Walking in the Light – 1 John 1:5-10
Heavenly Father, thank You for this opportunity to look into Your Word and share in the truths You have here for us tonight. Open our ears to hear from You this evening. Open our minds to understand what You are teaching us. Open our eyes to see what it is You are trying to show us. Open our hearts to receive Your message:
5This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7But 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, purifies us from all sin.
8If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives. (NIV)
How can we describe God? How can we possibly put into words exactly what His character is like? We read all through the Bible different descriptions of God. God is love, He is our Father. He is our Rock. He is our Provider. He is the Creator. He is the Great Physician. He is our Refuge. He is our Fortress. He is our strength. He is Lord. He is Judge. He is King.
John gives a very simple, yet profound description for us in this portion of his letter to the churches. He simply puts it like this: God is light.
Light is a beautiful definition of what God is like. Now remember, John is not saying that the light we see around us is God. It is just a description. We could go into great depths trying to define light and its make-up. The fact that it is waves of radiation in a spectrum of colours in what we call visible light. There is much more to light that we cannot see. X-rays, Gamma rays, ultraviolet, radio & TV, microwaves; all of these are part of what ‘light’ is. But we don’t worship light, thinking that light is God. People have worshipped all sorts of things, believing them to be god. People have and do worship the sun, the moon, the stars, the trees, the rocks, the earth, etc, etc, etc. But these are NOT God. Light is a metaphor of God’s character, and John goes on to explain that as we continue to read.
‘In him, there is no darkness at all.’ This speaks of the purity of God. God is holy, God is perfect, God is not tempted, God doesn’t have an evil thought in Him. Pure, perfect, light. Some people might think that God has it in for the human race; that we are all just pawns in some kind of chess game that He created, and He inflicts His will upon us and there’s nothing we can do about it. That is not the truth at all. The fact that there is evil in this world is not God’s fault, it is ours. We are each created with a free will to choose to follow God, or our own desires. God is not bent on destroying the human race, if that were so, He would not have created us in the first place. God was once grieved that He had made man. You can read all about it in Genesis 6, the story of the flood and Noah. But He promised never to destroy the world again (with water anyway).
Darkness is found in the heart of man. Darkness is a description of being apart from God. The book of Job uses the word ‘darkness’ 25 times, describing the separation between God and man, how nations grope in darkness with no light at all. Being in darkness is being alone. How many of us like the darkness? I don’t. The Norris’s did cardboard mazes at the church in the past. Long tunnels of fridge boxes and stove boxes, all big enough to crawl through, were taped together in long mazes with dead-ends, slides, twists, turns, and only one exit. This wouldn’t be so bad except that all the lights were turned off, and you had to find your way through the maze in utter darkness. Basically, you had to feel your way through the tunnels. For me, it was not a good situation. Add to that blaring music and the smell of a lot of sweaty kids in the maze; it all added up to a very unpleasant situation for me.
And that is somewhat what it is like to go through life with out God. We are just groping through the darkness of this world. We look for answers to what life is all about, why are we here? We ask a lot of questions, and try to answer them ourselves. People are looking for something, but often don’t even know what it is they are looking for. We find ourselves walking in darkness with no source of light, or if we think we have a source, it burns out, or doesn’t clearly show us where we are headed, and leaving us in situations we really don’t want.
The answer is to walk in the light. What does that mean? It means we are to have a relationship with THE Light, with God. This is what John calls ‘having fellowship’ with God. Now John uses two illustrations of being in this relationship with God. The first is one that exists only in our mind. What do I mean by that? Read verse 6. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. If we say one thing yet do the opposite of what we say, we are telling a lie aren’t we? We can claim to be all sorts of things, but if our life-style doesn’t back that up, then what we say doesn’t add up to anything, it’s just a bunch of lies. If that applies to our relationship to God, that we SAY we are followers of Christ, yet we live lie we don’t even know Him, than we are lying. We’re lying to ourselves, to others, and to God. It’s like reading the Bible, about how we should live our lives as Christians, agreeing that we SHOULD do all these things, yet going out and living any old way we want to. That’s not living by truth, that’s living a lie, and that is dangerous grounds my friends. Pretending to be a Christian won’t get anybody anywhere, especially where heaven is concerned. Jesus will say to those who claim to be his followers, depart from me, I never knew you. Those are words nobody will want to hear.
The key to a relationship with God is walking in the light. When we walk in darkness, we can get into trouble because we can’t see where we’re going. It’s like stumbling through life with a blindfold on, and no one leading us where we should go. We may even get mis-lead, by the world, by false teaching, or by trying to make our own way in life.
But when we walk in the light, our footsteps are sure, our path is clear, we can see obstacles and walk around them. When we walk in the light, we are walking with God. We have fellowship with ONE ANOTHER. It’s not a one-way relationship. It’s not just what we want it to be, it is a relationship, where both parties know all about each other. And in this relationship, we are purified by the blood of Jesus. That is to say, because Jesus died for our sins, because His blood was shed, our sins are forgiven. But again, that is IF we walk in the light.
John reinforces this point in the last few verses. If we think we are perfect, without sin, we are living a life of self-denial. If we think we are good enough to please God, we are sorely mistaken. God will not overlook sin. God will not let us slip into heaven through some loop-hole in the gospel. There is no back door into heaven. We need to admit to the fact that we fall short when it comes to God’s laws, God’s standards, God’s perfection. We can’t make it on our own. But if we DO admit that; if we DO confess to the fact that we are sinners (and we all are!) Then God says He will forgive us our sins and purify us from all that garbage in our past. When we get dirty, whether it’s from working hard, or playing hard, or just getting messy, there’s nothing that feels better than a good shower or bath to wash away all that smell and grime. In life, we get dirty. We hurt others, we hurt ourselves, we lie, we steal, and we cheat. We break God’s heart by breaking His laws. This is sin; living without keeping God’s laws. And in God’s eyes, that makes us unclean, impure, not perfect. And if we think we have not sinned, we making God out to be a liar for he says that ALL have sinned and fallen short of His standards. All of us have, all the world has.
We need a way to get clean, we need to be purified. And the only way to do that is to admit that we are sinners, ask God to forgive us, and then read the Bible (and here’s the hard part) and do what it says, EVERY DAY. I think this is where a lot of people get deceived. If we tell people that all they need to do to get into heaven is say a prayer asking for God’s forgiveness once and then they’re ok, we are lying…to them and to ourselves. Being a Christian is not a once-in-a-life-time experience. It is a daily, hourly, moment by moment life-style that we must walk out every day.
That is where the difference is between being a Christ-follower is to being a church-goer. We can go to church as regularly as Old Faithful, listen to as many sermons by the greatest of preachers from all over the world. We can do all sorts of things in the name of God for all sorts of people. We can even do miracles and give everything we have to the Lord, BUT, if we don’t have a change of heart, a change of purpose, a change of relationship to God, then it all adds up to nothing. Jesus said in Matthew 7 that 21"Not everyone who says to me, ’Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22Many will say to me on that day, ’Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ 23Then I will tell them plainly, ’I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (NIV)
So here’s my question to you. Do you know Jesus, and does He know you?
If you want to talk to me or someone about your relationship to God, please do. Don’t wait until tomorrow; don’t wait until it’s too late. Do it today. Let’s pray.
