August 24, 2025 - Rooted: God Is Light- How Fellowship Transforms Everything

Music.

So we began a few weeks ago, we're in the epistles of John, and last week we

looked at this idea of fellowship.

And we want to continue, let me make sure I got the right, there we go.

We want to continue our understanding of what God is talking about here in 1 John.

And I will tell you that it's a huge concept, it's a huge theological doctrine,

that if we get it through our finite human brains, it could completely change how we look at God,

completely change how we study his word.

It completely changed how you look at your spouse, your neighbor,

your kids, those down the street, the lady at Walmart, the lady at Meyers,

the homeless guy on the side of the street.

It completely changes how we look at life.

So to today, my prayer is that my very minuscule mind can break that down for us.

I was trying to explain it to Bryson earlier this morning.

And my mind is just going 5,000 ways, so just praying that God will bring his truth alive for us.

If you go in your Bible to 1 John, we're going to read the full passage here,

and then we're going to focus in on verse 6.

1 John, I'm going to start at verse 1. John starts, what was from the beginning, what we have heard,

what we have seen with our own eyes, what we have observed what we've actually

touched with our hands concerning the word of life talking about Jesus,

that life was revealed and we have seen it and we testify and declare to you

that eternal life was with the Father and revealed to us,

what we have seen and heard we also declare to you so that you also may have

fellowship with us and indeed fellowship with the Father and with the Son, Jesus Christ.

We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

Remember last week or two weeks ago, that word complete means all the way to the brim.

Where it's almost coming over in verse five. And this is a message.

This is a message that we heard from him. And now we're declaring this to you.

So church, this is our message that God, through John, wrote down for us today.

God is light. And there is absolutely zero darkness, no darkness him, in him.

If we say we have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness,

we are lying and are not practicing the truth.

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 we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he's faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and

to cleanse us from all this unrighteousness.

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

Jesus, I pray this morning. we are but dust,

and our minds are not nearly big enough to comprehend,

who you are and this idea of light that you are light Jesus I pray that your

Holy Spirit would make your word come alive and your truth come alive.

Jesus we thank you for giving us this fellowship that we can share with you, with your Father.

Jesus, I pray for my brothers and sisters today,

that you would cause their minds to be focused, and all the chatter that's everywhere,

all the noise would go away, and that we'd be able to focus and draw our attention

on this massive doctrinal truth, this truth about who you are,

and how that changes literally everything.

In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

So we're going to look at this idea that God, this is the message that John

is saying, that God is light.

God is light, and there's zero darkness in him.

John uses this word often. In the New Testament, it's used 73 times.

And we're going to focus in on John today and how John used this word to describe who God is.

So if you want to look at these different verses you can if

your eyes are good enough i don't know if you can see

that very well or not it's kind of small but you'll

kind of see a theme here in a second john 1 4 in him was life and that life

was the light of all humanity verse 5 that light shines in darkness and that

darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

Verse 7, he came as a witness to testify about the light so that we may all believe through him.

Verse 8, he was not the light, but he came to testify about the light.

Verse 9, true light that gives light to every man was coming to the world.

If you skip down to chapter 3, verse 20, for everyone who does evil hates the

light and avoids it, that his deeds may not be exposed.

Verse 21, but anyone who lives in the truth, by the truth, comes to the light

so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God.

Let's get down to verse 12 of chapter 8. Jesus spoke to them again.

This is what he says. He goes, I am the light of the world.

Anyone who follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

So we think about this understanding.

Jesus is laying out here, this idea of light, and John uses it very often.

But looking at these words here, God's saying, look, this is a message.

He says, God is light.

And this word is there.

It's a statement of who God is in his very essence.

It's the word, it's a verb that talks about it's it's it's a not just a fact

it's not it's not a descriptor right it's not like an adjective god is light

no this is actually who god is,

This light, God is light. And this light now, this word light.

So we have this eternal statement here that God is, it's a statement of fact.

That God is light. He does not stop being light. He can never stop being light.

And not just that, but true light is an absence of darkness.

True light, there's this absence of darkness. because there is zero darkness in God whatsoever.

And if you think about that, there is no darkness whatsoever in God.

This is, in a way, it's kind of describing his holiness and how perfect he is,

but it's also actually who he is. He is light.

And that light is so strong and so powerful that it permeates.

And this is an interesting concept that I was trying to explain to Bryson earlier,

and he kind of had this look at me like, so I'm hoping I'd describe it better. Maybe it's him.

You can hit Mr. Dusty later, Bryson.

If there was no light, we would not know that we're in darkness.

If there was not light, then we wouldn't realize there's darkness.

Light reveals the darkness that's the idea here this idea of light it reveals

it reveals who god is it reveals truth it's such a powerful concept,

that god is light and that we are to be as believers first off for the unsaved

for those who are operating in the dark,

they are literally if you picture in your mind picture your mind you're you're

in this this dark forest at those doors right there there's this giant pit of poisonous snakes.

That'll kill you in one bite and there's zero there's zero light here and so

the world those who are in lost in the darkness they're they're walking toward

that they have no idea where they're heading toward.

They have zero idea where they're heading toward. And God says, no, I am light.

And so that light now reveals all this darkness and God's light comes in and

it begins to reveal where we are.

God's light reveals who we are. If we understand God's light,

then we understand our own personal depravity, our lack of God.

And there's nothing we can do about it. There is no light that we can do to

ourselves to clean ourselves up.

So that's why later on in this letter, John says, look, the father,

he sent the son to be Rick's savior.

The father sent the son to be Patty's savior.

The father sent the son to be Frank's savior.

Frank was operating in darkness. Patty was operating in darkness.

Rick was operating in darkness, not even realizing it.

And God, now he sends his son, he sends his son to be the light of the world,

to show us that we are in need of a savior.

God's desire for us is to have that fellowship. Then Ben was talking about,

that this whole letter is about is this, this idea, this fellowship,

this relationship that God desires to have with us.

And not just in a little tiny way on Sundays, but in every way of your life,

in every possible way of your life.

I was listening to an interview by this neuroscientist.

It's kind of a mind-boggling idea. And he was talking about the power of the

sun and how it affects your eyes and your brain.

And he was saying that if you start every day and you spend five minutes looking toward the light,

toward the sun, not directly, obviously, because you're from your eyeballs,

but you head that direction, what that does is it turns all kinds of things

on in your mind and in your body.

It begins to produce all kinds of chemicals. It produces all kinds of things

that help you function throughout the day.

And God, even in our body, reflects who he is. Isn't that incredible?

That when we are in God's presence, in his light, what that does is it reveals darkness.

First off, it starts and it reveals the fact that we are lost.

But one, it reveals that we are in this darkness. We need a savior.

We are operating apart from God.

And so when you look at your neighbor, you look at your loved one,

you look at your, maybe it's your child who doesn't know God.

Maybe it's your sister. Maybe it's your husband.

Whoever it is, they're walking in darkness. And you know what?

God puts you in their life to reflect who he is.

And God gives and shows that light so that we may understand who we are truly

and fully in front of him.

And we understand that this light is the very essence of who God is.

There's zero darkness in God. And how does that flesh out?

How does that change us? How does that make you and I understand him more.

Well, he starts off the letter, right? He goes, I want to have this fellowship with you.

His disciples are writing. He's like, look, I want to have fellowship.

We want you to have the same kind of fellowship that we have with God.

And we desire it. So our joy can be so full, so complete, that it's just constantly to the brim.

And we want you to have that same fellowship that's,

And we want you to know what it is to walk in the light. What it means to walk in the light.

And his desire for us is to walk in the light.

And so John, along with the other disciples, they had this desire for the world

to come to the light, to have fellowship with him.

And then he says, if you have this fellowship with me, then you can't have fellowship with the darkness.

That's the kicker you can't have

both we can't have both now

that's going to rip your your complete your it's going to rip you

up completely once you did it and start applying it

to your life because it affects every stinking

area of our life how we

think how we process how we talk how we look everything so what do you think

the evil one wants you you think the evil one wants us to be in his presence

no he wants to distract us he wants to keep us distracted from everything,

there's a video floating around we're going to talk about in a couple weeks about

just the the present darkness and evil that's out

there and there's this video floating around someone asked chat gpt which is

like an ai and it said like something like this if you were satan and you wanted

to destroy men and women or families, how would you do it?

And that Chad GPT, this supercomputer, well, I would start doing it in little,

little by little, piece by piece.

If I were the evil one, distractions, all these things, piece by piece,

not one big massive thing, but piece by piece, little by little,

little by little, darkness by darkness.

Isn't that crazy? This man-made supercomputer tells us what God already knows

and has told us. Darkness is there.

The internet has just connected darkness and made us stronger. Right? You see it.

You want to hear something cool, though? Where God is kicking butt?

So you have this next generation, right?

This next generation, they call him I don't know, Gen Z and whatever the one's after him.

What's the next one, Bryson, after Gen Z?

Gen alpha, right? Okay. So this is the next generation, the next group.

So this next group, this next generation of kids that are out there,

there's this resurgence and there is this fire that's growing in boldness amongst

this young generation where they're taking the gospel to the streets and they're

getting online and they're not afraid to get online.

They're not afraid to present the gospel.

Ethan here loves to go and spread the gospel at different events and do street preaching and witness.

And this is something cool.

So there's this guy named Forrest Frank. You may have heard some of his songs

in the Christian radio stations.

Young guy, he's 30 years old.

God got a hold of his life, and God is doing some incredible things in him.

And a very humble kid guy.

And he really isn't part of the whole music system that everyone else is.

You know, all these popular people.

And God is taking this kid and his truth that he's writing about and some of it's really bold.

Like he's got this song out that they put out this week with a guy named Stephen

Crowder and he literally calls out Allah and all these other false gods and

they are going to take a knee to God.

And God is taking this kid and his music that he's putting out there and he

is beating the numbers of every other genre powered by the world,

like exponentially, like billions and billions and billions of listens.

And this truth is getting out there.

The reality is here, folks, that God is going to get his light out,

whether it's through you or me or somebody else.

But God calls us to get his light out.

So why are we sitting on our behinds? Or why do we sit back and we have this,

A generic version of who we think God is No We should have a fresh version of

who God is As we dig into God's truth.

As we dwell in the light, guess what happens? God begins to show things.

The more time that you and I spend in the light, in God's presence,

in his word, the more God is going to reveal the things in your life that don't belong.

You see, because without the light, there is no understanding of darkness.

But now that you have the light, now this is what John is saying.

Look, he's saying, look, if you say that you have fellowship in the light, then guess what?

Your life has to change. There's no excuse.

There's no excuse. No, God says, no, your life has to change.

If you say you have fellowship with me, you know what?

You're going to have fellowship with that guy because I have fellowship with that guy, that lady.

And if you say that you don't have fellowship, well, I don't like Holly because

you know, she, she didn't like my post on whatever, you know,

all that kind of stupidity, right?

God's saying, no, no, no, no. You can't have, say that you have fellowship with

me and allow this sin to exist in your life.

Husbands, you know what? This is going to smack you in the face that did me this week.

If I say that I have fellowship with God and I have sinned against my wife and

hurt her, whatever words, whatever it is, I can't have that complete relationship,

that perfect relationship that God wants with me.

Ladies, same thing for you. You don't get away, right? You can't hold that grudge.

You can't hold that whatever.

You see how it works? God wants his word to permeate every area of our life,

down to how we think, down to how our tones are.

Does the tone of your voice speak life into your brother or sister?

Because if it doesn't, that's not of God.

See, once you begin to apply this idea that the doctrine that God is light and

there's no darkness in him, and if we have fellowship with God,

then none of this exists in our life, then you know what?

Every area of our lives begin to change. And the old man breaks off,

and the new man begins to grow and flourish.

But you can't do it without being God's word.

The last thing here is that light changes everything.

God's light changes everything about you and everything about me.

And God's saying, look, if you say you have fellowship with me,

that changes every area of your life.

So how do you do that? How do you live this out? How does this happen?

You have to be in his presence. You have to be in his word.

You and I have to be operating in his word. We have to be spending time in his word.

Does that look like? Let's say you go to, you take out your Bible,

your Bible app, and let's say you go to Romans chapter 12, and you begin to read in verse 1,

Romans 12 · chapter mention

and so dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God

because of all that he has done for you.

Let them be a living sacrifice, the kind that he will find acceptable.

This is truly the way to worship him. Do not copy the behavior and the customs

of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing you into the way you think.

Then you will learn to know God's will for you,

which is a good and pleasing and perfect thing you can go into god's word and

you ask god to show show me please paul prays god as as i look at your word

please show me who you are and then not just that.

Step one step two is now reveal the

darkness within me because later on

he says if you say you don't have darkness well you're

a liar you're not operating truth

my desire is to constantly be cleansing you my desire is to be constantly cleansing

you that we can maintain this fellowship this relationship that's what god wants

and it doesn't stop until the day you die so you might Let's go jump of the

boat and understand this is what fellowship looks like with God.

This is what fellowship looks like with a light.

Sometimes it's not pretty. Sometimes you actually have to be honest with yourself

and stop faking everyone around you because you know what?

God sees the absolute truth. If you stand before God right now,

he doesn't see the human version of you.

He sees the real you. So you can't fake it.

You and I cannot fake it.

God's light dissipates all this darkness and

he shows the absolute truth and he wants us

not perfect but he wants us to fellowship in

the light with him and when we confess what

that is the idea is that we are we are agreeing with God yes God I I need you

I cannot survive this world without you I need you to cleanse me so I can have

that restored fellowship that restored relationship with you and then I can

be in your presence once again.

And then you mess up again and you have to go to God and say, God, oh, I'm so sorry.

I shouldn't have said what I did. I shouldn't have looked at what I looked at.

I shouldn't have had those thoughts. I shouldn't have not trusted you.

Please forgive me. I come into that agreement once again with God and I confess it.

And he restores that relationship once again. And again, we're walking in the light.

God wants us to constantly be walking in the light And if you're walking around

like you don't have a thing wrong in your life You are fooling yourself.

Want a bunch of perfect, happy, fake people. He knows you're a jerk in your flesh.

He knows you're impatient in your flesh. He knows all of that.

So why are we acting like he doesn't see us?

Right? God sees all of it. And he desires for us just to come and confess.

Just come in agreement. You know it. I know it.

I can look in the mirror and then my mind is, oh, that's a skinny guy.

But yet that mirror looks right guess what

you know what that is not telling me what i

want to think it's telling me the truth god's

light reveals the truth about you so stop

faking it and acting like you got your poop in a group and nothing's wrong and

you're just totally fine no god wants the mess because that's why jesus came

god wants to forgive god desires for you to live in the light of who he is.

That's a powerful place to live.

And it costs you nothing. And when you think you can do it, and somehow he's

already, think about it, he's already paid the bill for your sin.

So he's already paid the bill of your righteousness and that light.

And somehow we get in this we get in our mind that

somehow we can somehow we need to

constantly pay him back and so we'll

do a kind thing and we'll do another kind thing

just alleviate our conscience and we do all these things to

try to alleviate our conscience and we we throw this this money these coins

to try to pay our bill off except for our bill was billions of dollars an infinite

amount of sin and there's no way we could ever pay it but yet somehow we think

we can just continue to throw these coins at it, these acts.

No, that's performance-based Christianity.

God's already paid that entire bill. So put...

Deeds back in your pocket. And when your good deeds come out of your understanding

of you're in the light, that's what God wants.

He doesn't want you to perform. He doesn't want you to look a certain way,

fit a certain mold, fit some sort of man-made Christianity. No.

God wants us to stay in the light where he is.

Jesus, I pray somehow you'll take this truth,

and take the chaos that came out of my mouth,

but somehow that you would use that God that we would understand what it means

to be in your light and to be in you, to have this fellowship,

to have this relationship with you.

God, I pray for my brother or sister that came in heavy, overwhelmed,

beat down by the evil one.

I pray that you would bring truth to force out the lie, bring that light to force out the darkness.

And Jesus, I pray for my brothers and sisters that they would realize the power

that they have if they are truly your child.

And they truly have that fellowship with you to walk in the light of who you are.

And Jesus, if there is one here that, let's say, Josh, man, I think I'm in the darkness.

I need to understand what it means to be a follower of Christ.

I need to understand what it means to make Christ my Lord.

And I need to be, I need a savior.

If that's you, oh man, we're so excited. We're so excited the light has made

its way to your thick skull, and you are ready,

and God is working in you to bring you to that point of salvation.

Jesus, I pray that this friend of mine, that whoever he or she is,

would not give a care to what others think, but they would truly realize who

they are and how real eternity is.

Jesus, for my brothers and sisters.

Help understand how your

light changes everything it changes every everything we look at the way we think

about things the way we operate all of it so jesus i pray that your holy spirit

would take your word and go to town this week and do some deep cleaning,

we would walk in the light as you are in the light and confess these sins. Confess the darkness.

Please reveal the darkness in our minds and hearts.

Jesus, we love and we thank you for being that light, for allowing us to have

fellowship, this fellowship with you.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Let's stand. We're going to sing that song we learned today.

If you want to look them up on wherever, Spotify or whatever.

I posted on Facebook but the group is called, they're just three friends who

wrote it. One's a pastor in Audi somewhere.

What's it called? Leon Bryson Street? River Street, I think.

Anyway, it's on Facebook. Powerful Truth.

Man. Can you close us in prayer, Mike?

Father, we are your children. I dear fall thee, before the foundations of the earth will put in place.

It's just a sobering thought that

you called us to be your children before time

to be in and how blessed we are

that we have the opportunity to walk in

the light as you are in the light and we

all have pieces of darkness in our

life that we all need to deal with and thank you for your patience with us your

patience that just keeps pulling us along as we as we gratitate and love to

be holier and boldly to true our faith to you.

Say thank you for the work. Thanks.

So as we go into this week, may we eat a light of work as you have called us to eat.

May we be bold and truthful about this light that we walk in.

And it is the light of the work. So as we are coming,

it's a sea flight these are

coming to the end if he

ever showed bright it needs to eat now so help us and we want you to be proud

of our upper and you'll work hard for your power of your soul the spirit of

it so thank you Lord for this church that pushed on me the oppressed that you bid.

Amen have a great week .

Music.