God is Light
God is Light
Sunday, November 18, 2007
“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.”
1 John 1:5
1. We have seen in these last weeks that there are certain things which tend to interfere with the fellowship we have with God or to rob us of its true fullness and joy. John here reminds us of one of those things - a false sense of who God is.
2. John wants us to start out with a right understanding of who God is. God is holy and His people must be holy as He is holy. He tells us this by saying “that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”
3. If we neglect or fail to understand this in our thoughts about God then we find ourselves overwhelmed with unnecessary troubles and hardships. Today we must look at some propositions to help us in our understanding about God.
4. The first one is that in any thinking about God must first come from God as He has revealed Himself in His Holy Word - The Holy Bible.
5. Second we must recognize that man is not the center of the universe, that man has is not the authority on God and man’s thoughts and ideas about God are corrupt.
6. The Bible teaches that for us to truly understand man we have to first look at him in the sight of God and the teaching concerning God.
7. The tendency for most of us is to approach the whole subject of God and Christian truth and everything else in terms of ‘my desires’ and ‘my demands.’ What does God have to give to me? What can I get out of this Christian faith? Is there something in this that is going to ease my problems and help me in this dark and difficult world? These are just some of the corrupt motives we have if we are honest.
8. This is the root source of error in the Christian life because the first answer of the gospel is “Forget yourself and contemplate God!” This is “the message which we have heard of Him” - not that your needs and mine can suddenly be met and fixed by the gospel but instead because of the gospel we are compelled to see that it all starts and finishes with God and not with ourselves.
9. We see that the characteristics of cults, and of every religion which is not the true Christian faith, (including Teachers who claim to be Christian) is that they tend to come to us in terms of our own needs. They say things like “do this and your joy will be complete.” They seem to offer us everything just as we want it without any pain or difficulty. This is why the starting point in the Christian life must always be God and not ourselves and not our needs, nor our desires or our happiness.
10. Why do we have to start with God and not ourselves. Why do we start with God and not with our opinions? Because “our hearts are deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can understand them? Only God’s Word is true and it is the only source we have to truly know Him.
11. As we finish today let us look at some facts. (1) If you do not start with the holiness of God you will never understand God’s plan of salvation. Which is salvation that is only possible to us through the death of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross on Calvary’s hill.
12. (2) Having a right understanding of who God is and His plan of salvation allows us to fully realize who we are in relation to Him. This allows the Christian to “Strive for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” (Heb 12:14) This does not mean that the Christian will be without sin—indeed, John says that the one professing to be without sin deceives himself and makes God a liar (1:8, 10)—but it does mean that he will be progressing in righteousness so that his profession is increasingly matched by his conduct.
13. (3) When we start with the holiness of God as the standard we find all the false claims of fellowship with God are immediately exposed. You need to recognize today that with your imagination you might have created a false god, and you can have a kind of fellowship with that false god, but when hard times come, in your hour of need you will discover that it is truly false and not the God of the Bible.
14. There is nothing that exposes the false so much as coming to understand, know and worship the God of the Bible. My question for you this morning is which God do you know?
15. (4) God is holy and He can only forgive sin as He has dealt with it in His own holy manner - That was by pouring His wrath out and placing it on His Son on the cross for all who would believe in Him. Do you believe Him?
GracePointe Baptist Church
2209 N Post Road
Oklahoma City, OK 73141
Phone: (405) 769-5050