Living In The Light

Learning To Be The Light

1 John 1:5-10

Intro. There’s a new show on television called Sleepy Hollow. Have any of you seen it? It’s loosely based on the old story of the legend of sleepy hollow and the headless horseman. When I say loosely, I mean really loosely. The story doesn’t take place in olden times but in today’s society. It would take much too long to explain how they did that. As I tell my wife, you will just have to trust me on that. As the show has gone forward, they have tracked way off the legend of sleepy hollow and have gotten really creepy. We watch this show because at my house, it may not be what we all want to watch but it is something we can compromise on. Anyway, this week was especially creepy because it involved demon possession. I had already been studying today’s scripture and at the end of the show, the little girl that was possessed looked at the heroes, Ichabod Crane being one of them and said this. “The darkness is coming”. My immediate thought was sweetheart; you don’t know what you’re talking about. The darkness is already here. It has been here since mankind disobeyed God and has gotten darker ever since.

. Our scripture this morning is about light in the darkness.

. How we become a light and how we sustain that light.

. You see, even one small individual can be a light.

. In 1972, NASA launched the exploratory space probe Pioneer 10. According to Leon Jaroff in Time, the satellite’s primary mission was to reach Jupiter, photograph the planet and its moons, and beam data to earth about Jupiter’s magnetic field, radiation belts, and atmosphere. Scientists regarded this as a bold plan, for at that time no earth satellite had ever gone beyond Mars, and they feared the asteroid belt would destroy the satellite before it could reach its target.

But Pioneer 10 accomplished its mission and much, much more. Swinging past the giant planet in November 1973, Jupiter’s immense gravity hurled Pioneer 10 at a higher rate of speed toward the edge of the solar system. At one billion miles from the sun, Pioneer 10 passed Saturn. At some two billion miles, it hurtled past Uranus; Neptune at nearly three billion miles; Pluto at almost four billion miles. By 1997, twenty-five years after its launch, Pioneer 10 was more than six billion miles from the sun.

And despite that immense distance, Pioneer 10 continued to beam back radio signals to scientists on Earth. "Perhaps most remarkable," writes Jaroff, "those signals emanate from an 8-watt transmitter, which radiates about as much power as a bedroom night light, and takes more than nine hours to reach Earth."

The Little Satellite That Could was not qualified to do what it did. Engineers designed Pioneer 10 with a useful life of just three years. But it kept going and going. By simple longevity, its tiny 8-watt transmitter radio accomplished more than anyone thought possible.

So it is when we offer ourselves to serve the Lord. God can work even through someone with 8-watt abilities.

. All we have to do is be the light and let God use us.

.How do we live in the light though, How do we learn to be the light.

. Living in the light is a process that we learn as Christians.

. I asked that they play the song, learning to be the light, right before the sermon because that is what John is talking about in our scripture this morning.

. When we are saved, God does not go “Poof” you are now a perfect individual. We are in his eyes but in the eyes of the world, we are still the same person we had always been. We must live in the light in order to break through the darkness that is in the world.

. That’s what John is writing about in our scripture this morning.

. In the first 4 verses, John introduces this letter by telling his readers that they can believe what he is about to tell them because he got this “straight from the horse’s mouth so to speak”.

. He says that he has seen this Jesus, touched this Jesus , talked with this Jesus and that Jesus is life itself. In Jesus all life is revealed.

He was from the beginning and came to us and is now back with God.

. He sums up why he is writing to them in verse 4 of 1 John 1.

. 4We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.

. He says what I am about to share with you is how to be joyous. How to share in the Joy of knowing Jesus.