Sermon Tone Analysis

February 3, 2008

*1 John 1:5-10*

 

Introduction: How many of us have been told by our parents to do something?

How many of us have told them yes to get them off our backs and eventually we get screamed at for not doing it?

How many of us have made empty promises?

How many of us say one thing yet do another?

How many of us are living as hypocrites?

We find in this letter of John’s, he speaking and dealing with sin and living what is truth.

God is holy, He is light and cannot stand sin, and in fact He despises it.

(v.5)

The author John is very specific and emphasizing that there is no darkness at all in God for He is completely Light.

We must understand that light is not the opposite of darkness or vice versa but darkness is the absence of light.

So therefore darkness is the absence of God.

Fellowship is being one in community with, taking from passage, light or darkness.

It is either you are walking in fellowship with God or you are walking or living a life in sin.

Walking is doing, talking is cheap when it is not backed up by action.

So our words or even our beliefs in our minds or what we say is useless unless we live it out.

If we live out what we say, that is truth, but if we live other than what we say, then we are living a lie, and we deceive ourselves.

The passage constantly says “if we say, if we say” (v.

6, 8, 10) and then John goes on to say “we walk, if we walk, if we” (v.

6, 7).

It’s comparing and contrasting those who walk and say.

If the two don’t match up then there is contradiction, a disagreement and obviously our walk shows what we truly believe or are.

~*Think about this, if I told you I am a nerd, I am very diligent student and I am disciplined and love to study.

I wish this were true but if you saw how I live and what I do in my free time, you would think otherwise.

I can say it to you, I can believe it in my mind but it’s simply not true.

With that said, there are two roads we walk:

1. we walk in the light which is we walk with Christ or

2. we walk in darkness which we live in sin.

*I.**

Be Cautious when in Darkness*

The darkness is often a metaphor for ignorance respecting divine things and human duties, and the accompanying ungodliness and immorality.

And often times we find ourselves in the darkness, in our sin, living for the World but complacent within it because we ignore the dangers, we get use to it or don’t see anything greater than it.

Why are we often complacent within the darkness?:

*1) The deception of Satan* – he gives us false hopes and constantly longs to distract us from putting our hopes in the cross.

He doesn’t want us to know the truth of God and hell.

He will do whatever he can in his ability for you to worship yourself and enjoy the temporary things of this world rather than God and longing for heaven.

Satan has so many of you deceived into thinking there is nothing to look forward to, just enjoy life now and don’t think about the consequences as long as it feels good now.

Think about what the world struggles with, premarital sex, drugs, pornography, money, cutting themselves, suicide, etc.

All of these are temporary and give false relief and security.

~* The satanic bible doesn’t teach you to worship Satan but it’s to worship yourself.

*2) Our pride* – we like to see ourselves better than we think we are or we want to feel we are in more control of things than we should, acting like God.

We are too selfish and blind to see the necessity for change in our hearts and will do whatever we can in our ability to think to ourselves that we are okay.

We live a life that is inconsistent with God’s standards or we deceive ourselves that it is okay to not desire God and need to follow Him in everything.

Even at times when we fail or when we go to church on Sundays and read or pray once in a while, that we are fine.

But God calls us to walk in line with Him and obey Him and to turn away from sin completely.

For those who walk with God will be broken for they will see the truth of who they are and their necessity of God.

 

~*I remember in a time in my life when I was serving God in two different ministries, and God was really blessing me and growing me.

But I remember when I let my guard down and allowed Satan and my pride to deceive me of how God must be pleased with me because I am serving Him and sacrificing my time serving Him.

Only to allow myself to be blinded to my sin and thinking I had worth because I was serving God.

I neglected that I served not out of love but out of the enjoyment of being seen as a leader.

But even due to deceiving others and myself I found myself judgmental of others and not loving them as God calls me to, as I struggled with lust, and disgusting selfishness.

How I was disobedient and deceived I was but yet as God shined His light through His Words upon my sin and was shown truth that there are many dark sinful things in my life and that God wanted me to give to Him in surrender and walk away from.

To walk away from the darkness and into the Light.

Brothers and sisters is this your reality?

Or are you still living a nightmare in deception?

*II.

The Son was given so we can be forgiven*

*So we can be like Him and not to neglect Him*

And most of you don’t care, you come in so apathetic and with so many burdens, bitterness and you just don’t care.

God wants the best for you and you tell Him “you don’t care and want things your way”.

But the very thing you don’t understand about God’s heart is, is that He loves you and wants you to be true, to be what we are all called to be, a child of God.

Our Heavenly Father has called us to be like Him because that is what we were created for, for Holiness.

To be set apart for God so all the world may see Christ in all of us.

The Creator created us, given us purpose, and understands our hearts and souls longing.

Only the Creator knows theses things, but our Lord knows our hearts and how we have perverted ourselves with sin.

We reject Joy for happiness, peace for relief, truth for counterfeit, holiness for sin, purpose for success, light for darkness, Christ for the world, eternal life for eternal damnation.

Brothers and sisters is this is true, listen and hear God’s plea with you this morning!

God loves you and though we have fallen completely short of the glory of God, instead of rejecting us, He sent His one and only Son to die so that we may have true joy, peace, truth, purpose, reconciliation, and eternal life.

God has not left us in our slavery to sin but has risen and has gone to be with our Father in heaven to speak on our behalf when we approach God on Judgment Day.

We are have a Counselor, the Holy Spirit that is in those who have accepted Jesus as Savior which gives us the ability to follow in obedience to God and not in slavery to sin.

So we are free from sin and yet we live like we are still in bondage to it.

Yes brothers and sisters we have the old creation in us that we need to constantly fight but we are given a new creation that has been raised from death with Christ and now we are able to walk in fellowship with the Light.

*III.*

*The Light will bring us to repentance and give us true contentment*

And through that Jesus our Lord and Savior has given us the ministry of repentance, we are able to come honestly before God, in His Holy presence because of God’s wrath has been satisfied on the Cross, and confess our sins and be made whole again (v.9).

So we must repent, repentance is a gift, it is a blessing to be able to come honestly before God.

But as we genuinely do this, we once again come before God, we are saying that we acknowledge that we have been disobedient and have hurt our Heavenly Father’s heart and need forgiveness and we therefore accept this forgiveness as we bring our sin before the cross and cleansed by the blood of Christ.

We therefore say God here is my life I offer it to you, and walk away from darkness and follow God.

We are restored and once again claiming the freedom from sin in Christ.

But often we stop here and continue to sin, but true repentance is to turn completely away from sin.

I know it’s hard because we fail over and over but God wants us to love Him and if we love Him we’d have fellowship with Him and therefore obey.

But that is why we are able to come before God because He loves us, and wants us to live apart from the death of sin.

~*It’s like when you sleep early evening with the lights off and then all of sudden you wake up and then turn on the light, oh my goodness it burns!

It’s like I’m a zombie or something but then when I open my eyes again I see the truth of things.

So I ask you brothers and sisters, are you walking the talk, are you walking in obedience to the Word of God, being more like Jesus

Or are you living in Darkness, living for the World, yourself, and deceived by Satan and living lives that is contrary to what God has called you?

If we have not walked in the Light, we must come in repentance.

I tell you the only way to be in the Light is to understand our Father’s heart through the Word and to be out of darkness is to accept the Gospel that Jesus is our Lord and Savior who died and rose again to redeem us.

The true joy comes when we are given this eternal hope to one day be with Jesus in heaven forever, no more hurts, no more worries, that we accepted no matter and we don’t have to constantly find the next high because God was what we were made for and we get the greatest gift of all, Jesus.

So brothers and sisters which road do you walk, the road of darkness, full of dissatisfaction, following the world and the crowd or do we follow the cross?

There once was a famous tightrope walker who stretched a cable across Niagara Falls and was giving a demonstration of his ability.

A crowd had gathered to watch and every time he went across the falls and back they would cheer wildly.

One man in front yelled out to the tightrope walker "You are the greatest tightrope walker in the world!"

The tightrope walker looked at the man and asked "Do you really think so?"

The man answered, "Yes, I believe you are the greatest!"

The tightrope walker smiled then asked the man "Do you think I could walk across that cable pushing a wheelbarrow?"

The man replied, "Yes, I believe you could!"

The tightrope walker replied, "Well, let's see."

He then went to his truck, took out a wheelbarrow and proceeded to push the wheelbarrow across the falls and back.

The man in the crowd cheered and yelled out, "I knew you could do it since you are the greatest in the world!"