Walking In The Light: 1 John 1:1–10

o Thank you Leighton and Steven, for leading us tonight. I am excited to finally get tonight going. I started just a little bit less than a month ago and we have been working since then to get Sunday nights off the ground so I am excited they are finally here. If you have your Bible with you tonight could you please turn to 1 John chapter 1. That is where we will be tonight. As you know, the name of our Sunday Night gatherings is, “The Walk.” And I get that this is kind of a weird name. But as we look in scripture, we see a lot the metaphor of walking. When scripture uses this phrase, it often times means the way in which somebody goes about daily life. It doesn’t mean how you do things at certain points, but how we do things at all times. This passage, and really the entirety of 1 John, deals with this idea of our walk. Are we walking as somebody that is in relationship with Christ Jesus? The main idea of tonight’s message is that With the hope of eternal life comes a responsibility to walk in the way Christ would have us to walk. We see John demonstrate this in three main ideas. We can trust the message. What true belief in the message looks like and what true acceptance of the message is. As we do every Sunday morning, please stand with me to honor the reading of God’s word.

· TRANSITION: Something that we have probably all wondered at some point is, “How do we even know all this is true.” But as John demonstrates here, is that the message is truly reliable.

We can Trust The Message

{Exposition}John starts the passage off by speaking of that which was from the beginning. He is referring to Jesus. What John says right off the bat is that there has never been a time when Jesus did not exist. Jesus, The Son of God, being God, has existed for all of eternity and was there at the beginning of the world. This is very similar to how John starts off his gospel. He then goes on to speak of how he has seen Jesus and he has touched Jesus. Here, John is saying that what you have heard about Jesus is true and you can believe it because I know it to be true.

Explanation: we have to look at the context of this book to understand what John is saying. John, the author of this book was a disciple of Jesus. He was the writer of the gospel of John. He was the only one of Jesus’ 12 disciples to die a natural death as the others were killed for proclaiming the name of Jesus. There is probably a chance that he is the only person left alive that had seen the risen Christ. There is a good chance that John’s readers were wondering how they could believe the story of Jesus was even true. So what John is saying in verse 1 to his readers is that he saw the risen Christ with his own eyes and touched him. Remember, it is in John’s gospel that we read about Thomas touching the places where the nails were put through Jesus’ hands and where he was stabbed in the side with the spear. So John is telling people they can trust the message that is true. A question you may be asking is, how do we know John was telling the truth? We know this because there was no incentive for John to be lying about this. At the time that this book was written, persecution of Christians had begun to worsen. For the first few decades after Jesus ascended back to heaven, persecution was mostly happening at the societal level and not a the hands of the government of the Roman Empire. But that had changed. The Roman empire was actively persecuting Christians unless they would recant their faith and say that Caesar is Lord. If John had not seen the risen Lord, why would he still be lying about this?

{Illustration} My paternal grandfather’s name was John R. Thomas jr. He had no middle name. One time when he was in elementary school, the teacher was asking everybody to tell her their middle name. My grandfather told her that he didn’t have one. It was only R. She did not believe him and unfortunately this was during the time that spanking was still a common punishment in schools. Since she thought he was lying, she spanked him with a textbook. She kept asking him what his middle name was, and when he would give her the same answer, she would spank him again. This went on for some time. It should have been pretty obvious at some point to this teacher that he was telling the truth, right. Did she think he was just enjoying being spanked with a textbook. If he were lying, at some point he would have come clean to make it stop. This was the same position John was in. If the resurrection of Jesus were not real, there would have been no reason for him to keep lying about it. The risk he was taking by even writing this letter shows he truly knew Christ to be alive. You might ask then, how do we know that John even wrote this letter. We know because the early church was very particular about protecting the authenticity of the writings that were considered scripture. They did not accept works from people they did not know or did not trust. They also did not accept works that were not from the person it claimed to be. Lastly, if they didn’t know who the author was, they didn’t accept it. So we can say with full confidence that the book of 1 John was written by John, the disciple of Jesus.

Application: You may be wondering why any of this is even important. It’s important because at some point everybody asks the question, how do I even know this is true. At some point those seeds of doubts have been sown in your mind. We can have full confidence that the words we read in this book are true.

Exposition: Being that John has confirmed that what he is speaking of is true, he reiterates his previous point. That Jesus, who has always has come to and he has brought with Him eternal life. This eternal life, which was not a part of earth since Adam and Eve ate the fruit in the Garden of Eden. Jesus came to earth and brought with him the hope of eternal life.

Explanation: When we hear about eternal life we tend to think about it in terms of beginning when we die, right. We think of it as, ok when I die and go to heaven, that’s when eternal life begins. But the promise of eternal life is that we don’t have to experience death. While we may see a physical death, we do not die. But for that to be true, that means this eternal life begins the moment we accept Christ as our savior.

Application: Some of you right now go through life with struggles that you may think nobody else understands. In fact, you may think that your life isn’t really that great. But when we are granted eternal life, we are granted a new life now. We have a promise towards the future of when we will spend eternity with Christ. And we should spend each day celebrating that fact. But with that comes a joy and a fulfillment that can pierce through any darkness this life has to offer. Maybe you are trying really hard to find out what’s missing. Maybe you are not sure why nothing in this world seems to satisfy. The reason may be because the only thing that can is a new life in Christ Jesus.

Exposition: In verses 3 and 4 we see we can trust the message because of the fellowship the message brings. John writes, “that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.” When we hear the word fellowship, what comes to mind. Probably eating or spending time together. Like some of you aren’t even hungry but when I said the word fellowship you started tasting fried chicken and sweet tea. But the word John uses here is stronger than that. It means having a common purpose. John wants his readers to have common purpose with him because he has common purpose with the father. This fellowship John is talking about is something deep. It’s a care and a relationship that goes beyond anything we can know outside of God’s church. Those of you who are actively involved and here on Sunday mornings know what I mean when I say this church loves you. The people of this church care for you. And the reason they do is because they have a relationship with Jesus and through the love he has for them they love his people. This is what John is describing. And in world that was growing more and more hostile to the message of Christ, this was going to be necessary. John longs for his readers to know that fellowship. He is writing them so that they can have that fellowship and his joy be complete. Think about this. he knew that by spreading this message and having people follow Christ more closely he was putting them in more danger. But he felt that it was worth it because he knew how great the joy of following Christ was. Let me ask you, do you have that joy tonight?

Transition: Knowing that this message is true, what is our response? How does this impact out lives if we say we believe in this message?

True Belief In The Message is Visible

Exposition: John says in verses 5-7, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in Him is not darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 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.

Illustration: In verse 5, John is giving us what is called a dualist view of good and evil. What that means is that there is two options and there are not other actions. It’s kind of like this. How many of you have eaten sushi? There is no one who kind of likes sushi. There is I love sushi, pass me the chop sticks and soy sauce. And there’s I hate sushi. Don’t we have federal regulations against serving raw fish.

Exposition: It is the same thing here. There is no grey area in our actions. There is sin and there is not sin. There is doing the things of Good and not doing the things of God. There is no, “Well it probably is a sin to do this thing, but it’s really not that bad.”

ExpositionThat leads to the next verse when John says, “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. “ Verses 6 and 7 are two examples of why we are calling Sunday nights The Walk. We see this language of walking used a lot. Some of your bibles may translate it live. That’s because in Greek walking was a metaphor for the way in which someone lived his or her life. John is very clearly saying here that our actions have to match our words. We cannot claim to have common cause with God if we are living a way that is contrary to the way of God. That isn’t possible, I think we all know that isn’t possible, and that is why John said it is a lie.

Explanation: This does not mean that we have lost our salvation. Even those who are saved can live in a way that is not in fellowship with God. But I do think we need to examine our salvation and make sure it is authentic.

Exhortation: It is not an uncommon thing for somebody to walk an aisle, say they want to be Baptized, and not really mean or know what what he or she was doing. Have you ever really felt changed? Have your ever felt like you had the eternal life in Christ? Have you continued to walk in darkness? If you feel that you have not truly given your life to Christ, there is no shame in acknowledging that fact. But if you know you are saved but have lived in the darkness while claiming to be in the light you must turn away from that.

Exposition: Moving on to verse 7, John says, “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.” The church is an incredible thing. If you are not regularly coming on Sunday mornings, I would encourage you to. But John’s letter wasn’t just written to one congregation. It was circulated throughout a region. As followers of Christ, we don’t just have fellowship with the people at Maynard Baptist Church. We have fellowship with believers all over the world. There are Christians in places like Iran and other closed countries where believers meet in secret at risk of losing their life to worship Jesus. We have fellowship with them as well. And this is all because if we have truly been saved, then the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. Because we could not pay the debt for our sin on our own, Christ died on the cross for our sins, taking on the punishment we deserved. Then he rose again so that anyone who believed in him could be experience eternal life. And when we are saved by this true belief in that message, then there should be evidence of it in our lives.

Transition We see John bring up the topic of sin. He says that Jesus’ blood cleanses us from all sin. We hear this a lot in church, but what we don’t talk enough about is why we need the forgiveness of sins. To do this we have to have a true understanding of the message

We Need A Proper Understanding of Sin

Exposition: In verse 8 John says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” When John uses sin in the singular here, it is largely believed that he is referring to the guilt that comes from sin. We are all guilty of sin and there is no amount of good things we can do to make up for it.

Illustration: I used this illustration with the guys Wednesday night. Say that you had your drivers license and you were driving and you got pulled over. You got pulled over for going 100mph in a speed zone. In fact you were going so fast, that they arrested you and you had to go to court. At your trial all the evidence of all the good things you had ever done is presented. And when the jury comes out they say, “Well this person was no doubt going 100mph in a school zone, But because he or she does a lot of good things, and was not going 120mph, we find them not guilty of going 100mph in a school zone. That’s not how any just legal system works. No matter how many good things you do, you are guilty of the things you do wrong.

Exposition:No matter how many good things we think we have done, we are guilty of sinning against a holy God. To say that we are guilty of sin is to just not be honest about the human condition.

Expostion: But there is good news. Verse 9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This plural use, sins, is speaking more of the actions that are sinful. John tells us that if we confess our sins we can be cleansed from all unrighteousness.

Exhortation: There is nothing that we can do that makes us too far gone. John says we can be cleansed from all unrighteousness. Christ is able and willing to forgive us. We just have to be willing to confess our sins to Him. Some of us may have secrets that are deep. Maybe we feel we have done things that are too awful for us to ever be saved and to have that fellowship with God. That doesn’t exist.

Exposition: But what does exist is an unwillingness to acknowledge our sin as sin. One of the things that is common among people your age is for people to say, “I don’t consider that a sin.” Or to say, “I mean that’s not really that bad. Especially if you don’t do it that often.” I mean the phrase, “I mean, it’s not like I do it all the time,” is one of the biggest justifications for sinful behavior that people use. We do not have the authority to chose what is sinful and what isn’t. As we saw in verse six, there is walking in darkness and there is walking in the light and that standard is the standard given by God, not us. We do not get to chose what is sin and what isn’t. We often hear, especially sexual sin and drugs and alcohol, “I’m a Christian,” or “I believe in Jesus, but I don’t think that this particular action is a sin.” This is the very heart of what John is getting at. If the Jesus of the Bible is real, and the Bible itself is to be trusted, then what it calls sin is sin. And when we begin to say that things God’s word calls sinful is not sinful, then we are making God a liar because we are saying His word is not true. Whether we realize it or not, that is what we are doing. How much better it is to align our life with the things of God.

· Transition: So as we close, what resonates with you tonight?

· Conclusion

o Maybe you have been dealing with doubts about Jesus. Maybe these doubts have kept you from believing or have led you into not walking with Christ as you should. Maybe you realize that you have not been walking in the light and you want to restore that fellowship. Maybe you realize that you have never truly confessed your sins and accepted God’s forgiveness. Tonight is the night to do that. I will be at the front down here if you need me to pray with you. In a minute we will breaking up into smaller groups. If you need to, use that as a time to get things off your chest