Be Honest
1 John 1:8-2:11
Be honest with yourself about sin (1:8)
Be honest with God about sin (1:9-10)
Be honest about the Remedy for sin (2:1-2)
Be honest with yourself about your relationship with God (2:3-11)
Test yourself (2:3)
Test your Actions
Test your Affections
Slide
There is a new TV show out called “Moment of Truth.” The premise is that you are asked questions while hooked up to a lie detector. Then on TV with your family sitting there and the Television audience watching, you are asked these questions again and all you need to do is be honest to win money.
Sounds simple enough.
Especially for someone who is a Christian, right?
Well, I don’t think there is anyone who likes to answer questions about what goes on in their heads, because the questions that are asked have more to do with what you would do or if you have thought about doing something.
For instance,
Would you cheat on your wife if you knew for sure you would not be caught?
Have you ever thought of stealing money from the bank you work at?
Have you ever fantasized about being with someone else other than your spouse?
And this is while your family is sitting there.
Sometimes it is very hard to be honest about some of the wrong things we have thought or done, isn’t it?
Well today, we are continuing on in our series in the book of 1st John and we are going to see that John tells us to
Be Honest
Slide
What do we need to be honest about?
We need to be honest about sin.
I think it is important for us to start out and be honest about what sin is.
Now before you get up and walk out on me, I want to talk about this because I desire personally and for each of you, as well as myself, to experience freedom and joy and the fullness of life that Christ has come to give.
If we don’t recognize sin in our life and the destruction it causes, we will not be free and we will continue to be in bondage.
Ok, so what is sin?
Sin is disobedience to God and it does not just happen in our actions, but even more often it occurs in our heart.
We all know it would be a sin to murder someone, but Jesus tells us we have committed murder in our heart and sinned if we hate someone.
We know it would be sin to commit adultery, but Jesus tells us that if we have lusted in our heart, we have committed adultery and sinned.
We know that doing something that God told us not to do is a sin, but it is also a sin to not do the good things we know we should have done.
James 4:17
17 Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.
Wow, if we include all of that in the category of sin, it sure becomes a lot easier to see that we are all sinners, to the very core of who we are.
Ok, Now that we know what sin is, it is time for the moment of truth. (Get out lie detector kit and chair). Who wants to be first in being honest?
Did you feel your heart start to beat a little faster?
Well, calm down, we aren’t going to be having anyone up here connected to a lie detector, but we are going to read what John says about who we need to be honest with and what we need to be honest about in regards to sin.
Turn with me to
1 John 1:8-2:11(p. 862)
Slide
Last week,
We talked about how it was time to Get Real and we spoke of
The Reality of Jesus Christ
The Reality of a Relationship with Jesus Christ
That relationship is based upon
our fellowship with the Lord and his church and
Truth.
Now John continues on telling us to be honest about sin
Read with me
1 John 1:8-2:11
8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
1 John 2:1 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense-Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
3 We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. 4 The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5 But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.
7 Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. 8 Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.
9 Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. 10 Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. 11 But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.
Wow, those are some pretty strong verses there.
Let’s take it piece by piece and see what it is John is telling us.
First, we see that John says that you need to
Be Honest with Yourself about your Sin
Slide
1 John 1:8
8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
We need to stop deceiving ourselves and be honest with ourselves about sin in our life.
There were people that were telling the church that the things they did were not sin and were seeking to convince those John is writing to that they were not sinning either.
If we are thinking we are without sin, we are lying to ourselves.
The Bible tells us in Romans 3:23
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
This is why it is important to recognize what sin is, so we can be honest with ourselves about it.
Before I was a Christian, guys I knew lived by the rule
“You can look but don’t touch.”
That meant it was alright to look at other women, or even pornography, but it was only wrong, “a sin”, if you will, though we would never use that language, to actually cheat on your spouse.
Well, as we talked about a minute ago, Jesus has something entirely different to say about that.
Matthew 5:27-28
27 "You have heard that it was said, ’Do not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
If we think sin is just breaking a command, then there are people I believe who may actually come to a point of believing that they don’t sin.
But if we recognize fully what sin is, that it is also
not doing what we should have done or
sinning in our heart, such as, lusting after someone or hating someone
then we can be honest with ourselves and recognize that we are sinners.
It is important for us, if we are going to experience freedom, that we are honest with ourselves about our sin.
You not only need to be honest with yourself, but you need to
Be Honest with God about your Sin
Slide
1 John 1:9-10
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
We need to be honest with God about our sin.
The word that is translated confess in our Bibles means actually to “say the same thing”
We need to be in agreement with God about our sin, that it is sin.
What does that look like?
What would it look like to confess our sin to a Holy God?
I think it might be helpful to start out with what it doesn’t look like.
It doesn’t look like this
“Lord forgive me if I have done anything wrong.”
“Lord if you see anything wrong in me, please forgive me.”
Now it is not wrong to ask the Lord to expose sin in you.
Psalm 139:23-24 says
“search me oh God and see if there is any wicked way within me.”
But once exposed, we need to admit it and confess it.
Listen what David says when his sin is exposed.
2 Samuel 12:9-10
9 Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’
David is confronted with the sin of adultery and murder.
Even though he did not actually kill Uriah, he had him moved to the front lines and left alone to be killed.
God exposed it for what it was, murder.
And what is David’s response?
Lord, I wasn’t the one who actually killed Uriah, so technically it isn’t murder.”
No.
Here is what he says,
2 Samuel 12:13 - "I have sinned against the LORD."
And what does Nathan, God’s prophet tell David after he confesses his honest about his sin with the Lord?
"The LORD has taken away your sin.”
There is freedom and restoration of fellowship with the Lord when we are honest about our sin with ourselves and with God.
Forgive me for Lusting
Forgive me for my gossiping tongue
Forgive me for my impure thoughts
Forgive me for not honoring my parents
Forgive me for not helping that man whom you were directing me to help
Don’t say forgive me if I have done anything wrong.
Say Lord forgive me because I have sinned against You in this way, and then name the way.
Be honest with God about your Sin.
Be Honest about the Remedy for Sin
Slide
1 John 2:1-2
1 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense-Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
Jesus is the remedy for our sin.
We live in a society and age where it is no problem to talk about God.
There are all kinds of people who believe in a “god,” but that does not make it the one true God.
The one true God came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ and paid for your sins by dying on the cross.
In fact, He paid for the sins of everyone in the whole world.
However, that payment for our sins, only gets credited when by faith we receive Jesus as Savior by believing in Him, who He is, God in the flesh, what he did, died for our sins and rose 3 days later.
You are not believing in the true God until you are believing in the Son He sent.
John 5:23
He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.
And salvation is only received, even though your sins and the sins of everyone else in the world, have been paid at the cross, that salvation only becomes manifested in your life, when you are honest about the only Remedy for our sins that God has provided, and you receive Jesus as your Savior.
That is the only remedy for sin.
Being good enough is not a remedy for sin.
You aren’t good enough
Being rich enough to pay money is not a remedy for sin
You don’t have enough and can never have enough because there is not enough ever.
The only remedy for sin is
receiving Jesus as Savior by believing in Him and
the only remedy to experience continued fellowship with the Lord is
to confess your sins to Christ who is our advocate “who speaks to the Father in our defense”
Jesus Christ is the remedy for our sins.
He is the remedy so we can experience salvation and He is the remedy so we can experience fellowship.
Now one final thing we need to be honest about and it is you need to
Be Honest about your Relationship with God
Slide
These next verses start out
1 John 2:3-11
” We know that we have come to know him if …”
Now that we know we need to be honest with ourselves and with God and about Jesus being the remedy for our sins, John now gives us some tests to see if we are really being honest about our relationship with the Lord.
We need to test ourselves?
Yes.
In fact Paul tells us this specifically in
2 Corinthians 13:5
5 Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you-unless, of course, you fail the test?
So how do we test ourselves?
First you need to
Test Your Actions
Slide
1 John 2:3-6
3 We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. 4 The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5 But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.
Now it is important that we keep all of this in context of the previous verses as well.
John has just finished telling us that we need to be honest and recognize that we are sinners with ourselves and with God.
We are going to sin.
But just because we are going to sin at points does not mean that we should be living a lifestyle of sin.
Just because God offers us forgiveness when we sin, that does not mean He offers us a blank check to go and sin.
As we recognize sin in our life, we need to seek to overcome it with the power of the Holy Spirit Whom we have received when we believed in Jesus as our Savior.
This is the part that can be confusing for some people.
Sometimes people believe that
If I receive Jesus as my Savior, then I can do whatever I want because my sins are forgiven and my salvation is not dependant on what I do.
While your salvation is not dependant on what you do,
the truth of your salvation, the truth of your receiving Jesus as your Savior is shown by what you do.
That is why we test our actions.
Paul says
Romans 6:1-2
6:1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
You need to ask yourself if what you say you believe is evident in your life.
Better yet, ask someone else.
Is there habitual sin in your life that you aren’t overcoming or trying to overcome or feeling convicted about in your life?
Be honest with yourself now, because we will all face a moment of truth when our lives and motives and inner most thoughts will be exposed for what they are.
Have that moment of truth now.
Be honest by testing your actions now.
If you find that you have some habitual sin in your life, then confess it and repent and be purified and restored into right relationship with the Lord.
Don’t be like the man John talks about.
“The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” (1 John 2:4)
His command it to confess. Do that and be purified.
Last, you need to
Test Your Affections
Slide
1 John 2:7-11
7 Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. 8 Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.
9 Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. 10 Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. 11 But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.
John is telling us that a true Christian will have a love for his brother.
Jesus said in
John 13:34-35
34 "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."
People should be able to clearly recognize us as followers of Christ by our visible love for one another.
Do you have love for your brothers?
Is it more than just words out of your mouth, but actions from your heart?
These are some tough tests.
The reality is that none of us completely measure up.
But as a Christian, our beliefs and love for others ultimately should be evident in our actions.
We should be progressing in being honest about the sin in our life and confessing it.
Part of the actions we need to be taking is confessing and seeking forgiveness.
If our life looks no different than from before you think you received Jesus as your Savior, then perhaps you have never really believed.
I grew up going to church and knew about Christ, but I was not a Christian, even though I would have said that I was.
The truth of my receiving Jesus as Savior when I was 27 is shown in how my life has changed.
Don’t get me wrong. I have not arrived. I am not sinless anymore than you are. But I can tell you that as god exposes sin in my life, I do feel bad about it and I do confess and repent of it and I have experienced victory over some sins in my life.
As I continue to be honest with myself and with God, I do get to experience freedom from sin that seeks to keep us in bondage.
Each of us can have Victory in Jesus.
If you have tested yourself and there is something you need to be honest about by confessing it to God, then I want to take the next minute or 2 for you silently to confess that to the Lord and receive forgiveness.
If you after testing yourself, you find that your actions and affections don’t indicate that Christ is working in your life, then receive Him as Savior.
I am going to give you a minute in silence to pray and confess then I will lead those who may want to receive Christ as Savior in prayer and then we will sing a song, Victory in Jesus.
