Be The Real Thing Walk In The Light 1 John 1:5-2:2

Call to Worship Psalm  27:1-9

Isa 49:6 he says: "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." 7 Thus says the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation, the servant of rulers: "Kings shall see and arise; princes, and they shall prostrate themselves; because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you."

Psa 104:1,2  1   Bless the LORD, O my soul! O LORD my God, you are very great! You are clothed with splendor and majesty, 2 covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent.

Psa 36: 9 For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.

John 1:44 In him was life, and the life was the light of men.5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

3:19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God."

 8:12 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

God is light . . . a reference to His holiness, His perfection, His glory – even his person.  By the way, the fact that John refers to God as light and throughout his Gospel Jesus claims to be the light all this equates the essence of Jesus to be equal to the Father.  In fact, when Jesus Christ pulled back the curtain of His human flesh at the mount of transfiguration, Peter James and John had to shield their eyes because the Lord's face shone like the sun and his clothing blazed with brilliant white light (Matthew 17:2).  The future dwelling of the believer in the Father's House will be a place marked by brilliant light and no darkness at all (Revelation 22:5).

Law and Grace reading  Isaiah 6:1-8

1 John 1:1-2:2  WALKING IN THE SHADOWS OR WALKING IN THE LIGHT

Doxology   Numbers 6:24-26

 

1 John 1:5-2:2  The Real Thing

There were some people in John's day who said, "We have fellowship with God." How they had come by it they did not explain. Perhaps they claimed to have reached it by philosophical speculation, by exact reasoning, or by long-continued meditation. Whatever the road, they said that they had reached the City of God and were in communion with the Great Being. John saw that they walked in darkness, rejecting the Light of Divine Revelation from above and the pure Light of the Holy Spirit within. He also saw that they, themselves, were not true, and that their lives were not pure and, therefore, he warned them that they were speaking and acting a lie. Their life was a lie, for they were not walking in the truth. And their profession that they had fellowship with God was another lie, for God can have no fellowship with falsehood. "God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all" and, therefore, He cannot hold any communion with darkness.

John curtly dismisses false claims with that plain word, "lie." The disciple whom Jesus loved spoke like the Son of Thunder that he was when he had to deal with shams. It is the part of true love to be honest and to expose that which would be injurious to those it loves.

Get The real thing, the fellowship with God which comes of walking in the Light of God.  THE LIGHT OF OUR WALK. True Believers do not walk in darkness. They have found the road and they see it before them. They know whom they have believed and why they have believed–and so they go forward intelligently.

1. Be Serious About Sin

John highlights three false claims about sin. I hear them every day too.  Each is highlighted by the words "If we say." One claims sin is not a big deal.  If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

1.  Don't Downplay the Consequences of sin.

"If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth" This is the attitude of mind which says in effect that sin no longer matters.

Our deceitful heart suggests to us, first, that we should deny our present sinfulness, and so claim fellowship with God on the grounds that we are holy and so may draw near to the Holy God.

The claim that they made  The claim was that they were both enjoying fellowship with God and at the same time they were able to walk in darkness. Darkness, you will remember, is either the opposite of truth or in this context the opposite of holiness and righteousness. One is tempted to wonder who these people were. Were they true Christians or were they purely nominal Christians? But certainly they were those who maintained deliberately a way of life that was quite out of harmony with the mind and will of God, and yet, obviously, they were claiming to be Christians and to have fellowship with God. Some plead that though it may be they have sin, yet they are not bad at heart. They look upon sin as a technical term and though they admit, in words, that they have sin, yet they practically deny it by saying, "I have a good heart at bottom. I always was well-intentioned from the very first. True, what I have done does not appear to be right according to the very severe judgement of the Law of God, but I cannot help that. I only followed my nature and cannot be blamed, for I never meant to do anything wrong, either to God or man. I have always been kind to the poor and have done the right thing all round. I know I have erred–of course we all have–here and there, but you cannot expect a fellow to be perfect!

The charge they must face  And the charge is quite simply that of lying. John says in effect you cannot possibly persistently, deliberately and continually walk in darkness and at the same time claim that you are enjoying fellowship with God. The Word of God is absolutely clear on this point that sin spoils fellowship. In the Old Testament this note is struck "your sins and your iniquities have separated between you and your God and he cannot hear"  Look at how stupid the sons of Aaron became.

Numbers 16:  1 Now Korah the son of Izhar, son of Kohath, son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, and On the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men.2 And they rose up before Moses, with a number of the people of Israel, 250 chiefs of the congregation, chosen from the assembly, well-known men.3 They assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said to them, "You have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the LORD?"4 When Moses heard it, he fell on his face,5 and he said to Korah and all his company, "In the morning the LORD will show who is his, and who is holy, and will bring him near to him. The one whom he chooses he will bring near to him.

2. Don't Deceive Yourself  About  The Corruption of Sin.

There is the one who denies that sin matters at all because it no longer exists in them at all.

 Sin no longer existed in themselves, and so we read in v.8 "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us" This is a fantastic claim for anybody to make. And I have heard some make this claim.

The reasons people say this?  I've heard ministers say that people have progressed so far that to talk about sin is an insult to intelligence. What the Bible called sin, is now just personal preferences to be respected and approved. Don't talk about sin!  That is what some pastors demand today.  Don't call good what God calls evil. Don't call evil what God calls good.  And that is right where our society is at right now.

The results of saying this?  He says "we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us" God's truth is not in us because God's Word is not in us. We do deceive ourselves and to be deceived is always dangerous.  It means that we can expose ourselves to peril when we are not aware of it and this can lead to disaster. Occasionally I do come across Christians who make precisely this claim. They claim what we call in the language of theology "sinless perfection". But I always feel when I meet such a person making such a claim that all that I need is just five minutes with the person's wife, or husband, or child, or even maybe their cat or dog, and I will soon discover the truth. God's truth is that "all have sinned?' and our Lord Himself told us that it was "from within, out of the heart of man" that all evil proceeds. The claim that sin no longer exists, to deny the corruption of sin within our own personalities is to walk in the dark self-deceived.

3. Don't Deceive Yourself  About  The Committing of Sin.

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

John is concerned with people who were actually denying the fact that they had committed sin. Don't deny the seriousness of Guilt.   They were not prepared to admit that there was anything wrong about what they were doing nor were they prepared to admit that anything was their fault.  Because when you deny the seriousness of guilt you also deny the sacrifice God in Grace made for you. If there is no sin there is no need for a Saviour and no need for Christ. And of course this means that these people are adopting a position which makes God a liar, which means in effect that the whole of God's plan of salvation is nothing,  a hoax and that the offer of the gospel of God's saving grace in Jesus Christ is nothing but a quack remedy for an illness and malady that does not exist.

Two men went hunting in Canada.  They had a pilot take them to a remote spot. They bagged 6 elk. Pilot says, "We can't take off with that many -- too heavy. We can only take three."
One man said, "Last year our pilot had the same kind of plane and allowed us to take 6 elk from here."
"Okay," said the pilot. They took off, but soon found they could not ascend above the hills.  They crashed.  All survived. "Where are we?" the dazed pilot asked the hunters. One replied, "Wow!  We're right where we crashed last year!

4. Be Sure About Salvation

Don't Discard the Grace of God in the atoning death of Christ.        The Power of Christ 's blood

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.

The cleansing from sin referred to here has been interpreted by commentators as being either judicial or experimental and referring either to every kind of sin or the very implications of sin indwelling. The fact is that when we walk in the light we become so conscious of the sinfulness of our own hearts that we find that the Cross is all the more the one fact in our redemption. We find this strange paradox emerging in the lives of all God's true servants that the greatest saints are those who have always felt themselves to be the greatest sinners. Rather like a child that loves drawing; in the early stages the result s of that chi ld's efforts are unrecognizable but the child is quite content but as the child progresses so the standard improves arid recognition and indeed approbation may grow too but satisfaction declines. Walking in the light then means being ready and prepared to experience a consciousness of our sin. But it is not enough to be conscious of our sin and so in v.9 John goes on to speak of the second characteristic of those who walk in the light. They are careful to confess their sins to God.

5. Be Careful About Confession

" If we confess our sin he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" Somebody once said "Keep short accounts with God" and this of course is exactly what walking in the light means. There are some Christians in some churches who go to Confession once a week. John would suggest that we never wait to confess our sins, we go at once.

The word John uses here for confess is a verb that means to agree with another . . . to say the same thing about something –  And in this context, it means to say the same thing about our specific sins that God says.  It's actually, taking God's side against yourself. It's as if you step out of yourself and turn around and say to yourself, "Self, I am agreeing with God on this one – what you're thinking or what you're doing or saying is nothing more or less than sin."

Let me give you a concise definition of Biblical confession; admitting that we disobeyed God, then agreeing with Him that we don't have an excuse.

An outgoing PM offered help to the new PM. He told him that three envelopes had been prepared and placed in the top drawer of his desk. Whenever he made a big mistake, he was to open envelope #1 and follow the directions. He promised the new PM that his advice would work every time. For several months, the new tenure of the PM worked wonderfully. But then, he made his first mistake. It was costly and undeniable. He remembered those envelopes and opened the envelope marked with a number 1 and the brief message simply read, "Blame me." So he did. He blamed the former PM for the problem saying that he'd inherited the problems of the former PM and there was nothing he could do about the issue that he'd encountered. Everyone believed him and things went back to normal. Less than a year later he made another big mistake. He opened envelope #2 and it read, "Blame the Public Service." So he did. And again, it worked. Months later this PM made another big mistake. It was costly and obvious to everyone. He opened the third envelope and it simply read, "Prepare three envelopes."

Verse 7 is referring to our status – that is, we are continually in a cleansed state by virtue of the cross of Christ.

Verse 9 is talking about specific sins which need addressing.  

The Old Testament sacrificial system dealt with this concept.  The offerings of the Levitical law included the sin offerings and the trespass offerings. The sin offerings related to the principle of sinfulness while the trespass offerings related to specific sins.

One author wrote, "The sin offering dealt with who they were and the trespass offering dealt with what they'd done. The sin offering dealt with the root of sin and the trespass offering dealt with the fruits of sin.

In the New Testament, Jesus taught the same principle to His disciples in the upper room where He grabbed a towel and began to wash their dirty feet. When Jesus got to Peter, Peter said, "You'll not play the role of a servant and wash my feet." And Jesus said, "If I don't wash you, you want have any part of me." And Peter said, "Then Lord, wash my whole body."  I love Peter.  And the Lord said to Him, "He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean." (John 13)

In other words, Jesus was referring to the all-cleansing bath represented by God's application of Christ's death on our behalf – that total and completed and eternal payment for our sinfulness – who we are – cleansed by the offering of Christ once and for all.  Washing feet, on the other hand, was a metaphor Jesus used to represent the ongoing, daily cleansing in the lives of believers for what we do . . . we're not yet delivered from the presence and even participation in sin – in fact, the more you grow in Christ the more aware you are of your sinful thoughts and actions; you don't have to be justified again every time you sin – or, saved again – but you do need your feet washed.

It's this kind of specific cleansing that John speaks of in I John 1:9.  "if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous or just . . ."  He is faithful – that is, He will keep His word – made as much to God the Son as to us. If Christ's sacrifice was satisfactory, then God will be faithful in forgiving us. He won't go back on His word.  But He's also righteous or just to forgive us.  This also references the cross work of Christ.

God is just – that is, He will never demand a second payment for your sins.

Jesus paid it all really means Jesus paid it all.  And who is it that finds daily forgiveness and cleansing – the blessing of a clean conscience and the benefits from this ongoing cleansing of dirty feet?

The forgiveness we must take  Some people ask for forgiveness but very seldom accept it.. The person who is walking in the light knows what it is to be conscious of sin, to confess sin, and then to accept God's forgiveness and to live the forgiven life. There are some people who seem to think that God has a message of forgiveness for the unconverted but none for the converted. This is tragic and the word is absolutely clear - to cleanse us from all unrighteousness and we must not and dare not make exceptions where God makes none.

 A faithfulness we must trust.  God is described here as being faithful, faithful that is to his promises, and righteous – righteous because having met the demands of his own law once in the person of his own Son he cannot in righteousness ask us to meet those demands our selves. As somebody has said "God will not payment twice demand; once from my bleeding surety's hand and then again at mine.

John makes God's intention absolutely plain in the opening verse of chapter 2 "those things write I unto you that ye sin not" God does not want us to wallow in failure and defeat.

 "If any man sin" We may sin through carelessness, we may sin through presumption, but the tragedy of sin is it can very often bring us to despair and how many a young convert has been tempted to despair and the devil has come saying "you can't be a Christian." But!

"We have an advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world." Every sort of person. Every nationality.

Christ is our Advocate," he is our representative as it were at the bar of God's justice: and he is not only our representative, our lawyer, to plead our case there but he himself is the propitiation. He is the one who in himself constitutes the grounds for our forgiveness before God. We can neither add to what Christ has done or what Christ is, nor can we take away from it. And walking in the light means becoming more and more conscious of my complete and utter dependence upon the merits of Jesus Christ in his death, resurrection and ascension. Someone has said to answer the charge which imagines that here Jesus

Christ is seeking to propitiate an angry God, someone has said "It is not that propitiation wins the love of God but that the love of God provides the propitiation in Christ." Somebody has put it this way "His advocacy is valid because he himself can bear witness that the only conditions on which fellowship between God and man can be restored has actually been fulfilled, i.e. the removal of the sin by which that intercourse was interrupted." It is worth noting that John says here that Christ is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. What an amazing statement! What an amazing Saviour! Surely we can have confidence, and complete confidence, in Jesus Christ but no confidence whatsoever in ourselves. This is what it means to walk in the light, knowing that we are accepted in the beloved but never for one moment accepted by God for anything in ourselves.

6. Be  Fruitful  About Friendship

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.4 And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. 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.

The Lord wants you to enjoy fellowship with Him and fellowship with one another.  Keep short accounts with God.

You have been reconciled to God through the death of the Lord Jesus at the cross.  That became yours forever the moment you believed in Him.  But our enjoyment of that fellowship can be diminished.  Our joy in it can become painful.   Husbands, you know what I mean.. forget something and you get the frosty treatment when you get home.  Act stupid, you are still married, but the enjoyment has become cold.

What  do you need to do?  Sort it out.  Apologise. Buy a new one whatever it was you broke.

Restore that fellowship. 

Are you out of sorts with someone at church? Maybe you are out of sorts with your relationship with God.  There is some secret sin that you are treasuring  in your heart!  Deal with it.  Confess it.. Admit it to God.  You can have a bright joyful Christian life again. Bt get it sorted.

Pilgrims Progress is a great book everybody ought to read. In a story form Pilgrim goes on a journey to the celestial City.  But occasionally he leaves the road. He gets in a mess. And he has to get it sorted. Then he goes back to the place where he left the road and gets on the road again.  You need to get on the road again at the very place you left it.

Christian learned the painful consequences of sinful sleep. He became careless and idle and, as he slept in the light, his roll slipped away. But Christian also demonstrated the fruits of humble repentance. He acknowledged his sin, sought forgiveness, and retraced his steps in a diligent search to find and recover what was lost.

The roll was precious to Christian. It represents, as Bunyan reminds us, "the assurance of his life and acceptance at the desired haven." Assurance is not a given in the Christian walk; it is not guaranteed to all believers. It can be strong or weak at times. It can even be lost for a time due to sin or neglect. The 1689 London Baptist Confession acknowledges that even true believers can struggle with assurance.

True believers may in various ways have the assurance of their salvation shaken, decreased, or temporarily lost. This may happen because they neglect to preserve it or fall into some specific sin that wounds their conscience and grieves the Spirit. It may happen through some unexpected or forceful temptation or when God withdraws the light of His face and allows even those who fear Him to walk in darkness and to have no light. Yet they are never completely lacking the seed of God, the life of faith, love of Christ and the brethren, sincerity of heart, or conscience concerning their duty. Out of these graces, through the work of the Spirit, this assurance may at the proper time be revived. In the meantime, they are kept from utter despair through them. [Confessing the Faith: The 1689 Baptist Confession for the 21st Century, 20.4]

Though Christians may fall into dark times and lose the light of God's felt presence and comfort, God, by the power and work of His Spirit, will keep and protect them. When the time is right according to His purposes, he will restore their assurance and hope. David prayed for such revival as he grieved his own sin in Psalm 51: Make me hear joy and gladness, That the bones You have broken may rejoice.
Hide Your face from my sins, And blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from Your presence, And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, And uphold me by Your generous Spirit.     (Psalm 51:8–12)

"Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."