Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good morning, Lafayette Baptist Family.

It is once again good to see you all this beautiful Lord’s day morning.

If you will all, please go ahead and turn in your bible’s to 1st John.

Specially 1 John 1:5-10, 1 John 1:5-10.

While you are doing that I want to paint a few pictures for you.

The first one, imagine you are about to enter a room that you have never entered before by yourself.

Think about it, ask you self, what is the first thing you would do when you when you are in this scenario?

Someone, please answer me… Hopeful we opened the door first (yes you can laugh at that).

Seriously though, The first thing you would do is look for the light switch.

You would probably take your hand and run it along the wall on your right-hand side, because that is generally where light switches are in rooms.

Why?

Because we want the darkness to go away, we want the truth of what is we are about to encounter in the room to be revealed to us, we want the truth we want the light and not the hidden badness (perhaps the potential to trip or get hit by something) of the darkness to come upon us.

Also, consider the children’s game, one that I’m sure most of us in here has played either with our children, or our cousins, our friends, or our siblings, called flashlight tag.

In this game, you have one person who is “it.”

The person that is “it” is to run around the dark yard or room and try to shine the light on the other children to in turn make them, “it.”

What are you doing as the person who is “it,” you are trying to shine the light on a person and reveal (in the light) who’s face is now the “it” one.

In fact, you probably then excitedly scream out, “George (or whoever it is) is it!

To tell all the others who are playing.

Once the light comes out of the flashlight, it reveals and shows information to us.

In this instant, a new truth exists, that I’m no longer it and George is it.

Both George and I cannot be “it” at the same time.

In the same way that there cannot be “it” people abiding (or being together) at the same time, The Light and the darkness cannot abide together and this is today’s big idea, the Light and the darkness cannot abide together.

The Scripture

If you will all, please rise for the reading of God’s word.

While I’m reading if you will all please read along in your own bibles and after I am finished saying “This is the Word of the Lord” please respond with “Thanks be to God”.

First, let’s pray.

Father God, thank you for who you are.

You are an awesome and great God.

One that exists in the Light and not the darkness, one that sheds the light on all things.

Father, I pray that during your word today that you will open our hearts, ears, eyes, and hands to receive what you are going to show us today.

Help us to put away any thing that will distract us from this gift that you are giving us today.

Help us to keep our every thought and intent squarely on you Lord.

Help us in these things, and to put us to work with what you teach us.

It’s in these things I ask and in Jesus Christ’s Holy and Precious name that I pray.

Amen. 1 John 1:5-10, 1 John 1:5-10.5

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.

6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

This is the Word of the Lord (Thanks be to God), Thank you, you may be seated.

The Context

So here we are, picking up where we left off from last week.

Once again, w e are working together through the epistles of John and Lord willing we will get to finish them together.

Last week we learned that this epistle was of sort of correcting commentary on the Gospel of John, whereas a false gospel, known as the Gnostic Gospel, had infiltrated and was gaining steam in the Church at Ephesus and surrounding areas as well.

So, the Apostle John wrote this particular letter, 1st John, to put away confusion and false words and clarify his points in his gospel with the hopes of redeeming and restoring the brothers and sisters that were straying on the wrong path.

Last week we particularly looked at the idea that John was making it clear that Jesus was the Word that he was referring to.

Also, we touched on the ideas of the word being observed (it had came and we saw it),The Word being sent, it being proclaimed and that this word (Jesus) brings us Joy.

This week, when looking and breaking up our text, I noticed an interesting pattern and I will challenge you to look at this passage in the same way own your own this week.

That is, it seemed that John had a sort of rhythm or pattern to the arraignment of these verses.

I looked and saw again and again that the pattern went something like this, “Positive Statement, Negative Statement, then another positive statement followed by a negative statement, concluding then with yet another positive statement and negative statement.

As looked at this deeper, I realized this had a lot to do with the comparison of the character of God vs. Man.

Whereas, God’s character is right and good and man’s character is flawed.

This is a true statement, and one that you can take to the bank.

Good is always good all the time (in fact his name is the definition and perfection of good) and humans are flawed at best.

This is of course because of the sin nature that we all have, every one of us.

So, with that in mind, lets dive deep into the text for this week.

The Exposition

Here is your first point, so if you are taking notes.

The first point is, God is Light

5 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.

6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

Here we see that John is proclaiming a message to the readers, that God is light and has no darkness.

So, what is this light and darkness?

Intellectually, light is truth and darkness ignorance or error.

Morally, light is purity and darkness evil.[1]So,

we can say here that God is not capable of lying, in Him is only the truth.

Morally God is pure, and Satan and sin is evil.

Additionally, God makes himself known and this fact known to believers.

The Theologian Stott says, “It is his nature to reveal himself, as it is the property of light to shine; and the revelation is of perfect purity and unutterable majesty.

We are to think of God as a personal being, infinite in all his perfections, transcendent, ‘the high and lofty One … he who lives for ever, whose name is holy’[2].”

John then goes on to say that if we walk in the darkness/sin/Satan while we claim on our own to have fellowship with God (without His actions) we are a wrong.

We deceive ourselves and others.

We need to turn away from this.

This was true for them and it is true for us.

You know, this passage reminds me of a portion from the Hymn “A Might Fortress is our God” by the reformer Martin Luther.

The hymn portion says, 3 And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God has willed his truth to triumph through us.

The prince of darkness grim(Satan), we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo! his doom is sure; one little word shall fell him.”

This little word, is THE WORD.

Jesus, the word of truth, the word of life, the Word of Light.

Satan tries to deceive us with rebellion to God, but we don’t have to fear him or the evils that he does, because Jesus will shine the light on his (and our) darkness.

Like I said the other week, we don’t need to be running away from God in fear because of sin, we need to run TO HIM because we fear sin.

Let’s move on.

The next point is, God is the Truth.

7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

I think it’s safe say that we all agree that it is good to, “walk in the light” by now.

We really don’t need to beat that idea to hard over the head.

We have heard it and can probably articulate it pretty well.

What we need to do though, is talk about what it looks like to walk in the light.

John tells us directly what it means to walk in the light here.

He says, that first we must let the blood of Jesus cleans us from all sin.

This means, that Jesus’s death on the cross pays the penalty for the great sin debt that we have with God.

Why the blood specifically?

This is partially one of the great mysteries of God.

It’s clear to us throughout history God has required blood to pay for sin; the greatest of which is the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and is what we as Baptists say the juice represents when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper; others include animal sacrifice, which we see the Jewish priesthood had the purpose of doing, sacrificing animals to atone (for a time) for the sins that people had done.

We see this all the way back even to beginning after mankind’s first sin, God sacrificing animals for mankind, when God had animal skins made into clothes, probably more like loincloths to cover Adam and Eve’s shame.

So, this blood atonement is an old institution and one that because of Jesus we do no longer need to observe today; because the perfect and final sacrifice has been made.