God is...
1 John- That you may know you have life • Sermon • Submitted
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· 8 viewsthe contrast of light and dark shows us God's perfection
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5 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. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 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. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
In the text we have before us today are some very important issues. The biggest of which is the tension we all feel about sin.
If we mishandle the text, then we will get the idea that sin is either something means you are not saved at all or sin is something that is no big deal… both of which are wrong.
“We are like a drunk man on a horse… if we fall off one side we quickly get back on only to fall off the other side” Martin Luther - I am paraphrasing this of course.
We could easily read this passage and say anyone who sins is walking in darkness and then has no fellowship with God, which is not exactly what John is saying here.
He also is not saying that we can sin all we want as long as we get really good at confessing it, then it isn’t a big deal.
There is a balance to be struck here but again it would do us well to remind ourselves of who John was originally talking to and speaking against.
The Gnostics were those who liked to mix the spiritual nature of the Christianity with their own teaching, they denied the physical resurrection of Jesus and promoted a false gospel using mystical spiritual language borrowed from even the Apostles teachings.
So what we need to know is that John uses contrasts here to illustrate something but we need to be careful how we read them without making them say something he was not saying. Here is what I mean… Falling into sin is not exactly equivalent to walking in the darkness. And being super spiritual is not the same as walking in the light.
When John is talking about those who walk in darkness he is talking about those who believe a different Gospel but claim to know Christ. Being in darkness is a word picture that means you cannot see, as opposed to walking in light where you can clearly see.
So those who are believing something other than the Gospel are walking in darkness and cannot see their own sin and need for a savior, yet those who are walking in light are becoming more and more aware of their sin and their need for a savior, so they confess it all to God who is Just..
So we need to read what John wrote in light of who he was writing to before importing it to our time and perceived needs. But let’s not just treat 1 john like it is a stand alone book, rather we need to remember that it is one many books that make up the Bible which has one point altogether...
The Bible is a revelation of God to humanity, and each book in the bible tells us something about who God is, which is of the utmost importance to understand before we can apply it to our lives.
So today as we look at the text, there will be things we can learn that will effect our lives in response to who God is, but we first must understand who God is...
1john
5 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.
Last week we talked about the message they Heard from Jesus, how to have fellowship with the Apostles and ultimately Christ, through that which was from the beginning, God in the person of Jesus Christ and the good news of the Gospel.
Notice John says this message was heard by them from Him, Jesus, and it is being proclaimed or told to them and us...
There is something huge we must understand here...
That God IS Light
God IS Light
God IS Light
Do you know what it means that God IS light??? that means that God is not A light that is among other lights, God is not a light bearer, and Light is not one of his character...
NO NO NO… God IS Light! meaning there is no light without God!
We try in human terms to understand God, but we fail miserably every time because we are trying import our ideas of a man into our understanding of God.
The Bible tells us that God is Spirit...
24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
That means that God doesn’t have some sort of old man body… he is not Gandalf… he is spirit and he is everywhere at every point in time. That means that the very essence of God is Spirit and we in our spirits have to worship him in spirit and truth, which is the truth of how he revealed himself to us.
But
But to say he is spirit may not be enough because that may leave you with the idea that he is a puff of smoke, because we try to picture what a spirit is in human terms… God is more than that picture too… look...
1john4.
16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
God is Love… He is not partially made up from love, he IS love!
Meaning there is no Love outside of the very essence of God. He didn’t create Love, he IS Love!
So God is Spirit and he is Love, both things by the way, John has written to us about. It was a high priority for the Apostle John to let us know who God is, and how Jesus and God are one!
Yet in this passage today he says that God is Light!
“God is light means that he is the sum of all excellency” A.W. Pink
But John goes on to say, “In him is no darkness at all”… Was it not enough to say that God IS light?
This emphatic negative the Positive… It means that God is Diametrically opposed to darkness. To say that there is no darkness means that God is absolutely perfect… pure light without any hint of darkness in it… Our minds cannot even imagine that without being blinded.
The implications of this are huge… We cannot have fellowship with true light and be in darkness. To be in darkness is the opposite of being in light.
But how can we see this light? In what ways can we experience it?
12 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
By Jesus saying he is the light of the world, he is saying that he and the father are of the same essence! furthermore, to follow him is to walk in that light! and it is to Have that light… but how can we be sure of this? Isn’t God the Light of the world?
Jesus disciples asked him questions like this once, look at his response...
9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
To see Jesus is to see the father… Jesus is the Light of the world and God IS light! Yet God allowed his light to be seen by us in Jesus Christ...
4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
So we can see that God IS light, he let light shine in darkness, and he gives us this illumination in our hearts so we may know him and see Jesus!
So when John says God Is Light and in him there is no darkness at all… He is teaching us about the perfection of God and how it is at the core of their message!
But what does light do?
Light exposes hidden things and destroys darkness
Light exposes hidden things and destroys darkness
To say God is light is to say that God, in Jesus Christ will expose the darkness of this world and destroy the darkness of this world.
Light always overcomes darkness, darkness cannot overcome light. Yet if the source of light in darkness diminishes, then the light can go out. But if God IS light and he is shining in our hearts by Jesus Christ, then our source is eternal and will never go out. All sorts of hidden things will be exposed and darkness will be destroyed as we have fellowship with him, because he is light!
lets continue
6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
Think about this… If you really do not know God, you do not know he is Spirit, you do not know he is love, and you do not know he is Light. If you do not know this, then how could one say they have fellowship with him???
For the original readers who were being told by false teachers that they could use part of Jesus’ teaching but needed more secret knowledge, they were still in darkness. But it was becoming popular for these teachers to say they were “believers” and yet they didn’t believe in the resurrected Christ.
So as John is talking to them he starts saying, “WE” in an effort to show them the contrast, how they are different than those who claim to know God.
He is saying, look at our lives… Are we saying we have fellowship with him and appear to be walking in darkness? If we did we would be lying to you then and we wouldn’t be practicing the truth.
There was a difference between John and the Apostles and other false teachers is that they talked a lot but didn’t practice truth. But he isn’t just talking about them, he is talking about US too...
But now with Them, we who are reading this have the same issue. Do we say we have fellowship with Christ, who is the true light of the world, and yet live like we do not know him? That’s what he means by saying the word walk… To walk in light or to walk in darkness means to live or act as though you are in that state.
So to say one thing and do other things is a contradiction, like being in darkness and light at the same time… you cant do that. This is what it means to live a lie… Maybe you have done this before, maybe you feel this way right now. The sinner who refuses to set his life in harmony with God’s will can’t claim to have fellowship with him. The gnostics were doing this at the end of the first century, they separated their words from their deeds and tried to lead people astray.
But with God there is no darkness in him, so we must walk in the light...
7 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.
1john
So now we are getting somewhere...
Last week we talked about the idea of having fellowship with Christ and abiding in him, letting Gods word abide in you, etc...
The concept is the same here. Having fellowship with the Father and the Son means intimately sharing in the full light of God’s presence. Nothing is hidden in the the brilliance of the fellowship with the true Light! In God is absolutely no darkness and no need to hide anything.
look at what is says in psalm 139...
12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.
Why do we make efforts to hide what God already sees? Who are we fooling?
Rather we should walk in the Light, in fellowship with God by his Son through his Word… Why? Because we know that the Blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.
See people are not truly walking in the light because the light will expose sin… and if you are really in Christ, that is a good thing because we know that he cleanses us from all of it.
Jesus blood doesn’t work for some sin sometimes and not others… His Blood works on all sin, So walk in the light and fellowship we have with one another. Don’t pretend that the light does not expose your sin… why? Why shouldn’t we be afraid of the light that exposes our sin?
8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
If we are so fearful that our sin will be exposed then we may not actually be believers in the first place.
If we like to go about acting like we do not have sin, the only ones we are deceiving is ourselves… God knows it already. Sure other people don’t but that is because we are not really acting like true believers.
Listen, no one can be in Christ if they haven’t repented of Sin. Everybody who is is in Christ has had to acknowledge that… Why then, after we have come into the knowledge of the truth do we feel like it is time to start hiding what the light is exposing?
So one of the sure ways we can know that we have true life in Christ is by seeing if we are trying to cover what God already knows. And if we say we have no sin… the truth is not in us...
This should be a sober verse for all of us, because there is moments where we all like to act like we have no sin… Yet the Holy Spirit has a way of putting his thumb on us and letting us feel tension… Some of you may be feeling that now as I am talking, I know i do all the time.
We have to remember
In these moments we need to remember the good news though… Walking in the Light is not as much about us as it is about God… We need to know him for who he is to feel free from this sinful pressure...
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Now there is so much Good news here I can hardly take it.
First things first… we want to stop and make a big deal about all the “IF’s” in this passage… There is definitely a response we have to all this, but before we can know that we must see the glorious truths about God… remember the bible isn’t primarily about you and I it is about God...
So what have we said already...
God is light, God is Spirit, God is Love… But here we see that He is also Faithful and he is Just...
First God Is Faithful
God IS Faithful
God IS Faithful
So much of what John has told us about God is amazing no doubt, but this statement makes it so much better… Why?
Well, think about it… If we confess our sins, If we do not pretend like they are not there, because God already knows it and darkness is as light to him… He is faithful and just to Forgive...
What do you think of when you hear the word Faithful??? How about Old Faithful??? It is a geyser that goes off in Yellowstone park. A geyser shoots water into the air, and old faithful goes off every 90 mins for around 3-10 mins each time. It has been doing this since 1870...
It is faithful… Consistent… It doesn’t change… But this is a poor example because God is faithful on a whole other level… Look...
13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.
First thing we need to understand is that God is Faithful even and especially when we are not!
Our problem is that we are used to other people treating us a certain way and expect to be let down, yet God is not a man! He is Faithful… You can count on him to Forgive… He doesn’t change...
8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
He will never change, he is Consistent...
6 “For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.
All through scripture we see that God is Faithful that he never changes, and he doesn’t change his mind. In fact we cannot change his mind. We may change our minds all the time but God does not!
We expect him to give up on us when we are confessing our sin over and over but he does not!
The Light of fellowship with God constantly exposes our sin and destroys dark ways that seem be a temptation for us. And when we are so tired of fighting sin, and when we fall we expect God to eventually require something more of us than just bringing the truth out into the light by confessing… But he never does… He is faithful to forgive and purify us from all unrighteousness!
Every time, no matter what… People may get tired of you but God does not… People may choose to not forgive you, but God does not treat you like you deserve to be treated…
WHY???
Because God is Just
God IS Just
God IS Just
Do you understand what it means for God to be JUST?
We live in a day when we know all too well what it means for authorities and judges to corrupt, and for there to be a sense of Injustice...
Think about a judge… If a Judge does not uphold the law, is he a good judge or a bad judge???
If he allows someone to be imprisioned that does not belong there… is he just or unjust?
Well, think of God as your Judge… Knowing that we all sin and knowing that we are all guilty, and knowing that God is perfect and holy… Is God Just if he punishes us for our sin??? He would be… except for the fact that he did something for us that we could not do for ourselves in sending Jesus to the cross for us to die in our place for our sin...
So when I say that people may not forgive you, but God does not treat you like you deserve to be treated when you sin against him, and this is because God is Just...
What I am saying is that he is the righteous judge who has already punished our sin in Christ on the cross… If you are in Christ, IF you believe the Gospel… Then God will not punish you for your sin… In fact he cannot! Because he is just and he has already made a payment for you sin.
If God treated us like we deserve, if he was not faithful even when we are faithless, if he didn’t forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness, then he would not have been Just in allowing Christ to die in our place!
We try to hide sin from him because we think God will judge me if he knew what I am doing… and yet he does know and he calls you to repent of it and confess it.. to allow the light to expose it so you don’t act like it isn’t there and deceive yourself.
In verse 7 it says that the Blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin… What you need to know is this...
22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
heb
There is no forgiveness without blood shed… But the shedding of Jesus’ blood was a voluntary substitute and sacrifice. It was so powerful it made a payment that is forever enough
27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
Those who walk in the light, who confess their sin receive forgiveness and are purified of all unrighteousness, and God isn’t looking to judge you but to forgive you until he comes back for you!
Jesus bleed and died for our sins, and God is Just and Faithful to forgive us IF we confess! Who wouldn’t want to take that deal?!
Only those who are walking in darkness and do not want the light to expose their sin… and so John warns us...
10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
It is final verdict for the unbeliever that refuses to acknowledge sin… He is not just lying to himself and deceiving himself, but he is calling God a liar...
Such a person who says he has no sin and claims he is not a sinner because he has not sinned, he is making himself equal to God, the only Sinless one! through God’s word he convicts mankind of sin, and if we refuse to hear his word and admit our sin, then John brings us to the climax… we are actually calling God a liar!
There are 5 conditional verses here, 3 are negative and to are positive...
Let’s look at the progression of an unbeliever
6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
So we lie, we are not practicing God’s truth
8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
1john1.8
We deceive ourselves, and truth is not in us
10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
We make him a liar, and his word is not in us!
yet John doesn’t just do this exercise to show us what it looks like to be an unbeliever… he showed exactly what true believers look like
7 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.
What does it mean to walk in the light? What does it look like to have the Light expose the areas of our life we do not even what to acknowledge? like this...
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
To confess means to say the same thing about sin that God says about it… God would apply his law to us and have to declare “you are a sinner”
And like the tax collector at the temple praying, I must acknowledge my sin and pray, “Oh God, have mercy on the sinner”
And when God and man say the same thing about sin, when we confess it, the blood of Jesus dissolves the stain of sin… God will remember it no more, he is faithful and just to Forgive and cleanse from ALL unrighteousness!
There are t-shirts and coffee mugs and bumper stickers that well meaning christians are using to try to tell the world that “God is Love”… But no one is displaying the sign that says “God is Light” But that is exactly what John is doing here. He first say God is light and then later he will say that God is Love… And order is important because Light coming before love means that the light will uncover all the things we try to keep hidden. When we have fellowship with God we cannot hide our sins from him. Sins like darkness have no place in God’s light… They Must be removed, and that is exactly what believing in The Gospel of Jesus Christ proclaims! God is Faithful and Just to Forgive!
3 questions I want us to ask this week in our groups.
Question 1 - What does it mean that God IS Light?
Question 1 - What does it mean that God IS Light?
How do we miss this? How do we live and pretend that God isn’t perfect and in him there is no darkness, and so walking light will expose any sin in us?
Why is that scary to us? And why do we sometimes fight it?
Question 2 - Why is it important to remember that God is Faithful?
Question 2 - Why is it important to remember that God is Faithful?
Seems like we forget who we are dealing with sometimes. We make God out to be a really old man rather than the God who is Spirit and truth and love and light. We project on God how others may treat us because we know what we deserve, yet we forget just how consistent and faithful God is.
When you think about his faithfulness, how does it change the way you feel about your won life? Does it give you hope… It should!
Question 3 - What is so powerful about God being Just
Question 3 - What is so powerful about God being Just
Do we really understand that it was Jesus’ own blood that made forgiveness for our sins? Do we really believe that it was enough to satisfy God’s wrath? then why do we act like we will be judged when he already judged sin on the cross?