Agreeing With God - 1 John 1:8-10
INTRODUCTION: In chapter 1 we have the elder statesman of the church, the last living apostle, writing to a church that, since the death of Paul 30 yrs earlier, has fallen into various forms of heresy. John the mender of nets writes at the age of 90 to fix what has fallen in disarray in the church.
(1) The missing ingredient: TRUE FELLOWSHIP
(a) Founded upon a person: Jesus Christ - 1:1-2
(b) Enjoyed with others including the Father & the Son - 1:3
(c) The basis by which we enjoy true fulfilling Joy in the body - 1:4
(2) True fellowship means having the right understanding of:
(a) God - 1:5 He is light
(b) Ourselves - 1:6 We are to walk in the light
(c) Jesus - 1:7 He makes the light a possibility
(1:8) If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. (1:9) If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1:10) If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.
One of the great mysteries of the Christian faith is that although Christians are cleansed from sin, they still sin. These verse deal with the fact that believers sin and that to deny sin is to deceive yourself.
1) The great need of every believer is to have the power that God provides when we walk in fellowship with Him by dealing immediately with sin in our lives. Because we have our old fleshly nature we still are vulnerable to sin but because of Jesus Christ we have a new power to say no to tempation
2) True Fellowship: Koinonia literally means to ’hold things in common with one another’. All my resources are at the disposal of Jesus Christ but also all His resources are at my disposal: To learn what this means is to discover genuine Christianity.
Becoming a Christian comes down to one single issue: SIN. I hope that you are not here to have a better life, to escape eternal judgment, or to have a better reputation in the community. The only valid reason for you to be where you are is that at a point in time you recognized SIN in your life and that you were led to the only hope of forgiveness and mercy which was found in a person named Jesus.
This morning I want to look at three issues with regard to sin and it’s impact in our lives.
THE ROOT OF ORIGINAL SIN: If we say there is no sin problem between ourselves and God we are living a lie. (8) If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.
1. John uses three examples where we might say one thing and yet the truth is another. 1) 1:6 Someone might say that they have fellowship with God and yet their life demonstrates the opposite to be true. 2) Someone might claim to have no original sin in their lives and are only fooling themselves.
It is NERVES that cause us to speak impatiently - it is tiredness and fatigue that makes us speak sharp words - it is pressure at work that makes us lose our peace and become worried and troubled - it is our difficult neighbors that make us resentful and bitter - WE SAY THE PROBLEM IS NOT SIN BUT CIRCUMSTANCES
a. Anyone who claims that they have no sin will have almost every person they have ever know to disagree with them.
2. Notice the difference between the word sin in verse 8 and the word sins in verse 9. One is singular with the other is plural. One is the root while the other is the fruit.
a. Sin - is the fallen twist in man that dates back to our original parents. It makes us want the world to revolve around us, it promotes self-centeredness, pride and independence.
3. Various religions today: hinduism, buddism, Religious science (Travolta, Michael Jackson…etc) Sin is ’an error of mortal mind’ and that all that is necessary to deal with sin is to correct your thinking.
a. Popular today to discount sin as an issue, other’s morality
THE FRUIT OF ORIGINAL SIN: If we say that sin has never been a condemning agent in our lives we are calling God a liar. (10) If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.
1. RICH YOUNG RULER - Agreed that sin is a reality but argued that it had never born fruit in his own life. Jesus, the Great Physician, did some spiritual surgery and identified the sin in the man’s life.
2. We say verses what God says: Rom 3 ’all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’ ’there is none righteous, no not one’ To say that things in our lives are not just concerns to the holiness of God is to call God a liar. God thought that they were such significant issues that He sent His own Son to die on a cross.
D.L. MOODY: Approached one day by a man who claimed to have no sin in his life: ’Well, I would like to ask your wife about that’.
3. Popular today to rename sin: To not see what we do in our lives as sin but as something else: weaknesses, and failures, moral stumblings.
a. Saw this continually with the last leadership we had in this country.
Reason we have a problem knowing just how much oil we really have in this country is because all the oil reserves are in Oklahoma, Texas, and Alaska but all the dipsticks are in Washington D.C.
b. Have to be a DIPSTICK to deny the obvious:
1) Denies sin as an issue in their life:
2) Denies that sins are a problem in their life: Call it something else
Human frailties, bad tendancies, hereditary faults,
Others have prejudices while we have convictions
Others are conceited….self-respect
Another man is lazy….we are too busy
He is presumptuous while we have initiative
He loses his temper while I have righteous indignation
Find a nicer label and try to clothe our wrong so that it looks right. Reality is that the neither the truth of God nor the Word of God is abiding in us.
Jesus didn’t come to die for a weakness, a failure, a mistake, a
Common fault…..Jesus came to die for SIN.
4. To not call sin sin is to put the blame on God: Your fault God, circumstances You have allowed which have made it impossible for me to be obedient.
a. World’s oldest excuse: Gen 3:19 Back to the Garden of Eden ’It was the woman you gave me…..It was the serpent….’
THE SOLUTION TO ONGOING SIN: If we agree with what God says is true then we can live a life walking in the light. (9) If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The heart of this passage is found in verse 9: What is to be done with sin? Not to deny it or to refuse to admit it but it is to deal with it directly.
Prov 28:13 He that covereth his sins shall not prosper but he who confesses and forsakes them shall find compassion
1. CALL IT ONLY WHAT GOD CALLS IT: If we confess our sins
a. Word confess does not mean to ask for forgiveness. It literally means to ’say the same thing with’. That means we look at the things that we do and say the same thing, give the same label to them as God does. WE AGREE WITH HIM.
2. CRY OUT FOR GOD’S FORGIVENESS: He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins
a. Compare two words: Confess & Forgive. Two different meaning and two different Greek tenses.(opens up the meaning sometimes)
1) CONFESS: Present tense meaning continual action. As we deal with the FRUIT of sin we have to say the same thing God says about our actions and seek His cleansing in order to have this koinonia fellowship that John speaks of.
2) FORGIVE: Aorist tense meaning a past action with no continual occurances. Lit. means ’to send away’. In God’s forgiveness our sins, past present and future, and their condemnation have been sent away from us forever. A process never to be repeated.
Rom 8:1 There is therefore now no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. IT IS FINISHED!
3. COME OFTEN FOR GOD’S CLEANSING: and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
a. Our initial confession of sin brings God’s mercy and forgiveness with the result that the guilt and condemnation of our sins is ’sent away’ never to return. They were placed upon Jesus Christ, nailed to the cross, and taken with Him into death as our sacrifice.
b. Our daily confession of sins brings a cleansing to our lives that allows us to maintain a true fellowship with God.
John 13:8-10 Account of the disciples in the Upper Room in preparation for the Last Supper. Jesus girded Himself with a towel and began to wash the disciples feet. When He came to Peter : ’No Lord, you will never wash my feet’.(embarrassed at such a thing) Jesus said, ’If I wash you not, you can have no part with Me.(no fellowship) We may feel our sins are too extreme or embarrassing to confess but if we don’t we won’t find His cleansing power that we might have fellowship.
Peter says, ’Lord, if that is the case, then wash me all over’. ’No Peter, he that is bathed does not need to wash again’. No need to be competely washed again but only to clean what has become dirty. We were forgiven and cleansed by the blood of Jesus(1:7) but as we walk in the world we can become dirty and as we confess this filth in our lives then God is ’faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness’.
