Me and the dark don’t get along, at all. When we were first married, Barb and I lived in a small basement apartment that had 6 ½ foot ceilings. That’s fine because I’m about 6’ 2”. One problem.
On the way to the washroom in the middle of the night from the bedroom area, there was a pipe that hung down 5 inches from the ceiling. You get where I’m going. Lots of welts on the head. We moved as soon as we could.
Most likely, most of us here aren’t afraid of the dark, per se. But we’re not particularly adept at maneuvering in the dark. We all have our share of stories of stubbed toes (funny to watch, not-so-funny to experience).
We’ve likely smacked our heads in the dark, dropped keys in the dark, got lost in the dark. Darkness is a problem for humans. I know that complete darkness is beneficial for us to get a good sleep, but other than that, darkness is not our friend.
In our Scripture reading today, John the Apostle is concerned about darkness. He’s concerned about the effect of darkness on Christians in particular.
He wants us to walk not in the darkness, where there are all kinds of hazards; rather, he wants us to walk in the light.
It might be helpful to have a little background on the situation John was writing into. Did you know that all of the letters of epistles in the New Testament were responses?
They were letters written in response to problems that were developing in the early churches. Paul’s letters, Peter’s letters, John’s letters and others – they were written out of concern for how Christians were doing in the early days of the church.
Now more than likely, John was writing to 2nd and 3rd generation Christians. Those who were not eye witnesses to Jesus’ life and miracles. There’s no indication in this book of mass persecutions of the church.
That’s not to say persecution wasn’t happening, just that it hadn’t yet impacted the church everywhere. But among the second and third generation Christians, there’s evidence here that the moral and ethical demands of the gospel on the individual Christian were beginning to weigh on the church.
You know, there is a sheen on new clothes. There’s that new car smell. There’s the fresh excitement and vibrancy in a new relationship. And there’s a bloom on a person who has come to Christ recently.
For someone who has just come to believe in, and who has received Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, there is a whole new world to explore. Everything about the life of faith is fresh and wonderful. Often prayers are answered in huge volume. There’s often deliverance from addictions and from a compulsion to sin. There’s just the whole awesome experience of learning about our new identity in Jesus Christ.
There’s just a lot of getting used to the realization that we truly matter to God, that God has loved us enough to save us through the blood of Christ, that God really does have a purpose for our lives and plans to prosper and bless us, and bless the world around us, through us.
The church is often new too. All these new relationships and this new community where we can share very close to the heart with new friends. It’s awesome. In some ways I’ve never gotten used to it. Hope I never do.
But a very normal thing happens. And to the Christians that John is writing to, something very normal and understandable has happened.
The bloom has been fading. The joy of the Lord, abundant to the new believer, has been impacted by the trials and tribulations of just living.
Freedom from addiction and the tendency to indulge in sin, often a gracious gift from God to new believers, was less of an easy thing to sustain, and was becoming more of a discipline – a daily choice to walk in holiness and reverence for God.
In a sense, for new believers, God does a lot of the work for them through the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives, making it pretty easy to walk the walk. That was true in my life, for sure. Gradually though, because God wants us to mature, because He knows we can’t stay infants in the faith for ever, the work of the Holy Spirit changes in our lives.
By His grace seen in our lives as we stumble and fall, we learn that we need to truly cleave to God, we need to exercise our faith, to intentional practice what we believe.
We need to walk in our identity; that means the choices that we make need to reflect the choices of someone who no longer belongs to himself or herself – we belong to God.
Once that new relationship is established with that special person in our lives, we need to tend carefully to all aspects of the relationship, as though we’re tending a garden. The same is true of our walk with God.
So it’s into the life of the church and the lives of Christians who were more established that John writes. Let’s look at what he says:
1 John 1:1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched--this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.
Does this ring a bell to you? John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning.
John cared about beginnings. God cares about beginnings. How and why something starts has a huge impact on its future. Where a seed falls determines if and how if grows.
Now John starts by affirming that what matters the most is the One Who is from the beginning. It’s good that he starts this way, because we should always reaffirm our roots. Always reaffirm the ground of our being. So he proclaims Jesus, the Word of Life who gives eternal life, who was in the beginning with God. Jesus Christ, King of kings, co-regent with God the Father.
Beginnings matter. Cool fact: If you start your day by blessing God, by thanking Him for your life, for His mercies that are fresh every day toward you, you will have a much better day. If you start your day by remembering that you belong to God, that Christ died for you, that you were bought with a price and that you are His, your attitude and your conduct during your day will be different. Try it. Tell me how it went. Get into the habit of doing it every day, and worlds of blessing will open up to you.
Anyway, John here affirms to these second and third generation Christians that he and the others who were around during the time of Jesus’ public ministry know of which they speak. They listened to His voice, His teachings, they watched Him, they touched Him – the experience of walking with Jesus in person is burned into their collective memories.
I should mention that one of the problems faced by the early church was that people known as Gnostics denied that Jesus had come in the flesh.
They had this idea that all matter including human flesh was evil, and that everything of the spirit was good. So some were saying that Jesus never actually came in the flesh.
That’s the other reason John begins this way. He affirms that he speaks of that “which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched”.
3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We write this to make our joy complete.
This is John’s overriding concern. Fellowship. That now sounds like an old word, except for its use in Lord of the Rings, which has helped bring that word back into use. Fellowship. Fellows in the same boat. People going in the same direction. People whose common life was held together by their love for Jesus.
People who took Jesus at His word, people who believed not just any old thing they made up themselves about God (such a common thing today); but people who accepted God’s revelation about God’s own self. Whose relationship with God was on God’s terms, based on what God has done in Jesus Christ.
One of the thousands of things I love about this church (I really do love this church, you know; it is church the way I believe church should be). One of the things I love about this church is that we’re not named or defined by anything potentially divisive.
By that I mean, we’re not Anglican so to exclude non-Anglicans. We’re not Pentecostal so as to exclude non-Pentecostals. We never talk about us being Baptist or Methodist or Presbyterian or Catholic.
Those are all good things and any group that exalts Jesus Christ as Lord and God and King is awesome, so we’re not AGAINST those labels.
We just know here that those labels don’t define us. They don’t define our fellowship. In the early church, churches were known by their region. The church at Ephesus, the church in Jerusalem, in Rome. The church at Phillipi.
Well, I like that we’re simply the Church at the Mission. What defines our fellowship? Jesus. Why do we meet here weekly? Jesus. Who do we live for? Jesus. What’s the basis of our fellowship? Jesus. Fellowship is important to God. Deep and rich connectedness among US is important to God. It’s never easy. All kinds of things create challenges to being in fellowship.
May it be said of us that our fellowship is with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. And may we each renew our commitment to being in fellowship with one another.
There’s something about being in fellowship that connects us to joy. I have a lot of responsibilities at the mission that don’t directly involve Church at the Mission.
Indirectly, but not directly. Increasingly I’m called upon to give leadership to the overall spiritual life of the mission, which is great, and I love doing it.
Pastor Lee being here and being so excellent at his work enables me to have these other responsibilities. Pastor Jan being so extraordinary at her ministry also frees me up.
But nothing, nothing dare take me away from you good folk. Being with you on Sundays and often on Tuesdays and other days, and meeting with you one-on-one makes the rest of my work at the mission make sense.
Your fellowship is vital to me. Thank you for being my church. My joy is made complete as I fellowship and worship with you!
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
John here says something about the message of Jesus that we don’t particularly here quite so pointedly elsewhere in Jesus’ teachings: “God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all”. That’s an interesting summary of a lot of Jesus’ teachings, His message.
Respected commentator William Barclay says that a person’s character will necessarily be determined by the character of the god whom he or she worships.
So John here lays down the nature of the God and Father of Jesus Christ Whom Christians worship. God, he says, is light, and there is no darkness in Him. What does this statement, that “God is light” say about God?
It tells us that He is spendour and glory. There is nothing so glorious as a blaze of light piercing the darkness. To say that God is light tells us of His sheer splendor.
It tells us that God is self-revealing. Above all things light is not smelled or tasted or heard. It is seen. And it illumines the darkness round about it.
To say that God is light is to say that there is nothing secretive, nothing sneaky about God. He wishes to be seen and known by humanity.
It tells us of God’s purity and holiness. There is none of the darkness that cloaks hidden evil in God. That He is light speaks of His purity and stainless holiness.
It tells us of the guidance of God. One of the great functions of light is to show the way ahead. Saying that He is light is to say that he offers guidance to our footsteps. And light is the revealer the things. Imperfections great and small, hidden in the darkness, come to clarity in God’s light.
That God is light, is good for you and for me.
6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.
7 But 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.
So…God and darkness don’t mix. Not at all. God is light. God lives in the open, so speak. Romans 1:20 says: “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse”.
Darkness, of course, hides. Deeds done that don’t want exposure to the light cloak themselves in darkness. God wants us to have true and deep fellowship one with another, and with God Himself.
But we can’t ‘walk in darkness’, we can’t make a practice of sinning and still be in right relationship with God or, really, with one another. And the thing is, it is actually unnecessary for Christians to make a habit of sinning.
We needn’t live in darkness or practice the deeds of darkness: Colossians 1:13 says “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins”.
But…if I say that I have a relationship with God, that I have fellowship with God, but my actions have to be hidden; if I fear transparency, make a practice of sinning and justifying my sin (which is the only way we can keep up the practice of sin in any given area – think about it), my actions drown out my words. I might fool myself. I might fool you. But I won’t fool God. [Repeat last 3 sentences]
There’s lots more I could say here, and Romans chapter 7 is a good balance to this Scripture, but the point is not to dwell on issues of darkness. The point is not to make excuses.
And for God’s sake, the point is never to find clever ways of twisting the truth so that we end up calling good what God calls evil, so that we deceive ourselves most thoroughly.
Man, some people spent a lot of time doing that. Complete waste of time. Deeply destructive to a living faith.
The point is in verse 7. Walk in the light. That’s the only way to walk with God, because God is in the light.
Romans 13 puts it clearly: 12 The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13 Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. 14 Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
Is this hard? Of course it’s hard. Like I said, the people that John was writing to found it hard. It’s the difference between Christian infancy and Christian maturity. And it’s our calling to walk in the light.
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.
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.
Anyhow, John is not at all fuzzy about why is writing this letter to the church. It is a) encouragement to walk in the light (and to not return to an unholy lifestyle) and b) ultimately this letter is about the One who is the atoning sacrifice, the righteous One, the One to talks to God about you, the One who speaks to the Father in our defense.
Truth is, if you want to walk in the light, there is a way. If you want to have your sins forgiven, blotted out – never held against you by divine justice, there is a way. If you want true fellowship with God and deep fellowship with the people of God; If you want to live free of the burden of guilt and shame, there is a way.
If you want to discover your ultimate purpose in life, there is a way. And if you want to have the capacity to live life to the fullest, there is a way.
It is in coming to Jesus. Jesus said it best: (Matthew 11: 28-29) "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
Let me speak for a moment to the one person here, perhaps, to whom God is speaking directly. This is your time. You know it.
You can begin today walking with God. You can start your life fresh today, cleansed of all your sins, forgiven, set free to live.
But there’s only one way to do it. Will you come to Jesus Christ today, will you accept Him as your Lord and Saviour today?
Will you be established today on the Rock that is Jesus Christ, the Rock of your salvation, the anchor of your life, the very ground of your being?
I’m going to pray a simple prayer, thanking Jesus for willingly laying down His life; confessing sins to him and repenting of those sins. Then asking Him to come in and take up residency by His Holy Spirit. If you want to do that today, then pray after me…
