John's little letter, first John, first chapter, verse five, hear the word of the Lord. 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 that 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, the word of the Lord. Heavenly Father, we come to your word this morning with expectation that you will open our hearts unless the Lord your spirit comes and superintendents our minds, our consciousness, our hearts and in livens our abilities. We are helpless to understand and to apply your word. Lord, help us to be faithful. Help me, Father, to deliver to this little flock this morning, faithfully, the import of this passage. Give us, O Lord, the grace to receive it and give us, Father, the ability to hold forth each day. In Christ's name we pray, Amen. There is a theory, and it's a good theory, in critical New Testament scholarship that says that so much of what we have in the books of the New Testament, of course written to the churches, were written for liturgical use, that is, that the apostles in writing the various epistles and gospels would word things in such a way that certain paragraphs or phrases or strokes and lines could be used in the public worship literally right the way they are. We see that, of course, obviously in the Apostle Paul, where he says, this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. And you see that stuck in our bulletin, in our liturgy, as a wonderful confession of our sin? Well, you see that in other fact, the book of Hebrews especially has one passage after another that's marvelously useful in the public reading and quoting of the word of God as we worship around his word. And I believe that the little letter of first John is along that same genre. I think that John wrote the epistle to accompany his gospel. The gospel of John, of course, written very, very late in the first century. And the epistle of John written alongside of it to go as a oratory letter to exhort and explain and to sort of punch up and implore the people to pay attention to the gospel and to avoid certain errors. And there are a couple of features of this kind of liturgical liturgy that sort of stand out. One of them is the vivid use of imagery. And we see that in this passage. The imagery that's used over and over is that of light, the light, and the darkness. And the light and the darkness provide imagery for two things, truth and deception. Truth is light. We talk about things when they become known, we say it's brought to light. The truth has come out. And when we speak of things that are hidden, we say they're in the darkness, they're hidden. They are enshrouded. And this particular imagery is very vivid. We'll see in just a moment where John might have derived this imagery. And then we have in this particular passage confession and denial. If you confess your sins, confession, and on the other hand, if you deny that you have sin, if you say you have no sin, then there's consequences to that. And another feature in addition to imagery in this kind of literature, as we see in our text today, is the use of parallel statements that have a lot in common. And here we have, in this passage, these few short verses, five if statements. If we say, if we walk, if we confess, if we say, if we make a profession of a particular thing, if, if, if. And they're all, of course, in the subjunctive mood, which in the Greek is the mood for condition. And we see there that if certain conditions are claimed, if you say, then certain things must be true, or tragically certain things might be the case. So you see kind of the literary framework for what the Spirit of God has used to convey to us these truths. And what I want us to do this morning in the time that we have, which is brief, is to simply look at these if statements, these if statements. But it all begins with John saying, the message we've heard, and last week we talked about the nature of that message, how that it was very authentic, very well attested, it was based upon empirical evidence, that which we've seen with our eyes, which we have beheld we've gazed upon it, that which we've heard with our ears, that which we've handled with our hands, and we talked about the significance of the apostles actually physically touching Jesus, not only in his humanity before the cross, but in his resurrected body after the resurrection before his ascension, well attested message. We proclaim that which we've seen in which we've heard, it says this message that we've heard from him, and proclaim to you that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. John says God is light, he'll talk about that several more times before we're through here in these early portions of this epistle, but he will also then talk about another essential element of the nature of God, one of his God is as to his essence love. So when John says God is light, he's using the imagery to try to tell us something about God. The Psalmist says that the Lord, the Lord God, is enshrouded in light. You think about that for a minute. That which we find so brilliant, the effulgence of the glory of the Son, for example, or the stars, especially that one star that's closest to us that we know more about the Son that gives forth its brilliance, to just behold it from 93 million miles away, can just about ruin your eyesight. And on a day in Texas in August when that son beats down, you feel like it's the most oppressive enemy that your body has, is that son beats down upon your bald head? Not all of you have bald heads, but I'm speaking from personal experience. I have a whole array of hats nailed up on the wall in my little barn at my place, which I never never step out there without putting some kind of hat on straw hats and cloth hats and all kinds of hats for that son. That son is just very imminent with us and it's the brightest light that we know. I don't know how many billions of lumens the son is capable of projecting upon the little planet earth, but I know this, that whatever the brilliance of the Son is multiplied by the innumerable stars that accompany our Son, many of them, most of them, larger, and more brilliant than our Son, the Bible says that that is the darkness that covers the brilliance of the light of God's person. Did you catch that? That light is the shadow, the covering, the curtain, the drapery that covers God's true light. Can we say that his brightness is a brightness that man cannot see and live? One time Moses said, Lord, show me your face, show me your brilliance, show me your person, show me, you've talked to me through a burning bush and the light of that fire was covering a shroud so that Moses would not really see the face of God and the Lord told Moses that if he showed himself in his brilliance, that Moses couldn't stand it. And so he took him and put him around the rock and put him in a cleft of a rock where he was completely out of the direct light and the Lord didn't show his face, his brilliance he simply passed by. He as it were, figuratively, kind of showed Moses the back side and that's all Moses got to see, but that was enough to show him. The whole imagery of the revelation is an imagery of brilliance and brightness of the glory of God. Now light has come to mean not only something that is of the essence of God's nature, we have to, we are enslaved and we are entrapped in our humanity and the finitudes of our mind and all we can do is grasp at anthropomorphic straws, little ways of trying to understand God with what we do understand about his creation and light of course is one of those. We understand the brilliance, but the light of God tells us something about his holiness, something about his power, something about his purity, something about his truthfulness, something about his self-disclosing nature. You can't put a light under a bushel, I don't know how many times I've taken my cell phone and slipped it in my pocket and I don't think about it for a minute. Now look down and all of a sudden my pocket's glowing because the screen is lit and there's light coming. That's the way it is, it's difficult to hide that which is glowing, you can't hold it down and that's the way God is, the power of God burst forth in all of His creation. It's not an accident I think that when God created the universe, the first thing He did when He needed, He says, let there be light, the effulgence of the glory of God, the great emanations from His person went forth to brilliantly, brilliantly, radiate the whole creation. And since God is infinite and creation is finite, God filled the finite universe with His light and His brilliance. And so those who really saw to understand the divine, not just in the Christian faith but in Hebrew faith and other world religions, you study the light, the notion of light, the vision and the imagery of light is divine. It gives us something, it tells us something, by the way that's probably one reason Paul says in Romans chapter 1 that there's no such thing as ignorance of God. When you see God, He is undeniable. This morning, about 4 o'clock in the morning, I was flipping channels, couldn't sleep at all last night. And I was flipping channels and there was Christopher Hitchens, the older who he is, famous, famous atheist, very brilliant man, love to hear him talk, I just love his expression, I love his wit and his ascetic attitude. But man was famous for his denial and his vociferous atheism in denying God, but you can't really. When you look at a phenomenon of the universe such as light and all of the brilliance and the energy and the power that's contained therein, the explosive power. So light, the universe, and then to take it and focus it down and bring it into such a concentrated power that you bring about a laser beam that can take a jet airplane out of the sky with one quick shot. Just a glimpse, just a fleeting glimpse of the glory of Almighty God. So when John says God is light, He is not playing around with imagery and trying to be a trite in any way. He is giving us something that we can understand about the brilliance and the purity and the holiness of the God that we seek to know and love. Now the if statements, let me take just a moment and talk about each one of them since we won't be back here again, we're moving along next week will be in the next paragraph. So we've got to say this, let me point out a couple of things about each one, let me talk about how they're framed and what moral lesson is there and then let me mention something about kind of the logical progression of the five. The first one says if we say we have fellowship with Him, what is that? If we say we have fellowship with Him, what is that former Baptist preacher? That's a profession of faith. We make a profession of faith. When a profession of faith save you, James says if we say we have faith and have not works, profession of faith will not save. What saves is Christ and what latches on to Christ empty hands and grasping the free-given gift is our faith. We must have that faith without faith it is impossible to please God, to come to God, to know God. Faith is absolutely imperative, but a profession of faith, just saying we have faith and then we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. How many people do we know? How many people among us and is it I who say I have fellowship with God? I know God, He knows me, that make a profession and yet still walk in darkness, in the ignorance and the sinfulness and the depravity and the filthiness of a daily walk. The mouths speaking lies, the mouths cursing in bitterness, the feet, quick to go astray, the hands shedding innocent blood, the blaspheming, all that goes with walking in darkness and yet we say we have fellowship with Him. Pretty arresting little if statement and then it follows upon that and when He mentions this darkness in light He follows that this is if we walk in the light as He is in the light. In other words, it has to be of the same sort just as He is in the light. In our fellowship is truly with one another and earlier we had seen that our fellowship is with the son and with the father and fellowship is with one another if we walk in the light. It's an interesting thing about that word of Paripatetic in the Greek, it always talks about lifestyle, lifestyle. Every time we come to church and sit in a pew we must be willing to do at least a couple of things. Sometimes we need to somehow amend and revise our worldview and somehow correct our lifestyle. If we don't come away from a service and a sermon doing that, I don't think we've profited a whole lot to revise our worldview to see the things of God a little more clearly, to learn to think His thoughts after Him and at the same time to rectify our walk, our conversation, our daily lifestyle. That's really what the word walk means principally in the New Testament. It means our lifestyle, the way we live our life, our life for minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years of an indeterminate number and each one of those in increment is spent walking in the light or as the Old Testament prophets says stumbling in the darkness. If we don't have that particular lifestyle, there's a remedy, there's a corrective and it's right there in the apodosis and the blood of Jesus, His Son cleanses us from all seeing. The moment that John raises the spectre, the very thought of us walking in darkness in sinfulness, He immediately knows what the remedy is and that He is the cleansing blood of Christ. I remember one of the things that I remember, I remember my mother teaching me this verse when I was a little child and I remember her making this emphasis, she says if we walk in the light and see it's in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus. Of course, if I were a preacher, I'd haul off a preacher about the cleansing blood, I would talk about the soul cleansing blood of the lamb, the redeeming work of Christ, how that without the shedding of blood, there is no remission to sin and even though it is a repulsive to our nature to think about that horrible thing of substitutionary bloody physical sacrifice, it is God's chosen way to eradicate and cleanse the sins of humanity. But I'm not a preacher so I won't digress. But I remember her mother saying, His Son cleanses us, I love that cleanses us from all seeing, all seeing. One of the things my brother said to me when he was dying literally a few years ago, he said you know, Ron, your sins that ever sin you've ever committed is forgiven. I said, Well, I know that's the gospel that's wonderful. He said in all the sins you're going to commit it for given to. I thought man from this moment on, I don't want to sin. I don't want to have any more sins to be forgiven. I'm done with sinning. I don't want to sin. Of course, I have, incessantly and pathetically, but here's the remedy. The blood of Jesus, His Son cleanses us, removes the vile pollution. Takes away the sexes and the infection and the ruination of that vile chemistry that has ruined us, it has been cleansed by the purging work of Christ. Don't ever let a Catholic tell you as a Protestant you don't believe in purgatory, or you believe in purgatory. Purgatory was when Him by Himself had purged us from our sins on the cross, sat down at the right hand of God, to their plead His blood before the face of God, for every sin will ever commit throughout our entire life. That's grace. That's amazing grace. That's grace. Then the next if statement, and then He follows light, took him into this statement, and now the notion of sin takes him in logically into this statement. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Who would make a claim of sinless perfection? I remember growing up around some people that had a little different theological perspective that we have, and they believed that they had reached the point where they sinned no more that they were what was called entirely sanctified, and they made that claim with their bare face hanging out. They made the bold claim that they had no sin. Only a person that has a very, very shrunken and shriveled view of the law of God and its demands and its stipulations upon our lives can make a claim like that, someone that has a truncated view of what God demands, or someone that has an entirely unrealistically inflated ego to think that they have a purity and a holiness and a righteousness that somehow avails or somehow supersedes. But there are people that do that. They deny their sin, and he says, when you deny your sin, what you're really doing is you're practicing a deception, a darkness, you are deceiving yourself. And then when he talks about sin and the deception of sin, he says instead of hiding our sin and covering our sin, the proverb says, who so covered this sin shall not prosper, but who so confessive and forsakeeth his sins shall have mercy. So instead of taking our sins and trying to just hide them and cover them and deny them and deceive ourselves, instead we open the door and we open our mouth with the mouth confession is made and we confess our sins. We just tell God, word confession, I know you all know means literally to say the exact same thing. So we say the exact same thing about our sin that God says about our sin. And he talks about how terrible our sin is. We say that's right, it is terrible. He talks about how it separates us between him, between us and him, there's a separation. And we say that's right, we say the same thing, we see that separation. We see that our sins condemn us and we say the same thing, yes, I am under condemnation due to my sin. And we see that the wages of sin is death and that there's a death penalty for our sins. And we say the same thing that God says, yes, we know that, that we bear a death penalty, a sentence of death in our souls because of our sin. So confession of sin is saying about your sin, what God has already said about it. And that he is opening up and when that happens, when that confession is made, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. My mother prepared this sermon in my heart years ago. So here she is again, I remember her saying, he is faithful, that means he'll do it every time. He is just and means when he does it, he'll do it right. God just doesn't forget about her, says, I don't worry about it, I'm a big God, you're a little person, I don't pay attention, those little pick of delos, you're a human, go ahead and say and forget about it, no, no, no, no, no, that sin drove the nails in the hands of his only begotten son in order that the blood may be shed and the death may be died to pay for those sins. How seriously God takes this? And he did it justly, he is just and the justifier of sinners. How can sinners be made right with God? God makes them right because he takes that penalty and carries it out. He doesn't dismiss the case, he carries out the sentence, the penalty, and that's what Jesus has done in his death. He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins, to pardon and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. It's not enough that our sins be forgiven, but we must be cleansed. And that's what he does. And once again, mom would point out not some unrighteousness, Ronnie, all unrighteousness. And then finally here is he talks about the confession of our sin, and what he says, but if we deny our sin, if we say we have not sinned, is a repeat of the theme above, within we make God a liar and his word is not in us, in other words, either God is truthful about our sin, and we are deceived about it, or we're truthful about our sin, and we say that God is deceived or God is deceitful or God is a liar about our sin. I don't know how many people that try to tell me that God is not serious about his law and his word in sin, and when they do that, they're saying, oh, God said it, but he didn't mean it. Or maybe we don't know if God said it. They're trying to put the deception and the misleading onto the God side of the equation. They're calling God a liar and Paul in his frustration with some of the ignorance of his day, verse 4, and said, let God be true and every man a liar. That's the way it is. The truth is, if you deny your condition as God says it is, what you're doing is you're looking at God and saying, he's wrong, he's the liar, he's the deceiver, he's the one that's in darkness, he's the one that should sober us.