Good evening, everybody. Welcome here.
Good evening. Turn with me in your Bibles this
morning to the book of First John.
We're going to be going through Chapter 1 today, book of First
John. And while you're turning there,
I want to try and set the background a bit here for what
what is going on in the early church at the time of this
writing and kind of give you an indicator as to why it is that
John is writing this epistle along with a couple others that
will be coming. Right now is a very tumultuous
time in the church for us. A lot of us are are often times
kind of caught off guard by how uneasy things are.
But that was the same back then, especially kind of coming
towards the reign of Nero. There was a lot of church
persecution and along with the church growing and expanding so
fast with it popped up a lot of this false doctrine.
These teachers that would come up and they would, they would
say one thing and they would say that, you know, the teachings of
Jesus mean this, but they were wrong.
And because of these false teachers popping up, John wrote
this letter to aid the church, the churches of the time, in
trying to discern what was true from these false teachers and
what wasn't. Now, notably at the time, there
was this belief called Gnosticism, which is a really
big word that just means that physical is always bad and
spiritual is always good. It was a mixture of Christianity
and some Pagan religions essentially saying that Jesus
didn't have a physical body, that he didn't physically die.
He wasn't physically here. He came as a spirit.
And now for those of you who know the gospel and know the
story of Jesus, you can see why that presented some major issues
for the church at the time. And with these major issues came
major unassurances in the faith of early believers.
And so that's what this book is about.
And that's what I'm hoping to kind of we're going to do like a
fast blanket overview of the 1st chapter of First John to talk
about A, what the true message of the Bible is.
And B, what we need to look out for, not just with our teachers
that we hear, not just with the preachers that we're listening
to, but also what we get to look out for in our own hearts, in
our own beliefs. So look at we look at First John
chapter one with me this or this afternoon.
And I will just read the whole chapter as it is right now.
And it says what was from the beginning what we have heard,
and what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and
touched with our hands, concerning the word of a life.
And the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and
proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and
was manifested to us. What we have seen and heard we
proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with
us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son
Jesus Christ. These things we write so that
our joy may be made complete. This is the message we have
heard from Him and announced to you, that God is light, and in
Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have
fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do
not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as
He Himself 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 that we have no sin,
we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to
forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. If we say that we have not
sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in US.
Would you bow with me in prayer this evening?
Father, we thank you so much for this time that we have to go
through Your word. We thank you for the Bible.
We thank you for the accessibility of the Bible.
And we thank you, Lord, for John and for his desire to see
Christians know the truth inside their hearts and in the
teachings that they take in. God be with us this evening.
We praise in your heavenly name, Amen.
So the first stop that we're going to make is going to be in
verses 1-2 and three here is kind of the beginning of what
John's looking to do, and that is to establish what the proper
doctrine is. Now in this we read that John
doesn't isn't basing his thoughts on Jesus on some vague
philosophy or some weird spiritualism or some moral
standing. He's not just saying like that
Jesus was like a good moral guy or like he is a metaphor for
yadda, yadda, yadda. A lot of things that we hear
today, he actually starts off with very specific language.
The language that he uses is it's very first hand
experiential language. And what I mean by that is that
we can tell that he was there and I'll explain.
We read what was from the beginning what we have heard,
what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and
touched with our hands concerning the Word of life.
So like I said earlier, there was this Gnostic belief that
Jesus wasn't physically here. He was this sort of almost like
a ghost or an apparition, right? But John confronts that
immediately with very pointed language.
This wasn't some spirit or something that they heard second
or third hand. Jesus was real, intangible and
physically there to the point that these apostles could stand
in front of him, could touch him, could hear him.
If anybody was going to know if Jesus was physically there or
not, they would have known. And so the first thing that he
confronts right off the bat is that Jesus is not some ghost.
He was here. He also starts in verse one and
two again he mentions that Christ, he calls him the word of
life. Now many of you maybe that
sounds familiar. In fact it was actually John
himself who wrote in his gospel at the very beginning in John
chapter one verse 1, he says in the beginning was the word and
the Word was with God and the Word was God.
And jumping down to verse 14 in that chapter we read and the
word became flesh. We read here that this is a re
establishing for John saying Jesus is God.
He was the word of life, He was the word in the beginning
meaning Jesus was eternal, he was with the Father, meaning was
that they've had fellowship for eternity, right?
This is an establishing again of who Jesus is and what is true
about him. Not these rumors or these like
pseudo mystical things that they were hearing from other people
at the time. Jumping down to verse 3, John
mentions that they, being believers, have fellowship with
the Father and with Jesus and they wish to see others come to
that place as well. John mentions again that the
things that he has shared in the past, looking back at the Gospel
of John and what he's going to share further on in these
epistles are all based on what he himself has experienced.
That's also important to note. John wasn't somebody who heard
from somebody who heard from somebody or like we like to play
the midnight game, right? John wasn't Susie's aunts,
cousins, brothers, step brothers, uncles, whatever John
was, John was there. He knew Jesus, He reclined at
his chest. These things he's not saying
because he like it feels like the right thing to say.
He's not echoing somebody else's.
He's echoing the words of God. All of this is to say that
Christ was physically here. Christ is the Word from the
beginning. He was eternal.
He is eternal. He invites us to fellowship with
him and with the Father. And this establishes at the very
beginning what is true about Christ.
Now from here, John begins to give some practical things to
look out for. Obviously that address at the
very beginning is very cut and dry.
John is very pointedly saying that this Gnostic belief that
people are confused about is not true.
But John continues and will continue for the rest of this
book, going through practical things to look for in teachers
and in in the in the life of a believer for assurance of
salvation, but also for a sound doctrine.
And so we're going to look at a glimpse of that in the
second-half here of chapter 1. So many of you may and your
Bibles have seen that there might be a break after verse
four, and then it might kind of separate your chapter from
verses one to four and separate and then kind of split in half
and then go from the five until 10 to the end there.
I think that I can make an argument that verse four really
should be in that second-half, and I'll explain why.
The reason why I think that is because verse 4 also contains a
practical characteristic that we as Christians should have.
Let's read it so it says these things.
We write to you so that our your our joy may be made complete.
The first thing that we can look from this and we can say and
look to other teachers and look to our own hearts is that true
biblical Christians should find joy in the teachings and life of
Jesus. With teachers Speaking of Jesus,
having a passion for the gospel, speaking truthfully, and finding
joy in that. These things, there should be a
fulfillment of joy that teachers have presenting the message.
How good do you feel when you go to a church or go to some
function and the speaker sits up front in it?
Good morning. It's a wonderful day to be here
in the House of the Lord. Do you believe that?
No, we don't believe that at all.
If someone comes up and is miserable, how?
How authentic, how real does that message seem?
Christian teachers should find joy in the preaching and
teaching that they give, and we should look out for that.
Well, not only this, but on a personal level, as a Christian,
do you find joy in speaking about Jesus?
You should Verse 7, we jumped down there a little bit.
Verse 7 even talks about how verse 7.
But if we walk in the light, as He himself is in the light, we
have fellowship with one, we have fellowship with one
another. We should have so much joy when
speaking about Jesus that we want to congregate to gather
together, and the Bible calls this fellowship.
It is only within the lens of our joy and our belief in Jesus
that we're having true fellowship.
Going to your buddy's house and watching a movie is not
fellowship. Having people over for a coffee
isn't necessarily fellowship. But when Christ is centered and
when there is a joy to speak and to love and to enjoy the
conversation that you are having with fellow believers on Christ,
that's true fellowship. And maybe it is through watching
a movie, maybe it is through having a coffee.
But what is the motivation behind it?
So the first characteristic we can walk away in this is very
simply that as a Christian, as a teacher and as a follower, we
need to find we should expect to feel joy and passion over the
gospel. Jumping down a little ways here
to verse 5, actually, I'll mention first.
Does that always mean that we have to feel joy in like doing
jumping jacks 24/7? That doesn't necessarily mean
that there are seasons in life that are really dark and there
are circumstances that are really hard and there are things
that are difficult to get through and that it would be
naive for us to say that that's not the case.
But if you never feel joy, if you never feel a longing to
speak of the truth of Jesus, there's an issue because we have
a lot to be joyful about. Now moving down to verse verses
5 through 7. I'll read them again.
This is the message we have heard from him and announce to
you that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.
If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk
in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we
have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus
his Son cleanses us from all sin.
Now here's like the main message that John's trying to convey
here, right? This is what we're trying to
teach. God is light and in him there is
no darkness. Now, obviously the we all kind
of already know this. If a teacher doesn't teach that,
that's pretty weird. If, if something like we don't
necessarily think, you know, who teaches that God is fallible,
who teaches that God is evil. It's pretty rife in our culture
right now. I've heard non believers talk
about the general consensus that I've heard from a couple non
believers I've talked about with Jesus.
They typically say things like, well, you know, Jesus was a man,
right? So he couldn't have been perfect
or Jesus, you know, nobody is sinless, so Jesus had to have
sinned at some point, right? Nobody's perfect.
That's heresy. That's it's wrong.
Our God is good, He is light. There is no wrongdoing.
There is no evil in him and to hear otherwise is wrong.
Many of you might have been here a few weeks ago where we had a
guy from a church, Ryan Fair, who's Hi Ryan.
He did a sermon on Psalms chapter 1.
He was talking about the counsel of the wicked and to not listen
to the counsel of the wicked. This is like the epitome of the
counsel of the wicked to say that God is fallible.
If anything that we've learned from that sermon, it's this that
we should not be listening to now.
As Christ followers, it's also important that we align our
hearts with what this says as well.
Do you really believe that God is good, that he's infallible,
that he has what's best in mind for you?
That's easier said than done. On paper, it can mean that.
But when you're faced with those difficult seasons, I was talking
about not so easy anymore. But this is something that we
need to look into our own hearts for, that even in those dark,
scary, brutal times, God is light and in him there is no
darkness. Moving down to verses 6 and
seven, we can it continues that thought.
It offers us a standard for us to hold ourselves to that.
If we say we have fellowship with Him and we walk in
darkness, there is no truth in US.
Well, this makes sense because like we just read God is light
and there is no darkness in him. It makes no sense for the light
to live in darkness, right? How can light come from dark or
vice versa? But if we walk in light, we are.
If we walk in light, we are walking in fellowship with Him.
We are walking in fellowship with one another and it says
that Christ's blood covers us of all sins.
Now, I think it's important that we mention two things here.
First of all, you know, what does it mean to walk in light
and what does it mean to walk in darkness?
Because it's one thing to just sort of say those two things and
then to just kind of leave you all with that.
I can close my Bible and go home, but what does that mean?
Well, the first thing that I think we can talk about in this
particular section is that occasional sin that is shrinking
in frequency is not what this means by walking in darkness.
If you're like me, when you first read that you said anyone
who walks in darkness, there is no, there's no truth in him.
Your first thought was, well, I'm a Sinner.
What do I do? Oh my goodness, I'm walking in
dark. I'm walking in darkness.
But that isn't what this means. So what does it mean to walk in
darkness? I think the simplest way that we
can think about this is that someone who walks in darkness
wants to walk in darkness. They may say all the Christian
things, go to all the Christian functions, read their Bible
every day, know all the big words, the sanctification, the
justification, the righteousification, the all the
big words, made-up or otherwise. But they're still in darkness.
Why not? Because they're doing their best
and they're not making. It's because they like it.
And all of you that are here today are sinners.
And you know that sin is pretty. You like sin.
You have a drawing to sin. But as Christians, we know that
we can. We have another option.
There's another way, right? We've been made new.
First Corinthians talks about that.
But those who are still in darkness, they want to be there.
They enjoy it. Do you look forward to sinning?
Do you make time in your day to sin?
Are you thinking about it constantly in a positive manner?
That is walking in darkness now, too.
What is walking in light? Walking a light does not mean
that you can do some works or act upright, or be holy and
righteous and make things work. The Bible talks about how our
good deeds are like filthy rags before the Lord.
Walking a light isn't doing all the right things in hopes that
we get to heaven. That's impossible.
But I think that we can apply the same principle that we did
with walking in darkness to this, that those who walk in
light want to walk in light. First Corinthians, like I said,
talks about a new creation. We become new creations in
Christ. We have a new desire.
We start to like those evil things less and less and love
good things more and more. Someone who walks in light wants
to be there. Are you grieved over your sin?
Are you repenting? Do you believe that Jesus Christ
is Lord and do you have faith in him?
All of these are assurances that we can have, saying we have we
are walking in light. Now does that mean you're never
going to sin? No, of course not.
But how do you react? Are you excited to sin or does
it hurt your heart? Are you excited to do wicked
things or does it grieve your spirit?
Walking in light is not about your works.
It's solely about your faith and where your heart desires.
And walking in darkness is the same.
It's based on your lack of faith and your desires.
Jumping down to verse 8, we're going to look at verse 8 and
verse 10. It says if we say that we have
no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not
in US. Jumping down to verse 10, it
says if we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and
His word is not in US. Both of these things have a both
of these verses have a similar theme in mind.
I think it's pretty easy to pick up on that.
If you say you have no sin, you're a liar.
It's very straightforward, but verse 10 actually takes it to A
to another notch. It UPS it 1°.
It says, it says not only does it are you a liar, you're making
God out to be a liar, which has a whole nother layer implication
to it that could be vastly, vastly devastating.
Looking just at verse 8 for for a second, the simple thing that
we can look at when looking at teachers and looking at our own
hearts. Is that are people teaching that
they don't sin anymore? That's wild.
Now, many of you probably don't know anybody.
I'll name someone Todd White. Many of you have probably heard
this name before. He's a prosperity gospel
preacher. He teaches all kinds of false
things. And one of the things that this
man claims is that since his conversion, he has not sinned
one time in act or thought in probably 20 years.
He says he's been totally clean, blank slate, no sin anymore.
He's a liar. First, John says so, and not
only is he a liar, but it says that the truth is not in him.
It even brings his, his salvation into question.
That should, that should frighten us.
Now, like I said with verse 10, it says that we make God out to
be a liar. This has all kinds of
implications, one of which is that it should be fairly
obvious. Of course we would make God out
to be a liar. Scripture is filled with verses
talking about the sin of man, talking about the fall of Adam
and Eve, going all the way to the need for when God wipes the
world out with a flood through the the law and the the
sacrifices that were needed to to expunge the sins of the
people. Moving even to the New
Testament. The reason why Jesus came to the
epistles that we read, all of them make it very clear that we
are sinners in a not right standing with God before our
conversion. And so, yeah, if someone says
that they're they don't sin anymore, they're they're
essentially mock making a mockery out of all of the Bible.
But the other implication that we get from this that is even
more frightening is the idea that our sins can bring reproach
on the name of Christ. Now, what does that mean?
It doesn't mean that there will be a day when you know someone
will do something so bad that Jesus name will forever be
stained and and will it'll destroy his Kingdom.
No, that'll never happen. Christ's name will be made
great. He will be glorified, and every
knee and it will bow, every tongue will confess that he is
Lord one day. There's nothing that anybody can
do to change that. But what I think about is I
think about people like who was once one of my favorite
speakers, Ravi Zacharias, who many of you know that name.
This man was a teacher who claimed to know the gospel, who
taught from the Bible and then committed wicked in heinous
acts, forever undermining everything he taught.
Whether what he taught was what he taught was good and true, it
will forever be marred by his actions.
That's that is what how serious our sin is.
Our sin isn't just this little oopsie that we can Band-Aid over
and call a day. The reality is that there are
massive long-suffering implications or consequences
from our sin, not just for ourselves, but to the name of
Christ. And believe me, I don't want to
be at the Judgement Day and have that on my conscience, and you
shouldn't either. And so quite simply, when we
look to our teachers and when we look to our own hearts, if we
ever start hearing about how people don't sin, how we done
sin, flee. And if you in your heart sort of
think I'm doing pretty good, I've had, you know, this has
been like a solid, I think I've just gone five years without
sinning today. You're in a very dangerous place
because you're not just lying, you're making God out to be a
liar. And like I said, I don't want to
be in your place when the judgement day comes.
So here are the things that we here are things to look out for
in first John. One things to look for in our
teachers, things to look for in ourselves, some practical things
that we can visibly see or hear with teachers and some practical
things that we can look at our own hearts and examine.
Where is my faith at? Where is my, where is my heart
at? And everything that we've talked
about so far has been very negative.
But the last point I want to make today is going to be I want
to talk about verse 9. And the reason why I skipped
verse 9 is because I want to leave.
I want to leave on this note. I don't want to leave on all the
bad and all the evil and all the horrible things we have enough
to deal with. I want to leave on this.
Verse 9 says if we confess our sins, He is faithful and
righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. Do you know what the defining
characteristic of a teacher or of a Christian is?
It's the gospel. It's the gospel message.
This verse is essentially the heart of the gospel.
When we confess our sins and repent of them, Jesus is
faithful and righteous to forgive us.
You see, the reality is that we are all sinners, everybody, and
we all fall short of the glory of God.
Romans 323 But God is still faithful.
God is still righteous. And when we see our sin for what
it is, we repent. Now when we repent, we kind of
do two things at the same time. Repent is a very is a, is a, is
a word that means to turn away from your sin.
And when we're when we are confessing our sin to God, to
Jesus and we're turning away from that sin, we are at the
same time turning towards something else.
And when we repent of our sins in prayer, in, in, in, in, in
our prayers to God, to Jesus, and we put our faith and belief
in him, we're not just turning away from our sins, we're
turning towards him. We are laying our sin at his
feet and saying, Jesus, you have the authority to forgive this
because who else but God can forgive these sins?
We are confessing that Christ is Lord in that action.
Brothers and sisters, this is the core teaching that we should
hear preachers preaching. This is the core belief that
distinguishes whether or not we are saved.
If a teacher preaches that Christ died for your sins and
was raised back to life, and that through your repentance of
your sins and through the belief in Him, believe in Him as Lord
and Savior, that you too can rise one day, you're in a pretty
safe place with that teacher. And if you in your heart repent
of your sins, believe that Christ died for you, believe
that He lived perfectly, and that on that cross He bore the
wrath of God so that we would not have to, that we are saved
by His grace. You can rest with assurance.
Our God does not break His promises.
And I hope that tonight you leave feeling assured of that,
assured of our Saviour, assured of the ability that we all have
to be saved. Would you bear with me in
prayer? Father, I thank you so much
again for this opportunity and to be here.
And I thank you for this evening, and I thank you for
everyone who came out. And God, I pray that you would
help us to discern rightly to see it, to see the the teachings
of other people and to and to be able to tell whether they are
saved or not, to look at our own hearts, God, and to see if we
are in need of salvation or not. Lord and Father, I pray that if
there's anybody here tonight that needs to hear that needed
to hear this, that needs you. Lord, I pray that their hearts
would be would be transformed, that you would speak to them and
that they would confess and repent their sins to you, and
that they would be forever changed by your, by your
goodness, by your grace, and by the faithfulness that you have
to cleanse of cleanse us of all unrighteousness.
We thank you. Lord, we pray this in your
heavenly name, Amen.