FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD
1 John 1:5-7
INTRO: Today, I want to talk to you about fellowship with God. We would count it a great privilege if the President of the United States were to want to fellowship with us. We’d be honored. Yet the God of this universe, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords desires communion with us. God wants fellowship with us, and yet we do not talk to God. We do not seek Him. God awaits fellowship with His children.
Among other things, there are two relationships that are discussed in 1 John. There is that of Sonship in 1 John 1:1-2, and there is fellowship. Fellowship is described as communion. It is dialogue. It is communication. It is that closeness between God and man.
I. BASIS OF FELLOWSHIP (v. 5).
If we are to commune with God, what is the basis of that fellowship? John says the basis of fellowship is this “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all” (v. 5). John describes the basis of fellowship two ways: positively and negatively.
Positively — God is light. Notice the Bible does not say God has a light or God is like a light. The Bible says God is light. That is the way the Holy Spirit prompted John to describe God.
ILLUS: We talk about having the light, “Well, I used to do so-and-so but I saw the light and now I don’t do that anymore.” Paul talks in the Book of Ephesians about having eyes of our heart enlightened or illuminated and you know even the cartoonist describes a thought as a little light bulb. To say God is light means there is nothing that God does not know either about us or about anything else.
Morally it speaks of the holiness of God. If you wanted to use one word to describe God it would be Holy. The bible says, “Be ye holy for I am holy.” God is absolutely holy. John said, “God is light.” That’s positive. Then he uses the negative, “In Him is no darkness at all.”
In the Greek it’s a double negative. There is no, not any, none, not a shed of darkness in God at all. The basis of fellowship is this light. God is light, in Him is no darkness at all.
If we are to have fellowship with God, we must walk in the light, we must walk in light because God is light. Because God is holy, there are certain things that we ought to do. We ought to give God our:
1. Best Attention — When you come to worship God, give your attention to the praying, to the singing, to the preaching, to every aspect of worship.
2. Best Attitude — Our attitude determines our actions. So many times people cannot have fellowship with God because they come to worship God with a poor attitude.
II. BREAKING OF FELLOWSHIP (v. 6).
Let me tell you something you already know. I said the Bible talks about two relationships — Sonship and fellowship. A lot of people get confused right here, and say, “Well, I’m a child of God but if I sin then I’m lost again, and then I’ve got to be saved all over because fellowship is broken.”
ILLUS: Fellowship can be broken. At times, when I disobeyed my father, fellowship was broken. Now, I was still his son but the fellowship had been broken and that fellowship had to be restored before I could enjoy the father-son relationship. There were a lot of times as a matter of fact that I did not enjoy the relationship because the fellowship was broken.
That’s the same way it is with our heavenly Father. He wants us to be obedient to Him, and when the fellowship is broken He is going to bring us back into line by chastening us. John says it is possible to break that fellowship (v. 6). He says that there is:
1. Profession — Notice what he says, “If we say we have fellowship.” There’s a lot of people who say that they have fellowship with God but don’t because their actions say otherwise.
If I should say to you “Let’s have a show of hands; how many of you are in fellowship with God?” You might just pop your hand up there in a hurry. When you say you’re in fellowship with God it means that you have things in common with God. It means you’re interested in the same thing God is interested in. It means you’re walking in the same direction God is walking.
There are some who profess to have fellowship with God, but they do not because they are walking in darkness. If you are walking in darkness right now, you are out of fellowship with God.
2. The Practice — We say we have fellowship, but we walk in darkness. It’s one thing to say it, it’s another thing to do it, and if you are walking in darkness and claim to have fellowship with God, you’re lying and you’re doing two things that are very dangerous. First of all, you are:
1) Misrepresenting the Lord — Jesus was no phony. Jesus did not say one thing and do something else. An example would be someone who says they can drink and be a good Christian.
2) Misdirecting the Lost — When lost people see sin and inconsistencies in our lives they are misdirected. We ought to live in such a way as not to be someone’s alibi for not becoming a Christian.
III. BLESSINGS OF FELLOWSHIP (v. 7).
Walking in the light is just another term for walking in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is to have all sins confessed and living the Spirit-controlled life. John says the blessings of this fellowship are:
1. Communion With God and Man — “We have fellowship with one another.” The communion of the saints is to walk with God in fellowship with His people. Enoch was a man who walked with God. This communion comes through prayer and the Word.
2. Cleansing From Sin — “...the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” The tense of the verb here says “it keeps on cleansing us.” The word means that this is an action that was begun in the past that has present results. The blood of Jesus Christ never loses its power.
CONC: For the Christian the blessing of fellowship is to know that continually the blood of Jesus Christ is applied to our life and that continually as we confess our sins we are forgiven and fellowship is restored.
NOTE: This message is a revision of a sermon preached by my late father Ted Wood. It appears (though I can’t be certain) that he may have used Warren Wiersbe’s book "Be Real" for some of his inspiration.
