WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.100 Good morning. It's good to see you all here. It's our first sticky Sunday of the summer. 00:00:05.639 --> 00:00:12.560 It's not even hot yet. It's just sticky. But if you are finding yourself needing some air, 00:00:12.660 --> 00:00:16.600 there's some lovely air moving in front, you feel free to get up and move around. Or 00:00:16.600 --> 00:00:19.980 if you're really sweltering, you can go downstairs in the live stream 00:00:19.980 --> 00:00:24.719 in the air conditioning if that's necessary for you to focus. 00:00:24.719 --> 00:00:32.500 You know, one of the things that in my pastoral experience is true is that 00:00:32.500 --> 00:00:38.560 there are many reasons for a crisis of faith. Sometimes it's because we've encountered something 00:00:38.560 --> 00:00:47.159 new in experiencing the faith of someone else that we've never seen before, and we wonder what's that 00:00:47.159 --> 00:00:53.359 about, if they believe in a different religion or a different God. Sometimes crises of faith come from 00:00:53.359 --> 00:00:58.079 suffering and hardship in our own life or in the life of the world, and we wonder, 00:00:58.659 --> 00:01:03.060 we ask ourselves a question, where's God in the midst of those things? 00:01:04.099 --> 00:01:09.920 But one of the reasons why I think sometimes we experience crisis of faith is because we have 00:01:09.920 --> 00:01:18.920 a misunderstanding of true biblical Christianity. Our view of God and our view of ourselves become 00:01:18.920 --> 00:01:29.200 slightly warped by a misunderstanding of the truth in a way that then when we press that to its 00:01:29.200 --> 00:01:37.079 conclusion leads us to a crisis of faith. How could we believe? How can we have confidence that we could 00:01:37.079 --> 00:01:42.820 believe what we believe? How could we know the God of the Bible if these things are true? 00:01:42.819 --> 00:01:51.439 It is in this context in many ways that the letter of 1 John was written. It was written to give 00:01:51.439 --> 00:01:59.899 confidence to believers by clarifying the truth about what it looks like to actually know God rightly. 00:02:00.939 --> 00:02:06.280 And we are starting a series. We started it last week. We hope you're here. If not, 00:02:06.739 --> 00:02:11.479 Pastor Nick preached a great introductory sermon. You should go back, listen to it on our website or our 00:02:11.479 --> 00:02:20.199 podcast. But we're going to continue in 1 John at the second half of chapter 1 today because John is 00:02:20.199 --> 00:02:29.659 teaching us about particular things where he is addressing the false teaching or misunderstandings 00:02:29.659 --> 00:02:38.859 that have crept in to the Christian church that are causing them a crisis of faith. So we're going to 00:02:38.860 --> 00:02:48.980 look at John 1, 5 through 2, 2. It's page 959 in your pew Bible. So if you want to turn there, 00:02:49.060 --> 00:02:59.080 we're going to read that and pray for God's help as we look at his word together. John 1…I'm sorry, 00:02:59.240 --> 00:03:06.720 1 John. I keep saying John. 1 John. The letter of 1 John. Not the gospel of John. The letter of 1 John 00:03:06.719 --> 00:03:12.000 chapter 1 starting in verse 5. Let's read this together. 00:03:14.319 --> 00:03:22.139 This is the message. We have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light and in him is 00:03:22.139 --> 00:03:28.939 no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do 00:03:28.939 --> 00:03:33.960 not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one 00:03:33.960 --> 00:03:42.260 another in the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive 00:03:42.260 --> 00:03:50.680 ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our 00:03:50.680 --> 00:03:58.860 sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his 00:03:58.860 --> 00:04:04.720 word is not in us. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. 00:04:05.660 --> 00:04:12.280 But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the 00:04:12.280 --> 00:04:21.259 propitiation for our sins and not only ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. Let's pray. 00:04:21.540 --> 00:04:28.759 Ask God's help. Lord, we thank you for this word this morning. We pray that you will help us as we 00:04:28.759 --> 00:04:35.199 look at it for a few minutes. Lord, I pray for your help that I would speak clearly your word. 00:04:36.019 --> 00:04:42.439 Lord, I pray for us here as we gather to sit under your word this morning. Lord, that you would make 00:04:42.439 --> 00:04:52.139 our hearts receptive and our minds pliable and our wills submissive so that we might receive your word 00:04:52.139 --> 00:04:58.539 today. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. 00:05:01.360 --> 00:05:06.740 So you may have noticed I broke this passage up a little differently than the ESV does. 00:05:07.459 --> 00:05:14.459 Those breaks, the paragraph breaks and the little titles in there are editorial comments, 00:05:14.579 --> 00:05:20.839 not a part of the Bible themselves. And so we've decided to put it this way because we think there's 00:05:20.839 --> 00:05:27.359 a hole here where John is addressing these false understandings, particularly of our view of God and 00:05:27.359 --> 00:05:36.799 our view of sin as it relates to ourselves, to help us see this message, that it is Christ who rescues us 00:05:36.799 --> 00:05:43.739 from false ideals, ideas of sin that lead us to doubt our fellowship with God. 00:05:43.740 --> 00:05:50.379 John is addressing false ideas that have crept into the church. And as we look through it, we're going 00:05:50.379 --> 00:05:55.120 to have a little outline. If you're outline people, here it is, right? We're going to have the premise 00:05:55.120 --> 00:06:00.560 proclaimed. We're going to talk about God is light and cannot have fellowship with sinners. Then we're 00:06:00.560 --> 00:06:08.120 going to have the proposals confronted as these false teachings are laid bare, these false views that 00:06:08.120 --> 00:06:14.759 keep us from fellowship with God. And then the promise established, how Christ is able to keep us 00:06:14.759 --> 00:06:20.180 in fellowship with God. So that's what we're going to look at this morning. And we'll just walk through 00:06:20.180 --> 00:06:28.360 it one step at a time. First, verse five, the premise proclaimed, God is light. Look with me again. 00:06:28.480 --> 00:06:33.560 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you. This is what Nick preached on last week. 00:06:33.560 --> 00:06:38.319 He's saying, this is a message that we heard from Jesus himself. This is the teaching of the church 00:06:38.319 --> 00:06:43.759 throughout all ages. And now we make it known to you who at the end of the first century, 00:06:44.139 --> 00:06:50.000 maybe you who grew up not knowing the original apostles, but now I, as one of the last living 00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:56.100 apostles, want to make sure you know these things because we were eyewitnesses to them. That's what the 00:06:56.100 --> 00:07:01.939 beginning of chapter one says. It says, I want you to know this. And his first big declaration is this, 00:07:01.939 --> 00:07:10.680 God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. Now in the Bible, the light has a number of different, 00:07:10.939 --> 00:07:18.339 it's an image, right? It's a metaphor that's pointing to a few different things. Light is often seen as a 00:07:18.339 --> 00:07:27.180 revelation. So your word is a light unto my path. It's a way that God reveals himself, makes himself known by 00:07:27.180 --> 00:07:33.360 being light. Just like as we walk into a dark room, we can't see anything, but we turn on the light 00:07:33.360 --> 00:07:39.900 switch and then suddenly, oh, now we can see. This is what God is. God brings light through his revelation 00:07:39.900 --> 00:07:48.319 so that we can see truly what actually is. But light is more than simply revelation in the Bible. It is also 00:07:48.319 --> 00:07:56.459 an image of moral purity. It is a picture of perfection. It drives away all darkness when the 00:07:56.459 --> 00:08:04.060 light is bright enough. And so light is connected with that which is both right and what is true. 00:08:04.560 --> 00:08:12.420 And John is saying, the premise I want to start with this morning or in this message is, God is this. 00:08:12.420 --> 00:08:21.680 He is the one who has made himself known and he is morally pure in every way, unsullied, undarkened, 00:08:22.100 --> 00:08:32.800 and unblocked in the world. There's nothing that mars God's perfection. Now I think we have a hard time 00:08:32.800 --> 00:08:39.300 wrapping our minds around this because we've never lived in a perfect world. And we have very little 00:08:39.299 --> 00:08:45.659 idea of what perfection actually looks like, what any kind of perfection looks like. I did some 00:08:45.659 --> 00:08:53.379 research this week on the USDA on the standards for food production and purity. And I'm not going to 00:08:53.379 --> 00:09:00.839 ruin your lunch by giving you details. But all I can tell you is that the USDA allows for a percentage of 00:09:00.840 --> 00:09:11.660 animal parts, mold, or worse, in the production of the food that we eat every day that would 00:09:11.660 --> 00:09:18.160 probably make us not want to eat anything if we looked at. That's not actually true because when we 00:09:18.160 --> 00:09:25.639 look at it, we realize God has made us able to sustain this. But my point is, even what we think is pure, 00:09:25.639 --> 00:09:35.620 even what we think is perfectly good, it's not. We live in such an imperfect world. Nothing is ever 100% pure. 00:09:36.019 --> 00:09:47.019 But God is. He reveals himself as being morally perfect in every way. Everything he does is good. 00:09:47.460 --> 00:09:55.620 Everything he does is right. Everything he does is true. Everything he does is meant for his glory. 00:09:55.620 --> 00:10:02.080 And for the good of the world. He is morally perfect. There is no fault in him. 00:10:04.120 --> 00:10:08.080 I wonder, friends, do we really believe this is true? 00:10:10.060 --> 00:10:18.320 We wrestle with it. I think our instinct is to make God less pure and holy than he really is. 00:10:18.320 --> 00:10:23.140 We really wish God was a little bit more like ourselves. 00:10:26.200 --> 00:10:32.660 Why is this? Well, have you ever met someone who's really, really, really good at something? Say someone has a 00:10:32.660 --> 00:10:40.280 beautiful singing voice. And they invite you to sing with them. Or maybe Messi invites you to go play 00:10:40.279 --> 00:10:47.839 soccer with him. And you think, I don't want to do that. All I'm going to... Do you know who Messi is? 00:10:48.019 --> 00:10:53.100 Messi is the best soccer player in the world. Sorry, all you Ronaldo fans. He's the best soccer player in the world. 00:10:53.100 --> 00:10:58.639 And so, what I'm saying is that when we meet people who are exceptional at something, 00:10:58.960 --> 00:11:05.700 and they invite us to join in with them, our response is usually hesitation, shame, 00:11:06.200 --> 00:11:14.399 and a desire to hide from them because we see our inadequacy and our shortcoming. 00:11:14.399 --> 00:11:19.620 And one of the things we do with that is sometimes we get mean. And we think, oh, 00:11:19.659 --> 00:11:26.059 they're not actually that good anyway. Sometimes we do that in our hearts. And I think we do that 00:11:26.059 --> 00:11:35.919 with God. And sometimes I think we also run from him and want to hide. Because when we see God as he 00:11:35.919 --> 00:11:44.000 truly is, we know we are not as pure as he is. We feel shame and condemnation. 00:11:44.399 --> 00:11:51.879 Because deep down in our souls, our heart tells us we are not perfect as he is perfect. 00:11:54.459 --> 00:12:01.539 When we see his light, we see the darkness in our own lives. And friends, this is what the Bible calls 00:12:01.539 --> 00:12:08.639 sin. Now, let's talk briefly about this idea of sin because it's something we want to make sure. We 00:12:08.639 --> 00:12:14.360 often think of sin as doing something wrong, right? We break a rule. That's what sin is. 00:12:14.399 --> 00:12:20.019 And that is true. And there are rules that God has given us so that we might flourish in life. The 00:12:20.019 --> 00:12:24.419 Ten Commandments would be an example of them. And there are things like do not lie. Do not steal. 00:12:24.559 --> 00:12:31.459 Do not murder. Do not bear false witness. Do not covet your neighbor's donkey. You know, 00:12:31.579 --> 00:12:37.379 there are all these things that we're told, right? And these are rules, and we can transgress them or not. 00:12:37.379 --> 00:12:46.039 And so, it's true that sin is a breaking of those things. But in the Bible, sin is more than that. It's not 00:12:46.039 --> 00:12:53.720 just breaking a rule. It's actually underneath that, at its core, it's a disposition. It's a heart stance 00:12:53.720 --> 00:13:02.600 of rejecting God and choosing, rather than recognizing him as God and allowing him to be God in our lives, 00:13:02.600 --> 00:13:09.800 which would include telling us how we ought to live, we rebel against him. This is what we saw at the very 00:13:09.800 --> 00:13:15.100 beginning of the storyline of the Bible in the Garden of Eden. God had created a place where 00:13:15.100 --> 00:13:21.240 everything was perfect. And Adam and Eve had simply to receive from God and to submit to God 00:13:21.240 --> 00:13:27.019 in the regulations that he had set about living in the garden. There was nothing that got good that 00:13:27.019 --> 00:13:34.539 God withheld that was rightfully Adam and Eve's, and yet they rejected, and they rebelled. And they 00:13:34.539 --> 00:13:40.980 did transgress a command, but more fundamentally, they said, God, rather than receiving from you, 00:13:41.240 --> 00:13:47.379 we want to be like you. We want to be God's ourselves and to rule our lives and to rule 00:13:47.379 --> 00:13:54.600 all that we do. We want to be able to say this is what is right and wrong. We want to be able to say 00:13:54.600 --> 00:14:01.460 what we can and cannot do. This is why the passage that Susan read earlier from Isaiah says, 00:14:01.800 --> 00:14:08.659 all we like sheep have gone astray. We've gone our own way. This is our transgression, 00:14:08.920 --> 00:14:14.759 our iniquity, our sin. And John in this letter calls it darkness. 00:14:17.259 --> 00:14:24.220 And when you have a light that is so bright and so pure, there cannot be darkness. 00:14:24.600 --> 00:14:33.320 With light. And so John's premise creates a problem, doesn't it? How can we who have darkness 00:14:33.320 --> 00:14:40.399 in us because of sin be with God who is light when light drives out darkness? 00:14:42.159 --> 00:14:49.879 Well, I believe that the next part of this section of 1 John is some of the ways in which some false 00:14:49.879 --> 00:14:55.539 teachers, some false ideas were introduced into the Christian community on how to resolve this. 00:14:55.980 --> 00:15:03.980 Okay? And so this is verses 6 through the end of our passage. And what you see with John here 00:15:03.980 --> 00:15:11.740 in this is the proposals, these false ideas are confronted. These false views that keep us from 00:15:11.740 --> 00:15:18.779 true fellowship with God are exposed. And the way John writes here is not like Paul. Paul writes a good 00:15:18.779 --> 00:15:25.279 logical argument. If this, then this, therefore this, so that this. And we love all those conjunctions. 00:15:25.659 --> 00:15:30.620 John here is actually writing cyclically. He's writing in three times. He says, if this, 00:15:31.039 --> 00:15:37.480 if we claim this, well then this is going to be the outcome. But what about this? And this is the 00:15:37.480 --> 00:15:42.959 structure. And he does it three times in verses 6 and 7, verses 8 and 9, and then verses 10 through 00:15:42.960 --> 00:15:51.060 2-2. And that's why we went through 2-2, because verses 1 and 2 of chapter 2 are the, but the opposite, 00:15:51.840 --> 00:15:59.740 the other part of this cycle. Okay? And in each one we see the claim is judged as fault, 00:15:59.900 --> 00:16:06.920 and an alternative is put forward. So now I want to talk about the false claims that John is exposing. 00:16:06.919 --> 00:16:12.719 And I'm going to put them in modern terms. Hopefully that will resonate with some of us 00:16:12.719 --> 00:16:17.639 as we understand that, oh, we've heard this, and we've even thought this ourselves. Right? 00:16:17.799 --> 00:16:28.379 The first view is this. Sin isn't that bad. Okay? Verse 6 says what? If we say we have fellowship 00:16:28.379 --> 00:16:32.299 with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 00:16:32.299 --> 00:16:41.079 And I think underlying this is the idea that sin isn't actually that bad. Even though God is pure, 00:16:41.899 --> 00:16:49.919 sin, does it really break our fellowship with God? I think I can keep sinning and actually still know 00:16:49.919 --> 00:16:55.379 God. This is what people thought in the first century. They had a whole complex worldview that 00:16:55.379 --> 00:17:00.859 separated their body from their soul. And they thought, well, it doesn't matter what I do in my body 00:17:00.860 --> 00:17:06.220 because my soul is pure and so I can have fellowship with God in my soul and what I do in my body. 00:17:06.339 --> 00:17:10.539 It doesn't even touch that. So they had a very sophisticated view of it. 00:17:11.039 --> 00:17:15.500 But they believed that they could worship God while still doing whatever they wanted. 00:17:18.220 --> 00:17:23.920 Now, we don't have that system today. Most of us don't live with that kind of a worldview. 00:17:23.920 --> 00:17:32.580 But man, do we have a world that minimizes sin in so many ways. Here are some ways that I think we do 00:17:32.580 --> 00:17:42.060 so in our culture today. I didn't mean to. If my intent was good and my actions were wrong, 00:17:42.420 --> 00:17:52.740 that's not really that bad. How about this one? Well, nobody's perfect. Everybody messes up. 00:17:52.740 --> 00:17:59.059 Yeah, okay, so I sinned, but like everyone does it. So why are you holding me to a standard of saying 00:17:59.059 --> 00:18:09.299 that sin removes us from fellowship with God? Another way that we do it is we sin by saying, 00:18:09.559 --> 00:18:20.319 I didn't do anything, right? If I didn't actively transgress a law, if I didn't actively do something 00:18:20.319 --> 00:18:26.759 to harm someone else, then what was wrong with it? But the Bible is full of places where we see the 00:18:26.759 --> 00:18:34.579 sin of omission, where we don't do what we should do, is just as much sin as when we do do what we 00:18:34.579 --> 00:18:44.899 shouldn't do. And all of these deflect the significance of sin. We minimize it. We make it small. 00:18:44.900 --> 00:18:51.200 And then we walk around like this teaching and saying, well, I can believe in God and still 00:18:51.200 --> 00:18:59.720 sin because it's not that bad. The second view is what we see in verses 8 and 10. 00:18:59.720 --> 00:19:09.600 And that is that if we recognize sin really is bad, if we don't fall into this first one, 00:19:09.839 --> 00:19:16.140 we say, wow, sin is really terrible. If I sin, there's no way I could be in fellowship with God. 00:19:17.000 --> 00:19:25.980 But I'm not that bad. I don't actually have any sin. I mean, really, right? And so if the first false 00:19:25.980 --> 00:19:31.480 view is sin isn't that bad, the second false view is I'm not that bad. I don't have any sin. That's 00:19:31.480 --> 00:19:38.940 what verses 8 and 10 both say. If we say we do not have sin, if we say that we have not sinned, 00:19:39.059 --> 00:19:45.900 it's the same idea, I believe, twice repeated. And it says, if we don't have sin, then we're okay with God. 00:19:47.559 --> 00:19:53.960 And again, as we look through the rest of the letter of 1 John, we postulate that it seems that maybe 00:19:53.960 --> 00:20:00.140 some of the false teachers were saying we've had a special anointing from God. We have a special 00:20:00.140 --> 00:20:07.039 gift of the Holy Spirit that's purified us once for all so that we are unable. We now have like 00:20:07.039 --> 00:20:13.360 Teflon. Sin doesn't stick with us. So we do not sin anymore. And they claimed a higher spirituality. 00:20:14.259 --> 00:20:18.600 And there are some parts of the church that would still say this, that we can achieve a sinless 00:20:18.599 --> 00:20:28.719 perfection by being the best disciples and being super spiritual people. I love the story. I've seen 00:20:28.719 --> 00:20:33.159 this in a couple of different forms, so I don't know how much it's true. So this is anecdotal, not 00:20:33.159 --> 00:20:41.500 true. About Spurgeon and the man he met who claimed sinless perfection. Charles Spurgeon was a pastor in 00:20:41.500 --> 00:20:46.980 the 19th century in England. And as he was speaking in a conference, another man who publicly proclaimed 00:20:46.980 --> 00:20:52.720 that Christians could reach a place of sinless perfection where they no longer struggled with 00:20:52.720 --> 00:20:59.319 sin because they were perfected in the love of God. And the speaker then went on to suggest modestly 00:20:59.319 --> 00:21:05.920 that he had realized this in his own life and had achieved sinless perfection. So Spurgeon didn't say 00:21:05.920 --> 00:21:11.500 anything that day, but the next morning at breakfast time, he crept up behind the man and poured a jug of 00:21:11.500 --> 00:21:19.960 milk on his head and quickly discovered that the man still had a sinful nature. I mean, this is the… 00:21:21.839 --> 00:21:27.819 Now, I don't think many of us here today believe that we are sinless or could achieve a sinless 00:21:27.819 --> 00:21:35.920 perfection. But I do think that we still struggle to redefine sin in a way that says, if we define sin 00:21:35.920 --> 00:21:43.160 is this, then I haven't sinned. This is actually the very heart of legalism. Legalism is saying, 00:21:43.380 --> 00:21:51.220 here, tell me what the rules are, give me the list, and if I can keep that list, I'm good. Right? I haven't 00:21:51.220 --> 00:21:55.820 murdered, I haven't stolen, I haven't cheated, I haven't lied, I haven't hated anyone today, I haven't 00:21:55.820 --> 00:22:01.140 actively sinned in a particular way, so I don't have any sin. I haven't sinned today because I haven't 00:22:01.140 --> 00:22:09.180 done those terrible things. Or again, sometimes we think, well, I haven't sinned because if what I'm 00:22:09.180 --> 00:22:16.759 doing is what everyone's doing, it can't be sin. And so somehow we redefine it, we allow the cultural 00:22:16.759 --> 00:22:24.460 expectation or the societal practices to undermine our view of sin, so we say, well, that's not sin 00:22:24.460 --> 00:22:36.100 because everybody's doing it. There's an especially insidious kind of way that we minimize sin that is 00:22:36.100 --> 00:22:45.799 spiritually rooted in pride. I know theology, I know the Bible really well, how could I sin if I'm doing 00:22:45.799 --> 00:22:52.200 that? This is most heinous where we see it in Christian leaders who are saying, if I'm doing all 00:22:52.200 --> 00:22:58.940 this good work for the Lord, then I must not be sinning. Friends, this is a terrible distortion. 00:23:02.400 --> 00:23:09.880 And finally, there's just a broad view in our culture that's come from 400 years of humanistic 00:23:09.880 --> 00:23:15.519 thinking. We desperately want to believe that human beings are good. And so we just think, 00:23:15.740 --> 00:23:20.779 that's not me. Whatever sinners are, that's not me. And that's not my neighbors. That's not the people 00:23:20.779 --> 00:23:27.519 I know. I'm sure there are people out there who are terrible, but they're not me. And that's why 00:23:27.519 --> 00:23:34.839 these false teachings are so attractive, because they resolve the problem that verse 5 creates. 00:23:34.980 --> 00:23:40.819 If God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all, and if sin is darkness, and it can't have fellowship 00:23:40.819 --> 00:23:47.720 with light, then how do we have fellowship with God? Well, we either claim sin that isn't that bad, 00:23:47.720 --> 00:23:55.339 or we claim we don't have sin at all. But John gives a judgment on all of these. Verse 6, 00:23:58.279 --> 00:24:06.220 we lie and do not practice the truth. Verse 8, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 00:24:06.220 --> 00:24:14.460 Verse 10, we make God, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. 00:24:16.779 --> 00:24:24.539 John says that these false views lead us to a place where we are living in unreality, because it no longer 00:24:24.539 --> 00:24:30.120 corresponds to the truth. We are living in a place where we are deceived, we are self-deceived, 00:24:30.119 --> 00:24:36.339 and are deceiving others by the way we proclaim these things. And even worse, we are making out 00:24:36.339 --> 00:24:44.419 God to be a liar, because God tells us that we are sinful and lost, that all have sinned and fall 00:24:44.419 --> 00:24:50.139 short of the glory of God, that there is no one righteous, not even one. 00:24:50.140 --> 00:24:58.980 And though these teachings promise resolution, they deny reality, and when they deny reality, 00:24:59.140 --> 00:25:05.660 they don't get us to where we want. Because what we really want, and what the church that John is 00:25:05.660 --> 00:25:10.940 writing to really wants, is assurance that we can know that we have fellowship with God. 00:25:10.940 --> 00:25:21.039 But that assurance comes from reality. And what a beautiful thing it is that the Bible helps us 00:25:21.039 --> 00:25:27.500 see these tensions that we feel, because we've all felt this. God, how could you accept me when I blow it? 00:25:28.039 --> 00:25:34.160 Or we see someone else who says, they're not sinful, and we think, how can that be true? Because I know them. 00:25:34.160 --> 00:25:48.320 This dilemma might lead us to despair, if God is light, and we are still sinful, if there was no way 00:25:48.320 --> 00:25:54.420 forward. But John has given us an alternative to all of these, to these views. God has given us a way 00:25:54.420 --> 00:26:02.100 forward. He says, there's a promise established whereby God is light, and we can have fellowship with 00:26:02.099 --> 00:26:07.139 him. There are two things that John says about this, and I want to close with this morning. 00:26:08.500 --> 00:26:14.079 The promise establishes that Christ is able to keep us in fellowship with God. This is verse 7, 00:26:14.240 --> 00:26:21.019 verse 9, and the second part of verse 1 and 2 of chapter 2, where John gives us hope that we can 00:26:21.019 --> 00:26:28.779 confidently have fellowship with God. How does this happen? Well, first, we need to see this. 00:26:28.779 --> 00:26:36.339 John points to the ultimate ground of our confidence, and it's not us and how we do, 00:26:36.660 --> 00:26:42.740 and it's not redefining sin, but it's looking to Christ. So, verse 7 says this, 00:26:43.259 --> 00:26:47.000 if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, 00:26:47.500 --> 00:26:52.259 and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin. 00:26:52.259 --> 00:27:02.779 Verse 9, if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from 00:27:02.779 --> 00:27:12.359 all unrighteousness. In chapter 2, if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, 00:27:12.779 --> 00:27:18.279 Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, not only for ours, 00:27:18.279 --> 00:27:28.619 but also for the sins of the whole world. How do we resolve this tension? We don't. We are unable to 00:27:28.619 --> 00:27:36.099 bridge the gap between our darkness and God's light, but God has done the work that we can't do 00:27:36.099 --> 00:27:44.480 for us because he sent Jesus for us, right? And you hear the words repeated, he's able to cleanse us 00:27:44.480 --> 00:27:50.680 from our sins so that what is dark, the impurities of our moral lives become cleansed so that we become 00:27:50.680 --> 00:27:57.339 pure, so that our unrighteousness, the ways in which we are not like God, become replaced with 00:27:57.339 --> 00:28:05.900 a righteousness that comes from God. Chapter 2 says we have an advocate. Jesus has gone to be the one who 00:28:05.900 --> 00:28:14.279 stands between us and God as the propitiation. This is our big $15 theological word for the day. 00:28:14.480 --> 00:28:18.900 Propitiation. You may have heard of it. You may know of it. You may have never seen it before in 00:28:18.900 --> 00:28:25.000 your life. It has overtones of two different things. One is that a propitiation is one that 00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:32.360 removes the sin of the offender, and it also has the idea of appeasing the wrath or the justice of 00:28:32.360 --> 00:28:39.599 the one offended, right? And so this is the idea of propitiation. And in the ancient world, 00:28:39.599 --> 00:28:47.099 it was often used in context of pagan religion, where you're taking your child and you're sacrificing 00:28:47.099 --> 00:28:54.519 it to Molech so that he won't cause you great harm. And so you're appeasing a pagan God who is 00:28:54.519 --> 00:29:00.839 whimsical, capricious, and not good. And so on the basis of that, there has been in the 19th and 20th 00:29:00.839 --> 00:29:09.179 century a whole movement to say, that can't be what this means, and to say it must mean something else. 00:29:11.059 --> 00:29:17.399 And it is true that the God of the Bible is not a capricious God whose anger needs to be appeased 00:29:17.399 --> 00:29:23.199 because he might lose it and fly off the handle because he's upset with you about something. 00:29:23.200 --> 00:29:32.240 But it is true that the God of the Bible is a God of justice, a God who sees that sin is not just 00:29:32.240 --> 00:29:38.500 an offense against him, but it is something that is fundamentally wrong. It is a violation against 00:29:38.500 --> 00:29:47.640 the universe and what is all that is right and good. It is evil. Sin is evil. And therefore, 00:29:47.640 --> 00:29:57.240 it must be dealt with. It must be punished. It must be addressed. And the difference is 00:29:57.240 --> 00:30:10.000 that in the pagan religions, you had to provide the sacrifice to appease the God that you were 00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:17.180 worshiping. And in the Christian gospel, God himself provided the sacrifice for us. 00:30:17.640 --> 00:30:25.900 This is how God bridged the gap between his light and our darkness, not by calling us to do something, 00:30:26.160 --> 00:30:33.160 but by doing something for us in Jesus. Jesus comes and he lives the life of sinless perfection 00:30:33.160 --> 00:30:40.080 that would allow humanity to have fellowship with God. He was the human being who was the perfect one, 00:30:40.080 --> 00:30:46.340 who did live in perfect fellowship with God. He then goes to the cross saying, I will bear 00:30:46.339 --> 00:30:55.980 your sins upon my body. I will bear the wrath against the justice exerted against your sin 00:30:55.980 --> 00:31:06.959 on myself. For me, I'm going to go and die for you to remove that sin by having it be justly dealt with 00:31:06.960 --> 00:31:18.079 so that you might then in me be able to approach God who is light, not in your sinfulness, because I've 00:31:18.079 --> 00:31:28.700 taken that, but in my sinlessness, which I give to you by faith. This is the amazing news of the 00:31:28.700 --> 00:31:35.200 Christian gospel. We can never bridge this gap, and yet God has done it for us. And he gives us his 00:31:35.200 --> 00:31:42.059 righteousness so that when God looks at us through the veil of Christ in whom we have faith, 00:31:43.059 --> 00:31:52.660 he sees us as righteous the way Jesus was righteous. That is, he regards us that way. He's not foolish. 00:31:52.660 --> 00:31:58.980 He sees our sin. He doesn't, it's not that he's blind to what we actually do, but in the courtroom of God, 00:31:59.440 --> 00:32:05.080 in his judgment seat, he sees Christ, not us, when we go before him. 00:32:07.019 --> 00:32:10.000 This is the amazing hope of the gospel. 00:32:14.200 --> 00:32:20.940 God sees our sin. He's addressed our sin so that we might be rescued. And you might be wondering, 00:32:20.940 --> 00:32:26.200 okay, what's the end of chapter of verse two? What is that all about? That not only our sins, 00:32:26.279 --> 00:32:32.519 but the sins of the whole world. At first blush, it seems to say, well, what God did in Jesus 00:32:32.519 --> 00:32:36.559 covers everybody, no matter who they are, no matter what religion they believe, no matter 00:32:36.559 --> 00:32:42.240 what time they, it seems like, but we know from the rest of the Bible that is not true. 00:32:42.240 --> 00:32:53.420 We know that there is a clear delineation between those who by faith are in Christ and therefore can 00:32:53.420 --> 00:32:59.819 stand before a God who is light and those who are outside of Christ and therefore will be judged on 00:32:59.819 --> 00:33:07.519 the merit of their own righteousness or lack thereof. So we know that's true more broadly in the Bible. 00:33:07.519 --> 00:33:13.160 So it can't mean simply universalism, right? Everybody gets saved because of what Jesus did. 00:33:13.420 --> 00:33:19.799 So what does it mean? Well, I think it means this, and this is why I think, you know, as John was 00:33:19.799 --> 00:33:24.799 addressing a church where there are certain people who are separating themselves out and saying, 00:33:24.960 --> 00:33:30.519 we're the super spiritual people that God is really going to save. John says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. 00:33:30.519 --> 00:33:39.799 There are only two categories, in Christ and not in Christ. And this hope that he's presenting for us, 00:33:40.160 --> 00:33:48.980 this work of Christ is available to all, the whole world. John uses the world as a, almost a 00:33:48.980 --> 00:33:55.139 semi-technical term to say the world in rebellion against him. So this is John inviting the world 00:33:55.140 --> 00:34:03.500 that has rejected him to come back to him and take hold of this offering, Jesus Christ, the righteous one, 00:34:03.780 --> 00:34:10.800 and saying, if you come and believe in him, then you will be able to have fellowship with God. 00:34:10.800 --> 00:34:21.180 So salvation is not just for particularly spiritual people, but it's for all people 00:34:21.180 --> 00:34:29.120 who come in faith and confess their sin. And friends, this is the second thing. This is the 00:34:29.120 --> 00:34:37.300 second way in which we see John helping us gain, because based on what God has done for us in Christ, 00:34:37.300 --> 00:34:42.940 there is then a second thing that this passage exhorts us to, so that we can have confidence 00:34:42.940 --> 00:34:52.019 that we have fellowship with God. And it is in verse 7. If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, 00:34:52.320 --> 00:34:57.340 we have fellowship. And it's fascinating, because he says fellowship with one another, not even with God, 00:34:57.440 --> 00:35:02.660 but fellowship with one another. So he's talking about this as a communal activity. But we have this 00:35:02.659 --> 00:35:09.339 with one another, and with God, I think is implied, when we walk in the light. Now, when you hear that 00:35:09.339 --> 00:35:15.899 phrase, when we walk in the light, what do we think? You better be perfect. You better be sinless. You 00:35:15.899 --> 00:35:23.279 better never blow it. You have to do everything right. But look at the parallel of verse 9. Verse 7 says, 00:35:23.399 --> 00:35:30.299 if we walk in the light, what does it say in verse 9? The parallel is, if we confess our sin. 00:35:30.300 --> 00:35:40.120 Walking in the light according in the Christian gospel is not perfection, but it is living in light of 00:35:40.120 --> 00:35:48.820 the truth of the gospel. And so what it means is, when we walk in the light, we have an ongoing pattern 00:35:48.820 --> 00:35:58.460 of confessing our sin to God. This is the pattern that we had when we entered into a relationship with 00:35:58.460 --> 00:36:05.900 God. We came to God and said, I have nothing but my sin. I have no right to claim anything before you. 00:36:07.360 --> 00:36:13.920 But I put my faith and trust in Jesus and what he has done. And I forsake my life of sin, and I give 00:36:13.920 --> 00:36:20.679 myself and trust myself to you and the salvation that Christ has given us. This is how we enter into 00:36:20.679 --> 00:36:27.500 being a Christian when we say that. And friends, this is how we walk as Christians. This is how we live. 00:36:27.500 --> 00:36:35.420 Continuing to say, I am a sinner, and God is holy, and Christ is righteous, and Christ has done what I 00:36:35.420 --> 00:36:43.579 can do. And so now Christ is empowering me and calling me to forsake sin that he died to overcome, 00:36:44.019 --> 00:36:49.400 to forsake sin so that I might move towards the light that is God and all of his moral perfection. 00:36:50.280 --> 00:36:56.139 This is what chapter 2 verse 1 says. I write this so that you may not sin. 00:36:56.139 --> 00:37:03.500 The truth of what God has done for us in Christ doesn't give us license to do whatever we want. 00:37:04.000 --> 00:37:10.480 Instead, it frees us to pursue the things that we really want, which is fellowship with God who is 00:37:10.480 --> 00:37:17.859 light. And as we do so, we will move further and further towards righteous living, rightly submitting to 00:37:17.859 --> 00:37:24.159 God, loving the things that God loves, and hating the things that God hates. It is a call to obedience. 00:37:24.159 --> 00:37:32.159 It is a call to holiness. And it is a beautiful and glorious thing. And it's painful to us because of our 00:37:32.159 --> 00:37:37.699 sin nature. We still want to hold on to things. And God says, I'm going to prime your fingers off of that one. 00:37:37.779 --> 00:37:45.099 Can you let go of that little idolatry? And that little pet sin? And that little pleasure that's not good for you? 00:37:45.099 --> 00:37:51.319 And he gets into our lives and he does that kind of hard work. And it's hard, isn't it? But the pursuit of holiness 00:37:51.319 --> 00:37:58.980 is not meant to be a duty and a burden, but a delight and a joy because it moves us towards deeper and greater 00:37:58.980 --> 00:38:07.980 fellowship with God. And friends, it is not towards perfection. One of the things that I have seen is 00:38:07.980 --> 00:38:13.579 that the old saints who have walked with Christ for 40 or 50 years, do you know what's true about them? 00:38:13.840 --> 00:38:22.719 They know they're more sinful than they were when they were 20. Because they've seen their hearts. 00:38:23.360 --> 00:38:29.300 And they've seen the ways that even though outwardly they've become more and more holy, 00:38:29.460 --> 00:38:34.039 you look at them and you just think, oh my gosh, you are so gracious, so perfect, so holy, 00:38:34.039 --> 00:38:39.039 so committed to God. You don't have any sin. It looks like that on the outside. And they will tell 00:38:39.039 --> 00:38:46.840 you, no, no, that's not true. I see how much more of my pride and my selfishness and my independence 00:38:46.840 --> 00:38:57.300 that I really have. And this is why the way of the cross, the way of the gospel is the way to have 00:38:57.300 --> 00:39:03.139 fellowship with God. It's not confession of sin the way the Catholic church frames it as in a 00:39:03.139 --> 00:39:08.900 particular place that absolves us of particular sin. It is an ongoing attitude and a perspective 00:39:08.900 --> 00:39:15.599 that though I have been saved by Christ, I am being saved by Christ now and I will be saved in the end. 00:39:15.940 --> 00:39:21.359 And so I'm going to continue to confess my sin that is acknowledged that I am not righteous yet. 00:39:21.739 --> 00:39:28.900 Only Christ is. But when I see my sin, I take it to Him and I say, God, I hate this sin, but I love You. 00:39:28.900 --> 00:39:34.660 And I thank You that Your forgiveness means that I don't have to live in the bondage of guilt and the 00:39:34.660 --> 00:39:40.860 slavery to the burden of what I have done wrong, but instead I have the freedom to move out of it, 00:39:41.019 --> 00:39:48.440 away from it, towards You. This is what God tells us. This is the way of the gospel. And this is what 00:39:48.440 --> 00:39:57.900 John tells us allows us to have confidence in our fellowship with God. God is light and we are not. 00:39:58.579 --> 00:40:04.800 But because of Jesus, we not only are able to enter into a standing with Him where we are forgiven, 00:40:05.099 --> 00:40:11.619 but we have an ongoing pattern of confessing our sin and appropriating this forgiveness for us. 00:40:11.619 --> 00:40:21.500 And when we do this, we have confidence. We are able to have confidence that we know God and to walk with Him. 00:40:22.859 --> 00:40:31.539 Friends, if we fail, if we stop confessing our sins, if we think that in our pride that we have somehow 00:40:31.539 --> 00:40:41.359 overcome that, then our confidence will shrivel because our sense of being with God will be based on our performance. 00:40:41.619 --> 00:40:49.039 But when we see this happening, this is then what God has for us, this pattern of walking in the gospel. 00:40:49.539 --> 00:40:55.400 And it is a gracious provision, a way that sinners like us can have fellowship with God. 00:40:57.079 --> 00:41:00.500 This is good news. Let's pray together. 00:41:02.079 --> 00:41:06.599 Lord, I thank You for this passage, and I thank You for all that it teaches us. 00:41:06.599 --> 00:41:09.139 And I pray, Lord, that You would help us. 00:41:12.179 --> 00:41:20.880 Lord, I pray that You would, by Your Spirit, humble us so that we would be willing and able to see and confess our sin. 00:41:22.219 --> 00:41:26.980 Lord, for as we do that, Lord, we see the greatness of what You have done for us in Christ. 00:41:27.480 --> 00:41:33.799 We take hold of the forgiveness that You have secured for us that is ours for certain. 00:41:33.800 --> 00:41:42.620 Lord, we see Christ standing before You as our advocate, having taken away our sin and given us His righteousness. 00:41:43.800 --> 00:41:48.360 Lord, so that we might be free from sin and pursue righteousness more and more. 00:41:49.560 --> 00:41:52.900 Lord, we know we will never make perfection until the day of glory. 00:41:53.740 --> 00:42:01.640 But Lord, let us run this race towards You, towards deeper and richer fellowship with You, with confidence. 00:42:01.639 --> 00:42:03.940 Thank You, Lord. 00:42:04.559 --> 00:42:06.139 We pray these things in Jesus' name. 00:42:06.739 --> 00:42:07.039 Amen.