COMFORT IN THE DAWN

1 John 1:5–10 NIV

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 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. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

INTRODUCTION

Love, Light, Living Water.

They make up the core of our Mission and Vision Statements, and serve as the action steps of what we are called by God to do as His church. (P)

Love is foundational to all of this - it is the reason anyone does anything of any significance for anyone.

It’s why God created us.

It’s why He provides for us.

It’s why Jesus died for us.

It’s why He’s prepared a place for us, so we can dwell with Him...He wants to be with us....

And in our love for Him and others, it’s why we fulfill His commands to share the gospel so others can partake in these wonderful gifts, as well. (P)

That’s what we’ve spent the last several weeks discussing, because it’s not until we learn to love with the love of God that we care enough to want to help others - and to be that light and living water to a world in need. (P)

Today, we move on, and begin a couple of messages about what it means to fulfill our role as light.

It’s the second action step you see on the front of your bulletin, but let’s see how this is worded in our Vision and Mission Statements, and then we will explore this further. {CLICK}

Vision Statement: To be known as a people who embody God’s love, who are a light in the valley, and a means by which His living water flows. [Matthew 22:37-40; 1 John 1:7; Matthew 28:19-20]

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Mission Statement: We are here to glorify God and love first through our worship that enables us to live out Christ’s commands in our behavior, acts of service, and Christ-like redeeming relationships towards others, thus fulfilling the Great Commission.

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We will abide and walk in the light of Christ,

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Rapidly flowing with streams of living water from God’s Spirit, which empowers us to share His love and light in the valley and beyond. [John 15:4; Isaiah 58; John 7:37-39]

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So how do we do this?

How do we, out of our love for other people and our concern for their salvation, fulfill our role as light? (P)

Well, the first step is right here in our Mission, discovering who the source of light is, and what it means for us to abide in that light. We can’t be light for others until we understand where it comes from and how we abide in it ourselves.

Remember, abide means to remain, stay, or reside, so keep that in mind as we talk about what it means to see Jesus as our source of light. (P)

I’ve shared before a little of my emotional and spiritual journey in those early months of 2013, after I had left here to try both the sanitation and truck driving industries. I had mentioned that neither of those jobs was what I thought they would be, and I never found any enjoyment in them at all.

It was a dark time of searching - one that was miserable at the time, but I don’t at all regret. It was something I had to go through. (P)

But one of the feelings I will never forget was what came over me within the first two hours of my shift every day.

In both picking up trash and driving a tractor-trailer, my shift always started in the wee hours of the morning. I was usually getting up between 3 and 4 to be in the truck between 4 and 5, and at that time of the year, there is still plenty of darkness to get through before the first light of the sun.

And it only made the misery of those jobs worse, being out at that time of morning, when it was still dark and hard to see. So every morning, I would look anxiously out my truck window for that first sign of light coming over the eastern horizon. And not that I suddenly liked those jobs when the sun came up, but there was definitely peace and joy that would always set in when dawn broke and daylight had arrived for another day. (P)

When we think of the light that we identify as Christ, and what we are ultimately called to be for others, we examine this Greek word, phos, and find that among the English synonyms for this word are, in fact, light, daylight, and dawn. (P)

And when we understand dawn to be the first light after a long, dark night, we can grasp why this word is so important, not only during my days in those trucks, but even more importantly, in our spiritual lives.

It’s what the Apostle John is describing here in the first chapter of his letter. (P)

John says there is light, there is darkness - and they cannot coexist - it’s either one or the other, and he goes on to describe what each of those things stands for, and we’ll see that momentarily.

But he says that light will always overpower dark. And that’s a great thing when we come to understand what all light entails. But in this life, as long as sin is around, we still have to deal with darkness, and so there is still a somewhat painful, illuminating-and-cleansing process that must occur for us.

That’s what John is talking about here when he discusses these three things that the light of Christ exposes, which are critical for the Christian to grasp and appreciate.

First, he reminds us that: {CLICK}

1. Light exposes the standards of God.

...because that’s where it all starts. We don’t even know right and wrong, or light and dark, until we understand those standards. (P)

John says in the last half of verse 5: {CLICK}

1 John 1:5 NIV

God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.

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(P) God is the only one who fits that description - no one else can say that of themselves, and therefore, God alone is qualified to set the standard, the laws and commands that we find in His Word. (P)

That’s a big contention point in today’s culture in the debate over the authority of scripture, but that’s the simplest and frankly most logical way to explain it - no one else can set a perfect standard, because no one else is perfect.

And as you go to the first chapter of John’s gospel, we see how this worked when God’s Son, Jesus, being fully human and fully God, came into the picture.

It opens this way: {CLICK}

John 1:1 NIV

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Verses 4 and 5: {CLICK}

John 1:4–5 NIV

In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. {CLICK} The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John the apostle then introduces John the Baptist in these verses, whose job it would be to prepare the way of Christ, saying things like what we find in verse 9: {CLICK}

John 1:9 NIV

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

(P)

Now it’s important to make a distinction here early on.

While there is a literal sense to calling God light, as many verses throughout the Bible refer to Him being the only light in Heaven, and Him actually taking on a luminescence that keeps us from being able to look directly at Him, like: {CLICK}

1 Timothy 6:16 NIV

God alone is immortal and lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.

It’s like getting up early in the morning, before it’s light, and the house is pitch black - like when I was doing those jobs I was telling you about. And you go to your bathroom and turn on those lights, particularly if they’re especially bright lights. I have always hated how uncomfortable that is until you get used to the light.

So there is a significant element to His actual brightness, but most of the passages we look at today refer to His moral character. (P)

God sets the standards of what is right and wrong, He keeps those standards, and His Son is the only one to have ever done that perfectly on Earth, which is why He is referred to here as the Word. It is Christ who is the final authority on the standards that we now read in the scriptures today. (P)

The darkness occurs when those standards are violated by sin. We all walk in darkness when we sin. That’s why John implies in both of his works - his gospel and his letter - that no darkness is found in God.

In fact, there was only one time that Jesus was associated with darkness - and that was not His doing - He did not sin, but it was when He agreed to take my sin, your sin, and the sins of all people for all time on His back. As He hung on the cross, taking the condemnation for all of that sin, Jerusalem saw that darkness first hand - in the literal sense: {CLICK}

Luke 23:44–46 NIV

It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, {CLICK} for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. {CLICK} Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.

For three hours, the land was dark, as sin was hung in full view for all to see, taking on the punishment sin deserved - ultimate darkness. But that didn’t happen on our backs, where that belonged; it happened on Jesus’ back, out of love. (P)

That doesn’t mean, however, that life is a free-for-all and we can continue walking in whatever ungodly path we might be going down. Yes, Jesus defeated sin, but it is still up to us to avoid it, to seek His forgiveness when we mess up, and to repent. That is, we are so broken by sin that we no longer want it to be a part of us, so we, with God’s help, remove it from our lifestyle and count on His strength moving forward to avoid it, and HIs forgiveness when we slip up. (P)

Sin is still dark, and as one commentator puts it, if anyone walks in darkness, he is hiding from the truth which light reveals.

I love how Charles Spurgeon describes that concept:

A young girl was putting a button on her father’s coat. She was sitting with her back to the window, and she said, “Father, I can’t see; I am in my own light.”

He said, “My daughter, that is where you have been all your life!”

Spurgeon goes on to say:

This is the position of some of you spiritually. You are in your own light; you think too much of yourselves. There is plenty of light in the Sun of Righteousness, but you get in the dark by putting self in the way of that Sun. Oh, that your self might be put away! (P)

Sometimes, we need to get out of the way.

We get in the way when we don’t take proper time for prayer, study, and meaningful time with God. You can’t have light if you don’t turn it on. It’s up to you to flip the switch on your time with God.

We get in the way when we think we know better than God what His standards are, by debating the scriptures we don’t like instead of trying to understand them and the reasons behind them.

We get in the way when we know what the scriptures say, but we choose flat-out defiance to them because we aren’t willing to sacrifice our way of life for one that God gives us that is so much better. (P)

We can trust the Word, because we can trust Jesus, the Word in Flesh, who set the standard, modeled the standard, and then made a way out when we violate the standard. (P)

Even King David understood that, and that was before Jesus had even come into the picture. {CLICK}

Psalm 119:105 NIV

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.

(P) So now that we understand that the Light of the World illuminates the standards we are called to live by, what happens when we do mess up and get in the way?

That’s what the rest of John’s letter and this message are about, starting with number 2: {CLICK}

2. Light exposes the horrors of sin.

As we think of those standards that God has established and Christ has confirmed, it doesn’t take long to realize that we do, in fact, violate them more often than any of us would like to admit.

And sometimes, that’s the problem. We don’t want to admit it. We want to keep it tucked away in those dark, untouched corners of our basement, because we don’t want to let them go, and we think it’s our own best-kept secret. (P)

Starting at verse 6 in his letter, John walks his readers through this thought process that most of us can recognize from going through it on our own.

He says it this way: {CLICK}

1 John 1:6 NIV

If we claim to have fellowship with God and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.

Let’s talk about this word fellowship:

That word in the Greek, Koinonian, means first and foremost:

Wuest’s Word Studies in the Greek New Testament Chapter One

to have

(P)

John is basically saying here that you can’t have such an inflated view of self that you're overlooking the serious disconnect that exists between your sinful darkness and His perfect light. (P)

Now, that doesn’t mean God doesn’t want fellowship with us - He does, which is why Jesus came.

But if we aren’t making an effort to live up to His standards, and we’re just going about life in this entitled fashion, as if to say, God and I are tight, He’s my guy, and I don’t need to make any changes, then something is way off.

And John knew how we think - he was a human, too, and He spent three years with a lot of guys who had a hard time with that, and one man who exposed that to them when Jesus first taught these lessons during His ministry. So he knew exactly where his readers' minds would go next - in saying, well, if this fellowship thing is true, then I’ll just say that I don’t have much sin. Because I’m mostly a good person. I mean, I would certainly never do what some of those others have done!

Hence, verse 8: {CLICK}

1 John 1:8 NIV

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

Then verse 10: {CLICK}

1 John 1:10 NIV

If we claim we have not sinned, we make God out to be a liar and His word is not in us.

And the reason that is true is because of what Paul tells us in: {CLICK}

Romans 3:23–24 NIV

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, {CLICK} and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

(P) Now, that last part will be important in a moment when we move to number 3, but we can’t appreciate that grace until we understand the darkness of sin...unrated by God.

It’s in there. We can’t deny it, we can’t dumb it down in comparison to others, and we can’t hide it. And the moment we try to, God’s light turns on and shows us the truth. (P)

I mentioned last week that my parents did a good job keeping the house clean. They taught me well at a young age, too, with the chores I would have in that department. It may not always show, now, but they did a good job. You almost never saw crumbs on their floor or dust on the furniture.

But I remember often being mesmerized by one sight, and you probably know exactly what I’m talking about - when, as clean as the house was, I would be sitting in the living room watching TV in sight of our dining room window that always let this bright ray of sun in. And in that beam, what did I see but those little dust particles dancing and floating in that light so abundantly?

That dust is everywhere, but you only see it in that ray of light.

And that’s how the light of Christ works. He would testify to this Himself in His conversation with Nicodemus in John, chapter 3. Verse 19: {CLICK}

John 3:19–21 NIV

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. {CLICK} Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. {CLICK} But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

And that’s what we were talking about last week when we mentioned how we have to explore those dark corners of our hearts to see if there are any grudges or tidbits of hate we may be holding onto in keeping us from loving others. And that’s how it works with all our sins.

We said that Jesus must expose these areas, again - not to condemn - but so we can see what we have to address and change, according to the now illuminated standards of God, so we know what we must confess and repent of in our now illuminated sin.

We do this so that, contrary to receiving condemnation for sin, we may see how, instead: {CLICK}

3. Light exposes the grace of Christ.

Here’s what John says this looks like in verse 7 of today’s text: {CLICK}

1 John 1:7 NIV

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.

Verse 9: {CLICK}

1 John 1:9 NIV

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

{CLICK}

John then gives a beautiful example of what this looked like when Jesus encountered the adulterous woman in his gospel, chapter 8.

The law-mongers were ready to stone her to death, but when they asked Jesus what should be done, He basically said - Sure, stone her according to the law - only one condition. Any among you who have never broken the law - who have never sinned, you get to be the one to cast the first stone. (P)

Jesus didn’t say - whoever never committed the same sin or whoever committed “lesser sins” gets to cast the first stone, but the one who never sinned. (P)

Only one person remained who had the right to cast the stone under that rule, and that was Jesus Himself. And His words were simple, but profound. When everyone had walked away because they couldn’t, by rights, condemn her, Jesus said:

Neither do I condemn you. (P)

He didn’t say what she did was okay. Yes, by law she should have been stoned - and frankly, if the laws were the same today, so should all of us according to our sins.

But the grace of Christ says, you do not have to endure what you deserve, because I’m taking care of that. But that doesn’t give us a free ride not to change, because His parting words were clear.

Go and sin no more. (P)

Then, in verse 12, He gives the entire crowd this lesson: {CLICK}

John 8:12 NIV

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

That’s how we go and sin no more, by following the standards of Christ, allowing them to illuminate the sins of our lives, but then undergoing the process of confession and repentance that, with the help of God, removes those evils from our lives and shows us the grace of Christ.

That process is described well in: {CLICK}

Proverbs 28:13 NIV

Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.

(P) Jim Wilson and Jim Sandell use the unpaid debt of our nation’s first president to describe grace this way:

New York City’s oldest library’s ledgers show that if George Washington were alive today, he might owe a huge fine for overdue books.

The library says Washington checked out the Law of Nations, along with a volume containing transcripts of debates from Britain’s House of Commons. The books were due November 2, 1789, but there is no record that Washington ever returned them.

Using the standard I remember of 25 cents per day, it would be over $21,000 per book. Yes, I’m a nerd who just had to figure that out.

Mark Bartlett, head librarian of the New York Society Library, says the institution is not seeking the 239 years' worth of late fees. He suggested the library would love to get the books back if they were located. (P)

That’s the story of everyone gathered here. We have all racked up debt because of sin, with a price tag far more than what George Washington owed a library.

And the only reason anyone’s story would not end with this beautiful picture of grace is if that person chose to reject Christ. And why anyone would want to do that, knowing all He has done for us, I have no idea, but it happens. (P)

Yes, we are all guilty, but Jesus is just waiting, and lovingly eager, to declare us innocent by His blood.

It’s what Paul tells the Corinthians - they, like all of us, were guilty.

But he says in: {CLICK}

1 Corinthians 6:11 NIV

You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

And so are we. (P)

CONCLUSION

So indeed, we must all take those moments where we give an honest evaluation of ourselves, where we are reminded of God’s standards, and the darkness that takes over when we fall into the traps of sin.

But just like my experience on the road all those years ago, we discover that there is comfort in the dawn. After a long night of sin, and being hunted and chased by Satan, we find peace in the light that comes from Christ as He shows us a grace that is like nothing else we could ever experience. And then we abide in that light. We remain connected to Christ, so we may be protected from Satan’s darkness. (P)

Progress magazine gives an article about Billy Graham I thought would be a great way to close for today and to begin to transition to what I want to focus on next week.

This article, posted in December of 1992, shares this story:

When Billy Graham was driving through a small southern town, he was stopped by a policeman and charged with speeding. Graham admitted his guilt, but was told by the officer that he would have to appear in court.

The judge asked, "Guilty, or not guilty?" When Graham pleaded guilty, the judge replied, "That'll be ten dollars -- a dollar for every mile you went over the limit."

Suddenly, the judge recognized the famous minister. "You have violated the law," he said. "The fine must be paid--but I am going to pay it for you." He took a ten-dollar bill from his own wallet, attached it to the ticket, and then took Graham out and bought him a steak dinner!

"That," said Billy Graham, "is how God treats repentant sinners!" (P)

When Billy Graham saw those lights in his mirror, I am sure he had no idea that his judge was going to show him that much grace and love.

But with Jesus, you can take that to the bank. When He shines and flashes His light, it isn’t to condemn you, for He already took care of that and paid that price for you on the cross. But we are called to repentance - to not continue living in those dark and dusty corners, but to live, instead, for Him.

We can’t take the light of Christ into the world if we are still living like the world that needs that light. That’s what we will zero in on next week when we talk about the second half of this light component. But let’s take this week to turn on the lights in our hearts and see what we need to clean out to be ready for the work our Mission and Vision are calling us into.