Light in the Darkness

Hook: Nothing in this life is assured.

Broncos GF. 7.24pm, October 1st 2023. Ezra Mam try, at home with friends- surely we will put 50 on them.

How about life? What assurances can we trust in?

John’s first letter is written to ensure his readers, of the assurance we find in God.

1. God is Light 1:5

1 John 1:5 (ESV)

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

What assurance does John offer us? God is light.

“we have heard” - ringing in the ears. This is a verb- continuous hearing. This hope is God is so profound its as if he is always hearing it.

For John, this revelation of who God is, that he is light, is how he summarises the hope found in the Good News of Jesus.

This is what he says at the start of His Gospel account:

John 1:1–5 (ESV)

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 were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

He will not be overcome. Light metaphor. Light chases darkness, you can’t flick on a darkness or shadow switch, etc. Darkness has no power to resist the light.

Light as a theme in scripture conveys holiness, moral purity, goodness, truth and revelation. God is light and is the source of all these things. This is what John writes to assure you, he says: “this is the God you believe in!”

If God is light, there is no darkness in Him. There is no dark side to Him. This is a fundamental foundation to his character. It will be this truth of who God is, that John will use to draw his readers to the practical application of the goodness of Jesus. First thing he will tell you- you have freedom from the darkness.

2. Freedom from the Darkness 1:6-10

As we read these next few verses, you, like me, may have found it pretty confusing. There seems to be this tension between light, darkness and sin. How do we make sense of this?

Let’s lean on the metaphor that John provides for us, God is Light, we are called to have fellowship with Him in that Light. The light represents key parts of God’s character His righteousness, His moral purity and the Truth.

If light represents these characteristics, then darkness, being the opposite light means the opposite of who God is.

The opposite of righteousness is unrighteousness.

Isaiah 5:20–21 (ESV)

Woe to those who call evil good

and good evil,

who put darkness for light

and light for darkness,

who put bitter for sweet

and sweet for bitter!

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes,

and shrewd in their own sight!

To be righteous, means to be in the right. For your actions to be just and fair.

What makes these people, in Isaiah 5 fall into the category of unrighteousness?

Isaiah 5:24b (ESV)

for they have rejected the law of the Lord of hosts,

and have despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.

They are categorically, in the darkness. They cannot know good from evil. Only God is righteous, only God is light.

1 John 5:20 (ESV)

And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

What is true? That’s the wrong question for us. Rather, John asks the question- who is true? I think this is an exceptional question. To ask what is true causes us to enter a life-long journey of holding beliefs and values becuase it makes the most sense, but we can never be absolutaley certain that what we think is true, is actually true- all that is in this world is temporary and finite.

It’s why modern commentators came up with the idea of subjectivity, what seems true to you is now your truth. But you aren’t true. I know that because you’re just like me. A limited, fallible being who has, is and will fail and fall short. They’re too scared to accept that we just don’t know and cannot know.

So, instead, John says it’s not what but who, is true. This is freedom! We have someone, a being who presents himself to us, who is accessible to come “wonder and ponder with Me” to find a source of truth. That truth provides us with a foundation for living upon, meaning, purpose and a sense of self founded in an eternal, unwavering, Holy God who loves you and calls you friend.

God is true, He is righteous! This is the moral purity of God. He cannot be unrighteous (that is to commit evil) or he would contradict his nature. He cannot be wrong, otherwise He would contradict himself. He is the only one that is certain and therefore our only assurance in this life. He is the light of the world.

I picture it like this, if we can accept that the world is a dark place, full of chaos, death, violence and destruction, I imagine the presence and truth of God being like a physcial light on the path. It’s vivid, and leads me in the way I should go. Yet, I may stumble on the way. Perhaps I get distracted and lag behind and the light isn’t as bright as I get further away. Despite the presence of the light, and my knowing my need for it I still lose sight and focus. That’s what John is calling us to realise here.

The world is in darkness but God has come to give it light. Those who recognise God for who He is and put their faith in Him are said to be in the light. With this in mind, let’s walk through these next verses.

1 John 1:6 (ESV)

If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

John first address people who think they belive in God but have a skewed vision of who he is. This may be a result of ignorance or perhaps even pride. For some, who God truly is is unpalatable, so they skew his nature. They cut away his holiness, anger, wrath, justice and righteousness and make claims that all religions are paths to him, in fact all people, everyone, will be accepted. It’s a more tolerable in our modern world view, but it flies in the face of what God himself has said to be true. The word that we get this definition of “to skew the truth” is the word heresy or heretic. Obviously a bucket load of negative conatation there, but it simply means those who have a general picture of the truth but have changed details to fit their own agenda. It’s a warning to his readers to ensure they have a true, genuine faith in the one true living God, and not a different version that may be more preferable.

For John, in his context, he was directly speaking to a group called the Gnostics. These believers, they took this thought from the Greeks, that everything in the world is corrupted. It’s evil, its chaos, its impure, it’s death. Therefore the spiritual world is completely separate, the spiritual world is good, pure and has order. Should they come into contact, they belive the evil of the phyiscal, would overcome and corrupt the spiritual. So, for them, it is unfathomable that God himself, would come into the world- for them, that would be the death of God. To overcome this they said Jesus wasn’t sent from God, rather, he is just a man who lived a righteous life and was rewarded with eternal life. However, the Truth is so much better than that. Jesus comes from God, from the pure, He overcomes the evil, brings order to chaos, takes on the impure and makes them clean and defeats the reign of death. John says this in his next verse:

1 John 1:7 (ESV)

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 cleanses us from all sin.

We are called to walk in the light, to seek the truth but just because we might find it- that doesn’t mean we will now be perfect or without sin. In fact, you will still sin. So what has changed if we still sin? We are no longer under the condemnation of sin. Those who walk in the light we now no longer be judged by their sin.

1 John 1:8–9 (ESV)

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

Consider that for a moment- if you don’t know the truth, how can you know what is false? If you don’t know what’s false, how can you recognise your sin as sin? Those who live in darkness don’t recognise their sin for the destruction it can bring. Often times, when we were in darkness we worshipped sin.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

There is only one thing that is true when it comes to confessing our sins ans turning to forgive- he is faithful and just to forgive you.

The light of the world has called us to freedom from the darkness. To be in the light means to know the truth, know what’s righteous, to know what is morally good. To be out of the darkness doesn’t mean we will no longer sin or no longer stumble along the path, but He is just to forgive and we have been set free from the condemnation of sin. Freedom from the darkness of he world is not a result of strength of will, but of the faithfulness of the One who has forgiven us.

3. Freedom from your Sin 2:1-2

John will drive this point home in the next few verses. We have been saved from darkness, therefore we have been set free from Sin.

1 John 2:1–2 (ESV)

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

John’s hope for his readers, is that we will no longer fall into sin. That we would recognise the freedom that has been offered to us. John says we have an advocate to the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. Romans 8:34 says we have Jesus at the righthand of the Father, interceding for us. He is our propitiation for our sins, meaning his offering, his sacrifice has appeased the penalty of sin for us. But not just us, also the whole world. So that anyone, who turns to and puts their faith in Him, can recieve the forgiveness and freedom in Jesus.

The last point John makes here is this: for those who have come to faith in Him there should be some clear change.

4. What would they say? 2:3-6

I have heard it said, Sunlight is the greatest disinfectant. That which is antithetical to light cannot survive in its presence. In this case, the sin and brokenness inside each of us, which has been paid for by Jesus, should overtime be removed by His presence.

1 John 2:3–6 (ESV)

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

That phrase, “in him truly the love of God is perfected”. “Perfected” is a verb, a doing word. As we seek to keep his commandments, to do as he has called us to- he is perfecting us. A cleaning out of the cobwebs, a shaking of the dust off our bones.

John finishes this section with a clear depiction, of what it means to follow after Jesus. To walk in the light. We ought to walk as he walks. If you know Him your life should be a reflection of who He is. Note that it doesn’t come down to what you know, you simply your actions but ‘walking’ here is depicting a live lived in obedience after who he is.

Ray Comfort, an evangelist in the US, does this routine with people who don’t bvelive or even antagonistic to God and faith. He runs them through some of the ten commandments and he sort of goes, “have you lied? what do you call someone who lies? a liar. What about someone who steals? a thief.” He goes on and ort of disrupt the idea of “I’m a good person” that we hold in the 21st century. But then he asks this question, and it is so uncomfortable. “If someone could place a recording device in your mind that records all you thoughts, feelings, actions for a week. And then played that recording in a movie theatre for all your friends and family- what would you do?”

You’d run away- right? No thank you! Jesus died, to pay for all of that. Every week of your life. That is the freedom offered to us. Yet, it begs the question. If someone could into your life- how would it add up? Could somone, looking into your day to day, the way you spoke to others or about others, how you spent your time, what you spent your money on. Would they say “the love of God is being perfected in this person.” “It is demonstrably evident to me, that this person loves Jesus and is seeking first the Kingdom of God.” What would they say?

What would they say?

Riff.

Prayer.

gg