Good evening, everybody. Welcome here. Good evening. Turn with me in your Bibles this morning to the book of First John. We're going to be going through Chapter 1 today, book of First John. And while you're turning there, I want to try and set the background a bit here for what what is going on in the early church at the time of this writing and kind of give you an indicator as to why it is that John is writing this epistle along with a couple others that
will be coming. Right now is a very tumultuous time in the church for us. A lot of us are are often times kind of caught off guard by how uneasy things are. But that was the same back then, especially kind of coming towards the reign of Nero. There was a lot of church persecution and along with the church growing and expanding so fast with it popped up a lot of this false doctrine.
These teachers that would come up and they would, they would say one thing and they would say that, you know, the teachings of Jesus mean this, but they were wrong. And because of these false teachers popping up, John wrote this letter to aid the church, the churches of the time, in trying to discern what was true from these false teachers and
what wasn't. Now, notably at the time, there was this belief called Gnosticism, which is a really big word that just means that physical is always bad and spiritual is always good. It was a mixture of Christianity and some Pagan religions essentially saying that Jesus didn't have a physical body, that he didn't physically die. He wasn't physically here. He came as a spirit.
And now for those of you who know the gospel and know the story of Jesus, you can see why that presented some major issues for the church at the time. And with these major issues came major unassurances in the faith of early believers. And so that's what this book is about. And that's what I'm hoping to kind of we're going to do like a fast blanket overview of the 1st chapter of First John to talk about A, what the true message of the Bible is.
And B, what we need to look out for, not just with our teachers that we hear, not just with the preachers that we're listening to, but also what we get to look out for in our own hearts, in our own beliefs. So look at we look at First John chapter one with me this or this afternoon. And I will just read the whole chapter as it is right now.
And it says what was from the beginning what we have heard, and what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of a life.
And the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us. What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. These things we write so that our joy may be made complete. This is the message we have heard from Him and announced to you, that God is light, and in
Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He Himself 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 that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in US. Would you bow with me in prayer this evening? Father, we thank you so much for this time that we have to go through Your word. We thank you for the Bible. We thank you for the accessibility of the Bible. And we thank you, Lord, for John and for his desire to see Christians know the truth inside their hearts and in the teachings that they take in. God be with us this evening.
We praise in your heavenly name, Amen. So the first stop that we're going to make is going to be in verses 1-2 and three here is kind of the beginning of what John's looking to do, and that is to establish what the proper doctrine is. Now in this we read that John doesn't isn't basing his thoughts on Jesus on some vague philosophy or some weird spiritualism or some moral standing. He's not just saying like that Jesus was like a good moral guy or like he is a metaphor for
yadda, yadda, yadda. A lot of things that we hear today, he actually starts off with very specific language. The language that he uses is it's very first hand experiential language. And what I mean by that is that we can tell that he was there and I'll explain. We read what was from the beginning what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the Word of life. So like I said earlier, there was this Gnostic belief that
Jesus wasn't physically here. He was this sort of almost like a ghost or an apparition, right? But John confronts that immediately with very pointed language. This wasn't some spirit or something that they heard second or third hand. Jesus was real, intangible and physically there to the point that these apostles could stand in front of him, could touch him, could hear him. If anybody was going to know if Jesus was physically there or
not, they would have known. And so the first thing that he confronts right off the bat is that Jesus is not some ghost. He was here. He also starts in verse one and two again he mentions that Christ, he calls him the word of life. Now many of you maybe that sounds familiar. In fact it was actually John himself who wrote in his gospel at the very beginning in John chapter one verse 1, he says in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
And jumping down to verse 14 in that chapter we read and the word became flesh. We read here that this is a re establishing for John saying Jesus is God. He was the word of life, He was the word in the beginning meaning Jesus was eternal, he was with the Father, meaning was that they've had fellowship for eternity, right? This is an establishing again of who Jesus is and what is true about him. Not these rumors or these like pseudo mystical things that they were hearing from other people
at the time. Jumping down to verse 3, John mentions that they, being believers, have fellowship with the Father and with Jesus and they wish to see others come to that place as well. John mentions again that the things that he has shared in the past, looking back at the Gospel of John and what he's going to share further on in these epistles are all based on what he himself has experienced.
That's also important to note. John wasn't somebody who heard from somebody who heard from somebody or like we like to play the midnight game, right? John wasn't Susie's aunts, cousins, brothers, step brothers, uncles, whatever John was, John was there. He knew Jesus, He reclined at his chest. These things he's not saying because he like it feels like the right thing to say. He's not echoing somebody else's. He's echoing the words of God. All of this is to say that
Christ was physically here. Christ is the Word from the beginning. He was eternal. He is eternal. He invites us to fellowship with him and with the Father. And this establishes at the very beginning what is true about Christ. Now from here, John begins to give some practical things to look out for. Obviously that address at the very beginning is very cut and dry. John is very pointedly saying that this Gnostic belief that people are confused about is not true.
But John continues and will continue for the rest of this book, going through practical things to look for in teachers and in in the in the life of a believer for assurance of salvation, but also for a sound doctrine.
And so we're going to look at a glimpse of that in the second-half here of chapter 1. So many of you may and your Bibles have seen that there might be a break after verse four, and then it might kind of separate your chapter from verses one to four and separate and then kind of split in half and then go from the five until 10 to the end there. I think that I can make an argument that verse four really should be in that second-half, and I'll explain why.
The reason why I think that is because verse 4 also contains a practical characteristic that we as Christians should have. Let's read it so it says these things. We write to you so that our your our joy may be made complete.
The first thing that we can look from this and we can say and look to other teachers and look to our own hearts is that true biblical Christians should find joy in the teachings and life of Jesus. With teachers Speaking of Jesus, having a passion for the gospel, speaking truthfully, and finding joy in that. These things, there should be a fulfillment of joy that teachers have presenting the message.
How good do you feel when you go to a church or go to some function and the speaker sits up front in it? Good morning. It's a wonderful day to be here in the House of the Lord. Do you believe that? No, we don't believe that at all. If someone comes up and is miserable, how? How authentic, how real does that message seem? Christian teachers should find joy in the preaching and teaching that they give, and we should look out for that.
Well, not only this, but on a personal level, as a Christian, do you find joy in speaking about Jesus? You should Verse 7, we jumped down there a little bit. Verse 7 even talks about how verse 7. But if we walk in the light, as He himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one, we have fellowship with one another. We should have so much joy when speaking about Jesus that we want to congregate to gather together, and the Bible calls this fellowship.
It is only within the lens of our joy and our belief in Jesus that we're having true fellowship. Going to your buddy's house and watching a movie is not fellowship. Having people over for a coffee isn't necessarily fellowship. But when Christ is centered and when there is a joy to speak and to love and to enjoy the conversation that you are having with fellow believers on Christ, that's true fellowship. And maybe it is through watching a movie, maybe it is through having a coffee.
But what is the motivation behind it? So the first characteristic we can walk away in this is very simply that as a Christian, as a teacher and as a follower, we need to find we should expect to feel joy and passion over the gospel. Jumping down a little ways here to verse 5, actually, I'll mention first. Does that always mean that we have to feel joy in like doing
jumping jacks 24/7? That doesn't necessarily mean that there are seasons in life that are really dark and there are circumstances that are really hard and there are things that are difficult to get through and that it would be naive for us to say that that's not the case. But if you never feel joy, if you never feel a longing to speak of the truth of Jesus, there's an issue because we have a lot to be joyful about. Now moving down to verse verses 5 through 7. I'll read them again.
This is the message we have heard from him and announce to you that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. Now here's like the main message that John's trying to convey here, right? This is what we're trying to
teach. God is light and in him there is no darkness. Now, obviously the we all kind of already know this. If a teacher doesn't teach that, that's pretty weird. If, if something like we don't necessarily think, you know, who teaches that God is fallible, who teaches that God is evil. It's pretty rife in our culture right now. I've heard non believers talk about the general consensus that I've heard from a couple non believers I've talked about with Jesus.
They typically say things like, well, you know, Jesus was a man, right? So he couldn't have been perfect or Jesus, you know, nobody is sinless, so Jesus had to have sinned at some point, right? Nobody's perfect. That's heresy. That's it's wrong. Our God is good, He is light. There is no wrongdoing. There is no evil in him and to hear otherwise is wrong. Many of you might have been here a few weeks ago where we had a guy from a church, Ryan Fair, who's Hi Ryan.
He did a sermon on Psalms chapter 1. He was talking about the counsel of the wicked and to not listen to the counsel of the wicked. This is like the epitome of the counsel of the wicked to say that God is fallible. If anything that we've learned from that sermon, it's this that we should not be listening to now. As Christ followers, it's also important that we align our hearts with what this says as well.
Do you really believe that God is good, that he's infallible, that he has what's best in mind for you? That's easier said than done. On paper, it can mean that. But when you're faced with those difficult seasons, I was talking about not so easy anymore. But this is something that we need to look into our own hearts for, that even in those dark, scary, brutal times, God is light and in him there is no darkness. Moving down to verses 6 and seven, we can it continues that thought.
It offers us a standard for us to hold ourselves to that. If we say we have fellowship with Him and we walk in darkness, there is no truth in US. Well, this makes sense because like we just read God is light and there is no darkness in him. It makes no sense for the light to live in darkness, right? How can light come from dark or vice versa? But if we walk in light, we are. If we walk in light, we are walking in fellowship with Him.
We are walking in fellowship with one another and it says that Christ's blood covers us of all sins. Now, I think it's important that we mention two things here. First of all, you know, what does it mean to walk in light and what does it mean to walk in darkness? Because it's one thing to just sort of say those two things and then to just kind of leave you all with that. I can close my Bible and go home, but what does that mean?
Well, the first thing that I think we can talk about in this particular section is that occasional sin that is shrinking in frequency is not what this means by walking in darkness. If you're like me, when you first read that you said anyone who walks in darkness, there is no, there's no truth in him. Your first thought was, well, I'm a Sinner. What do I do? Oh my goodness, I'm walking in dark. I'm walking in darkness. But that isn't what this means. So what does it mean to walk in
darkness? I think the simplest way that we can think about this is that someone who walks in darkness wants to walk in darkness. They may say all the Christian things, go to all the Christian functions, read their Bible every day, know all the big words, the sanctification, the justification, the righteousification, the all the big words, made-up or otherwise. But they're still in darkness. Why not? Because they're doing their best and they're not making. It's because they like it.
And all of you that are here today are sinners. And you know that sin is pretty. You like sin. You have a drawing to sin. But as Christians, we know that we can. We have another option. There's another way, right? We've been made new. First Corinthians talks about that. But those who are still in darkness, they want to be there. They enjoy it. Do you look forward to sinning? Do you make time in your day to sin? Are you thinking about it constantly in a positive manner?
That is walking in darkness now, too. What is walking in light? Walking a light does not mean that you can do some works or act upright, or be holy and righteous and make things work. The Bible talks about how our good deeds are like filthy rags before the Lord. Walking a light isn't doing all the right things in hopes that we get to heaven. That's impossible. But I think that we can apply the same principle that we did with walking in darkness to this, that those who walk in
light want to walk in light. First Corinthians, like I said, talks about a new creation. We become new creations in Christ. We have a new desire. We start to like those evil things less and less and love good things more and more. Someone who walks in light wants to be there. Are you grieved over your sin? Are you repenting? Do you believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and do you have faith in him? All of these are assurances that we can have, saying we have we
are walking in light. Now does that mean you're never going to sin? No, of course not. But how do you react? Are you excited to sin or does it hurt your heart? Are you excited to do wicked things or does it grieve your spirit? Walking in light is not about your works. It's solely about your faith and where your heart desires. And walking in darkness is the same. It's based on your lack of faith and your desires.
Jumping down to verse 8, we're going to look at verse 8 and verse 10. It says if we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in US. Jumping down to verse 10, it says if we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in US. Both of these things have a both of these verses have a similar theme in mind. I think it's pretty easy to pick up on that. If you say you have no sin, you're a liar.
It's very straightforward, but verse 10 actually takes it to A to another notch. It UPS it 1°. It says, it says not only does it are you a liar, you're making God out to be a liar, which has a whole nother layer implication to it that could be vastly, vastly devastating. Looking just at verse 8 for for a second, the simple thing that we can look at when looking at teachers and looking at our own hearts. Is that are people teaching that they don't sin anymore? That's wild.
Now, many of you probably don't know anybody. I'll name someone Todd White. Many of you have probably heard this name before. He's a prosperity gospel preacher. He teaches all kinds of false things. And one of the things that this man claims is that since his conversion, he has not sinned one time in act or thought in probably 20 years. He says he's been totally clean, blank slate, no sin anymore.
He's a liar. First, John says so, and not only is he a liar, but it says that the truth is not in him. It even brings his, his salvation into question. That should, that should frighten us. Now, like I said with verse 10, it says that we make God out to be a liar. This has all kinds of implications, one of which is that it should be fairly obvious. Of course we would make God out
to be a liar. Scripture is filled with verses talking about the sin of man, talking about the fall of Adam and Eve, going all the way to the need for when God wipes the world out with a flood through the the law and the the sacrifices that were needed to to expunge the sins of the people. Moving even to the New Testament. The reason why Jesus came to the epistles that we read, all of them make it very clear that we are sinners in a not right standing with God before our
conversion. And so, yeah, if someone says that they're they don't sin anymore, they're they're essentially mock making a mockery out of all of the Bible. But the other implication that we get from this that is even more frightening is the idea that our sins can bring reproach on the name of Christ. Now, what does that mean?
It doesn't mean that there will be a day when you know someone will do something so bad that Jesus name will forever be stained and and will it'll destroy his Kingdom. No, that'll never happen. Christ's name will be made great. He will be glorified, and every knee and it will bow, every tongue will confess that he is Lord one day. There's nothing that anybody can
do to change that. But what I think about is I think about people like who was once one of my favorite speakers, Ravi Zacharias, who many of you know that name. This man was a teacher who claimed to know the gospel, who taught from the Bible and then committed wicked in heinous acts, forever undermining everything he taught. Whether what he taught was what he taught was good and true, it will forever be marred by his actions. That's that is what how serious our sin is.
Our sin isn't just this little oopsie that we can Band-Aid over and call a day. The reality is that there are massive long-suffering implications or consequences from our sin, not just for ourselves, but to the name of Christ. And believe me, I don't want to be at the Judgement Day and have that on my conscience, and you shouldn't either. And so quite simply, when we look to our teachers and when we look to our own hearts, if we ever start hearing about how people don't sin, how we done
sin, flee. And if you in your heart sort of think I'm doing pretty good, I've had, you know, this has been like a solid, I think I've just gone five years without sinning today. You're in a very dangerous place because you're not just lying, you're making God out to be a liar. And like I said, I don't want to be in your place when the judgement day comes.
So here are the things that we here are things to look out for in first John. One things to look for in our teachers, things to look for in ourselves, some practical things that we can visibly see or hear with teachers and some practical things that we can look at our own hearts and examine. Where is my faith at? Where is my, where is my heart at? And everything that we've talked about so far has been very negative.
But the last point I want to make today is going to be I want to talk about verse 9. And the reason why I skipped verse 9 is because I want to leave. I want to leave on this note. I don't want to leave on all the bad and all the evil and all the horrible things we have enough to deal with. I want to leave on this. Verse 9 says if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. Do you know what the defining characteristic of a teacher or of a Christian is? It's the gospel. It's the gospel message. This verse is essentially the heart of the gospel. When we confess our sins and repent of them, Jesus is faithful and righteous to forgive us. You see, the reality is that we are all sinners, everybody, and we all fall short of the glory of God. Romans 323 But God is still faithful. God is still righteous. And when we see our sin for what
it is, we repent. Now when we repent, we kind of do two things at the same time. Repent is a very is a, is a, is a word that means to turn away from your sin. And when we're when we are confessing our sin to God, to Jesus and we're turning away from that sin, we are at the same time turning towards something else.
And when we repent of our sins in prayer, in, in, in, in, in our prayers to God, to Jesus, and we put our faith and belief in him, we're not just turning away from our sins, we're turning towards him. We are laying our sin at his feet and saying, Jesus, you have the authority to forgive this because who else but God can forgive these sins? We are confessing that Christ is Lord in that action. Brothers and sisters, this is the core teaching that we should
hear preachers preaching. This is the core belief that distinguishes whether or not we are saved. If a teacher preaches that Christ died for your sins and was raised back to life, and that through your repentance of your sins and through the belief in Him, believe in Him as Lord and Savior, that you too can rise one day, you're in a pretty
safe place with that teacher. And if you in your heart repent of your sins, believe that Christ died for you, believe that He lived perfectly, and that on that cross He bore the wrath of God so that we would not have to, that we are saved by His grace. You can rest with assurance. Our God does not break His promises. And I hope that tonight you leave feeling assured of that, assured of our Saviour, assured of the ability that we all have to be saved. Would you bear with me in
prayer? Father, I thank you so much again for this opportunity and to be here. And I thank you for this evening, and I thank you for everyone who came out. And God, I pray that you would help us to discern rightly to see it, to see the the teachings of other people and to and to be able to tell whether they are saved or not, to look at our own hearts, God, and to see if we
are in need of salvation or not. Lord and Father, I pray that if there's anybody here tonight that needs to hear that needed to hear this, that needs you. Lord, I pray that their hearts would be would be transformed, that you would speak to them and that they would confess and repent their sins to you, and that they would be forever changed by your, by your goodness, by your grace, and by the faithfulness that you have to cleanse of cleanse us of all unrighteousness.
We thank you. Lord, we pray this in your heavenly name, Amen.