Sermon Central
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1 John 1:5-7 - The Revealing Light Of God Series
Contributed by Stephen Belokur on Jan 18, 2019 (message contributor)
Summary: God is Light. The Light is the great revealer of one's spiritual condition. There can be a disconnect between what we claim to be our spiritual condition and reality. The Light of the Lord reveals the truth.
Please stand as we read our newest memory Scripture together …
“This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.
“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.”
And our memory refresher verse(s) for today is(are) …
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others.”
Please open your Bibles to 1 John 1
In the Book of 1 John, the apostle John never really states who his target readers are but it is generally assumed that he is confronting Gnosticism. Gnostics claim to be Christian but are not.
Gnostics should not be confused with agnostics. Gnosticism comes from the Greek word “gnosis” which means “to know”. Gnostics claim to have a higher level of spiritual knowledge.
While gnosis/gnostic means “to know”, agnostic means “to not know”, i.e. “I don’t know if God exists or not …”
So … what did/do the Gnostics actually believe?
- They have a higher level of spiritual knowledge reserved for a special few
- They believe that Jesus’ physical body was not real, but only “seemed” to be physical, and that His spirit descended upon Him at His baptism, but left Him just before His crucifixion
- They believe that matter is inherently evil and spirit is good. As a result of this presupposition, Gnostics believe anything done in the body, even the grossest sin, has no meaning because real life exists in the spirit realm only. In other words, sin all you want, it will not affect your spirit as long as you have attained this “higher knowledge”.
While John does not directly state that he is refuting Gnosticism it will seem clear as we work through 1 John that these three issues are directly confronted.
Last week we took a look at 1 John 1:1-4
And we saw that the Apostle John was declaring
- Who Jesus is
- That they were actual eye witnesses of the Christ
- That fellowship may be had with other believers and even with God the Father and Jesus Himself
With that in mind let’s go ahead and read 1 John 1
“This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you …”
John is about to declare the message we need to know!
This is the message we have heard from Him (Jesus!) …
This is not hearsay knowledge; the apostles were not told this by someone else, this comes directly from the teachings of Jesus which the disciples heard with their own ears.
John is not suggesting to you that this might be true; it IS the truth, the Gospel truth.
Are you ready for the truth?
“This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you; God is light, in Him there is no darkness at all.”
“God is light …”
But, John doesn’t stop there! God is light, yes, but to reconfirm this statement he goes on and says, “in Him there is no darkness at all!”
God is the Creator of light.
“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”
The Lord clothes Himself in light …
“The LORD wraps Himself in light as with a garment …”
1 Timothy 6:15b-16
“God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To Him be honor and might forever. Amen.”
Every physical light has a light source from which the light emanates.
God alone is the source of spiritual light and He is also the light itself.
John wants to make sure that is absolutely clear, God is not only light but in Him THERE IS NO DARKNESS AT ALL!
The message is that God is completely, unreservedly, absolutely holy, with not even a trace of sin, no taint of iniquity, and no hint of injustice.
God’s light is righteousness – darkness is wickedness
God’s light is holiness – darkness is sinfulness
God’s light is purity – darkness is filthiness
God’s light is just – darkness is injustice
God’s light is love – darkness is self centeredness and hate
Light is revealing!
If I spill grape juice on the living room carpet it is no big deal as long as it is dark!
