Sermon Tone Analysis

As He is in the Light

Preaching from

Naysayers, skeptics, unbelievers, and the like are all around.

The ones that bother me the most are the ones that say, I have a church or I’m _______ fill in the blank, but really they are avoiding the conversation of salvation because they have made their own doctrine or no doctrine.

America is full of people who claim Christianity as their religion, who have neither forgiven nor been forgiven, love not their enemy but love themselves, serve no one unless there is a reward, and never speak to or hear from God.

This has been a problem for many many years.

If we don’t like what the church offers, if you become offended by the word of God, write in your own language, your thoughts, your ideals, your laws, and use them, no one can tell you different.

We might do well to hand people a small book with many lines to be filled in and simply write on page 1 paragraph 1 I believe God… People can then fill in their theology based on nothing really at all.

Oh they might remember a few broken scripture verses and write a few that aren’t really in the Bible, or have a few worldly thoughts they think Christ said or stood for, but most will get it wrong.

That’s because many see judgment as the primary characteristic of God.

If we follow John’s words and do as he said, if we confess our sins outloud, certainly God will cause sickness to come upon us, harm, not good, bad things will happen.

Oh how we get it wrong.

But take a breath, John faced the same trouble.

I want you to take a minute and think about John here.

John the apostle, walked with Jesus and the disciples.

Heard Jesus preach, teach, saw Him heal, care for multitudes, live and die.

Saw with his own eyes, the resurrected Christ.

Youngest of the apostles, and the only one to live out his life to a natural death, he witnessed the martyrdom of James, he saw Jerusalem fall.

The Apostles were scattered and the church suffered persecution.

John, now 50 years later, not yet banished to Patmos, living in Ephesus, a father, maybe grandfather, certainly a father of the church is faced with a couple issues.

One: he wont live on earth forever to tell his story, the story of Jesus.

Two, the Gnostics and the Jews are perverting the message and arguing against Christ constantly.

They disrupt people’s faith and the life of the church.

So he writes.

He writes a letter for all to read.

He writes to the saints, to the saved, to the believers.

Keep this in mind as we reread his letter.

1:1-4

As a simple text, we read it with understanding that John was testifying to his audience that he/we, the Apostles, heard, saw, looked upon, handled Christ.

A simple testimony.

Unless, you are in a battle with the Gnostics.

The Gnostics had a different theology: Docetism.

Docetism taught that a god cannot take human form.

That God may have entered the body of the carpenter at some point but that He, God, clearly left Him prior to the execution on the cross.

And by the way, all matter is evil and there is no eternal life.

Jesus was a phantasm.

Now read 1:1-4 again.

The promises Christ made to us we share with you and you share with us in fellowship and we fellowship with Jesus and the Father, it is a full circle.

There is no broken promise, no failure in His promise, His promise is true, and I/We the apostles testify to you because we walked with Him.

John is testifying to the body, the church, Christ was, is and will remain.

John is testifying to the body, the Church, to hold fast to the promises we heard.

They were declared to us and we declare them to you.

What did John hear Jesus say?

John

John

John heard, saw, looked upon, and handled the living God who walked among us and taught us.

The Gnostics have never stepped into the fellowship of Christ and cannot know the truth.

You know people like this.

People who are skeptics, who have never walked in the truth.

People who have made up their own laws, and commandment.

People who dismiss Christianity for any number of reasons.

No one can interpret the Bible correctly.

It is an ancient Hebrew text written by weird people.

No one knows where it came from.

That’s a fairy tale.

But John says no!

1:5 This is the message we heard from Him and declare to you.

God is light.

Light: no darkness at all

Do you like to camp

Do you like camp fires

So bright and you eyes are so fixed to the light, you cant see in the woods.

You hear a bear out there ravaging in the leaves.

In the morning you realize all that noise was a squirrel!

Giant aunts took over the campsite story...

When you walk in the fellowship of Christ, the light, the light brings out, illuminates, raises to the front, exposes our sin.

When we have sin in our lives, we have a choice: remain in the shadows and do not deal with it.

Avoid all our friends, avoid the church and fall out of fellowship with God, or, when the light exposes our sin, we confess our sin and John writes what in verse 9?

He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness!

But you must walk in the light to stay in the fellowship verse 7 with one another.

One another here is you and Christ, not you and me.

John knows this and write in his gospel :

John 3:

John saw and heard Jesus ask us to come unto him: what is our response to the call to light?

It could be as Travis Cottrell wrote:

John is stating to the Gnostics; God’s promises are true and will not be broken

I come broken to be mended

I come wounded to be healed

I come desperate to be rescued

I come empty to be filled

I come guilty to be pardoned

By the blood of Christ the Lamb

And I'm welcomed with open arms

Praise God, just as I am

Genuine Fellowship with God

Illuminates truth

We are called to walk in not according to (Verse 7)

Walk in is a term of familial

Family, fellowship and together with God

According to is of the law: we will fail to be true witnesses for God when we obey the law and not according to light

Light prefers love

Light prefers fellowship

The godless are seductive, but their word is false

Darkness looks good and enticing

Makes us want to participate

Our carnal nature our true depravity is attracted to to darkness the opposite of God

If we walk in the darkness, we are walking in sin and we are not in fellowship with God

The Good News

if we confess our sins...

We have an advocate with the Father 2:1

He gave Himself, a propitiation, an appeasement for the wrath of God, to justify you and me before God