1 John 1:5-10 Exposed

Welcome to Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where we are growing in faith, community, and service. This is a message from the series called In the Light out of the Book of 1 John by Pastor Don Filsek.

If you'd like more information about our church, please visit us on the web at www .recastchurch .com. Here's Pastor Don.

Christ as the Central Message and the Problem of Hidden Sin

This morning we're going to be picking up where we left off in the Book of 1 John. In his introduction that we took last week, just the first four verses, John made it clear that Jesus Christ is the central message of the Christian faith.

It really is all about him, and he wanted to point that out to us. And now John is going to explain the content of the message. Jesus Christ is the central message, and he's going to tease out some of the content of that for us here in the Book of 1 John.

Now the author of this book of the Bible had a good handle on human nature. Again, I believe that John, the disciple of Jesus, wrote this, and he was guided by the Holy Spirit in his authorship of this book.

He's writing it, and the Spirit is moving his pen as he is, moving it across the paper, and he is writing the words of God. And that would account for the keen insight that we're going to see this week about human nature, about the way that we work inside, that it's not just John's observation, but ultimately this is the Holy Spirit's observation about our lives and the way that we roll and the things that we do.

If we're honest, we all have at some point a hidden sin in our lives. We've hidden our sin from others, we've hidden our sin from God, and I think we can probably all agree that at different times in life we've been guilty of that, of hiding.

Whether it was breaking mom's vase by playing ball in the house. Anybody here ever break something of your mom's? Break something in your house, and how many tried to hide it? I think probably all of us can relate to that to some degree.

Or, you know, so trying to hide those little things, or possibly hiding bigger sins. Bigger sins like theft or adultery or pornography or gluttony or whatever, trying to hide things. We all, like Adam, have tried at times to hide our sins from God.

So remember when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? We're going through a series in the book of Genesis, so it's kind of interesting how some of these things tie together, but thinking about hiding from our sin and exposure of our sin to God, which is really basically the theme of these five or six verses in the book of 1 John that we're going to be covering today.

Think about it back in Genesis. They were created perfect, Adam and Eve, in the garden, in great relationship together. They were given a forest of permission, right? An entire orchard of permission. All of these trees, eat from any of them that you want, except for the one tree of prohibition.

So everything acceptable, everything blessed, everything good, everything there except for this one tree. Now, how many of you, if you're honest, when you read that story, and you've read that account probably a few times, some of you, the one tree kind of stands out to you.

And you have some questions about that one tree. And that one tree captivates you a little bit, and that one tree is the place where you focus. Like, why that one tree, God? And isn't that just like human nature to not focus on the multitude of blessings that God has given all of these trees except for one?

Well, why not that one, God? Don't you love us? Why not that one? You see how our hearts gravitate towards the one tree that is prohibited. That's the one that grabs our attention. That's the one that seizes human attention.

Well, they ate from it. We know that. You could say they missed the forest for the tree. They ate it, and God came down to visit, as the text seems to imply He was prone to do. God would come and He would walk with His people.

He would come and walk in the garden with them and talk with them and interact with.

Them.

Anybody think that's kind of cool? And what happens after they've sinned? They've ate from the tree. They've broken His law. They've gone against Him. And they've rebelled against Him. And what is the human response in light of that?

When He comes down to visit with them, what do they do? They hide, absolutely. They hide. They try to cover it up. We think we can take cover from the gaze of an all-powerful God. We think we can hide out and cover our sins and try to hide our sin from God, from others.

But John, in this text, is going to talk about a different way of living, a way of walking in the light, a way of walking exposed to our Creator, a life exposed to the eyes of God, a life that identifies our sin nature and the sins that we produce, and a life that confesses those sins and receives forgiveness and cleansing, because our lives are exposed.

To God.

Walking in the Light as Truth, Not Mere Moral Contrast

So let's open our Bibles to 1 John 1. We're going to be looking at verses 5 through 10. If you use the Bible that's in the seat back in front of you, you can turn there really easily to page 877. So if you go over to 877, you'll find it there.

I'm going to read 1 John 1, chapter 1, verses 5 through 10. Just a short text here. But follow along in your Bibles there as we read this. I'm reading in the English Standard Version. And if you don't own a Bible, please take that one with you.

We do want everybody to have a copy of the Word of God. But follow along 1 John 1, 5 through 10. This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.

If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice.

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, cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His Word is not in us.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank You for the opportunity that we have to hear Your Word, to listen to it, and then Father for Your Spirit to guide us into truth, to guide us into walking in the light. Father, I ask that this morning would be a morning of doing business with sin, of recognizing how we have fallen and how we have failed and exposing that to You in a way that is confession and is freeing and is recognizing the blood of Christ that covers our sins.

Father, as we have an opportunity even here at the front, we haven't heard this message yet, we've read the text, but Father many of us have experienced this already, this freedom that can be had in Christ.

I pray that as we have an opportunity to worship You, we worship You as people who have been set free by Your faithfulness and Your justice. You have forgiven us and You have cleansed us from all unrighteousness.

May we rejoice this morning as we sing these songs. As Your people gather together for Your honor and for Your glory and for the supremacy of Christ in all things, and it's in His name that I pray, amen.

Thanks a lot to the band and especially for Rob stepping in in Josh's absence, I'm just very grateful that we've got gifted musicians. I can play the radio and that's about it, so I really appreciate what they do.

And those of you who are not musical, and he's not even sure if I can play the radio, but other than that, be sure to get comfortable. I know we just took a break, but you can get up and get more coffee or donuts or juice at any time.

Men's restrooms back there, women's back here or up here. But feel free to get up and stretch out if you need to during the message as we go through.

This.

God Is Light: Truth, Exposure, and the Failure of False Fellowship

And keep your Bibles open in front of you. Keep it open to 1 John. Some of you weren't here when we first got started, so 1 John 1, 5 -10 is our text, and that really is my outline. If we go through the text, we're going to walk through it and see what God has for us in this section of scripture.

Now, to set the stage just briefly, John was abundantly clear last week that the message he proclaimed was Jesus Christ. I mentioned that earlier. He was an eyewitness. He emphasized the fact that he was an eyewitness to the life of Jesus, who he called the very word of life.

The word, the expression, the emanation of God out into the world that we might know the heart of the Father, and that is what Jesus was. Jesus had come from the Father to show us the Father. And John said that he saw, he experienced with his very life, that John experienced that word of life.

He touched this word of life. He heard this word of life teach. And now in verse 5, he's going to share with us the message he heard from this word of life. He's going to zero in on that aspect of being an eyewitness.

So what kind of things did Jesus say? And he's going to take one thing that Jesus taught him, and he's going to expand on that and explain how that ties into the message of the way that we live. And in verse 5, he shows us that message.

The hymn in verse 5 applies most directly in context to Jesus. So who did he hear this from? Who is the hymn that he heard it from? It's Jesus Christ. And that message is the primary concern of John in our text.

John tells us that Jesus came to share the message that God is light. And in him there is no darkness at all. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. John states it both the positive way of saying it and the negative way of saying it.

God is light, and on the other side, he has no darkness. The phrase at all is the English translator's attempt to emphasize how utterly stark John is declaring the dichotomy between light and darkness regarding God.

Whatever the light stands for. Now some of you think you already know what the light stands for because you've been around for a while and you're kind of like, I've been in Christian circles, I know what the light is, I know what the dark is.

But whatever the light stands for, we're going to get there here in a second, God is all of it. Whatever the light stands for, God is all of it. He is the focus, the centrality of what that light is. And then whatever the darkness is, John wants to tell us, God is none of it.

There is none of it in God. Whatever that darkness is. So how many of you think that it would be valuable for us to define what the light and the dark is according to John? What did John, what was John thinking of when he was talking about light and dark?

Do you think that would be valuable? Because he's just said God is the light. So would you like to know what the light is? You're going to know something about God if you understand what the light is.

And then knowing what darkness is, because then we're going to know something about God too, something that he is not. And so do you see how central it is that if we define that term correctly, then we're going to be able to go through this passage accurately.

But if we miss that, and we just completely, and how many of you have ever, you just jump to conclusions pretty quickly, like you just think, I mean, things kind of lock tight pretty quick. And I know that I have a tendency to do that.

As a matter of fact, when I was preparing this message, I read, when I was preparing to preach 1 John, I was still going through Genesis, but probably for two weeks, I read the book of 1 John once a day just to kind of get it washing over my mind, just to get it, get it there, and not study it in depth.

And I thought, when it comes to this section of scripture, I already got the sermon partially written for that one. Like I've already, I've talked about walking in the light and walking in the darkness.

I've got that pretty well in hand. And then this past week, I'm studying and I'm going, there's something unique here. There's something different that I haven't caught before. Have you ever had that experience, by the way, where it's like, you think you know it, and then all of a sudden, you study it, and you're like, I didn't know as much about that as I thought I did.

It's valuable for us to define those. Now, certainly, there seems to be room for some type of Star Wars illustration in here, the light side and the dark side and all of that, and you guys know me enough to expect something like that, right, when we're talking about that.

But if we were to talk about Star Wars, we would end up just defining what it's not, what is this dark side, what is the light side. How many of you have watched Star Wars? You've actually seen the series?

Okay, so I'm hitting some of you. In Star Wars, there is this all-powerful force, right, and people can tap into the force and use the force and all of that, and the dark side ends up being unrestrained use of that force, unrestrained use of power and authority, and the light side is a controlled and disciplined use of that same power.

That's not what John is getting at here. It's not like, well, there's one bank of power, and you either use it for good or use it for evil. That's not where he's going. So if it's not that, then what is it?

Many of us assume we know what darkness and light symbolize because we have spent many years in a civilization that has used darkness to symbolize what? Evil. And light to symbolize good. So we might naturally gravitate in our minds towards the yin and the yang of things, the light and the dark, and how the two are at war, and is there not, like in our culture and many of our movies, there's this epic battle between good and evil, right?

And that's kind of the dark and evil versus the good and light and this battle that's going on. And by the way, that is not necessarily a great category of understanding the cosmic way that things are really going on behind the scenes.

How many of you know that God has no equal? Can I hear amen to that? Does God have an equal? No equal.

No equal.

And so this idea of this powerful darkness against this powerful light is a little bit because in the end, he's just going to kind of go, all the evil forces gather against him, he's just going to go, and it's done.

Okay, that's the way the book of Revelation pictures the end of evil, done. So there's not really a contest, there's not this competition that we're thinking of anyways, this huge cosmic battle between good and evil.

Now is there a sense of evil?

Is there really?

Is there really evil in the world?

Is there really bad things?

Yeah, but it's no contest to God, that's the point that I'm getting at. But the text, so studying the text, it leads me to a different conclusion, what walking in the light and what walking in the darkness, what do those two things symbolize?

It is not just God's moral perfection that is the light and evil is the darkness. But throughout the text, we're going to see a theme develop of lies and truth. Lies and truth. Verse six speaks of lies and truth, actually uses those words.

Verse eight speaks of deceit and truth. And this entire text is going to move us forward toward an open and honest exposure of our hearts towards God, a revelation. So now think about light for just a moment.

Think about walking in light. Think about walking in darkness. What are some things that are troublesome and problematic about walking in darkness? Have any of you ever just tried to get from, have any of you ever tucked your kids in, shut the lights off and walked to the door and you forgot everything that was on the floor and you end up missing the door a little bit?

Have you ever, have you ever done, any of you ever done that? Or, or, you know, there's, on my floor, throughout my house, there's a lot of Legos. Anybody ever step on a Lego with your bare foot? That is not fun.

Those things are like torture devices, okay? And so, so there's problems with walking in darkness because what, things are not revealed to us. We are not seeing things accurately. We are not seeing things the way that they truly are.

And what is the benefit of the light?

Revelation.

Seeing things in truth the way that they really are. Oh, that door's not over here, it's right, it's actually right here. To be able to see the truth and be able to see it accurately, to have the truth is really what we're talking about here.

I believe that the light in this text is truth. And the darkness is falsehood. Darkness and light are not just categories of behavior, doing good, doing evil, but they are categories of exposure of your life.

And that's the context of this verse. That's why the sermon title is exposed. Are we walking in such a way that we walk in the truth? And that's gonna be John's point. See, sin produces within us the response of Adam and Eve.

We talked about that in the introduction. We immediately hide in shame from the watchful gaze of our holy creator. And I think all of us have experienced that. And right now, as we sit in these seats, we are experiencing various levels of that.

How much are we hiding right now from our creator? How much are we trying to keep hidden from each other? How much are we trying to hide from him? Walking in darkness, then, looks like flitting from shadow to shadow, hiding from the searching spotlight of the holy one.

Have any of you lived that way? Have you experienced that kind of life? It's living a life of deception, thinking we can get away with our sin and never allowing them to be exposed to the light of God's mercy and grace.

It's kind of going it alone. What I believe John to be saying here is that God is complete and utter revelation, complete exposure, complete light, and in him there is no deceit at all. When God sees it, he sees it correctly, as it truly is.

He's the only one who sees truly things the way that they are. Now his holiness certainly comes into play here, because his holiness always goes with him wherever he goes. He is indeed holy, but this is not just merely stating God is light, God is holy, but it's also stating he is true, he is reality, he is the light that exposes us in the darkness.

And now John gives us five conditional clauses throughout the remainder. The remainder of this text are all conditional clauses, if statements, that spell out real-life situations of ways that humans can respond to the light of the truth.

God exposes us to the light, how are you going to respond to it? Verse six, John describes a potential response. So if we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice.

The truth.

So can you imagine a person, we could maybe imagine someone who could say that they have fellowship with God, you know, somebody could say, me and God, we're all good, we're right, you know, and they might even be able to say, you know, I raised a hand, I was watching a TV show and I sent the money in, or I, you know, whatever it is, there might be some testimony of walking an aisle, you know, I was with a camp counselor when I was seven or whatever, and they might have some kind of a credible testimony with their mouth.

I'm okay with God, me and God, we're buds, we're in fellowship together. But they could be lying, they could be lying. If a person says they have been reunited with God but still walk in falsehood, still walk in the darkness, still practice the darkness, still practice falsehood, they prove themselves a liar and do not practice the truth, is what John calls it.

See that at the end of verse six? We walk in darkness and we lie and do not practice the truth. John is identifying that our mouths don't always match our actions, right?

Is that true?

How many of you have ever, this is a weight on me as a preacher, by the way, I get the privilege and the opportunity to stand up here and teach, and then I get also the opportunity for you to observe my life.

That's a scary thing because I have the opportunity to bring the word to bear on us, and then do I practice what I preach, right? And that's hard, but I mean, all of us live under that tension, right?

Of coming to the word of God and saying, I believe this is true, now are you gonna practice.

The truth?

Are you gonna live in it? Are you gonna walk in it? But what are those actions that are being asked or being required of us? What does practicing the truth look like? Does it look like sinless perfection?

We're gonna see in just a moment, John's gonna leave no room for us to entertain that notion. Complete holiness? No, it's not. He doesn't entertain the notion of us walking in complete holiness before God.

He says, if we say we have no sin, what? We're lying, you're lying. Walking in the light, then, is certainly something other than just merely walking in holiness. I believe that walking in the light means walking in the truth of God.

Truth, think of these truths, and then think about what it looks like to walk in them. A truth like we are fallen. Truth like we have sin. What is gonna be a byproduct of a life that takes on those two truths?

We're fallen and we have sin.

Humility?

Would humility be a logical result of a life that actually believes that truth? I'm fallen and I'm broken. Well, then how do I respond to others around me? They're fallen and broken, too. We're in this together.

Let's link hands and join arms and work together to grow in holiness with our God, and let's walk in the light together. I'm not better than you, but humility. So truth like we're fallen, truth like we have sin.

Truth like we need a Savior. Truth like God loved us so much that He sent His Son to die to be our Savior. All of a sudden, now the truth is starting to move away from humility to joy, right? How do you walk in the truth that you have a Savior?

Joy!

That's how you walk in that. That's how you practice that truth. Truth like we're not all that in a bag of chips, is that true? Truth like God is so much more than all that in a bag of chips. That's even a poor illustration for him, right?

Walking in the light is, according to John, practicing the truth. And the only way truth ever impacted my life was when I first believed it, and then let.

It change me.

I must believe it's true before it's ever going to have an impact on my life. Is that right? I have to believe it to start with. That's fundamental. And then it will be applied to me. So I'm going to use a physical illustration and then a spiritual illustration.

The two are kind of tied in, and of course you have a hard time taking the physical away from the spiritual and things like that. But the Surgeon General tells me that if I smoke cigarettes, they're going to harm me.

Is that accurate? Does the Surgeon General say that? So that's the first truth. Yes, he does. And is he accurate in his statement? Now I recognize I could be hitting close to home to some of you. I'm not picking on anyone.

It's just an illustration. But it's scientifically provable that cigarettes will harm me if I smoke them.

That's true.

Provable.

But unless I believe it, that truth has no power in my life to do anything, right? So believing it is fundamental. I have to believe it first. But just believing it isn't enough either, right? Because there's plenty of people who smoke that believe that it's harming them.

Is that accurate? And so it's not just enough merely to know that smoking is harmful, but it is practicing that truth that leads to behavioral and life change. Are you getting what I'm saying? You have to actually practice the truth, to use John's phrase, and if I'm practicing the truth about what the Surgeon General tells me, then now I avoid cigarettes.

Now I work on quitting, or whatever steps I need to take to prevent myself from being harmed in that way. Does that make sense? There's something a little bit more in the spiritual realm, still has certainly some physical implications, but I'm going to choose pornography because it's something that is quite widely acceptable in our culture, and we're going to be doing this Bonfire and the Bear thing, and if you guys are here and you haven't signed up for that, I'd encourage you to check that out on our website.

There's quite a few people already signed up, and it's going to be a great time. Nobody's going to be asking you to get up and speak. We've had some guys kind of go, I don't know if I want to go to that, because what are they going to do, point at me and stuff?

So just come out and check it out, and you can just take it in. I think it's going to be a time of significant edification. The Bible says lust is spiritually detrimental as a sin, right? Is the Bible pretty clear that lust is detrimental?

Lust is a problem?

Yes.

But until I believe the truth about pornography, I will have no power to deal with it. Until I believe that it is genuinely something that is prohibited by God and is detrimental to me, and once I believe that it's offensive to God and sinful, I now can practice that truth, confess it, and wage war against it in the power of God.

This is the process of walking in the light. Is that making sense? The truth, believing the truth, and then practicing it. Verse 7 gives us a contrast to the person in verse 6. Verse 6, being the person who says they have fellowship with God, but then walks in darkness, and now verse 7 tells us something different.

The person in verse 6 has areas of their life closed off to God. Areas of shadow and darkness that they say, let no light shine in this area of my life. Now it's not just merely ignorance that closes us off.

It's not just merely ignorance that makes us a person like verse 6, but sometimes our sin is that we do not trust the truth of God. The lie we sometimes believe is that sin is worth it. Some of us go through seasons like that.

The worst is when we know that something is sin and we choose it anyway, and that is walking in darkness, choosing the dark, obscure lies over the light and clear truths. But there's another way to live, John says.

We can live a life exposed, laid bare to our creator. No longer lurking from shadow to shadow, but a life exposed to his truth. A life recognizing his gaze. A life without all the weight of hiding from him.

That's a heavy life. Hiding from God is hard. How many of you have ever gone through a season of life with the sin that you were hiding from others? I'll be the first to raise my hand. I've gone through that.

I've been there. Hiding light, hiding from God, hiding from others, even to the degree of pretending I'm something that I'm not, I cannot think of anything more miserable than the fear of getting.

Caught.

You guys know what I'm talking about? Did I cover up my tracks? Did I do that? Did I really get... Is it really taken care of? Is it really covered? Did I forget that? Did I... And what if they find out?

And what if...

Do you know what I'm talking about? I think probably all of us do to some degree. It's sickening all the time. Walking in the darkness saps energy, depletes our usefulness, kills our joy. And John identifies that it also destroys relationships.

Walking in the darkness destroys relationships. If we walk in the light, which is the truth, then the scripture says we will have fellowship with one another. If we walk in the light, if we walk in the truth, we will have fellowship with one another.

Our relationships with each other are clearly contingent upon our honesty with God and our honesty with each other. It's very hard to relate to others in any honesty, in any deep way, while hiding in the darkness.

It's hard to have genuine relationships. By nature, living a life in the realm of falsehood and lies will be a barrier to every relationship in my life, and especially with God. But walking in the truth, walking in the truth is a glorious thing.

It is freedom to let it out to God, to recognize the truth. And in case any of you are still hung up on this connection between walking in the light and living a life of truth, I want you to check out what John says in his gospel.

John 3, if you can put that up on the screen, I'll read it. John 3, 19 through 21 says this, and this is the judgment. The light has come into the world, and people love the darkness. By the way, this is right after John 3, 16, in case you're noticing where it's at in the.

Bible. And this is the judgment.

The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his work should be exposed.

There's the fear of exposure, right? The hiding in the shadows. But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works. And here, this is a beautiful depth. I'm not preaching on this text.

I look forward to preaching on this text someday. Have been carried out by God. God gets the credit for the good that he is doing through us.

This is the judgment.

That light has come into the world, and that people fear exposure. The person who walks in the darkness is the person who is fearful of exposure. The person who does the truth is the one in the light, and that light exposes them as belonging to God.

This is how a couple scenarios that happened in the life of Jesus, I think, kind of illustrate.

This.

To contrast two individuals. There was a rich young ruler, a rich young ruler who came to Jesus Christ one day. He's teaching. He's teaching a group of people, and up through the crowd wanders this man.

He's decked out in finery. He's looking like a nice guy, nice-looking guy. Comes up. He's wealthy. He's wealthy, and he takes the initiative to come to Jesus. He is going out of his way to ask Jesus a fundamental question.

What must I do, good teacher, to inherit eternal life? Now, how many of you, if one of your coworkers came to you tomorrow morning and said, what must I do to inherit eternal life? What must I do to get to heaven?

You'd be like, okay.

First of all, you're mind-blown, and then you're thinking, slam-dunk, boy, do I have a message for you. How many of you are thinking, this guy is close to the kingdom? Are you with me on that? He's like right there.

Then, not only that, but to Jesus Christ, he then proceeds to explain, I have kept the law of Moses from my youth up.

Good guy? Walking in the light?

Would you guys think by looking at this man, he's walking in the light? By observing his life, if you were to walk around with me, and Jesus doesn't correct.

Him.

Jesus doesn't say, no, you're wrong. What that means is not that he never sinned, but it means that when he sinned, he took a lamb to the temple for sacrifice. He followed the Old Testament law down to even how to handle sin.

He was following that. He was living it, basing his life on that. What must I do to inherit? But Jesus, who is God in flesh, peered into the man's heart and said, you still have darkness in there. He didn't use those words, but he said, what you need to do, young man, is go sell all that you have, give it to the poor, and then come and follow me.

What did he see in the man's heart that was darkness? Greed, and a love of money that superseded his love for God. And that man turned on his heels and walked away from the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in darkness.

He walked away into the darkness. Now contrast that with another interaction that Jesus had. A woman came to Jesus unwillingly. She was dragged by a mob of civic leaders, caught in the act of adultery.

She is being drugged to him, and the leaders are picking up stones to kill her, and they, by technicality, need to have the ruling of a rabbi, and so they come by him, and he's standing there, probably doing some teaching with his disciples, and they come to him and drag her up to him and say, try this woman.