"The Light" (Part 1)
Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 16 viewsNotes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
Only once in sacred Scripture is an attribute of God elevated to the third degree. Only once is a characteristic of God mentioned three times in succession. The Bible says that God is holy, holy, holy. Not that He is merely holy, or even holy, holy. He is holy, holy, holy. The Bible never says that God is love, love, love; or mercy, mercy, mercy; or wrath, wrath, wrath; or justice, justice, justice. It does say that he is holy, holy, holy, that the whole earth is full of His glory. - RC Sproul
The study of the Holiness of God is not just insightful, but extraordinarily encouraging and joy bringing. Really? Yes so much so that John begins his letter desiring us to experience joy by proclaiming the reality of the Holiness of God. Huh? Man in our culture and society today why do you think an attribute that brings to light our sin, confronts us with what is true, reveals all of our secrets, and exposes all that we tried to sweep under the rug, would be encouraging in the slightest? I know its important but you actually gonna begin with it?
APPLICATION
The picture of the light of the Holiness of God compared to the sun does not help things either. The core temperature of the sun is fifteen million degrees centigrade. It is so hot that a pinhead heated to the temperature of the center of the sun "would emit enough heat to kill anyone who ventured within a thousand miles of it," explained physicist Sir James Jeans.
When a summer's day hits triple digits, most of us wilt. Imagine fifteen million degrees! It just goes to show, there's hot and there's hot. Likewise, there's holy and then there's holy. We can't begin to compare the triple digit righteousness of those we respect with what is attributed to God. The Bible tells us our God is "a consuming fire" (). In other words, we cannot draw near to Him in our sinful state without being consumed.
Should you not start with the message that is way more popular today… like God is Love? Well did you know that this has been the popular message since the 1860 and what a travesty it has become. This sentimental concept of God has caused major departures from orthodoxy because we cannot truly understand the concept of God is Love without understanding the holiness of God. The great preacher Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones writes, “Unless I start with the Holiness of God, my whole conception of the love of God is going to be false, and this of course is what we have been witnessing. We have the flabby, sentimental notions of God as a God of love, always smiling upon us, and then when wars and calamities come we are baffled and we turn our backs upon religion - this is what millions have been doing since the great wars of this century.”
So today we need to to start the way the scriptures start. They way the Apostle John begins. Remember that the scriptures also declare that our God is a consuming fire and without holiness no man will see the Lord. Lets look at this today.
This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth. But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.
The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever.
Theology Starts with God
The Holiness of God
The Joy of the Lord
The first thing we will look at today is how all that we know and believe about God has to and always has to begin with God Himself. Second, we will briefly address the vital starting point to all that we know about the Lord, the Holiness of God. Finally, we will see how this introductory proclamation of the Apostle brings fullness of joy in light of the glorious Gospel of Jesus.
Thesis: Though sin and the pattern of this world cause us to see man as the center of all knowledge and wisdom by his need and condition, it is the reality of the Holiness of God that will shine as light in darkness exposing the false and engaging the real joy that we find in Christ and in Christ alone.
I. Theology Starts with God
-We must always start with God.
A. John comes right out and makes a statement about the origin of his message: “This is the message we have heard from him.”
This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.
NLTThis is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.
B. John says he has a message to announce to his readers, and it is a vital one, a crucially important one, a life-changing message. And this message is a message that we heard from the very mouth of the King of kings.C. The greek used here for proclaim “anangellow” used only here in 1 John and what a picture is paints. The word means “to herald important news; to inform someone of someone else’s message” and was sometimes used for the declaration of a king. The king’s herald would walk the streets of the city announcing the king’s message. All the subjects of the kingdom were intently interested in the word of the king.D. And what is this message? Theos Phows Estin - God is Light.
C. Did you notice that before John ever talks about us, he talks about God? The Christian life begins with God, not us. Now I know that for many of us we hear this and we think well no duh Shane of course our theology must start with the theos God. But what is interesting is how it doesn’t and half of the problems we have as Christians is because we don’t. We assume too much.
Did you notice that before John ever talks about us, he talks about God? The Christian life begins with God, not us.
D. We assume we know the truth about God. We assume that everything is all right about what we believe about God that we never think that we need to ever examine what it is that we believe and why we believe it. So why start with God, I got that already, so we start with ourselves. We start with ourselves thinking that if we go from there we can get it all together, but when bad things happen, because we think we know it all about God, then God is the problem and we blame him.
Allen, D. L. (2013). 1–3 John: Fellowship in God’s Family. (R. K. Hughes, Ed.) (p. 33). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.
A foolish child is a calamity to a father;
a quarrelsome wife is as annoying as constant dripping.
People ruin their lives by their own foolishness
and then are angry at the Lord.
E. Let’s unpack it more. For years now, we cannot deny that man has become the centre of it all. All science and philosophy tend to start with mankind. Even our understanding about God, rest in our understanding of man and therefore we have a God that seems to be more like man than God. In our terms… that why some people struggle with the Trinity. We are trying to understand on mans terms instead of God’s. Think about it… our history for a while has shown that man’s ideas are the ones that count in the end. Man… the need and condition is the starting point.
F. It is even this way in the church. For many the approach to the gospel and Christianity as a whole tends to be very self-centered. “I am in this world and things are not Ok with me. I need something that I just cannot get. I know I have needs and desires. I know I am not as happy as I want to be. I have desires and demands. What can God do for me? What does God say for himself concerning what’s going on with me? What do I get out of this Christianity thing? How is Christ gonna make my problems go away? How is Christ gonna help me? What is in it for me?
G. This is not the “message we have heard from Him.” Not the initial message they got from Christ. The initial message that they proclaim to us is not how your needs and my needs can be met by the power of Christ. But that God is light and that in Him there is no darkness at all. He starts with God and not ourselves.
H. It is not just John here. The whole of the revelation of the Bible show that God comes first. The first pillar, the first foundation, the first cornerstone of the foundation of Christianity is the Lord and the Lord alone. We are silenced and we are put into the background when it starts with God, it is all about God, the entire of scripture from the beginning declare in the beginning, GOD.
I. But Shane I know this already … we start with God. I get it. Many when asked… do you believe in God they will say yes. Finding few these days that do not believe in God when you ask them. But it is when you ask them to tell you about God that the problems begin to arise. That is when I see the starting point to be man. It is descriptions of God that are shaped by men and what men want. God shaped in the image of man.
J. Remember family… the first issue we saw in the Garden of Eden was a wrong understanding of God his character and His word. And at first, we see something about God that needs to be foundational. The Holiness of God.
II. The Holiness of God
- The true reason for our joy today… the Holiness of God.
A. So here we are again… John desires our joy to be full and he goes on to propose a truth about God. God is… we might expect mercy, giving, compassionate, or even love. But it is God is light. Why in the world would this truth make us joyous? For our Joy… we do not start with the power and greatness of God, though they are both true. We do not start with the knowledge of God though it is truly essential. We do not start with the Lord as the source of all wisdom or even that God is love.
B. The message proclaimed is the Holiness of God. Lets follow the Apostle John on this. The understanding of light is not knowledge or insight, but holiness. It is reinforced more when the scriptures declare that in him there is no darkness at all.
C. If we do not start with the holiness of God we will never fully understand God’s plan of salvation for man. We will never understand why it was necessary for Jesus the Son of God to die on the cross on Calvary’s hill. If God is only about love, compassion, and mercy then the cross is totally meaninless. If man sins all he needs to do is forgive them. But the message of the cross is central to the gospel of Jesus. Why the cross? The Holiness of God. The starting point is God is light. The Lord is of such pure countenence...
But you are pure and cannot stand the sight of evil.
Will you wink at their treachery?
Should you be silent while the wicked
swallow up people more righteous than they?
Habakkuk
So the reason why many today are losing their grip and their clinging to the old rugged cross is because they are starting with the love of God without His Holiness. The reason we cling to the old rugged cross is because of the Holiness of God.
D. If we do not start with the Holiness of God then we see important doctrines like the incarnation of Christ, the cross of Christ, the plan of redemption, the active obedience of Christ, the resurrection, and the coming of the Holy Spirit as meaningless. We start where the Apostle begins. We begin with truth and not with our own ideas.
E. If we start with the Holiness of God then all false claims of fellowship with God is exposed. We do not find ourselves deceived in our alleged fellowship with the Lord when there is no fellowship at all. The false teachers were trying to deceive and manipulate the people John was writing to. John shows that the Holiness of God will expose the lies.
F. There is nothing that lies hidden when face to face with the reality of a holy holy holy God. When face to face with the holiness of God our consuming fire, all of the fellowship in our imaginations with the god’s that we construct in our minds are nothing but futile hypnotism and not real fellowship with the holy holy holy God. God is light and if there will be fellowship with a holy holy holy God then its gonna be on his terms and there can be nothing false. There is no darkness at all.
G. Understanding that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all keeps us from blaming God and criticizing him in times of trouble and times of calamity. Why does God do this? I do not deserve any of this. If we start with the Holiness of God we will never speak like this nor accuse the Lord of anything. We see that there is nothing unworthy in Christ at all. There is no imperfections in the King of kings. It silences me.
For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,
for my hope is from him.
H. If we start with the Holiness of God we will find the fullness of joy John desires us to have. There are few things in this world than having a false sense of peace.
They shout, ‘Prepare for battle!
Attack at noon!’
‘No, it’s too late; the day is fading,
and the evening shadows are falling.’
They offer superficial treatments
for my people’s mortal wound.
They give assurances of peace
when there is no peace.
I. There are false joys and a false ways of finding peace. Our beloved Puritans wrote at great lengths on what they called a false peace. There was nothing they were more afraid of than having a “false peace” with God. They assert that the most dangerous thing is for people to persuade themselves that all is right with God and then not to find Him in the moment of agony.
J. That is why the Bible asserts ...
2 Corinthians
Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine. Test yourselves. Surely you know that Jesus Christ is among you; if not, you have failed the test of genuine faith.
K. Never forget and recognize this subject called the Holiness of God. Start there and find true joy in knowing that He will not say to you at the end “Depart from me I never knew you.”
L. There is only one way to the true and lasting joy that the Apostle John proclaims and it starts with the Holiness of God. We will be delivered from every false peace and from every false joy. I will truly be faced with my failings and shall be humbled before the Lord. I will see that I am unworthy. I will see that I deserve nothing from the Hand of God. I will see the wretched man that I am and I will seek to find deliverence. I will then truly rejoice when I come to Christ to find true peace with God and true joy in the Lord.
K
III. The Joy of the Lord
- Jesus has come to bring life and life more abundant.
A. If we want the fullness of joy in us, if we want to be filled, we need to clear out the rubbish in our lives. We need to get rid of everything that is false and when it is truly empty we can be filled with the joy of the gospel.
B. It is the genius of the gospel. It brings us face to face with a holy and righteous God. Face to face with a summary of the character of God the 10 commandments. Face to face with the reality that we have fallen short of keeping it. Face to face with the reality that if we have broken the smallest of the commands of God we are as guilty as one who has broken all of it. When we are face to face with the perfections of God we come to the realization that we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We come face to face with the wrath of God, the consuming fire. It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of a living God.
C.
C. This is what the Holiness of God will bring us. This is the truth. It is the reality. Our God is a holy holy holy God. Is there hope for us for if the sun will consume us, how could we survive our God who is greater then the sun. Now I shall tell you of the love of God.
D. There is hope for us because God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son that whosoever… Jesus died for our sins according to the scriptures.... the saying is trustworthy… He became sin who knew no sin...
E. All who call upon the name of the .... If you confess with your mouth...
F. This is why we cling to the Old rugged cross