June 10/18 Sermon - 1 John 2:1-2
Today is the third in a series where we are looking at the book of first John. Pastor Bill Ryan did an excellent introduction to the book 2 weeks ago, and Pastor Arleen spoke on the balance of chapter 1 last week.
If you missed those messages, and you want to have a solid understanding of the book of 1st John, you can check them out on our Facebook live stream or on our podcast that you can find at our website at catm.ca.
I have always particularly enjoyed the apostle John and his writing. His gospel, the fourth canonical gospel, is in some ways quite different from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, which are called the synoptic gospels.
They’re called that because although they are not identical, they have a lot of similarities. You would expect that from different witnesses who see different parts of an event.
But with John’s gospel, and the flavour of his gospel is still present in this letter, you get the perspective of an insider, one who has been closer to Jesus at difficult times; on who was, as John says of himself in his gospel, the disciple Jesus loved.
There are those signs of deep friendship in his writings. There is this gentleness, this intimacy, at this familiarity that John brings to his writings.
And here, in his first letter, he gives very personal insights, and he speaks with great love.
If you were here last week, or if you caught the livestream during the week Pastor Arleen was speaking on the passage that comes right before this.
On PPT: (Read off monitor)
God is light and there is no darkness in Him
God is absolute goodness and holiness.
If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.
We don’t want to be faking it. We’re faking it if we say we’re Christians while we’re regularly doing stuff that offends God.
If we walk in the light we have fellowship with one another and are purified by the sacrifice, the blood of Jesus.
When we walk in truth and holiness, when we’re living the Way of Jesus, our friendships and our fellowship is for real and deep; and we’re all experiencing together forgiveness of God through Jesus’ sacrifice.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and forgives us our sins AND purifies us from all unrighteousness
If we keep it real and seek forgiveness from God for our sins He both forgives us completely and goes overboard and makes us pure as snow, pure as wool.
If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
If we’re lying to ourselves and to each other trying to make it as though we’re perfect, we’re full of beans, we’re disrespecting His Word and we’re showing that we don’t particularly care about His word or the truth.
That’s a super-quick summary of last week’s passage.
Then today, as we progress through our series on the book of 1 John, we find this rather short passage:
My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
So John is explaining what he’s just been writing. And he says that why he wrote all that is to encourage us, to motivate us to not sin.
And so, you might ask, as I did when I first read this more than a few years ago, what’s the big deal with sin? It seems to come pretty naturally. It’s like what happens when you aren’t giving any thought to anything.
Don’t they say
And doesn't this sometimes led to this:
So sin comes easily. Sin comes naturally. Then what’s the problem with it? Really. Aren’t we making a mountain out of a molehill?
First, what is sin?
What’s the Problem with Sin?
First
Well, first, sin is a quality of darkness. That’s not hard to see in these Scripture passages:
For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,
Col 1:13
It’s worth noting that the domain of darkness is the domain of Satan
"This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. John 3:19
But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. 1 John 2:11
Second
Second, Sin is the second last of a series of events that leads to death, which ultimately is separation from God for all time.
“...But each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death”. James 1:14-15
That’s the cycle of sin. This is what’s common for every human. God doesn’t want us to live stuck in this cycle.
He wants us free. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery”. Galatians 5:1
In Jesus we break free from slavery to sin.
3rd
Sin is not where we live anymore
For those who follow Jesus the cycle is meant to be broken, and in fact can be broken.
In 1 Corinthians 6:11 the Apostle Paul lists a number of common sins that pretty much represents everything under the sun that offends God. And then he says:
And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
The point is that who we were before we came Christ is overwritten and quite drastically improved by the presence of God in our life, the presence of Jesus in our life.
We’ll come back to the last part of this Scripture in a bit.
4th
Sin robs us of strength.
Because sin creates confusion in our internal world. I organize my workshop about once every 2 years nowadays. It’s useful for about 3 months, because I don’t keep cleaning and organizing it.
After a few months more it gets harder and harder to find things. Soon after that it’s no longer a place that I can do workshop-type things because it’s so cluttered. This is someone else’s workshop, but mine is not a lot better.
Sin creates a mess of our internal world. If it doesn’t get dealt with, forgiven, cleaned up, it becomes the norm.
What are parts of our internal world? That’s where we commune with and build our relationship with God. That’s where we pray for others.
That’s where we think about our actions and reflect on our conduct so that we improve as human beings.
At one point I went at least 4 years before really cleaning and organizing my workshop. In my mind then a workshop was a messy, disorganized place.
We can come to think and believe and accept that our internal world has to be a crazy mess.
But believe it or not, that is not the case. The Holy Spirit lives inside you. God is not the author of confusion, and He does not want our internal world to be a confused mess.
Sin robs us of strength because when we are confused, we are not strong.
5th
Sin distracts us from God and His purposes - this is why Satan loves sin
Sin robs us of our identity. No longer am I a redeemed child of God in my mind. In my mind, I’m a hypocrite.
Practicing sin makes it very difficult to hear the voice of God, but surprisingly easy to hear or be attuned to the voice of the enemy of our souls.
How do we overcome sin then? How do we block ourselves from sin that so easily besets? How do we deal with sin our life?
First, as it says in the previous chapter, don’t pretend it’s not there. 8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
And we need to be careful to not let our society around us be the authoritative voice that tells us what is and what is not sin.
We don’t give in to the culture around us like that. Instead, we remain citizens of heaven and we allow ourselves to be impacted by the culture of heaven instead. Where do we learn about that culture? That’s why we have the Bible.
The culture of heaven is the mind and heart of God, and we learn about that culture through our dedicated reading and learning of Scripture.
As Kingdom people, as people of his dominion, he wants us engaged in his Kingdom, which is big and grand. Our sin shrinks us into tiny corner of self indulgence.
2nd, without going overboard (cutting off your eye or hand that makes you sin) but taking it as seriously as Jesus suggests in that passage, first:
Call it what it is - sin. Speak the truth about yourself over that sin. You have no power or insufficient power in yourself to overcome that sin.
Then
Sincerely ask God to forgive you, and to empower you to follow the Way of Jesus and to live free from the sin.
Then, and this is important, make the choice to cooperate with God as he changes you. This comes down to very practical steps.
That means don’t go near a bar if your issue is drinking. Don’t go near your old dealer if your issue is weed or crack or heroin or ecstasy.
“But what if my dealer lives next door?” If you’re serious about changing, move. This is your life and your walk with God that we’re talking about.
Behave as though you’re someone worth respecting, and give yourself a fighting chance to live free of bondage.
If your issue is anger, maybe take a Bridges course in anger management. Maybe there’s deeper issues of trauma that are related that lead you to be angry.
See a Christian counsellor. We have great Christian counsellors here at the mission that will become part of your healing journey if you let them.
I work with our counsellors to support those who are serious about their walk with God.
I spoke with someone this week whose issue is internet porn. I gave the same counsel. Porn and seedy internet web cam stuff is designed to create addiction.
To draw people in and create dependency, like a crack dealer who starts you off with free crack and then cost you your house and home.
Since porn also is easily available in the home via the web, block yourself from being able to access it or even stumble upon it.
Block it with smartphone and tablet restriction passwords, with free software like K9 that keeps your computer from being able to access garbage on the web.
And do these things when you’re strong, not weak. When you’re weak all you feel is defeated.
When you’re strong, securing the boundaries of your life and blocking access to evil from your eyes makes you feel stronger because you are stronger when you are fortifying your life against sin.
God doesn’t want us to sin. That’s why John wrote this epistle as he said. But if you’re human, even with putting thought and wisdom into keeping yourself from sin, you will still do things that offend God.
The Christ-follower will sin, but sin will become increasingly vile to him. Yes, the Christian will stumble and fall, but she will find that the cost of sin is very high.
Charles Spurgeon, a well-known preacher from the past, said that the longer and the more you are in a love relationship with God, “the more expensive will you find it to sin.
An ordinary sinner sins cheaply: the child of God sins very dearly."
So sin remains a problem for the Christian, but a very different problem than for one who is not in Christ.
For the Christ-follower, sin can threaten our sense of closeness and intimacy with God.
Practicing sin, repetitively engaging in sin creates a very clear feeling of being entirely unworthy of being called a Christian. (PPT)
Our path is one of greater and greater closeness to God.
Our trajectory, our direction is naturally, as redeemed children of God to be closer and closer to God, and to feel that closeness.
So it follows that the closer we walk with Jesus, the more and more it hurts us to displease Him.
You’ve sought God's forgiveness and he’s forgiven you. You’ve done all you can to fortify your life from sins that easily beset you.
You’ve taken yourself seriously as a child of God and have been practicing the Way of Jesus.
But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
In this most intimate of letters, from John the beloved disciple, we hear these words that we need to keep hearing again and again, simply because there is a great distance between the head and the heart.
Jesus Christ is the atoning sacrifice for our sin, and not only for ours, but for the sins of all who call upon Him. So committed is Jesus to your liberty, to your active engagement in the Kingdom of God;
so committed is Jesus to have for Himself a people to both dwell with in eternity, and to accomplish His purposes as His body here on earth, that He became our sacrifice.
The Bible says He who knew no sin BECAME sin for us. Jesus took personal responsibility for your sins, for my sin.
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21
Pause for a moment and consider these words. [Pause]
Holy God, in Jesus name we thank you for the gift of liberty that has come to us through the forgiveness of our sins. We are no longer slaves to sin. Instead we belong to Jesus who is the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Empower us to live for you, mighty God. Convict us by your Spirit of things in our lives that offend you and impede our devoted service to you. And strengthen us by Your Spirit to align our lives, to conform our lives to your perfect will. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
