Untitled Sermon (56)

February

   How To Stay Close to God (1 John 1:5–10)

We must analyze our lives (1:7–8)

Ungodliness means anything in us that fails to glorify God and to worship Him and to make Him supreme in our own lives, and in the lives of others.

We need to worship and adore as well as to analyze and explain.

Since life is so brief, we cannot afford merely to “spend our lives”; and we certainly do not want to “waste our lives.” We must invest our lives in those things that are eternal.

The lives that are getting stronger are lives in the desert, deep-rooted in God.

The business of our lives is not to please ourselves but to please God.

When we walk in the light and have fellowship with God, two things will be true in our lives. First, if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another (1:7a).

We cannot be out of fellowship with or have hard feelings toward our brothers and sisters in Christ and be in fellowship with God at the same time.

How does Jesus emphasize this in John 13:35?

King James Version Chapter 13

35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

This is the “acid test” for being close to God. God never intended that we be “spiritual hermits” or “Lone Ranger Christians.”

Faith is such a vital matter to the children of God that it must needs be put to the test, first in order to prove that it is genuine, and second to purge and strengthen it.

Prayer is the acid test of devotion.

Samuel Chadwick

If our faith is not in the present tense it will never be able to stand the test of the days in which we live.

Our faith is really and truly tested only when we are brought into very severe conflicts, and when even hell itself seems opened to swallow us up.

Whatever new idea someone comes up with, this is the acid test: does it have Jesus, the Messiah, the Lord, as its centre and focus? If not, beware.

The acid test of a father’s leadership is not in the realm of his social skills, his public relations, his managerial abilities at the office, or how well he handles himself before the public, it is in the home.

Faith, like a muscle, grows by stretching.

Friendship, like gold, needs the acid test of adversity to determine its value.

What is the acid test? I suggest the real and thoroughgoing test in this incident that we are now considering. It is this: How does one react to trying and testing circumstances?

This is the “acid test” for being close to God.

God never intended that we be “spiritual hermits” or “Lone Ranger Christians.”

We must engage in spiritual warfare. Wemust put on the whole armor of God (Eph 6:12). We must put to death the misdeeds of the body.

Spiritual depression cannot be resisted by flight, but must be struggled with and resisted.

Our life in this world is a spiritual warfare, whether we want it or not; it is inevitably so, because of Satan.

You see that clearly in the life of the Son of God Himself, how constantly He was attacked and besieged by Satan.

Satan only left Him for a season after the temptation in the wilderness; then he came back.

Because Satan is the god of this world and governs and orders it.

The whole life of the Christian is, of necessity, one of spiritual conflict. Life in God,

The Christian life is not a playground; it is a battleground.

Fellowship with God produces a yearning in our hearts to be in fellowship with other believers.

If we have no desire to go to church or be with other believers, something is wrong with our fellowship with God.

If we walk in the light and have fellowship with God, not only will we fellowship with one another, but second, the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin (1 Jn 1:7b).

The word purifies is present tense, stressing the need for daily cleansing of those who walk in the light.

When we fellowship with God, we are very sensitive to sin.

This verse tells us Jesus’ blood will purify us from all sin—not some sin or just “minor” sins—but all sin, no matter how terrible (emphasis mine).

In case we think we don’t sin after becoming Christians, John writes: If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1:8).

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

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

God can neither deceive, nor be deceived; he cannot deceive because he is truth, nor be deceived because he is wisdom.

Indeed, it is not in human nature to deceive others for any long time, without in a measure deceiving ourselves too.

Those who deceive others, deceive themselves, as they will find at last, to their cost.

A lie consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving.

Ananias, in the effort to gain a reputation for greater generosity than he had actually earned, tried to deceive the believing community, but in trying to deceive the community he was really trying to deceive the Holy Spirit, whose life-giving power had created the community and maintained it in being.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

If we confess our sins, we can rely on him in his righteousness to forgive us our sins and to make us clean from all unrighteousness.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

IN this passage, John describes and condemns two further mistaken ways of thought.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

(1) There are some people who say that they have no sin.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

That may mean either of two things.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

It may describe people who say that they have no responsibility for their sin.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

It is easy enough to find defences behind which to seek to hide.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

We may blame our sins on our upbringing or on our genes, on our environment, on our temperament or on our physical condition.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

We may claim that someone misled us and that we were led astray.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

It is a human characteristic that we seek to shuffle out of the responsibility for sin.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

Or it may describe people who claim that they can sin and come to no harm.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

It is John’s insistence that, when people have sinned, excuses and self-justifications are irrelevant.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

The only thing which will meet the situation is humble and penitent confession to God and, if need be, to other people too.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

Then John says a surprising thing. He says that we can depend on God in his righteousness to forgive us if we confess our sin

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

On the face of it, we might well have thought that God in his righteousness would have been much more likely to condemn than to forgive.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

But the point is that God, because he is righteous, never breaks his word; and Scripture is full of the promise of mercy to all who come to him with penitent hearts.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

God has promised that he will never despise the contrite heart and he will not break his word.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

If we humbly and sorrowfully confess our sins, he will forgive.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

The very fact of making excuses and looking for self-justification shuts us out from forgiveness, because it blocks our way to penitence; the very fact of humble confession opens the door to forgiveness, for those with penitent hearts can claim the promises of God.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

(2) There are some people who say that they have not in fact sinned.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

That attitude is not nearly so uncommon as we might think.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

Any number of people do not really believe that they have sinned and rather resent being called sinners.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

Their mistake is that they think of sin as the kind of thing which gets into the news.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

They forget that sin is hamartia, which literally means a missing of the target.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

To fail to be as good a father, mother, wife, husband, son, daughter, employee or person as we might be is to sin; and that includes us all.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

In any event, anyone who claims not to have sinned is in effect doing nothing less than calling God a liar, for God has said that all have sinned.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

So, John condemns those who believe that they are so far advanced in knowledge and in the spiritual life that sin for them has ceased to matter; he condemns those who evade the responsibility for their sin or who hold that sin has no effect upon them; he condemns those who have never even realized that they are sinners.

The Letters of John and Jude The Sinner’s Self-Deception (1 John 1:8–10)

The essence of the Christian life is first to realize our sin and then to go to God for that forgiveness which can wipe out the past and for that cleansing which can make the future new.

No matter how hard we try, we cannot be completely pure and sinless.

This may shock you, but I want you to know I am not perfect, not even close.

I’ll tell you something else—neither are you!

Many Christians deceive themselves by calling their sin something else.

We call it “mature entertainment”; God calls it evil thoughts (Mt 15:19).

King James Version Chapter 15

19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:

We call it “adult” language; God calls it filthy language (Col. 3:8).

King James Version Chapter 3

ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them. 8 But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.

We call it a “harmless affair”; God calls it adultery (Mt 5:27–28).

King James Version Chapter 5

27 Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: 28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

We are so eager to be tolerant and open-minded we legitimize and glamorize sin.

Many Christians have become so open-minded their brains have fallen out!

However, what warning does God give us in Isaiah 5:20a?

King James Version Chapter 5

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; That put darkness for light, and light for darkness; That put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

The truth is we all continue to sin, so to stay close to God, we must scrutinize our hearts, analyze our lives, and …