1 Welcome to our Words of Assurance series. We are studying the book of 1 John. Today we will focus on 1 John 1:5-10. There are 3 things we will highlite. The Nature of God, the Nature of our Walk and the Nature of our Purity. 1 John 1:5-10 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. 8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. 1. The Nature of God. John begins the way the whole Bible begins. It s primarily about who God is. In the beginning, God! The Bible isn t primarily about us, it s primarily about God. Me-ism replaced with Worship. A. God is Light - God is light and it is the very first thing He created and it will be the last thing highlited. Light is so good. I spent many years in Willamette Valley. Lots of overcast, lots of rain. People got SAD. Seasonal Affective Disorder. In CDA we get 30 more days of sunshine and half the rain than where I came from. I am happy! Light is nurturing to all of life. It is revealing and it is healing. Anytime you turn on the light at home, remember God is light, He reveals. Most crimes are done at night, because there is a greater concealment factor in darkness. We love the sun so much when we can t get it we settle for a manufactured version of it, known as a tanning bed. We know the sun is bright, but not as bright as God. As light as our sun is, scientists tell us there are dark spots in the sun, but not with God. Another characteristic of light is that it is un-contaminatable. 1
2 In that while it comes in contact with all things, it is itself affected by nothing. It touches the disgusting and repulsive, it contacts foul pollution, it enters into the inner most recesses of rottenness in which unclean souls revile. And it remains the same clear element of light still; does not become dirty while shining on dirt; contracting no stain or disease, its brightness not dimmed nor its integrity marred. It endures as undefiled, clean and clear. Do you need light to shine in your life? B. In Him is no darkness at all - John makes a dramatic statement about God. He says God and darkness are distinct, not one and the same. Actually there is no darkness at all with God. The yin and the yang says God is in one circle and is a balance of light and darkness. Not biblical thinking. We see with God there are distinctions. The first thing God had Adam do was to establish distinctions in the earth by naming all the animals. Adam did not say Thing 1, Thing 2 and so forth. No he said you are a giraffe, you are a horse, you are a sheep. Distinction. The world is fighting distinction, at least as the scripture teaches it. Distinction is the first step toward discernment. If you want to be discerning allow God s light to reveal distinction in the world. God wants us to have discernment. There is the Creator and creation, distinct, not one in the same. Respecting vs. worshipping. Modern day druid. There is God and mankind, distinct, not one and the same. We are not gods, we were not born with God inside us, actually we are all born spiritually dead. There is male and female, distinctions, not one and the same. Gender beauty not gender neutrality. 2
3 There are angels and demons, distinctions, not just generic spirits. Not all spirituality is good. There is human life and animal life, distinctions, not one in the same. We were not once primates. There is holy and unholy, distinctions. Not everything is good, but not everything is bad. That is why God wants us to have discernment. There is good and evil. There is right and wrong. There is moral and immoral. There is the flesh and the spirit, distinctions. There is intellectual light and darkness, wisdom is light and foolishness is darkness, there is emotional light and darkness, love and empathy are light, bitterness and rage is darkness, there is behavorial light and darkness. Paul says avoid deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Many ideologies minimize biblical distinctions. I heard someone call it monism, pluralism, globalism, universalism. They would say there are not these distinctions but everything is one. Everything is God and God is everything. That is pantheism. Not biblical thinking. Sometimes if you have a Christian worldview and believe in distinctions people get upset because you suggest you re putting things outside the circle, your not including everything in one circle, you re intolerant. Sometimes intolerance is actually discernment between light and dark. Lion King ideology - Some would say, what about the circle of Life? Star Wars ideology The universe is controlled, altered or imbalanced by the force. Sometimes I forget many movies are simply creative sermons seeking to preach something. I am not anti-movie, but be observant, be discerning. God is not made up of a balance of light and darkness. He is always honest, truthful, integrous, faithful. He is not in a tug of war with darkness or satan. His light in our lives reveals and heals. 2. The Nature of our Walk. Our relationship with God is characterized by a walk. 3
4 Knowledge of God is something we know it is also something we do. Actually if there is not the evidence of doing at some point it is because we never knew it. Our walk is a holistic definition of our relationship with God. It is not compartmentalized but comprehensive. Roger Archer, Our church life and our real life must become the same life. Notice that walking in the light involves not only fellowship with God but fellowship with other Christ followers. We walk with God and with one another. If we walk with God we will have fellowship with other Christians. No Christian is to live in isolation from his spiritual family. One of the ways we know we have fellowship with the Lord is that we have fellowship with other people. A walk with God implies all of life. You see God s desire to walk with Adam and Eve in the garden. God cares about your walk because He cares about you. Your walk is your sum total of how and why you live your life. God wants your reasons for living and your lifestyle to be formed out of the light, coming forth from the light. John recognizes there is darkness in the world and he wants us to walk in the light. There is a test John is presenting for authentic faith, a test to see if we are walking in the light. A doctrine test concerning the person of Jesus. A lifestyle test concerning our lifestyle, and social test concerning our love for one another. The lifestyle test is: does your pattern of living represent your faith confession. Notice John isn't saying that a real Christian never sins. He says, "He cannot go on sinning." He's talking about habitual behavior, not occasional lapses. John's not expecting perfection in our walk but he is expecting progress. John says a great test if someone is in fellowship is their pattern of living. Apparently there were some false teachers around who were denying this congruency. 4
5 This teaching would lead to a heresy known as Gnosticism, from the Greek word that means "to know." They taught to believe in spirituality was the only thing that mattered. Material things weren't important; they were passing away. Only the spirit was eternal. Therefore, they reasoned, it didn't matter what they did with their physical bodies promiscuity, drunkenness, gluttony. These things didn't affect a person's soul, they thought, so there was no harm in indulging in them. You don't often hear the word Gnosticism today, but this kind of thinking this splitting off of our spiritual selves from our physical selves still finds its way into the church. These false teachers failed these three tests yet they claimed to walk in the light.. Because of that don t be confused or afraid or ashamed of your love for Jesus. Continue to walk in love, and walk in the light. Faith Grid Illustration Progress, not perfection. 3. The Nature of our Purity. Confession leads to forgiveness and cleansing. Love what kids say about the bible. One little boy learned in Sunday School about Adam and Eve and how Eve was created from one of Adam s ribs. A few days later he told his mother his side really hurt. She said what s wrong. The little boy in pain said, I think I am having my wife. One Sunday school teacher asked the class what is gray, has a bushy tail and gathers nuts in the fall? Five year old Adam raised his hand and said, I know the answer should be Jesus. He stated but it sure sounds like a squirrel to me. A Sunday school teacher asked, suppose we want to pray to God and ask for forgiveness. What must we do first? One little boy raised his hand and said outloud, we should sin. Do you believe in the reality of sin. Forgiveness doesn t mean much if you don t believe in sin. Sin of omission, sin of commission, sins we can see, sins we don t see. The sinful nature. Missing God s mark, His ideal. 5
6 Forgiveness means to send away. I was relieved when someone explained this to me. When someone told me there was light and darkness, when someone told me I was a sinner, but extremely loved, it was the best news I ever heard. Some of us may be offended to be called a sinner. This is true today and it was true in Johns day. The people who felt comfortable in their own righteousness were the religious people. They refused to consider themselves sinners. I was literally ecstatic to hear that. I knew something was wrong, life was second best. NFL GM Players want to know why they were cut. I wanted to know why I was empty and unsatisfied. Now they know what to work on. Now I knew why, the truth, and now I knew a way out, Jesus! When you have no trouble admitting you re a sinner, you will have no trouble receiving forgiveness and cleansing and you will have the greatest and truest purity available in this lifetime. Late 1820 s President Andrew Jackson was to attend a church service. The elders warned the Pastor Cartwright not to offend the President. When Cartwright got up to speak, the first words out of his mouth were, "I understand that President Andrew Jackson is here this morning. I have been requested to be very guarded in my remarks. Let me say this: "Andrew Jackson is a sinner and will go to hell if doesn t repent of his sin!" The entire congregation gasped with shock at Cartwright s boldness. How could this young preacher dare to offend the tough old general in public, they wondered. After the service, everyone wondered how the President would respond to Cartwright. When Andrew Jackson met the preacher at the door he looked at him in the eye and said, "Sir, I want to hire you, If I had a regiment of men like you, I could conquer the world! What is your attitude about sin? Some denied it, usually the religious people. That is who John s addressing. 6
7 God has a remedy for your own sins and when you have been sinned against. They both make you feel defiled. Cleansing is the word that comes from catharsis which means a cleaning out. There is no limit to the cleansing power of the blood. God rolls out the "red carpet" of salvation to even the worst of sinners. No one is so corrupt that Christ s blood cannot cleanse; no one carries a weight of sin so heavy that the Savior cannot remove it. An elderly Christian used to carry A SMALL BOOK with him that he often took from his pocket to show to others. He called it his biography. It had only three pages, but not a single word was written on any of them. Yet, he said it contained the whole story of his life. The first page was black. That, he said, was his sin--his condition by nature. The second, which was red, represented the blood of Christ, shed for his sins. The third was white. This final page stood for himself--washed in that blood and made whiter than snow. I lived years with only one page in my book. Then I added a red page and a white page. Mark 9:2-3 After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. 3 His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. Mikey: Cleansing from Christ is a message too good to keep to yourself. When evangelist John Wesley (1703-1791) was walking home from a service one night, he was ROBBED. The thief, however, found his victim to have only a little money and some Christian literature. As the bandit was leaving, Wesley called out, "Stop! I have something more to give you." The surprised robber paused, "My friend," said Wesley, "you may live to regret this sort of life. If you ever do, here s something to remember: The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin! " The thief hurried away, and Wesley prayed that his words might bear fruit. 7
8 Years later, Wesley was greeting people after a Sunday service when he was approached by a stranger. What a surprise to learn that this visitor, now a believer in Christ and a successful businessman, was the one who had robbed him years before! "I owe it all to you," said the transformed man. "Oh no, my friend," Wesley exclaimed, "not to me, but to the precious blood of Christ that cleanses us from all sin!" Discernment Congruency Cleanliness 8