Sermon Tone Analysis

Prayer

Introduction –

Personal greeting –

Text 1 John 1:5 - 2:6

Why? – It’s extremely relevant for us, the Church today.

We are in a similar situation – Situational Ethics, what feels good, no responsibility, and a limited view of sin.

1 John was most likely written between Ad 70 – 90 to Jewish Christians in Asia Minor.

One of the first things we notice about 1 John is that it doesn’t follow the typical style of a NT letter.

Much like the book of Hebrews it is written more like a sermon or a tract concerning the Gospel.

It’s a tract that seeks to solidify or reinforce what the churches of Asia Minor first believed and to counter the new false teachings that are creeping into church.

We face the same things today, that is why we need to stay grounded the in the truth.

The truth will set you free.

But what is the truth?

Many people if not a majority today will say there is no truth at least there is no absolute truth.

Or they ignore the truth, or they spin it and say the truth can change.

Let me tell you something, the truth, the Word of God, God himself does not change.

He is the same yesterday, He is the same today, and He will be the same tomorrow.

During our time in Indonesia sometimes discussions would arise as to whether Allah, god in Al Qur'an and Yahweh, our God were the same.

The Bible is different from the Al Qur’an.

Allah is not God, at least the God of the Bible.

They have different characters.

Muslims and Christians both believe they worship the God of Abraham but only our God is the Holy and unchanging God and His son Jesus is the only way to salvation.

John testifies to this in the opening to 1 John.

Verses 1-4 say:

John testifies to the truth.

He says, this isn’t something we made up!

We are telling you what we heard!

What we saw with our own eyes!

What we have touched with our hands!

We are telling you the truth about the Word of Life, Jesus Christ!

John goes on in the rest of the letter to expound on what this meant for them and hopefully I can build a bridge over the next several days that brings this message into the world and culture in which we live encourage you all.

This brings me to our main text for this morning.

Please open your Bibles again to 1 John.

We will be reading 1:5-2:2.

John uses a combination of opposite comparisons to illustrate his point.

As we read through 1 John we see the contrast between “light” and “dark,” between the “truth” and a “lie,” and between “love” and hate.

Darkness and Light

The world is a dark place, and it is getting even darker.

All you have to do is turn on your TV (American Horror Story, Walking Dead, …) or look at the kinds of movies Hollywood is producing today.

Some of them are ok to watch but it seems that many of them have become darker and darker.

Even the newer fairy tale movies seem darker.

The evil is more real.

For instance, Helen and I like the superhero movies, the Avengers, Superman, Spiderman, and the like.

But Helen wouldn’t watch the Batman – The Dark Night Rises because she said it was too dark.

Darkness is real; spiritual darkness is real.

In some places in the world you can feel it much stronger than here in the US.

Here I think Satan uses science and technology to achieve his purposes.

But in places like Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, and even sometimes here in the US the impact of dark spiritual forces is very real.

Thankfully John tells us in verse 5 that God is light!! God is holy and righteous and there is no darkness in Him, none.

Jesus is that light for us.

This is one of the themes that runs throughout 1 John and is prevalent in the Gospel of John as well.

John 1:5 - The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.[3]

John 1:9 - The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.[4]

Jesus himself claimed to be the light.

John 8:12 - “I am the light of the world.

Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

[5]

John 12:46 - I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.

[6]

Jesus came to bring light in the darkness, pure light.

He came to bring light into our dark lives, to light the dark places in our heart and soul.

God is different than we are, God is holy.

All of us, no matter how good we are, have a little darkness in us.

We all have something we don’t want anyone to know, some doubt, some fear, some sinful thought or action, some darkness.

Hopefully if we have followed Jesus for any length of time there is less darkness in us than before.

There is no darkness in God, He chases away the darkness.

It is impossible to have darkness in the presence of light.

Notice that John does not say God is a light or the light but that God IS light.

He is the source!!

Light is to darkness as righteousness is to sin.

The two cannot exist together.

Scripture equates darkness with sin.

The Bible tells us that the things done in the darkness will be brought into the light.

In verse 6-7 we see where John shifts to his second comparison and basically connects the dots if you will and makes the main point of my sermon this morning and his letter –

God is light so if you want to live by the truth you must walk in the light!!

You can’t walk in darkness and claim to walk with God!!!!!

You can’t live in sin, especially willful sin and claim to have fellowship of friendship with God.

Dallas Willard, an American philosopher and writer who has authored several books on Christian living, writes about a 2-and-a-half-year-old girl in her backyard who one day discovered the secret to making mud (which she called "warm chocolate").

Her grandmother had been reading and was facing away from the action, but after cleaning up what was to her a mess, she told little Larissa not to make any more chocolate and turned her chair around so as to be facing her granddaughter.

The little girl soon resumed her "warm chocolate" routine, with one request posed as sweetly as a 2-and-a-half-year-old can make it: "Don't look at me, Nana.

Okay?" Nana (being a little co-dependent) of course agreed.

Larissa continued to manufacture warm chocolate.

Three times she said, as she continued her work, "Don't look at me, Nana.

Okay?"

Then Willard writes: "Thus the tender soul of a little child shows us how necessary it is to us that we be unobserved in our wrong."

Any time we choose to do wrong or to withhold doing right, we choose hiddenness as well.

It may be that out of all the prayers that are ever spoken, the most common one—the quietest one; the one that we least acknowledge making—is simply this: Don't look at me, God.

It was the very first prayer spoken after the Fall.

God came to walk in the garden, to be with the man and the woman, and called, "Where are you?"

"I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid," Adam answered, "so I hid."

Don't look at me, God.

John Ortberg, God Is Closer Than You Think (Zondervan, 2005), p. 40-41

I have said this to God, “Don’t look at me.” I’ve been there and done this as a Christian man.

Fortunately, in my life, the Light overpowered the darkness.

Sometimes, I’m not saying all the time when God feels far away or like He is not with us or ignoring us it’s because of us, not Him.

The truth will set you free, but you have to be honest.

This is what John means when he says “we lie and do not live by the truth.”

If you want to live in fellowship with God and other believers you have to walk in the light, walk in righteousness, not your own righteousness but the righteousness that comes from believing in Jesus.

This begs the question, what does it mean to walk in the light?

We all at one time or another have probably asked ourselves, “What does God want from me?

It may be in the midst of a crisis, or it may be a daily event.

I know I have asked this question of God myself.