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Walk in the Light | 1 John 1:5-10 (12-10-23: Mark Evans)
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In the passage from the epistle of 1 John, the author emphasizes that God is light and in Him there is no darkness. He warns against claiming to have fellowship with God while walking in darkness, as this is a lie. Instead, he encourages believers to walk in the light as God is in the light. The author also addresses the false claims of fellowship and righteousness made by some, highlighting the importance of aligning one's profession of faith with their actions. Overall, the passage emphasizes the need to walk in the light as cleansed sinners. If you have your Bibles, do make your way to the epistle of 1 John as we continue our series through this wonderful letter. Our Scripture reading for this morning will be in 1 John chapter 1, verses 5 through 10. 1 John chapter 1, verses 5 through 10. And these are the words of the God who is light. This is the message that we have heard from Him and proclaim to you that God is light and in Him is no 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. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His Word is not in us. While the grass withers and the flower fades, let us pray. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we praise You for You are the God who is light and in You there is no shifting shadow. And here we are as Your children, children of light, sons of light through the light of the world, Jesus Christ. And so we pray, Father, indeed, that You would once again give us light that we might have eyes to see, to behold the Lord Jesus Christ, the King in His beauty, that we might walk as children of light. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. Amen. You may be seated. Well, have you ever stared directly at the sun? Kids don't answer that question. I'm sure that is something that your parents have warned you not to do. But perhaps, out of curiosity, maybe at an attractive sunset, you gave it a try, as we have all done at some point. And what happens when you stare directly into the sun? Well, immediately your eyes begin to burn. It's a burning so intense that you're soon forced to divert your gaze away from this awesome light. And when you do look away at the world around you, your eyes have a very hard time focusing, don't they? You blink and you blink and you might see a little more than just black blotches, black spots dancing in the air. Well, that experience is what John has for us this morning, that with the eyes of faith we gaze directly at the greatest light of them all, at the God who dwells in unapproachable light, the God who is of such brilliance that even the mighty angels have to shield their eyes before Him. And, of course, as soon as we direct our gaze away from this awesome light, away from the Lord God, we see but the blackness and darkness of our own souls. The good news is John does not leave us there. He does not abandon us to our own darkness. Instead, he calls for us to walk in the light as God is in the light. And so we'll look at this section in three parts, but we can really simplify it into one sentence, and that is that because God is light, we walk in the light as cleansed sinners. Once again, as God is light, we walk in the light as redeemed, forgiven sinners. And so, firstly, let us gaze at this God who is Himself light. And what you can love about John is that John always begins with who God is. And then, and only then, comes man's response. In other words, God's character is first and foundational for the Christian life. You could just compare that to the world's approach, something like secular humanism, moralism. Unfortunately, even some Christian teachings that begin with man, and man's ability to do good. And no doubt such movements will always find popularity because they appeal to our pride. They provide an opportunity for man to boast in himself and in his own doing. Even before John tells us to walk in the light, he says, first things first, I want you to gaze at the God who is light. And so John says, verse 5, this is the message that we have heard from Him, that is Jesus, and proclaim to you that God is light. Now, what does it mean to say that God is light? Light is a very frequent descriptor of our great God. God is said to dwell in unapproachable light. God is the light of life. God Himself covers Himself with light as a garment. You might remember when Christ confronted Saul of Tarsus, it was with that great blinding light. As Christ Himself testified, I am the light of the world. I am the light that is shined in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. Kids, just think of whenever you shine a flashlight into the dark, you'll notice wherever you point that flashlight, the light wins out over darkness. One church father said that all the darkness in the world cannot extinguish a single candle. Just pile up all the darkness you want, and that candle still burns brightly simply by virtue of being light. The question remains, well, what is light? What does John mean? Even in the scientific community today, there's debate over, well, what exactly is light? Is it a particle? Is it a wave? Is it both? The light remains a bit of a mystery to us. And how much more is that the case for the God who is light, who is beyond our full comprehension? But when we confess God is light, we are at minimum confessing God's perfect moral purity, His perfect, pure, constant moral purity, that God is of pure eyes and can behold evil. Indeed, all earthly lights, they eventually flicker, they fade, they grow dim, but not our God. In Him, there's no shifting shadow. There is no variation due to change, as James says. Our God shines with the same radiance yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Now, you know, John does not say that God has some light or that He gives off light. No, you have this robust truth. He is light. It's His very essence, His unchanging character. I hope you can see that is the best news for us, isn't it? That our God will never fade, He will never change, He will never flicker out. You can just look at one another and we realize how even among the best of us, we are such fickle, fluctuating creatures. But God's constant luminosity means that His love, His wisdom, His power, His faithfulness knows of no shade. He is eternally bright. And I ought to give you the greatest confidence as a Christian, because it's true, isn't it, in our doubts, in our faithless moments, we begin to suspect, well, maybe God does have a dark side to Him. Maybe God's like everybody else, He's got His good sides and He's got His bad sides. It was exactly this that Satan tempted Adam and Eve with, coming to them saying, this God of yours, perhaps He's not so good after all. Have you considered a dark side to God? Well, John is here to destroy that deception. He says the same truth, but he states it negatively and emphatically as verse 5 continues. He says, there is no darkness in God whatsoever, not the least little bit. You can only begin to sense the huge distance between God and man. I had a professor once who illustrated this in front of a giant whiteboard, a whiteboard nearly extended from one end of the classroom to the other end of the classroom. And he got out his black dry erase marker and he went up to the erase board and he drew just the tiniest speck of black. I mean, you had to squint to see this speck of black. And then he declared, this whiteboard is no longer pure. It's no longer pure white. That's a very small sense of John's truth here. There's not the least speck of darkness, of imperfection in our God. He is light of very light. And therefore, that's why when God called Israel, she was called to be a light to the nations. The tabernacle of old had that lampstand, always aflame, always burning to remind her, our God is with us and we are to be a light to the nations. And so you see in this next section, it is only with that knowledge of God as light that now God calls us to walk in the light. Kids, you've probably seen baby ducks following the mommy duck. Well, in a sense, that is us. We are called to imitate our God. As Peter says, be holy because God is holy. Well, John's version is walk in the light as God is in the light. But before that, John shows us how this light cuts both ways. Because light, of course, can illuminate, but light also can expose. It shows us who and what we really are. It pierces through all the veils that we might try to put up before our God. And so you see John shines such a light upon man's false claims of fellowship in verse 6. It reads this, if we say we have fellowship with God while we walk in darkness, we lie. You notice John is addressing not fellowship, but the claim to have fellowship with God. If you recall those Gnostics from last week, this was their bailiwick, the Gnostics held to a special so-called spiritual knowledge that actually led to an indifference to right living. Remember, the Gnostics taught that the body is just a shell for the soul. And so they would go and commit sins in and with the body and then claim, well, it doesn't really matter because all is right with my soul. They were so spiritual, they claimed to be beyond the reach of sin's pollution. And so in short, their claim was you could be righteous without walking righteously. And we know there is nothing new under the sun. We have our own versions of this today, of those who would claim to be moral, to be upright and yet walk contrary to God's law. There's no shortage today of mysticism, spiritualism, new age-ism. They claim the kind of fellowship with the divine and yet wholly apart from the cleansing power of Christ. The talk does not match the walk. And closer to home, you of course may even know professing Christians who fit this description. Their profession of faith does not align with their walk. And you were right to start by asking, is this me? Do I claim Christ on Sunday yet deny Him Monday through Saturday? Do I claim Christ and yet my words, my thoughts, my actions, my deeds, my conduct deny Christ? I claim Christ and yet I follow the world. I follow my own lust. I follow the pride of life. As our Lord Jesus said, there will be many who come and say, Christ, did we not prophesy in Your name? Did we do all these things in Your name? And He says, depart, I never knew you. You give Christ's parable of the soils, right? These seeds that sprout up with what only seems to be great godliness. Then over time, anxieties, cares of the world, persecutions, shows that such growth was never rooted in the good soil. Friends, 1 John, it's a letter all about assurance. He wants you and I to have a firm bedrock confidence that I belong to Jesus Christ and nothing, no one could snatch me out of His hand. But John is also very careful. He's very wise as far as how he speaks about such assurance. He's always quite clear that if the pattern of your life is a pattern of unrepentant sin, of disobedience, of no godly sorrow, no confession, then he says you have no genuine claims to Jesus Christ. Just hear his blunt conclusion in verse 6, if we claim this fellowship but walk in darkness, then we lie. No matter how sincere our profession might be, no matter how earnest our claims might be, no matter how much we might persuade others, even persuade ourselves, if we walk in darkness, then our claims to fellowship with God are false. We are lying. Now, two types of people could fall into that category. One could certainly be the backsliding Christian, the true Christian, but one who is seriously strained from the faith. As the confession says, there can be seasons of life when we fall into grievous sins, grieving the Holy Spirit, our hearts are hardened, and in such a season we can be simultaneously in dangerous darkness and yet lying to ourselves that everything is fine. And perhaps you yourself have been through one of those seasons. You look back and you think, what was I doing? I can't believe I was living that way. I can't believe I was walking in such darkness and flattering myself that all was well. So that's one type, the backsliding Christian. The other type would be the one who professes Christ but is no Christian at all. We could think of Judas as a very easy example, outwardly bearing all these marks of a disciple and yet the truth was not ever in him. Now whether the person is of the first or the second type, the call is really the same to both. Come to Jesus Christ. Come to Christ to be cleansed and forgiven and maybe even to know Him for the very first time. And that's right where John goes next in verse 7. Hear that contrastive conjunction, but, as in but, if we walk in the light. Notice he does not write, if we say we walk in the light. He's not interested in what we say but what we do, not our talk but our walk. Because it is our walk, isn't it, that reveals the inner reality, that the tree is known by its fruit. Mannerisms are a funny thing, aren't they? There's something quirky about us as humans that you could identify someone simply by their walk. You might know family members in your family so well that if you spotted them from a long way off, you could say, oh yeah, that's dad. I recognize that gate anywhere. That's mom. I know that stride anywhere. That's brother and sister by the way that they walk. And John says that's to be us. We're to have such a noticeable stride about us that anyone in the family of God would recognize our gate of godliness because we're all imitating the same pattern after all. And so John says, verse 7, walk in the light as God is in the light. What does this mean to walk in the light? Oh, firstly, chiefly, it is a walk of grace. As we open today with, as Paul said in Ephesians, at one time you were darkness. Now you are light in the Lord. It is solely the grace of God in Jesus Christ. His shining his light upon us that when we were in the domain of darkness, he transferred us into the kingdom of his son. As Jesus told his disciples, you are the light of the world. And of course we know full well there's nothing that they did to become the light of the world. Just the opposite. They were in darkness until this child king was given to them who is the light of the world. And that is the wonder of grace, isn't it? That God has chosen us to be his prisms here on earth, to refract his light through us. So it's a walk of grace. Secondly, it is a walk of fellowship. If you're walking in the light and I'm walking in the light, then we are both walking in the light together. That's what he says in verse 7. We have fellowship with one another. That makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Just think of the opposite of light trying to have fellowship with darkness. As Paul posed the question, what does light have to do with darkness? That's not a trick question, all right? Light has nothing to do with darkness. Righteousness has no partnership with lawlessness, all right? And two walk together unless they agree to meet. That's why I word to our younger members, you'd want to choose your friends very carefully. As Proverbs says, he who walks with the wise becomes wise. You're going to want to find friends who are walking in the light. It's a great blessing, a great encouragement to you. As we saw in Ecclesiastes, if I fall down and there's no one to pick me up, bad for me unless I have a friend who can encourage me, who can pick me up, and then we can both be walking in the light together. So what is it to walk in the light? Well, certainly it simply means to walk in God's commandments. The psalmist says God's word is a lamp unto our feet, it is a light unto our path. But John's focus here is really more so on fellowship, fellowship with one another. And maybe you've been wondering at this point, is this John a perfectionist? Is he an idealist? This community of light, it seems a little too perfect. As Groucho Marx once said, never join a club that would have you as a member. And so you might be wondering, is John being unrealistic here with all this talk of walking in the light? Well, no, John knows better than anyone that sinners sin and sinners sin against one another, that sheep will bite and kick at one another. Indeed, we're called to love one another, and yet we sin against one another. We gossip, we slander, we envy one another, we covet one another's success or possessions. We bear petty grudges against one another, even growing bitter, even nursing hatred against one another. This is our great darkness. John is well aware that when you get a bunch of saints together in a room, you have also a bunch of sinners together in a room. But his plea is, bring it out into the light. It's now known how certain bacteria, pathogens, germs can be destroyed simply by exposing them to UV light. How much more is that the case spiritually? So John says, take your sins, bring them out into the light. And you see how we do that at the end of verse 7, the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. Pack into that little statement, you have three profound truths to examine. Firstly, the blood, as God's law said, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. God was teaching Israel at that time that all sin requires penalty. It requires payment, that the shedding of blood atones for sin. That's a vital truth to remember, that our God never simply forgives sin, as in God does not forgive sin apart from blood. Now the defect with those Old Testament sacrifices was that you had to keep on repeating them over and over and over again, yet again another sacrifice. The bloodshed was good, but never good enough. And that brings us to a second point of that little phrase. Not just blood, not just the blood of bulls and goats, but the precious blood of Jesus His Son. Remember from last week, John proclaimed to us, God become man. God in the flesh, our flesh, the flesh that John had seen with his very own eyes, and so when the God-man goes to the cross, you have a sacrifice never before seen in history. You have a sacrifice never to be repeated again in history, that there was the shedding of blood that was nothing less than the precious blood of the Son of God. So we have blood. Secondly, blood of God's own Son. And thirdly, what arises out of that is this truth, just how powerful, how effective is this blood, that it cleanses us from sin, not some sin, not a few sins, not most sins, but from all our sins. And church, may we never outgrow rejoicing in that profound purification that our God has given us this fountain. Here is the fountain to go to, to be plunged underneath, to be purified of not few, not some, but all of your sins. But that is not John's point, though of course he would not disagree with any of that. His point is not so much the vertical, but how the vertical shapes the horizontal, how we can have fellowship with one another. So John shows us how Christ is the foundation of all true fellowship. To be in Christ does not mean that we will no longer sin against one another, that we will no longer hurt and hate one another, that just as the human body has its infections, the body of Christ will have its infections of sin. That is the bad news. But the good news is that while our fellowship might be hindered, it is not destroyed. Here is this ever-flowing fountain of grace to go to. So Christian, what that means, what is yours to do is to forgive and to be forgiven. As Ephesians says, as God has forgiven you of all of your sins, how quickly, how easily, how kindly, how tenderheartedly are you to forgive the very small sins of your brother or sister toward you. And that is what it is, to walk in the light as God is in the light. But there is one final danger that threatens to darken our fellowship in the third section. And that is this all-too-real threat of self-deception. For my money, self-deception is one of the most fascinating of human achievements. It's an amazing thing that we can pull off self-deception, because just think of what deception is in general. If I want to deceive you, if I want to trick you, that means often that I know something that you don't know. And based off of that, I've got the ability to trick you, to deceive you. So for instance, just think of that famous example of Jacob deceiving his father Isaac. Jacob puts on those animal skins, and he tricks Isaac into thinking that he is Esau. Jacob knew he had on animal skins. His father, of course, did not know that, and so the deception worked. It's clear enough. Well, just imagine if Jacob deceived even himself, so much so that he begins to think, am I really Esau? Which one am I? Am I Jacob, or am I Esau? That seems silly, doesn't it? And yet we do this all the time. We deceive even ourselves. We can and do lie to ourselves. We're so good at this, not only can we trick others. We can trick even ourselves. This is the dark magic that we possess in our fallen nature. And John says here's one of the main ways we do that in verse 8. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. Verse 10, very closely aligned. If we say we have not sinned, we make God a liar. God declares, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The man says, nope, I have not sinned. You God are the liar. I am the truth teller. Again the background of that lightly goes back to those Gnostics who claimed to reach such a spiritual state of perfection that they were in fact sinless. One can only assume these Gnostics were not married. One simple conversation with a wife would have established their sinfulness. But John says, let's bring this claim out under God's light. Because again, we have our own versions of this today. And no serious Christian would claim to be sinless. Indeed, nearly all people claim to admit to faults in general. Right? We're not so bold as the Gnostics. In our parlance though, we'll say things like, well, nobody's perfect. I've got my faults just like everybody else. We have no problem admitting to sins in general, because in general, that saves face and it leaves our pride well intact. We might sin hypothetically. We might fall short in theory. But it's when things start to get specific and particular, it's when the blame and the shame fall squarely upon our person that we begin to squirm. When all the excuses are stripped away, all the explanations are removed, all the finger pointing, all the extenuating circumstances are cleared away. All the, you made me do this, you made me feel this way, my genetics made me do it, my upbringing, my parents are to blame, society is to blame, I'm tired, I didn't mean it that way, you took it wrongly. All the many, many echoes of Adam when Adam said, Lord, it was not me, it was in fact the woman that you gave me. That's just a small sampling of our ability to lie to ourselves. We don't ever formally come out and say, I have no sin. No, we're far too clever for that, aren't we? Instead, we erect all kinds of plausible excuses. We tell ourselves all kinds of stories that would make the greatest storyteller ever envious of our ability to weave lives from within. Well, that again is the bad news. That's how skilled we are in the art of self-deception. It comes as no surprise that the world only helps us out in this area. Instead of divorce, we have no-fault divorce. Instead of adultery, we have affairs. Instead of sinful worry, we have clinical anxiety. Instead of original sin, we have pre-programmed chromosomes. Instead of ownership, we have victimhood and so on and so on. Of course, one of the great recent dangers would be the very potent lies of the sexual revolution that make it acceptable, even morally good, to claim Christ and yet walk in unrepentant sexual deviancy. That again is the bad news. But John does not leave us there. No, remember, John writes so that we might have fellowship with one another. We are not left abandoned to our self-deceptions. Christ saves you even from yourself. And so we have this good news in verse 9, which says, if we confess our sins, the verb confess is very straightforward, it just simply means to tell, to acknowledge, even to declare, it is all the marks of sincere conviction as when David said, Lord, against you and you only, I have sinned. Are you a confessor? Is it your regular pattern to confess clearly, frequently, and quickly? Firstly, clearly, as in not all the stories and strings attached to it, just simply acknowledging, Lord, I have sinned. And such clarity demands a naming of our sin. Best practice to come before God with the biblical name to our sin, my lust, my unrighteous anger, my slander, my sloth, and so on and so forth. Secondly, to confess often. The general pattern is that as we walk in the light, the more and more the Spirit convicts us of our sin, the more like Paul we begin to realize, oh yes, I am the chief of sinners. You're probably well aware, it's often those furthest away from the Lord who think there less there is to confess. So let us confess clearly, frequently, and thirdly, quickly, learning to keep short accounts. Because when we sin, the temptation, of course, is to bury it, to conceal it, to cover it, to nurse it, and sit on it. And as the prince of darkness hates our God of light, doesn't he love to use such shame to keep us from confession? And Satan knows that confession is your gateway to communion, to restoration with your God. And so he'll do everything he can to keep you from confessing, saying, God will not have you. God will not forgive you. How can you do this and call yourself a Christian? You can always confess later. Why not indulge a little bit for now? And that is to walk in the dark. And so John says, confess. And there are limitless verses that tell how well it goes for the confessor. My favorite is what we read earlier of Proverbs, that whoever conceals his transgression will not prosper. But to the one who confesses and forsakes his sin, he will obtain mercy. Expect mercy on the other side of your confession. Like David said, let the bones that you have broken, may they rejoice. And that's right where John goes next. He's told us to confess, but now he tells us who's on the other side of that confession. That's perhaps the most important part. Because whenever you confess, humanly speaking, to another person, you often wonder, don't you? How's he going to react? How will she respond? Will they be gracious or will they erupt? I wonder what mood they're in today before I confess. Well, Christian, just see who's on the other side of your confession. This God of light in whom there is no shifting shadow, as verse 9 says, our God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. You see, it's not the quality of our confession that gets us our repentance. No, once again, it's God's unchanging character. Well, what does it mean that God is faithful to forgive us? Faithful towards what? All right, a faithful soldier is faithful towards his country, a faithful wife towards her husband. Well, what is God faithful towards? Well in a word, simply put, towards himself, that God is faithful unto himself, particularly his covenant promise, to be merciful, to be gracious, to remember our sins no more, to forgive us our sins, these covenant promises that find their yes and amen in Jesus Christ. And whatever God's name, God's reputation is on the line, that's the best news of all for the Christian. That gives us bedrock confidence that God will uphold his fame and his reputation. And secondly, how is God just to forgive? That's perhaps confusing at first. If anything, we might think of justice and forgiveness as at odds with one another. After all, it is God's justice that requires him to punish sin. It's his glory to distribute punishment upon sinners. And so if God will by no means clear the guilty, how then does he forgive the guilty? Well, that can only be so if God's justice has been satisfied, if God's justice unto sin has truly been exhausted. And that is the glory of the crucifixion, of the just for the unjust. We saw last week that Christ took on flesh, our flesh. We see this week that Christ takes on our punishment, that upon the cross the full weight, the full wrath of God's punishment unto sin was fully poured out upon our Savior, that it was finished when he truly uttered those words, it is finished. The cross is the only grounds by which God forgives sin because it is only in Christ that God remains both just and the justifier of sinners. So what that means for the confessing Christian is that that confession of your sin will not be returned with punishment. How could it be? Consequences, certainly, but the punishment of that sin that you are confessing today has already been paid in full upon Calvary. That means punishment for your lust, your manipulation, your envy, your gossip, your slander, your sloth, has been nailed to the cross and the justice of God poured out in full and every drop drunk down to the dregs. And so what the confessing Christian receives is no punishment, instead it is forgiveness. It is cleansing of our sins. As a just God, he would do no other than forgive. The penalty has been met in full, and as a loving Father, he delights in nothing more than to restore his children unto himself. That is our forgiving God. The question is, are you a confessing Christian? Well when that is done, we do what we are called to do, which is to walk as children of light, to walk in the light as God is in the light, and we have fellowship with one another. In just a few moments, we'll hear that familiar benediction from Numbers that we've heard so many times, that Aaron said unto the people of God, that God would make his face shine upon us, that God would lift up the light of his countenance upon us. That was the greatest of blessings to an Israelite, that he longed that God's face, his smile, his countenance would break out in a smile, in a radiance. Not darkness, not punishment, but the light of life, a smile of approval and unending love. And we're right to ask, how could that be? For sinners like you and I, when we know it's because God has shined the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ into our hearts, so that we might walk as children of light. Let us pray.
