1 John: The Light of Confession

So Monday night Christy and I we climbed into bed and each of us were reading our books and finally she finishes she turns the light aisle and I mean two minutes later she's asleep it was kind of annoying because for me it was one of those nights I mean this has been a busy week for us as church staff I mean Sam and Annie I mean they've been working tirelessly to get this room and get all the children slipped around so there's just a million things going on and so 10 minutes pass and laying there in the dark 20, 30, 40.

I don't know what your cutoff point is.

Do you have a cutoff point where you're like, and I'm done, I'm getting up, doing something else.

So yeah, 40, I'm like, I'm I'm up.

I went back to the den, I watch a parks and wreck episode, and then finally, I finally I fall back asleep, and it's late.

I fall back asleep.

And so the morning comes and my alarm goes off just like any other time, and it's it's before sunrise.

So I hit snooze, still dark out.

I hit snooze, then hit snooze again, and hit snooze again, and hit snooze again.

And some of you know what I'm talking about because you're a snooze.

Maybe you're not a snoozer, right?

Great, we're proud of you.

We are impressed by your self-discipline.

Snoozers?

Just go ahead and all right.

So we're in the same club.

So you know what I'm talking about here, where you're hitting snooze, but then something, something happens that changes everything.

And that's when the sun rises.

It does change things.

That sun sneaks in between your blinds or between your curtains, or maybe your mom flips the switch by the door, right?

And light enters, light bursts in, and this changes.

Now you can return to the darkness, right?

The cover over the head.

You can return to the darkness, but it doesn't change the fact.

Light has changed things.

That's what light does.

Light holds that power to infiltrate the darkness, and the darkness does not win in that scenario.

The light always enters the darkness of that room and it changes things.

Light wakes us up, helps us grow, keeps us warm.

Too much of it and it blinds us, and then too little of it and we can't see.

And John says in 1 John, where we're gonna spend the next few months going through 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, three letters he wrote.

He says, God is light.

You want to think about God, start thinking about light.

You'll start to get some ideas.

So that either means that he is blinding and overwhelming, light, blinding and overwhelming, or he is guiding and he's welcoming.

Or maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe he's both.

Alright, so here's the text.

I'll reread it.

We'll look through it on these screens.

1 John 1, 1 and 2.

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked upon, and have touched with our own hands, concerning the word of life.

The life was made manifest, and we have seen it and testified to it and proclaim to you the eternal life which was the Father and was made manifest to us.

So John does something here that he also does in his Gospel, John.

So that's like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

He wrote that, John, and then he wrote these letters, John.

So in the Gospel of John, in the first chapter, he uses this word logos, but he also uses that same word here at the first chapter, the first three sentences of 1 John, logos.

Maybe your version in your Bible says word of life.

This text says eternal life.

Now this term carries a mystery with it.

Logos was a Greek term.

It sort of meant the soul's universe.

That sounds like today's language, doesn't it?

We're just recycling philosophies, is all we're doing, by the way.

The soul's universe was this Greek thought.

See, you see, at the time that the Greeks were wondering, how did we all get here?

How did I get here?

How does all this sustain itself?

And if there's a God, does he make himself known?

And the answer coming from Plato, remember the Greek philosopher, Plato taught that an impersonal and unchanging logos, the world soul, kept the planets moving and on course.

And it was a creative, rational, divine energy, but it was impersonal.

So John uses that same term logos that's floating around in the culture, and he uses the same word.

He says, Oh, oh, logos, you've been you've been talking about logos.

Oh, oh yeah.

That divine that you're kind of circling around, that divine made himself manifest into reality for you to know.

That's what verse two is all about.

The objectivity of Christ in Jesus the Christ.

We've heard him.

We saw him, we touched him.

Not just one person, a group of people, plural, we.

And we documented it.

So Christy and the girls and I, we were went to the mountains a couple of weeks ago during July.

Last morning, I walk outside the condo to put, to start packing up.

And so I take a suitcase out, I put it in the back of the car, I turn back around to come back toward the condo, and I see a huge bear digging in the trash.

I have a picture, I took a picture so I could use it in a sermon.

You can see him kind of poking out.

I took this for you, by the way.

This was for you.

This is me risking life.

I didn't run or anything.

And so he was huge.

I mean, he's kind of tucked in.

You can imagine the whole rear.

I mean, he's he's he's like a minivan, is what he was.

And he was there, he's not concerned about me.

He was very, very happy where he was at, going through the trash.

So I've seen it.

I heard him.

He's over there munching away.

I did not touch him, thank you very much.

So you know, I know better than that.

I calmly walk back inside.

I close the door.

There is a bear outside.

Anybody's eating yogurt?

There's a bear outside.

Y'all should come see it.

You gotta stay calm, you gotta stay quiet, and we're gonna stay by the door.

And so we all file out, stay tight to the door.

I don't know what I thought that door was gonna do if this bear decides that we were his enemy, but the door gave a lot of security in my mind, and we calmly walk outside.

We're out there for about a second and a half.

That's my level of comfort in the situation, and then we go back in.

So they have now seen it and heard it.

They didn't touch it, but they've seen it and they heard it, and we documented it.

That's what John's saying.

This happened.

This is point number one.

Jesus the Christ.

We see this in verses one and two.

Jesus the Christ is the Christ from the beginning.

That's what John's saying.

Jesus the Christ is the Christ from the beginning who manifested so we might know God.

Jesus is the manifestation of God's love into objective reality.

So we have this gift from God that is both objective and subjective.

So the subjective is our experience and our feelings.

That's just us and our experiencing in 2019.

And we as believers, we don't have we don't have to rely on one without the other.

We get the gift of the objective and the subjective together.

Verses three and four.

That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ, and we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

So point number two is this Christian faith is triangular.

So here's what John is saying.

We've seen and heard, and we told you so that you might know with us, and somehow, like your knowing of God helps my joy become more complete, and somehow my knowing of God helps your joy become more complete in some way, and then we know each other and we have a church.

So we get a church.

I had to draw this to figure this out, so I drew this slide for us this week.

This is very simple, but this is what John is saying.

There's you and God, there's me and God, and there's you and me.

And all of this works together.

Here's what I read this week in the commentary that I was studying.

This is the mystical union I enjoy with Christ that becomes the substance that binds the church together.

The thing that binds the church together is not great new buildings.

It's not great new books that you love.

It's not new a new worship album.

The thing that binds the church together is your mystical union with Christ, and my mystical union with Christ, and then we come together with our mystical union with Christ together.

And we're going like, oh, you know about him, and I know about him, you know about this, and I know about this.

All of a sudden we have church.

Verse 5.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaimed to you that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

So point number three is this God is light, and we need light.

For some of you, it's all you need to hear this morning.

Because darkness is near.

You woke up in the darkness.

You went to sleep in darkness.

You've been in depression a long time.

You live in shame all the time.

You know more about guilt than you do relief.

I don't have to beat you down with your sins because you know your sins.

Because they're on replay.

The fear's overwhelming, anxiety's overwhelming, and that's all the darkness.

And here's what we're wondering: all of us dabble unfortunately in all of that.

We're wondering, is this light blinding and overwhelming?

Or is it guiding and welcoming?

And the answer, of course, is yes.

Yeah.

God is both pure holiness and perfection and glory, and yet he chooses not to shame you, not to shame you in any of your darkness or your sin or your depression or any of it.

He doesn't choose to shame you, he chooses to grace you.

Verses 6 and 7, John keeps going.

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.

So my oldest daughter and I, we went on a hike a couple of weeks ago.

It was two hours one way up, and then two hours one way back down.

Now, there were simply times on this hike of two hours, and by the way, no screens, no music, nothing.

I mean, the only noise you could hear, no cars, the only thing you could hear was like a creak every once in a while.

It was beautiful, and we're just walking and talking and being quiet at times, and we're just walking two hours, one direction.

Now, that doesn't mean every once in a while we didn't sort of take a wrong path by 10, 15 feet, I don't know, something, and then go like, ah, this doesn't quite look right.

We come back to the main path and off we go in the same direction.

This is the word walk.

It's not perfect.

But it is a habitual movement in the same direction.

Now, darkness is a life of walking, a habitual movement in the wrong direction of lies of who you are, lies about who God is, and lies about who God deems you or desires for you.

That's darkness.

But those who walk in the light habitually move toward holiness and wholeness.

Habitually move toward wholeness and holiness.

This is not a faith toward perfection of holiness or wholeness.

But it is a faith, a walk, a habitual movement of the comprehensive self to move.

Not perfectly, but habitually toward holiness and wholeness.

Even while we do it imperfectly, we're deemed whole and holy by God.

That's what the cross gives us.

That's why we move the cross over here.

We can't not have it.

We have to have it because that's the place that gives to us, grants to us by the work of God in Christ and reveals to us what is true.

That He took our sin upon Him.

And He gives to us His righteousness.

So we are forever secure as the beloved.

It's not up for discussion or addition.

It just is.

Now, this is where the sermon could go incredibly moralistic, because at this point I could turn it, I could say, so therefore, walk in the light.

You know, get your act together, pull your bootstraps on, let me give you five steps of things you need to do every day in order to stay in the light.

But listen what John does.

John does something we would not expect.

Because what he says is this is not you muscling your way into any of this habitual movement.

This is done by confession.

Verses 8 through 10.

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 our unrighteousness.

If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

So verse 9 is teaching, not that if you neglect to confess a particular sin, you're doomed.

That's not what it's teaching.

What it's saying is, as a general truth, truth, confession is the road to healing.

And maturity in faith is not moving past repentance, but it's moving into quicker and quicker awareness and quicker and quicker repentance with no fear.

Because you're already accepted in Christ.

You're already righteous, you're already holy.

And for the proud, I pray you will be broken.

And for the comforted, for the broken, I pray you will be comforted.

My brothers and sisters, not shame on you.

It's not shame on you.

It is grace on you.

May He be the light into your darkness.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for your grace and mercy and the good message that you are light.

While you are blinding and overwhelming, you choose to be for us, guiding and welcoming.

And in Christ we are forever welcomed, forever yes upon our hearts and souls.

Give us eyes to see what is true about you and your regard for us.

May we not be in deception.

That we are better than we are.

Give us eyes to see that we are in need of your great, good supply of grace that is sufficient for us.

And may confession be the road to healing.

In Jesus' name.

We pray.

Amen.