Untitled Sermon (3)

First John – Chapter One

THE MESSAGE FROM CHRIST (Part 6)

1 John 1:3-10

      I.           The Declaration of the Message – 1 John 1:3–4

A.   They Declared the Message by (Their) Witness

B.   They Declared the Message by Word

C.    They Declared the Message by Writing

D.   They Declared the Message by Welding (Joining)

E.    They Declared the Message by Way (of Life)

   II.           The Design of the Message – 1 John 1:3–4

A.    The Benefit of Fellowship

B.   The Benefit of Felicity

III.           The Details of the Message – 1 John 1:5–10

A.               The Message of the Father –

B.               The Message About Fakers - (1 John 1:6).

C.                The Message About Fellowship - “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another” (1 John 1:7).

·      We noted above that to have fellowship with anyone means to have some things in common with the person with whom you are fellowshipping.

·      Here we are told that walking in the light enables us to fellowship with God for He is light.

·      Walking in the light means to adjust your behavior according to the light of Divine revelation.

1.                To walk in the light means that our lives will be transparent and above reproach.

·      1 Timothy 3:7, “Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.”

·      To walk in the light means that our lives will be transparent and above reproach.

o  We will harbor nothing shady, nothing we would not want to be seen and known, for light exposes the hidden works of darkness.

·      How can two walk together in fellowship when one has ulterior motives and the other something to hide?

o  Amos 3:3, “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?”

2.                The one thing darkness dislikes one thing more than anything else is light.

·      John 3:19, “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

·      John remembered Jesus saying that, but John knew, too, that little children fear the dark.

§ No wonder that little children is this old apostle’s favorite description of the people of God!

·      We are to embrace the light and walk in the light so that our fellowship one with another might be unbroken.

3.                The Bible teaches us that if we walk in the light that’s a reflection of our redemption.

·      It’s not impossible for a child of God to walk in the light, it is expected of him.

·      2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

·      Ephesians 5:8, “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:”

4.                “If we walk in the light,” that is, if we walk in the light of the Word of God.

·      Dr. Harry Ironside tells of his own confusion of mind relative to this verse. Noticing that the cleansing of the blood depends upon our walking in the light, he read it as though it said, “If we walk according to the light, the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” He thought it meant that if he was very punctilious about obeying every command of God, God would cleanse him. Then he noticed that it does not say if we walk according to light, but if we walk in the light.

5.                The important thing is where we walk, not how we walk.

v Have we come into the presence of God and allowed the Word of God to shine upon our sinful hearts?

o  You see, it is possible to walk in darkness, thinking you are all right.

v Let me illustrate this. I went squirrel hunting several years ago when I was holding meetings in my first pastorate in Middle Tennessee in a place called Woodbury. After the morning service a doctor came to me and asked me if I would like to go squirrel hunting, and I told him there was nothing I would rather do. After lunch he brought me a shotgun, and we drove out to his farm and parked in the barnyard. We walked along by the creek there and had some good hunting. FInally we came to a fork in the creek, and he said to me, “I’ll take the right fork, and you take the left fork. It will lead you around the hill and back to the barnyard. We will meet there.” In the meantime it looked like it was going to rain. It had drizzled once or twice and stopped. When I started out by myself, it started drizzling again. I kept going, and I made the turn around the hill. I noticed quite a few caves in the hill, and when it started to really rain, I knew I was going to get wet; so I crawled into one of those caves. I went into the largest one I could find and sat in that dark cave for about thirty minutes. I began to get cold and decided I needed a fire; so I gathered together a bunch of leaves scattered on the floor of the cave and put a match to them. I soon had a small fire going, and when I looked around the cave, I found out that I wasn’t alone. I have never been in a place in which there were so many spiders and lizards as there were in that cave! Over in one corner was a little snake all coiled up, just looking at me. My friend, I got out of there in a hurry, working on the assumption that possession is nine–tenths of the law, and since those creatures had the cave ahead of me, it belonged to them. I proceeded down to the barn and really got soaking wet, but I wasn’t going to stay in that cave!

v Now let me make an application.

o  I had been sitting in comfort for about thirty minutes while I was in darkness, but when the light of the fire revealed what was in the cave, I could no longer be comfortable there.

v All across our land today are multitudes of folk who are sitting in churches every Sunday morning but are not hearing the Word of God.

o  As a result, they are sitting there in darkness, hearing some dissertation on economics or politics or the “good life” or an exhortation on doing the best they can.

o   Are they comfortable?

§ Of course, they are comfortable!

o  If they would get into the light of the Word of God, they would see that they are sinners and that they cannot bring God down to their level.

§ John has said that if a person says he is having fellowship with God but is living in sin, he is lying.

6.                There is a purpose given (for the light) in verse seven – “we have fellowship one with another.”

·      True fellowship comes only when a person is born into the family of God by faith in Jesus Christ.

·      When we are born of God and we belong to the family of God we have fellowship with the Lord and His people.

§ John tells us that when we walk in the light we will have fellowship with the family of God.

§ It doesn’t matter what color they are, what they look like, where they are located, what their social standing is, what their financial standing is, the Bible tells us that we will have fellowship with them.

D.               The Message About the Fluid - “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).

·      “Without shedding of blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22).

·      Sin makes us dirty. Jesus’ blood cleans us up.

·      Robert Lowry’s hymn “Nothing But The Blood” says it well, “What can wash away my sin, Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

1.                What happens if we sin?

·      John comes to this problem at once, mentioning the cleansing blood of Christ.

·      This surely has to be one of the most comforting verses in the whole Bible.

o  It is a truth taught from Genesis to Revelation—blood cleanses sin.

·      A skeptic challenged a believer: “How does blood cleanse sin?” he demanded. The believer replied with a counterquestion: “How does water quench thirst?” he asked. The skeptic replied, “I don’t know, but I know that it does.” “Just so,” said the believer, “I don’t know how blood cleanses sin, but I know that it does—God says so.”

2.                We are not talking about just any kind of Blood

·      All the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament could neither cleanse nor cancel sin.

o  They could only cover it—sweep it under the rug, so to speak.

·      Isaac Watts (1674–1748) puts it like this:

Not all the blood of beasts,

On Jewish altars slain,

Could give the guilty conscience peace,

Nor wash away one stain.

·      The blood of bulls and goats simply pointed forward to Calvary.

o  Every such blood offering was an object lesson for a people still in the kindergarten stage of spiritual development.

·      The shed blood of the Passover lamb, and of the goat on the Day of Atonement, and of the red heifer in the wilderness were pictorial and prophetic enactments of Calvary.

o  It is the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, that cleanses from all sin.

·      The Old Testament offerings were accepted only because they were symbols of Calvary.

·      Isaac Watts concludes,

But Christ, the heavenly Lamb,

Took all our sins away;

A sacrifice of nobler name

And richer blood than they.

3.                The blood of Christ is unique.

·      In some ways it is like ours, but in other ways it has no equal.

·      Blood is a marvelous substance and incredibly complex. The oxygen in our body is carried in the blood stream, chemically combined with hemoglobin to form a solid.

o  Human hemoglobin, the red coloring in the blood cells, is an extremely complex molecule, made up of 3032 atoms of carbon, 812 atoms of hydrogen, 780 atoms of nitrogen, 4 atoms of iron, 880 atoms of oxygen, and 12 atoms of sulfur. Each of these 9520 atoms must be hooked to each other in exactly the right way or hemoglobin does not result.

o  Antibodies in the blood fight and prevent infection, giving us immunity and, further, if blood fails to reach the various cells of the body, death takes place in those cells. When blood ceases to circulate, the body dies.

·      The blood that flows through an unborn babe’s arteries and veins is not derived from its mother. The baby’s blood cells are its own, produced within the body of the fetus.

o  Angiogenesis, or blood vessel formation, begins about thirteen to eighteen days into the embryo’s life.

o  From the time of conception to the time of birth of the infant, not a single drop of blood passes from the mother to the child. The mother contributes no blood at all.

4.                By means of the Virgin Birth, the Holy Spirit ensured that the Lord Jesus had a truly human body, derived from Adam, but His blood came from quite another source.

·      The Lord Jesus, as man, was conceived by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:31–35; Heb. 10:4–5)—God was His Father.

o  Luke 1:31–35, “31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. 32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: 33 And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. 34 Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? 35 And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”

o  Hebrews 10:4–5, “4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. 5 Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me:”

·      Consequently, He had divine, sinless, incorruptible blood—so much so that in Acts 20–28 it is actually called “the blood of God.”

·      This is the blood that cleanses us from all sin, and it is now on the mercy seat in heaven where the Lord took it Himself (Hebrews 9:11–14, 19–24).

o  Hebrews 9:11–14, “11 But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; 12 Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. 13 For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: 14 How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?””

o  Hebrews 9:19–24, “19 For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book, and all the people, 20 Saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you. 21 Moreover he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle, and all the vessels of the ministry. 22 And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission. 23 It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:”

·      It is there, in the Holy of Holies above, to silence the accuser and justify the believer.

5.                Thank God for the little word “ALL.”

·      In the Old Testament ritual, on the Day of Atonement, two goats were used.

o  The one was slain and its blood taken by the high priest beyond the veil into the Holy of Holies.

o  There it was sprinkled upon and before the mercy seat where God sat in the Shechinah glory cloud between the figures of the cherubim.

o  Those golden cherubim were so fashioned that their faces were turned inward and downward, so to be forever occupied with the blood upon the mercy seat.

·      The remaining goat was then taken to the high priest, who placed both his hands upon its head.

o   He then confessed over him “all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat … And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited” (Lev. 16:21–22).

o  Note the fourfold repetition of the word all, preceding iniquities, transgressions, sins.

o  The word used for “iniquities” is åvon, a word that means perverseness and that comes from a root meaning “to be bent,” or “crooked”; the word used for “transgressions” is påsha, carrying the idea of revolt and rebellion and having to do with sin against lawful authority; the word used for “sins” is chåtå, which means “to miss the mark,” “to stumble,” or “to come short,” referring to sin in thought, word, or deed.

o  Thus, the Day of Atonement represented a thoroughgoing, but symbolic, removal of sin.

o  All that was foreshadowed by the Old Testament type is now fulfilled in Christ—He cleanses us from all sin.

6.                We have complete Redemption through our Lord Jesus Christ

·      He purchased us lock, stock and barrel.

o  He purchased us.

o  He owns us we are paid in full.

§ 1 Corinthians 6:19–20, “19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.”

·      The only way that a person can go to heaven is to belong to the family of God, the only way a person can belong to the family of God is to be washed in the blood of the Lamb.

There is Power in the Blood #198

Would you be free from the burden of sin?

There’s pow’r in the blood, pow’r in the blood;

Would you o’er evil a victory win?

There’s wonderful pow’r in the blood.

Would you be free from your passion and pride?

There’s pow’r in the blood, pow’r in the blood;

Come for a cleansing to Calvary’s tide;

There’s wonderful pow’r in the blood.

Would you be whiter, much whiter than snow?

There’s pow’r in the blood, pow’r in the blood;

Sin-stains are lost in its life-giving flow;

There’s wonderful pow’r in the blood.

Would you do service for Jesus your King?

There’s pow’r in the blood, pow’r in the blood;

Would you live daily His praises to sing?

There’s wonderful pow’r in the blood.

Refrain:

There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder-working pow’r

In the blood of the Lamb;

There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder-working pow’r

In the precious blood of the Lamb.

7.                The word cleanses us is not in the past tense, but in the present tense meaning that the Lord Jesus ever interceded on our behalf.

·      That His blood cleanses us from past, present, and future sins.

·      Cleanses: is in the present tense; denoting a continuous action.

8.                Biblical effects of the Literal Blood of Christ.

a.    There is redemption (atonement, substitution, remission, salvation or purchase) through the Blood of Christ.

·      Leviticus 17:11, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.”

·      Matthew 26:28, “For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.”

·      Mark 14:24, “And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.”

·      Luke 22:20, “Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.”

·      Acts 20:28, “Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.”

·      Romans 5:9, “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.”

·      Ephesians 1:7, “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;”

·      Colossians 1:14, “In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins:”

·      1 Peter 1:18–19, “18 Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; 19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:”

·      Revelation 5:9, “And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;”

b.    There is propitiation through the Blood of Christ.

·      Romans 3:25, “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;”

c.     There is justification through the Blood of Christ.

·      Romans 5:9, “Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.”

d.    There is fellowship through the Blood of Christ.

·      Ephesians 2:13, “But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.”

e.    There is peace through the Blood of Christ.

·      Colossians 1:20, “And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.”

f.      There is forgiveness through the Blood of Christ.

·      Ephesians 1:7, “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;”

·      Colossians 1:14, “In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins:”

g.    There is sanctification through the Blood of Christ.

·      Hebrews 13:12, “Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.”

h.    There is reconciliation through the Blood of Christ.

·      Colossians 1:20, “And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven.”

i.      There is cleansing (purging, washing, purifying) through the Blood of Christ.

·      Hebrews 9:14, “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”

·      Hebrews 9:23, “ It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.”

·      1 John 1:7, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.”

·      Revelation 1:5, “And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood,”

·      Revelation 7:14, “ And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

j.      There is remembrance through the Blood of Christ.

·      1 Corinthians 11:25, “After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.”

k.    There is boldness (and access to God’s throne) through the Blood of Christ.

·      Hebrews 10:19, “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,”

l.      There is maturity (in doing God’s will) through the Blood of Christ.

·      Hebrews 13:20, “Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,”

m. There is Punishment (or weakness, sickness, or death if we mistreat it) through the Blood of Christ.

·      Hebrews 10:29, “Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?”

n.    There is victory (over Satan) through the Blood of Christ.

·      Revelation 12:11, “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.”