Sermon Tone Analysis

What does it mean to “walk in the darkness”?

Those who continue to practise the works of darkness cannot be in fellowship with the light

This person claims to have things in common with God, common likes and dislikes, a common nature, the divine, which basic things eventuate in a communion of interest and activity which we call fellowship.

This person is said to be walking in the darkness which is not in God, namely, sin.

The verb is present subjunctive which speaks of habitual action.

Thus, this person is sinning habitually, continuously, which shows that he is an unsaved person.

No child of God sins habitually to the exclusion of righteous acts.

We learn that from John’s use of modes and tenses as we proceed in our exegesis of this epistle.

Furthermore, he walks in the darkness.

The case of the noun is locative of sphere.

He walks, that is, orders his behavior, conducts himself (peripateō (περιπατεω)) in the sphere of the darkness of sin.

His actions and words are ensphered by sin.

Nothing of God’s righteousness or goodness ever enters that circle of sin which surrounds this person.

The individual making this claim of fellowship with God while at the same time ordering his behavior within the sphere of sin, is an unsaved person.

John says that in making that claim, he is lying, and he is not doing the truth.

Here John was confronting the first of three claims (see also 1:8 and 1:10) of the false teachers: that people can have fellowship with God and still walk in sin.

False teachers who thought that the physical body was evil or worthless taught one of two approaches to behavior: either they insisted on denying bodily desires through rigid discipline, or they approved of gratifying every physical lust because the body was going to be destroyed anyway.

Here John was stating that no one can claim to be a Christian and still live in evil and immorality.

The false teachers claimed to be living in God, but they failed to reflect God’s moral purity.

Those who claim to know God must also be living in the light, for darkness and light are incompatible.

People cannot live both in the darkness of sin and in the light of fellowship with God, in whom is “no darkness at all” (1:5).

John often used “darkness” to refer to sin (1:5, 6; 2:8, 9, 11).

Thus, one cannot live a sinful life and simultaneously claim to be a Christian.

So in this first letter, John confronted us with a disconcerting reality.

If we are to be comfortable with God and live in intimate fellowship with Him, we must “walk in the light, as He is in the light” (1 John 1:7).

Our values, our behavior, our attitudes, our commitments must be in harmony with God’s character rather than with the natural passions of fallen humanity.

But this seems to raise a terrible barrier.

If we must walk in light to have fellowship, how can we, who feel sin’s pull and all too often give in to temptations, ever be comfortable with God? Isn’t each sin a retreat to darkness?

If sinlessness is the avenue to fellowship, who then can stand in the presence of God?

But John was not talking of sinlessness.

“If we walk in the light,” he said, “the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin” (v. 7).

Even those walking in the light need forgiveness, and cleansing from sins they commit.

While it is possible for us in Christ not to sin, we can never claim that it is impossible to sin.

John’s primary target here seems to be those who “claim to have fellowship with Him yet walk in the darkness” (v. 6).

These men and women speak glowingly of their closeness to God and the fellowship they enjoy—and yet make a practice of sin! Their lifestyle is not godly; it is patterned after the ways of the false teachers described by Jude and Peter.

No one who makes a practice of sin can claim fellowship with God.

God’s nature is light, not darkness.

Those who walk in light as He is in the light may fall, but they will quickly turn away from that old lifestyle to find forgiveness in Jesus.

We might sum up John’s teaching this way; if the direction of your life is toward the Source of light, you will find forgiveness for your failures and inadequacies.

But if the direction of your life is toward the darkness, then you may be sure you have nothing in common with God.

What are the two darkest places on earth?

Hint.

You may have been in one of them.

The other some people have been to but I don’t think any of you ever were.

Inside a cave — turn off the lights.

Depths of the ocean.

But even if you haven’t been in the darkest places on earth, you may have been in some rather dark places.

Obviously, it gets dark at night and without the light of the moon and stars or artificial light, it can get quite dark.

In the Arctic now that darkness is 24 hours a day.

Here it is only 14.5 hours a day which is long enough.

The interiors of buildings can be quite dark even in the daylight hours if there are no windows or the curtains are drawn.

Literature, including the Bible often talks about darkness but not just physical darkness.

It is often used to describe something negative.

Shakespeare

Milton

The Bible (we will return to it shortly)

In old Westerns what color hats did the bad guys wear?

Black

When little or no progress was made for centuries in Western civilization it is known as . . .

The DARK ages.

The color for mourning is BLACK.

If you are the rapscallion in your family you may be referred to as the “BLACK” sheep of the family.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

However, Bulwer-Lytton was also responsible for what is now renowned as one of literatures most enduring examples of florid and melodramatic phrasing – also referred to as “purple prose” – with his infamous opening sentence to his 1830 book Paul Clifford, which contains the infamous and oft-mocked line “it was a dark and stormy night.”

The books opening sentence sets the scene admirably with:-

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents – except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

Genesis begins with darkness upon the face of the deep, until God encompasses this void to change it.

Even here, darkness is just absence, not moral horror.

Moses is allowed to create "a darkness which may be felt" over Egypt, but God still hides himself in "the darkness, the cloud and the thick darkness" when he speaks to them in the Book of Deuteronomy.

Reading through all this, and especially, later, Job – the book that mentions darkness most ("a land of darkness most, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death; a land without order, and where light is as darkness", "He discovereth deep things out of darkness" and "Where is the way where light dwelleth?

And as for darkness, where is the place thereof?", and many more), there is the heart-squeezing opening of John's Gospel, "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."

John uses this description to reveal the impact Jesus would have on the world.

John 1:5–13 (NIV84)

5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

6 There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John.

7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe.

8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

9 The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.

11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

Darkness can mean a state of not knowing and believing the truth of God and the truths that he teaches us in his revealed world.

One problem with darkness is that we either cannot see or are limited in seeing all that is around us.

The darkness conceals items and it also conceals actions so that others cannot see it.

In our relationship with God, although we can know a few things about him from nature and conscience, we cannot know who the true God is or what he has done to save us without his revelation.

God sent Jesus—the Light of the World— to make himself known to us.

I know a main emphasis at Christmas is how God sent his Son into the world to take on human flesh so that this body which God had prepared for him could be sacrificed for our sins and that we should see the cross in the manger as it were, and this is most certainly true.

But as we consider the aspect of light during our candlelight service, we also not that just as the light reveals things that are hidden, Jesus reveals to us the true nature of God and our relationship with him.

How are we to respond when a light shines on us?

Negative: Run away from the light.

I remember one time on the farm that one of our chicken house was not being used.

I went in their one night and turned on the light.

I don’t know what I expected but I know what I saw.

A whole brood of rats.

What do you think they did when I turned on the light?

They scurried for darkness.

Some people have the same experience with cock roaches when the light is turned on.

Criminals don’t like the light either.

More crimes are committed under the cover of darkness.