The Way of Jesus 24.0

All right, well welcome everybody.

If you don't know me, my name is Dale.

This is my husband Adam.

We are continuing our conversation this morning, part 24 of

uncovering the Way of Jesus.

Yes.

So much to uncover in the way of Jesus.

It's so good.

So today is we, look, we're looking at the way of light.

We are also gonna be doing something wonderfully awesome at the end

of this morning's gathering.

We have two precious souls being baptized this morning.

You may have noticed the baptismal outside.

And so after this morning, well, we'll get the, the two people getting baptized.

We'll get them forward at the end of the service, hear from

them, and then we'll go out.

And we will baptize them out there.

It is gonna be a good day in the house of the Lord, is it not?

Oh, yes.

We're on.

Come on,

come on, come on.

All right.

So the way of light, we are going to be looking at one John, one, uh, to one

John chapter two, verse two this morning.

So let's start by reading the passage of scripture together.

That which was from the beginning.

Which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have

looked at and our hands have touched.

This we proclaim concerning the word of life.

The life appeared.

We have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the

eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.

We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard so that you also

may have fellowship with us.

And our fellowship is with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ.

We write this to make our joy complete.

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you God is light in him.

There is no darkness at all.

If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we

lie and do not live out the truth.

But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have

fellowship with one another.

And the blood of Jesus, his son purifies us from all sin.

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just and will forgive us our sins

and purify us from all unrighteousness.

If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his

word is not in us, my dear children.

I write this to you so that you will not sin, but if anybody does sin,

we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ, the righteous one.

He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but

also for the sins of the whole world.

Lemme just pray, just quickly, father God.

We thank you for this word that it contains so much precious

truth and light and goodness.

So just in this moment now, we invite the work of your spirit to come to

lead and guide us into all truth.

Holy Spirit, would you help us to receive what it is?

That you have for us this morning, the truth, the life for each soul here.

We just welcome you this morning, spirit.

We welcome your ministry through your word this morning.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

All right.

The way of light.

Just really noticed as I was reading this, then he uses the

word sin a lot, doesn't he?

Anybody notice that?

Yeah.

That features a lot.

Okay.

And there's a reason for that.

Uh, sins a big problem.

Yeah.

And, um.

Not bigger than Jesus.

Praise the Lord.

And there's a very, very summarized version of the guts of what John

is saying here in this letter.

Sin is a massive, huge problem, not bigger than Jesus, okay?

Jesus has made a way.

And so what is sin?

Just quickly, just in case it's language, maybe you're not super familiar with.

'cause sometimes it's like, oh, it's really churchy language.

It sounds really condemning.

The church just cares about sin.

Okay.

Um.

Sin is anything we do that's outside of the will and the way of God.

All right.

And we all, we all do that.

Okay?

And, uh, none of us can, and this all says we, we, we are lying If we say

to ourselves that we don't sin, and I don't say that to condemn anybody,

you know, just one sinner talking to a room full of sinners here, right?

Again, Jesus is bigger than all of that, but our sinner is what breaks this world.

Our sin is what breaks relationships.

Our sin is just, is everything that destroys God's good created world.

And it's everything that Jesus came to set, right?

It's what we remember in Advent.

It's what we remember at Christmas.

So.

Yeah, well, today sees us, yes, we're continuing, uncovering the way of

Jesus, but we're also contin, we're stepping into a bit of a subseries,

um, called the way of light as we're, as we're in this advent season, this

season of looking towards the birth of Jesus, remembering the birth of Jesus.

And what I love about this passage is that it's so very profoundly weaves

together multiple threads that are really relevant for us right now.

So.

Light clearly a big theme of advent.

So what is advent?

It makes a lot more sense when you're in the northern hemisphere, right?

Because it's very dark in the northern hemisphere right now.

And so there's that whole sense that, that real sense of waiting

for the light because people in northern hemisphere, in deep darkness,

we don't quite get that here.

We are full of light here in Perth, aren't we?

There is so much light.

Um, so we're, we're leaning more into the, the metaphorical darkness

of the world of sin, of brokenness.

And that is a season of advent.

It's a season of waiting for the light to come, the one

who is the light of the world.

And the beautiful truth of Christmas is that God does his best work

in the dark, in the womb in.

In the tomb.

God does his best work in the dark, and so my friends here this morning, if

you find yourself to be in a dark place right now, fret not for your God who

loves you, does his very best work in places of darkness, if you will, but.

Allow him to shine the light of his love and his life and his truth

into the darkest places of your world, and then the way of Jesus,

the way of walking in the light.

Did you hear that in the passage?

If we walk in the light as He is in the light, does anybody else think

of DC talk when you, when we, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Um, if you're not sure what that is, I

don't think they were the original artist of that song.

It was.

I wanna be, who knows, in the

light as you are in the night.

No, it was Charlie.

Charlie.

Anyone know?

Anyway, I remember it as DC talk.

Charlie Peacock, thank you very much.

Oh, well done.

Am I right?

Okay, so we're looking at walking in the way of light.

We'll look at this throughout this month.

In the lead up to Christmas, whoever has the son has life, whoever does not

have the son of God, does not have life.

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that

you may know that you have eternal life.

This is what it is to walk in the way of light, to know

that you have the assurance.

What darkness can come against you when you have the assurance

of eternal life with you.

And that is a big theme of one John.

And another theme that is really relevant for us right now, that really

comes out of last Sunday as well.

We had a love attack last Sunday and many of you participated and

you went to a gamut of different churches across our city and it was

a joyous expression of church unity.

Indeed.

And last Sunday in the PM we had Nick Scott and we have Steve Scrim, and we

also, just as a last minute call up, we.

Had Wayne, Wayne Holick come up as well, and these are like,

uh, and Adam was there as well.

And, um,

yeah, sorry,

just in the corner.

And they were speaking on the topic of unity across the

broader body of Christ as well.

It was real.

If you, if you weren't here for that, definitely listen to the podcast.

It was, it was so encouraging.

And so we've been leaning into unity as well.

And this is expressed through this passage.

'cause another word that comes up a lot through this passage is a word fellowship.

And I know again, a little bit of a cheesy church word sometimes, but it's a word

of deep, profound, precious, meaning the actual Greek word is the word coyier.

And the whole point of Christianity is coyier.

Effectively, it is that we would live in perfect, unbroken, harmonious,

communal relationship with the Trinity and with one another.

It's one of the key reasons why Jesus came and lived and died and rose

again and ascended, was so that we could exist in Coyier with God, with

the Trinity, and with one another.

And so, um, God created us to experience this and so central for all of us to know.

Our fellowship and unity with God.

There has to be this thing now, which also appeared in this passage

of scripture called forgiveness.

So the way of Jesus is the way of forgiveness because of sin.

There has to be forgiveness because we've sinned against God for us to live in.

Relationship with him.

There has to be forgiveness from God for us to live in

relationship with one another because we sin against one another.

We then too must become people who walk in the way of forgiveness, or we

will never live out and the world will never witness the depth of coyier,

of fellowship, of community, of unity that Jesus prays for in John 17.

So forgiveness is key to this because we all hurt one another.

We all offend one another.

We all rub our broken bits up against one another, and forgiveness is

the thing in the name of Jesus that brings us into a place of unity.

Coyier fellowship with one another, the way we were always

intended to be God's will.

Ephesians one 10, is to bring unity to all things in heaven

and on earth, under Christ, but because of our sin, our offenses.

Forgiveness is required for this to happen.

So the way of forgiveness, receiving forgiveness, and then walking as

those who freely give forgiveness, 70 times seven to those around us.

That is what Jesus calls us to, to live lives of forgiveness.

And that is where the good life is.

Found this good life that we all innately strive for, desire

to wanna know and apprehend.

It's not in stuff, it's not in success, it's not in possessions,

experiences, wealth, but it is in peace with God and peace with one another.

So let's just look at this first point now.

And this is the message of Advent, that God is light.

God is light in him.

There is no darkness at all.

It's what it says in one John one 15, God is light.

This is something we can say and forget to actually stop and think about

the implications of what this means.

God is light.

When you hear those words, what rises up in you?

Because everything that light is, that's who God is for us.

So light is life.

Light is truth, it is sight.

It is warmth.

It is welcome.

It's warning, it's purity.

Everything light is to us.

God is to us.

Light is life.

Light is sight.

It is beauty.

I was, uh, as I was thinking about this, the lyric, some lyrics from,

um, greatest Life faithfulness came to mind, the hymn and it says, there

is no shadow of turning with thee.

Because God is light.

There's no shadow within him all.

There is no shadow of turning within him.

He changes not his compassions.

They fail, not they can't because He's light.

Because he's truth.

There's no darkness.

There's no lying in God, right?

Because he is pure.

Light is pure.

God is pure.

As you have been God forever.

You will be the last line of that verse there because he can't be

anything other because he is light and there's no darkness in him.

There is no shadow of turning unlike us.

Right?

The shadow of turning all over the shop.

In our hearts, we say one thing, we do another.

We justify ourselves, we lie, we do all manner of dark things,

even despite our best intentions.

We all suffer from a shadow of turning with us away from what

the way we know is good and we turn to dark ways all the time.

But God is not like that.

Um, John eight 12 says this, when Jesus spoke again to the people, he

said, I am the light of the world.

Whoever follows me, whoever walks in my way, will never walk in darkness,

but will have the light of life, and that Jesus would come into the darkness

of this broken world as the light of the world sent by the Father tells me.

So much about the heart and the intent of God.

Darkness represents death, light represents life and God's intent.

The father's intent is to bring us from darkness to light, from death to

life, and then to be with us now so that we are able and enabled to live

in the light as he's in the light.

That we can live and know and share the eternal life of God in the here and now.

And so the Christmas, Christmas is the message that the king, the light

of the world, has come to rescue us from the dominion of darkness, to

redeem us from the ownership that death has on us because of our sin.

And to restore us and to recreate us in him, restore our union with him,

that life, light, peace, hope, and joy would be ours now and forevermore.

It's good.

Dale.

One of the images I have always liked, and you've probably seen this before,

I'm gonna pop it on the screens.

It's a picture of a pile of rubbish.

And there's a light shining on the rubbish, and in the shadow you

see something that you don't see.

When you look at the rubbish, you see something human.

You see something beautiful, you see an image.

What's interesting for me about this picture is.

To really understand the light, you've really gotta understand darkness.

To understand a solution, you've really gotta understand the problem.

The solution doesn't really make a whole lot of sense unless the

problem is actually magnified.

So you see it as it is really is.

What's interesting about this picture, as you can imagine, the light turn off,

you'd have the garbage there, right?

But when you turn the light on, is the garbage still there?

Yes.

It's like we are saturated in the problem and the reality is.

We need to look at our brokenness through the lens of his light, but

that doesn't mean the brokenness sort of fades into nothing.

We're still confronted by it.

We still live with it.

We're still present with it.

And so the question that I'm gonna cover just quickly now is why do we need light?

Why do we need light?

And the, and the simple answer is we are bent towards darkness as we just

recap that scripture we've already read.

If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we

lie and do not live out the truth.

But if we walk in the light as he is in the light.

We have fellowship one with another and his, the blood of Jesus,

his son purifies us of all sin.

The Lutheran church, many years ago, they taught, termed this phrase

that sin is a way to describe it is when we are curved in on ourselves.

It's a concept where the, the internal heart is bent towards itself

seeking self glory over God's glory.

Self corruption, self, um, absorption, corrupts even good desires internally

in us sending good desires into what the Bible describes as idols.

What's an idol?

An idol is anything that gives you a sense of identity significance.

Or a sense of rescue other than God himself.

And these idols demand allegiance.

So, but rather, when we're serving these idols because they demand

allegiance, we, we end up rather than loving, uh, outwardly, having

a love of God and a love of people.

We fixate on our personal satisfaction using people and

even God as a means of self ends.

Yeah, walking in darkness, as this scripture describes, is actually

lying about sin, even minimizing sin.

'cause it's rooted in self-justification.

So what we're doing when we're see, we are actually trying to justify

ourselves rather than allowing God to be the one who justifies us.

And you live in a sin cycle, you are gonna get caught in what

they call spiritual blindness.

This is quite a scary thought, spiritual blindness where you begin

to end up preferring sin more than God and you don't even see it.

It's one.

One author says it's choosing gravel over diamonds.

It's our inability to see God's superior worth.

It's a self deceptive state where our willful ignorance.

We end up loving evil, actually calling evil.

Good.

And this echoes John three 19, and this is not an easy topic to talk about.

So if you're squirming right now, that's okay, because what we're doing right

now is we're elevating the problem so we can actually see what the solution is.

Does that make sense everyone?

So John 3, 3 19 is trying to do this.

This is the verdict.

That's a strong enter entrance of a sentence.

Light has come into the world, but people love darkness instead

of light because they're deeds.

We're evil.

Light illuminates truth.

It breaks the cycle of desiring less, lesser things amidst God's presence.

So unless we understand the problem, which is our darkness and deception,

we won't fully appreciate the light, but they also, without the light.

You can't discern your need for rescue, so we need forgiveness.

We need God.

We are blind.

Sin blinds us.

Sin also grieves God.

When I think, think about that idea of grieving God, okay?

It's not because God's like, oh, you broke the rules and I'm angry at you.

What?

It's, what is grieving?

God is, sin is destroying your life, and the God who loves you is

so in love with you that he doesn't want you to destroy your life.

So it's grieving him that you're on a pathway in your blindness, not even

knowing that you're on a pathway.

Of destruction, but it also grieves God because he's given every single

one of us the antidote for life, and here we are willingly rejecting it.

That's a grief dynamic, especially if you bankrupted heaven to bring the antidote

to rescue the solution and we reject it.

Light is essential to reveal the inward deception.

Pride blocks, admission of fault.

Perpetuating isolation, perpetuating isolation from his light.

One of the things that I've noticed when you're caught in a sin trap, when you are

blind, you end up having the situation, which I call heart desensitization.

You get a pin and you prick your finger for about half an hour, and

then do it every day for four weeks.

What's gonna happen to your skin?

It's gonna get hard, right?

You lose the sensitivity of the ball, of the tip of your finger

because you are piercing it actually.

And this is what sin does.

It desensitizes your heart, and as a consequence, you find it harder

to be sensitive to the light.

Another way of describing the light, you find it harder to hear God's voice.

The other one I like about the idea of sin is like sin is if

your life is like a, a windscreen.

On your, on the car.

And, uh, sin is like throwing mud at that car.

And then you get your wipers with no water in the, in the tank.

And what happens?

Just smudges it.

Sin is smudging it, so you just can't see.

Or in this case, you can't hear God's voice.

It, it, it, it, it messes things up.

And, and, and when you are caught there, and if you're trying to find direction

in your life, IE through the car window.

Uh, you're gonna have a tough time.

What's beautiful about the light though

is when you confess, when you repent, when you ask for forgiveness,

because the light shines on you, it's an exposing moment because the

rubbish is still visible, right?

It's like, oh, I see it damnit.

So it's not easy, but actually.

You begin ending up confessing and repenting, not because you got

caught in your sin, but because you did it in the first place.

It's actually this dynamic where you realize, oh, this is grieving

my father in heaven, and my confession comes from a place of

recognizing I've grieved the father.

Light exposes sin, but it also gives you grace to live beyond it.

The way you know, you just had the light hit you.

You see your sin, you go, oh, it's ugly.

But then you also have this empowerment to go, oh, I see.

That's an empowering experience.

If it's only condemnation for your sin, potentially the light hasn't hit you.

Yeah, if it's the light, and also there's like an empowerment to go,

oh, I wanna, I wanna live beyond this.

Imagine being blind and seeing for the first time, that's exhilarating.

So the light of God, not just, um, gives conviction to sin.

It also brings empowerment to live beyond it.

Does that make sense everyone?

Cool.

Point three, darl.

Where are we going now?

Mm. Just something that, um, I have been musing on.

Recently it connects to what Adam was just saying, one of the things that really

causes us to stay stuck, I think, and I, I wonder if this is, no, I think this

has always been there, but I think it's maybe it's heightened a little in our

modern day, very therapeutic environment.

Um, and that rather than just call out our sin as sin, we've

learned how to justify it.

Um, because that's.

Yeah.

You know, we've learn how to, to blame it on our family of origin

on this context, that context.

And I'm not saying there isn't a place for therapy and

understanding these things, right?

But when we are confronted with a sinful pattern of behavior in our lives.

And we justify it through this reason, that reason we miss out

on experiencing the forgiveness of God, and yet we can understand

it till the cows come home, right?

We're not called to understand our sin.

I mean, I'm not saying that's a wrong thing to do, but much better

to confess, to own it, to just own the sheer offense before God,

before a holy God of what I've done.

Um.

There is greater healing there than in, uh, the depths of self-justification

of just trying to understand the whys and who to blame for your particular

brand or sinful behavior or, or what we like to call brokenness 'cause

it's a little bit less offensive.

Um, and again, I just wanna reiterate the heart of God in all of this, okay?

Sometimes we, we hear this as like an angry God who just

wants to punish us for our sin.

That's not it.

You know what came to mind, just as Adam was talking, was the picture

of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem.

So Jesus comes as a light of the world to the people of God, the Israelites.

And because they sin their hearts are so hardened by sin, they cannot see him.

They cannot receive him, right?

The Gentiles can, interestingly enough, but God's own people can't.

And what does Jesus say at this one point?

He's looking over Jerusalem and he's weeping for Jerusalem.

You know Jerusalem, Jerusalem.

You know, if you would just listen, hear, turn, repent.

The heart of the father is to gather you like chicks.

Like a hen gathers her chicks under his wind.

The heart of God is to shelter us.

From all sin and evil and darkness and destruction.

And so for the weight of that to happen leads me into 0.3.

This is the forgiveness of God for us, which is hinges on the blood of Jesus.

And this is something, the blood of Jesus we can talk about a bit in

church, but maybe sometimes we don't really understand what it means.

And one John seven says, the blood of Jesus' son purifies us from all sin.

Matthew 26 28 For this is my blood of the covenant.

Which is being poured out for many.

For what?

For the forgiveness of sin.

So we cannot have fellowship with God and with one another.

We cannot walk in the light with the one who is light.

We cannot walk in unity together in the way of light without forgiveness.

Without being reconciled.

And so throughout scripture, forgiveness is never cheap or casual.

Forgiveness always involves a real offense, a real cost, and a real

covering, or this word atonement.

So in the Old Testament, that cost was symbolized through sacrifice in

the shedding of blood, Hebrew 9 22.

Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.

Why Jesus's blood?

Because he is the similar sinless lamb of God.

His life of is of infinite worth.

His death was voluntary and not forced.

His sacrifice is perfect to complete.

His blood does what?

Animal Blood could never do.

The blood of animals in the Old Testament.

He could never do.

Purifies the conscience breaks the power of sin and reconciles us to God.

So one John two, verse two, my dear children, I write this to you so that

you will not sin, but if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the

Father Jesus Christ, the righteous one.

He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but

also for the sins of the whole world.

What a thing.

Church that every wrong you have ever will ever commit when you say, Jesus is my

Lord and Savior is covered by his blood.

What does his blood mean?

It's his life.

His perfect life now covers every bit of death that you have ever participated

in, ever will participated in flipping.

Heck, what have we got to worry about?

The things we worry about when we stand as people redeemed,

covered by the blood of the lamb.

It's like, oh my gosh, we forget.

Don't we?

We forget.

We think we need all these other things to be okay.

We don't.

We have the thing that makes us okay, we have the blood of Jesus.

And to explain this far better than I just did.

I was watching this video, the Bible Project, right?

So if what I just said to you didn't make a lot of sense, don't

worry Tim and John, we'll fix it.

All right.

Are we good?

We all long for the world to be good, for people to live in

peace act with love and justice.

But there's a problem.

Something compels us humans to constantly wreak havoc and destruction

instead, and we call this evil.

And from the Bible's point of view,

evil ruins things in at least two ways.

There's a direct effect of our evil.

Like when someone steals from another person, they've created injustice.

Good.

Yeah.

Therefore.

You know, they owe something to make it right, but there's

another indirect effect of evil.

'cause they've also ruined the environment of the relationship,

creating a lack of trust.

There's emotional damage, it's like vandalism and they

need to make that right too.

Now many people believe, hey, God is good.

He should be the one to just get rid of all the evil in the world.

But let's be honest, I mean the evil that I see everywhere out there, it's

the same evil that's inside of me.

We have all contributed and and we keep doing

it.

And so this kind of puts us in a bind.

If God's gonna rid the world of evil, he'll have to get rid of us.

And this is what's so

remarkable about the story of the Bible.

This God is so good that not only is he going to rid the world of evil.

He's going to do it without destroying humanity.

So how is he

gonna do that?

Well, early in the story of the Bible we're introduced to this practice of

animal sacrifice, which I know it seems weird to us, but for the Israelites,

it was a very powerful symbol of God's justice and of his grace.

So remember, I'm a contributor to the evil that's in the world.

I should be removed, but God is allowing this animal's life to be a substitute.

It's symbolically dying in my place.

And the biblical word for this is atonement, which means to

cover over someone's death.

But there's a second part to this ritual.

Remember, evil also causes this relational vandalism.

And in the Bible, this idea is described as polluting or defiling

the land and making it unclean.

So the priest would symbolically wash away the vandalism by sprinkling the animal's

blood and different parts of the temple.

So the animal's blood is cleaning things.

Well, remember, this is a symbol and it's a symbol that we're not used to.

The blood represents life and the sprinkling of the blood is this

representation of how God is cleaning away these indirect consequences

of evil in their community.

In the Bible, this process is called purification, and so the temple and the

land now become a clean space where God and his people can live together in.

So this ritual makes things right between Israel and God.

And more than that, the Israelites experience God's love and his

grace through these symbols, and by being forgiven, ideally this

would compel them to become people of love and grace too, right?

That's the ideal.

But it wasn't always happening, right?

So the prophet Isaiah, for example, he talks a lot about this.

He opens his book by saying that the continual sacrifices of the Israelites

had become meaningless because they were also allowing great evil in their midst,

ignoring the poor and the oppressed.

Even the Israelite kings were distorting justice.

But Isaiah looked forward to a day when a new king from the line of

David would come and deal with evil.

But in a surprising way, the king would become a servant and not just

serve, but also suffer and die for the evil committed by his own people.

And his life would be offered as a sacrifice.

And this is the promise.

Jesus believed he was fulfilling.

He's the king of Israel suffering and dying on the cross.

In fact, Jesus himself used Isaiah's words when he said that he came to serve

and give his life as a ransom for many.

And that word ransom refers to his sacrifice of atonement.

And so all over the New Testament, we hear about how Jesus' death

was an atoning sacrifice for us.

It covered the debt that humans owe God for contributing to all of

the evil and death in his world.

But the New Testament authors also talk about Jesus' death

is providing purification.

And so we hear about Jesus' blood as a symbol of his life, having

this ability to wash away the vandalism that evil has caused in us.

And around us so we can now live at peace with God.

So that's the meaning behind Jesus' death.

But.

There's more to the story.

Yeah.

The New Testament makes this powerful claim that Jesus' death was not final.

He rose from the dead, and so he's the sacrifice who broke the power

of death and evil, which means that he lives on to offer his

life to anyone who will accept it.

He is the perfect sacrifice to which all the previous sacrifices

were pointing all along.

So because of Jesus, the early Christians stopped participating

in the ritual of animal sacrifice, but they were given new rituals.

There are two that Jesus taught his followers to perform.

The first is called baptism, just as Jesus died.

So going into the water becomes this personal connection you now

have to his death, and in coming out of the water, you, so to speak,

come back to life with Jesus.

So baptism is this sacred ritual that joins your story to Jesus'

death and his resurrection.

The second ritual is called the Lord's Supper, which is a reenactment of

Jesus' last meal with his disciples.

And he used bread and wine to portray his coming death as a sacrifice.

And so now followers of Jesus, they take the bread in the cup regularly

to remember and to participate in the power of Jesus' death and in his life.

So these rituals, they remind us of God's love.

And encourage us to live a life of love and grace,

but they do more than that.

They connect us to a new life source.

The very power that brought Jesus back from the dead is the same

power that can deal with the evil in our own lives and transform us

into people who lead lives of love.

And.

But if you want to check out the W project more and more, uh, there's heaps

of content there, which is helpful.

So we just covered the blood of Jesus.

Okay.

So that we're trying to give an indication on what did Jesus accomplish?

What was his act of bringing light into the world?

That was the definer.

It was the fact that his death, his resurrection, was the bringing of light.

Light that you and I have to accept.

And we don't have to, by the way.

But we're we're invited into that space to say yes to his death, his life.

Later on, we're gonna have some baptisms.

The people who are being baptized, they're, uh, bringing a personal alignment

with saying, I believe that the death of Jesus covers my sin personally.

And I believe that he rose from the, from the grave, uh, guaranteeing that I

will also raise to life with him forever.

Uh, and that's something we're gonna be celebrating at the

end of the service today, which leads us onto this next point.

Uh, we call this the way of light is the way of unity.

The way of light is the way of unity.

As you could see in that little video we described this interesting.

I love the way the light kind of moved.

It was following the person and then it kind of landed on the, the.

Poor in spirit person.

Uh, what we're talking about there is if this light is just for you

personally and it has no external impact in your relationships, that

light is actually meaningless.

The light must transfer from the interior of your world to the exterior of your

world and the way you treat one another.

Uh, the key text that we've mentioned here is in chapter, uh, chapter

one, verse seven, which is if we walk in the light as he is in the

light, we have fellowship with one.

Another story time.

Tim Skinner, 1942.

He was, he uh, I think he was born in 1942, um, New York City.

He was an ex gang member to become a minister and evangelist for

Jesus in Harlem, New York City.

This is the story.

He says this, Jesus is alive in me.

My life has new meaning and purpose because of him.

The tremendous work that the spirit of God has done in my life in

transforming me soon became evident to me as I was newly converted.

As I became a Christian in the early days for his life, he took the bigotry

hate violence out of my life, and he relates the incident of what happened

several years after his conversion.

He was a football player.

So in a football game, grid iron, think, grid iron, not Australian

rules in a football game, several weeks, uh, later, my newfound

Christian Love met another test.

I played left guard on the team.

It was my job, uh, on end runs and off tackle plays to run interference

when the halfback took the ball.

If you can understand that you're doing well.

So when the quarterback called the pla, called the End Run Play, I

pulled out and blocked the defensive end knocking him out of the play.

The halfback went through and scored, so his team scored

because of his defensive play.

Alright.

We were getting up from the ground to head back in the huddle and the kid that I

happened to block got up and was furious.

He jumped in front of me and slammed me in the stomach.

As I bent over, he, he, uh, he took a blow and hacked me across the back.

He hit as I hit the ground.

He kicked and kicked and kicked me shouting, you dirty black beep.

I'll teach you a thing or two.

Under the normal circumstances of the old Tom Skinner, he would've jumped

up and pulverized that white boy.

But instead, he got up from the ground and said to him, you know,

because of Christ, Jesus, I love you.

Anyway, the kid threw his helmet to the ground, ran off the field,

and couldn't play for the rest of the game when the game was over.

This is amazing.

He met me in the locker room and said, Tom.

You've done more than just knock the prejudice out of me by telling me that

you loved me than you would've if I had, if you'd socked me in the jaw.

It's an interesting story.

His demonstration of love was just not some internal experience.

It came out of his life and he was able to share it when in this case was his enemy.

As we talk about the way of light and the way of unity, we're talking

about the idea of forgiving.

Quickly.

Everyone say quickly.

Forgive quickly, Adam.

Well, I would, if they would apologize, I would, if they would

agree with my position, I would if they would meet me in the middle.

Unfortunately, if you think like that, you've misunderstood forgiveness.

Your forgiveness is not about justice.

It's about freedom.

You see when you are the one caught in the trap of unforgiveness, when you harbor a

fence, it's not hurting the other person.

It's hurting you.

Your unforgiveness is quite literally preventing unity.

I wanna be the person who forgives quickly because unity is more

important than being right.

To the degree that you've experienced this vertical forgiveness from

God, the light is the degree that you should be able to on give that

same forgiveness horizontally.

Just as the story about the unmerciful servant, Matthew 18, if you're looking

for it, at the end of Matthew 18, the servant couldn't, could not pay the

forgiveness that he had received forward.

To the one who owed him a very meager amount.

He couldn't pass that on.

And if you can't pass on the forgiveness that you've received, there's real,

really a good question to ask yourself is have you actually truly experienced

that forgiveness in the first place?

So the exposing statement as we talk about our journey for all of us towards

unity and the necessity of forgiveness is if you can't forgive others,

there's reason to ask the question if you've actually experienced being

forgiven by God in the first place.

The connection to unity is profound when we talk about unity.

When we talk about forgiveness, there seems to be some confusion.

So let me help you with that confusion today by showing you my

amazing picture that I did yesterday.

This is the journey of unity through forgiveness.

I've got a little definition out for there for you.

Forgiveness is getting out of the judgment seat for the wrong, committed to you and

allowing God to sit in the judgment seat.

You are completely unqualified to sit in the judgment seat.

Let that sink in.

The problem when I make this diagram, you are gonna think that forgiveness is

like a flow chart formula and it's nice and clean and sorted and, and, and easy.

No forgiveness is not a clean, orderly process and it's not a formula.

Has everyone got that?

But I need to give you some indication about what forgiveness is.

So like, I've already said this, um, this morning.

First it's a personal experience of God's forgiveness vertically, and then secondly.

Out of that is extending the same forgiveness to

others, horizon horizontally.

So let's just break down what we mean by forgiveness.

So there's conflict.

Yes.

Everyone's got it.

Everyone's has seeing it.

Everyone's probably in it right now.

Do you think, um, as well as conflict, you could put, not, not

to harp on about sin, um, but you could put like an offense or sin.

Yeah, I'm trying to place a very one word in that, in that little cell there.

Like I said before, if you're gonna take a photo of that, that's fine,

but if you're gonna email me later with slightly better words, then

is that just 'cause it's more aesthetically pleasing or

can I just continue?

Yeah, you may.

So do you need to forgive me right now?

No, I'm good.

'cause this is pretty normal, so.

So what we're talking about is forgiveness within the context of the cross of Jesus.

Okay?

So essentially because of sin, um, a, a payment for the penalty of that

sin must be made for that punishment.

There's a cost.

Now, if you're the one who's been sinned against, the cost is to you, right?

Because you are the one doing the forgiving.

Make sense?

You gotta understand that critical component.

Now, forgiveness requires one person, requires one person,

and we're all called to forgive.

This is in this little section here because of the cross,

forgiveness is always possible.

The problem with most of us is we don't define forgiveness well.

So, COI said CO is not equal to forgiveness, is not, does

not equal reconciliation, and it does not equal trust.

Okay?

It's important to make the distinction.

God calls us to reconciliation when two people come together in the

truth of the situation and agree about the truth of the situation.

But that is not always possible because how can you manipulate the other person?

Well, you shouldn't be doing that in the first place.

But it's not always possible.

Even though if we have forgiven and the other person's ready to

reconcile, we should be on the front, four foot towards that.

However, if you can't reconcile, there's reason to ask the question whether you've

actually forgiven in the first place.

Does that make sense?

And then it's just suggesting here that trust is a completely different

dynamic compared to reconciliation.

It's not always possible.

Time is required to rebuild trust, if so desired.

And then there's the realm of unforgiveness.

And so that's just a very simple little picture I wanted to share with you.

'cause the problem, um, with putting it like this is that it's

not, it's not clean and tidy.

It's not a formula.

Forgiveness is not trying harder to forgive others.

Just try harder, will yourself more.

This doesn't talk about the system of forgiveness that the world offers.

There's the world system and then there's the kingdom's system.

I'm not gonna go into that, but it's fascinating how it's very difficult

in the world system to simultaneously show love and truth together.

I would suggest as a very brief comment, in the world system, it's impossible.

You're either gonna lead too far to love or or forgiveness, or you're gonna

lead too far to punishment and truth.

It's very difficult at the cross.

It's simultaneously, uh.

Expressed enough on that.

That's for later.

So what if it's not about trying harder?

What is it about?

It's about receiving more of God's forgiveness to you more correctly.

It's more about experiencing more of his forgiveness.

CS Lewis puts it like this.

This is brilliant.

Read this yesterday.

Now, it's not like this whole journey of forgiveness, okay?

It's not like teaching a horse to jump better and better, like turning

a horse into a wing creature.

Of course, once it's got its wings, you can imagine it would soar over

the fences, which would never have been jumped, and thus beat the

natural horse at its own game.

But there is a period while the wings are just beginning to grow.

When it cannot do so, and at that stage there's lumps on its shoulder.

No one could tell by looking at them that they're gonna be wings

may even give an awkward appearance.

Has you ever heard of the idea of I'm practicing forgiveness?

Every single one of us haven't arrived at.

Forgiveness.

We are practicing forgiveness.

We are growing our wings, so to speak, but the reality is you

just can't grow 'em yourselves.

You've actually gotta receive the forgiveness of God more and more.

So how do you receive more of the forgiveness of God?

I'm glad you asked.

How does.

My heart grow in its ability to receive more.

This is not about forgiving more.

This is about receiving more because you can't give what you don't have.

So if you receive more forgiveness, you can give more forgiveness.

Another way to put it is how does the cross of Jesus get

larger in your sphere of vision?

When you sin, throw yourself.

Everyone say, throw yourself.

Throw yourself on the mercy of God whenever you get the chance.

If you never do that, I'm sorry.

You're not gonna grow in receiving God's forgiveness.

Confess your sin whenever you get the chance.

James says it so much emphatically that when you do that with one

to another, you'll be healed.

Healed is not just healed, but it's also growing in his love for you.

Number three, meditate It.

Meditate on what it took for God to go to the cross.

What did it take for the king of the universe to come to earth to die?

Fascinating.

Davina.

Read that this morning.

Philippians chapter two.

Number four, meditate on how far down the pit you have been rescued.

That's an interesting picture, isn't it?

Like it's being under the righteous wrath of a holy God, spiritually dead

and slave to sin, destined for judgment.

Aren't you glad you came to the church today and the fact that the

eternal son of God had to bear that wrath, that curse, the consequences

of that pit was on him and not on you.

And to save us shows nothing less than his divine blood could

reach to the bottom of the pit.

We have to, with fear and trembling, consider how heinous our sin is to God.

But at the same time, how sheer good and grace given it is that God has

poured out this on us, his people.

It is as if the kindness of God is so unbearably large that it causes

you to faint in its sheer presence.

I'm talking about how do we grow in receiving more of the forgiveness of God?

A healthy fear and trembling holds both of those realities.

Intention, the dreadful of God's anger against sin.

And the staggering wonder that in Jesus, his anger has been turned away

and replaced by his steadfast love.

This is not a work of darkness by like going low to lowly places.

It's actually a work of light revealing who we are and who he is

in light of our lives here and now.

This is gospel preaching.

Gospel preaching is actually elevating the problem and then elevating the

solutions, so the solution is actually clear, concise, and compelling.

Just one other quick thought on how you can receive more forgiveness.

Refuse to justify your own sin because it leaves you with nowhere

to go when you don't justify.

But you know you're loved by a good and holy God.

There is nowhere for you to go except to the cross, and that is the

only place ultimately you can go.

And so if you are in a cycle of sinful behavior.

Whatever it might be.

Bitterness of heart.

Maybe you're a gossip, maybe you're just, maybe all sorts of awful stuff comes

out of your heart and out of your mouth.

Maybe you're stealing, maybe you're like, you know, you're a tax dodger.

Maybe.

I don't know what you, maybe you're an adulterer.

Maybe you're right into a pornography, you're in an addiction, uh, that's

just called these things out.

Maybe you're a glutton, like maybe you've got a problem with alcohol.

Maybe the.

You know, our sins are, uh, we are very, very creative in the ways we sin as broken

humanity If you refuse to justify it.

And where am I gonna go?

Where am I gonna go with this?

With the stain of this, with the stain of the guilt of this, of you, go the

cross because their love will meet you.

And love will wash you.

Clean and love will set you free and love will deliver you.

So if you are under the weight of conviction this morning, just repent.

Turn him and he will forgive you.

It's free this gift of grace.

It's such good news.

It's almost too good to be true.

So good news.

What we're gonna do is I'm just gonna ask the band to come up and what

we're gonna do is, while we're there, just gently playing on the screens,

we've just got a couple of refle reflection prompts, um, questions.

I just don't wanna rush out of here into our time of baptisms this morning.

I know we're already running over a little bit here, so we're

not gonna go too long with this.

But I want you to just ponder where, where do you sense the spirit gently

inviting you into the light today?

What sin or burden has become darkness because you've been carrying it alone?

What would it look like for you to confess honestly, without

minimizing, without excuse?

Who do you need to forgive or ask forgiveness from to walk in unity

again, to let those uh, questions just prompt you this morning.

And we'll be back in a couple of minutes.