could ask a question without raising their hand and they didn't have to wait for office hours yet they didn't always get what their teacher was telling them.

How will you answer Jesus pop quiz? Was God really with us?