Let's turn in our Bibles in the New Testament to 1 John 1. 1 John 1. We will be in verses 5-10 of this first chapter in John's first epistle, his first letter that we have. And the sermon today is titled, very simply, God's Light and Our Darkness. God's Light and Our Darkness. I want to have a very simple and short and sweet review from last week simply by reading the first four verses which we covered last week. As we remember how John opens describing his encounter, the Apostle's encounter, in person over a long period of time with the eternal Word of Life made flesh. Verses 1-4 say, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest and we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the father and was made manifest to us. 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 or some manuscripts have so that your joy may be complete and so as he has just introduced the topic of how the gospel, the gospel of the apostles passed on and proclaimed creates fellowship, not only among God's people, but with God himself. And with that eternal word of God, the father, that eternal life made flesh forever now, Jesus Christ, his son. As he has introduced that topic of fellowship, now he's going to talk about who God is and thus what fellowship with Him actually is and is not. And who can actually claim to be a part of that fellowship? What does that fellowship look like in its dynamics in our everyday Christian experience? You know, just quickly, fellowship is one of those words that Christians use in a lot of different ways and sometimes becomes shorthand, becomes just an understood phrase because we've used it in certain ways so long. And sometimes some Christians, especially in some circles, will talk about how maybe They have had a time of more struggle with sin and more spiritual coldness, not being as close to their Heavenly Father as they should have been. They might talk about that as being out of fellowship with Him, and then getting back in fellowship with Him. That's when they make things right with the Lord, they draw closer to Him again in better fellowship, better harmony with their God and their Father. So people will talk about being, while they are true Christians, being falling in and out of fellowship with God sometimes. But understand the way John is using these concepts and words, that's not the way he uses the word fellowship. As I think you'll see and as becomes more evident then the further we go in the whole book of 1 John, really when he says, you have fellowship with God, he means you have this eternal life in common with the one who is eternal life. Fellowship, holding something in common in a common mutual union. He's talking about fellowship as another way of describing the Christian life period. Having life, eternal life with God. Now, as we'll see, the Christian experience is filled with ups and downs in our relationship to God. But for John to say you're out of fellowship in this context would mean you don't know God. It would mean you have nothing in common with God. So when he said, he's about to talk about fellowship, if we say that we have fellowship but act this way, it's not true. Understand, he's talking about fellowship as a synonym, a similar word, for the reality of sharing eternal life with God the Father and his Son. So we need to be careful about that as we enter our sermon text here. Now, let's read verses five through 10 as we encounter God's light and our darkness. This is the message we have heard from him. Heard from who? You should not just be reading along, kind of leery-eyed and not really catching it. This is the message we have heard from him. Who is that? Well, who's he just been talking about? This is the message we have heard from the word of life, the eternal life with the father from the beginning, God's son who became flesh, Jesus Christ. All right. So this is the message we have heard from God's son, Jesus Christ, and proclaim to you that God is light. And in him is no darkness at all. That's very emphatic in the original language. the way it's it's worded it's it's almost like we would think a double negative but there's none at all no darkness at all in him verse six if we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness we lie and do not practice the truth or could say we do not do the truth would be a good but clunkier translation Verse seven, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. Foundational, crucial New Testament texts from John the Apostle, 1 John 1, 5-10. So the big idea is that through his son, through his son, God brings sinners into his light and truth. That's what God is up to. That is what God is all about through his son, sending his son into the world and having his son proclaim to you. Even today, through his son, God brings sinners into his light and truth. That's different than the emphasis, which many might hear from some version of Christianity. Maybe that emphasis might sound something more like through his son, God frees sinners from the penalty they would otherwise pay for their sins. That's very true. But that's not all. Or you might say, through his son, God, to put it more crassly, to bring out the imbalanced or even false teaching, through his son, you might say, God gives sinners a get out of hell free card. No one would ever actually say that, saying, that's what I preach. But that's what some people preach. With the emphasis being all on, we get everything we want by escaping what we don't like, judgment. But then we're free to do our own thing. God would like us to then do better in life, to be more like him. But that's really up to you. doesn't matter for being a Christian it can be implied sometimes now again we never even once we have become a Christian by faith alone in Christ alone we never then start to add in our works as some way to keep God's favor to stay his child or something don't go there but John is simply going to talk now about the reality of someone who really is a child of God, who has really come to know God and is in fellowship with Him, who really has eternal life. If that's real, certain things are and are not going to be true of them. That's just the way it is. You can't encounter the living God and live in a real relationship with Him and remain the way you always were, naturally. Through his Son, God brings sinners into his light and truth. Let's talk about fellowship with the light in the first half of this, verses five through seven. Fellowship with the light. According to Jesus, verse five, God is light without any darkness. That's the message we heard from Jesus Christ, God's Son, who came to reveal the Father. According to Jesus, God is light without any darkness. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. Now the same apostle who later in the same letter writes, God is love. First writes here, God is light. So we don't get to separate the love that God is from the light that he is. His love is not a dark twisted love that hides the truth or sweeps it under the rug. And if someone were to start denying that God is love, that would be an equally horrible thing to do. But also, don't downplay the fact that God is light. And so His love is not like our love. Our love is a very corrupt thing. unless God changes it. Our loves, I should say, the way we express love or experience it, if we're left in our natural state, if we're not conformed to God's image and the way he loves, if we just say God is love, we can get a very wrong picture of God. Well, if he's love, then he'll just accept me for who I am and leave me that way. No, that's not what that means. God is light and love. Now, what does it mean, God is light? I think we intuitively immediately get some of it. Joel Beakey puts it this way. Often in scripture, the term light signifies purity, life-giving power, glory, wisdom, or knowledge. And darkness often signifies ignorance, evil, corruption, and death. It is often connected to Satan as the prince of darkness and to the darkness of men's hearts by nature. So naturally, under Satan's sway and under the enslavement of corrupt hearts, we are in the dark. That means we are hardened in ignorance of God and what is really true about God and His world, to a degree. So there's that idea of darkness hiding the truth, and then there's also darkness meaning the blackness of moral impurity. And the two concepts can't really be separated from each other completely. But, as Joel Beakey goes on to say, in God there are no dark corners. This is what he's saying that John is saying. In God there are no dark corners, no shadows, no moral inconsistencies. God is eternally and implacably opposed to sin. His eyes are too pure to look upon sin. He sees every wicked way in us. That thought frightens us, for many of us want a God who will let us live as we please. We want a God who is benign, who will never interfere, who will stand on the sidelines. But the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is pure and holy. He will not tolerate wickedness." End of quote. I think we can also, very simply, again, get this picture of both, of the light as both goodness and truth, and darkness as the opposite of all that. We can get that from something else the Apostle John wrote, the Gospel of John, as he is, it seems, well, some say at this point he's still quoting Jesus, some say at this point John the Apostle is just writing himself, but John chapter three, verses 19 through 21 says, And this is the judgment. Speaking of how God just spoke about how God sent his only begotten son into the world, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. And it said more about that, but he says, this is the judgment. The light has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his work should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. You see, goodness and truth are inseparable, ultimately. If we do what is good, we're living according to God's truth, what is really true. If we're doing evil deeds, it's because we're living by lies. So, again, both those concepts for darkness and light. So according to Jesus, God is light without any darkness. So naturally, this is what John says next in verse six. Despite contrary claims, despite what people might say, walkers in darkness have no true fellowship with God. Walkers in darkness, those who walk in darkness, have no true fellowship with God. And again, he's using this very common Word picture, it was just an idiom in the ancient world and in Hebrew especially. Walking just means your lifestyle, who you eventually are in your character. This is how you walk, this is how you live. It's not talking about something that may be true just momentarily here or there. This is your walk, this is your lifestyle, this is your pattern in life. So it says, verse six, if we say we have fellowship with God, with Him, while we walk in darkness, we're living in the dark, we lie and do not practice the truth or do not do the truth. We don't act the truth out in our lives. Now I'm gonna park here a little bit because scripture emphasizes this with good reason all over the place. Psalm 15 verse 15, verse one through five. Oh Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? That is who can approach God in his sanctuary and his holy presence and have a closeness to him. He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart. who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend, in whose eyes a vile person is despised. You know, we're supposed to, in one sense, despise vile people, because God does. Not denying our love, our Christ-like love for the lost, but we also need to hate what God hates. In whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord, who swears to his own hurt and does not change. He keeps his word even if it harms him. Who does not put out his money and interests. In the law of Moses, they weren't supposed to charge fellow Israelites interests. That was mistreating each other. And does not take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things shall never be moved. Or Psalm 24 verses three through six. Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place, again, that close contact with the Holy One. He who has clean hands and a pure heart, meaning clean actions and a pure soul, you could say. Who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Or let's turn together to Psalm 50. Psalm 50. Starting in verse 16 of Psalm 50. God has summoned His people to hear what He has to say to them, and first He encourages His people to not just offer token, surface-level worship to Him, but to really trust in Him and call upon Him in the day of trouble, and He will deliver His people so that they may glorify Him. But then God turns to those in the congregation of Israel whose heart is not with Him, who do not really have fellowship with Him. Psalm 50 verse 16, but to the wicked, God says, what right have you to recite my statutes or take my covenant on your lips as if they were part of his covenant people really to say, well, I have a right relationship with God through the covenant he made with our people. He says, what right have you to do that or cite my statutes and take my covenant on your lips? Verse 17, for you hate discipline and you cast my words behind you. If you see a thief, you're pleased with him and you keep company with adulterers. You give your mouth free reign for evil and your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother. You slander your own mother's son. These things you have done, and I have been silent. You thought that I was one like yourself, but now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you. Mark this then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart and there be none to deliver. Like a lion would tear apart its prey. Verse 23, the one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me. Meaning he doesn't just go through the motions of the outward temple sacrifices, for instance, but he really has a thankful heart towards me and lives like it. He offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice. That's the one who glorifies me. To one who orders his way rightly, I will show the salvation of God. One more text in the Old Testament. Proverbs 6, verse 12. Notice, again, how the Word of God places, makes a special link between wickedness and falsehood. Not living according to the truth. Proverbs 6, starting in verse 12. A worthless person, a wicked man, goes about with crooked speech. Winks with his eyes, signals with his feet, points with his fingers. So it's going through the anatomy in a poetic way. of this person who is always, he's shifty, he's worthless and wicked, he says crooked things and then everything else indicates his deviousness. Verse 14, with perverted heart he devises evil, continually sowing discord. Therefore, calamity will come upon him suddenly. In a moment, he will be broken beyond healing. There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him." Now, that doesn't mean this is a complete list of all the things God hates, but it's placing special emphasis. Count up six, even seven things. I know that's five, but count it up. These seven things are some things that God especially hates. There's 17. haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers. So let me pause here and say, as we're trying to be specific and not just general and vague about this concept of walking in darkness, Know this, whether you're an attendee or a member of Hope Reformed Baptist Church. And no, there's not something going on that I'm shooting at from the pulpit. I'm just trying to make sure you know this biblical concept, okay? Neither our church attendance or membership, nor our other religious activities, prove that we're walking, living a lifestyle in the light of God. Our everyday actions are the evidence. And remember, John's special emphasis on how God's light is the light of both righteousness and truth. So if you're a devious person, if you're a person who spiritually likes the dark, you have no friendship, you have no harmony, no fellowship with God. We have to soberly compare our religious claims to our actual lives and we have to get specific. Are you habitually honest and straightforward in your relationship to your spouse and to your parents, kids, to your other family members, to your children, parents? Are you habitually honest and straightforward with your spiritual family in the church or with your authorities or your peers anywhere? Or do you have an agenda of darkness? So again, you say, what do you mean? Darkness meaning dishonesty and falsehood, or darkness meaning moral evil in general? Well, both, because you can't have one without the other. That said, if you walk around in the darkness, if you're at home in the dark, but you say you're a Christian reconciled to God, you're lying. That's just what John says here in our sermon text. You're lying. You're not practicing or doing the truth. You're living a lie. And you need to know that and own up to it. That's why famously Jesus warned against not only false prophets in Matthew 7, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves, and you'll recognize them by their fruits. Healthy tree can't bear bad fruit. A diseased tree can't bear good fruit. But not only does he warn against false prophets, he warns against false professors of Christianity in general. Matthew 7, verse 21, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, acting as if they know me personally as their Lord. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father, who is in heaven. You'll be able to tell God's children by if they actually want to obey him. On that day, that day of judgment, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name? Didn't we do a lot of stuff that showed real religion and power for you? And we thought we had your power to do it. Then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. Doesn't matter how many religious activities you pile up, if you don't really care about God's specific commands and obeying them, you don't belong to him. You don't have fellowship with him. You're in darkness. But, and John is gonna keep flipping from the negative to the positive, from the bad news to the good news here. That helps us. We move on to verse seven in our text. Walkers in God's light, have fellowship with his people, and cleansing by Jesus' blood. And this hints at something that John will develop next also. Walking in the light doesn't mean I'm perfect or mostly perfect and free from sin. But it means I'm not hiding from God in the dark, just loving sin. If we walk in the light, but if we walk in the light, verse seven, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. And the blood of Jesus, his son cleanses us from all sin. Colin Cruz in his, in his commentary says, um, when he, he examines how it says, then we have fellowship with one another. He says to put it another way, there is no real fellowship with God that is not expressed in fellowship with other believers. It would appear from what is to come later in this letter that this unexpected statement about the consequence of walking in the light is made to rule out the claim of the secessionists, those who were leaving the church to do their own thing religiously. It was to counter their claim and rule it out when they say that they have fellowship with God, but they're not sharing fellowship with other believers. And that's important. He could have said it a different way if he was talking about If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with him. See, but he again said, as he does throughout this letter, he says, you can't separate fellowship with God totally from fellowship with his people. There's a connection there. So if we walk in the light, if we are people who love the light, and when we sin, as we'll see, we let, we confess it. We bring it into the light. If we walk in the light as God is in the light, then we really have Christian fellowship with each other. It works then. And the blood of Jesus, his son cleanses us from all sin. His blood cleanses us. That should have bells go off in your head. If you know the Bible at all, harks back to that old Testament wording of blood atonement by priestly sacrifice, right? His blood, the blood cleanses us. priests made all those sacrifices to, in some sense, at least ceremonially, cleanse the worshipers from their sins. But those blood atonements by priestly sacrifice all pointed, of course, to what Jesus has now perfectly accomplished once for all by his blood. He's the sacrificial lamb of God who takes away sin, and he's the great high priest who made atonement by the sacrifice of himself, by his own blood. If we walk in the light, and we're going to notice in the light our sins, there is a perfect answer to our sins. We don't have to hide it. We can deal with it. Or rather, someone else has dealt with it. Jesus' blood has dealt with it and deals with it. If we want to get very specific here, when it says, And the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. It's very important, at least in the Greek language, it's important. That word for cleanses is in the present tense. It's talking about a present, usually ongoing thing. It's kind of viewing it as something that's happening right before your eyes, ongoing. So this seems to be talking about someone who's already a believer, who's already in Christ, already in fellowship with God. It's talking about the ongoing reality right now in their Christian life. They've already been justified, declared righteous by God, but as they keep walking in the light, in fellowship with God and his people, Jesus' blood keeps working on them. It keeps cleaning them, cleansing them, purifying them from their defilement that remains. As Matthew Henry says, his blood procures for us those sacred influences by which sin is to be subdued more and more till it is quite abolished. And it's worth noting that it says it cleanses us from all sin. So as Donald Burdick says, there is no sin, whatever its nature or degree, that is beyond the cleansing power of the blood of God's Son. And believers can sin in horrible ways. I'm not encouraging that, and the Apostle John's not encouraging that. He's about to say at the beginning of the next sermon text, chapter two, I'm writing these things so you don't sin. But if we sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. But understand, believers can, and this should make you tremble with fear, believers can sin in horrible ways. Because we all have remaining wickedness in us. Walking in the light does not mean we are sinless, as he's about to say. But there is no sin which you dare say, well, it's just too much. Jesus' blood can't deal with that. It can't clean me up. I'm too defiled. I can't be forgiven. No, if you say that, you don't understand. You're taking way too lightly what Jesus did on the cross. Again, as Colin Crews says, by John's use of the present tense for the verbs to walk and to purify. The author represents both the walking and the cleansing as continuous activities. One lesson that may be learned is that walking in the light does not mean that those who do so never sin, but that they do not seek to hide that fact from God. They walk in the light with him and the result of their doing so is that the blood of his son Jesus purifies them from their sins. That brings us to verses 8 through 10 confession of sins. Confession of sins. Verse 8, this we can very simply address before moving on, to deny our sin is to lie to ourselves. And it seems quite likely that some of the false teachers and false systems of religion in the area of Asia Minor, where John was probably writing, it seems very likely that they, in various ways, were denying the sinfulness of sin. or denying that Christians really sin in God's sight anymore, or something. We don't know exactly what the teaching was. There's various theories. But there's been, there were various, various false teachings about that. Then there have been many more throughout church history. There's been the false teaching that you can reach Christian perfection in this life where you don't actually have any sin anymore. Maybe some weaknesses, but not actually sin anymore. that's possible to attain in this life as a Christian. That was from the Wesleyan holiness tradition. And there have been other things that some of the Gnostic false teachings would redefine things so that, well, the whole goal of Gnostic salvation was often to get free of all that's material and physical and just become purely spiritual. So if I do things with my material body, it doesn't matter anyway. God doesn't care about that. What's happening inside that you can't see is all that matters. So things I do with my body, some radical Gnostics taught, isn't really sin. There can be all kinds of ways to lie to ourselves about our sin. And much less complicated than what I was just talking about. we simply won't admit that, well, that's just my personality, that's not really sinful, it's just who I am, I can't help it. Or, well, we know deep down that we're guilty, but we'd rather just hold out and not admit it at all and just say, they're the ones who sinned against me, they all need to get that right. I didn't do anything wrong. And we could go on, but verse eight says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. It's a very serious statement. I'll focus on it more when we find the parallel statement in verse 10 later. The truth is not in us. That's a very absolute statement from John. God's truth is not inside us at all. If we, if we can say that, and that's just our, our approach to life, I don't have sin. But again, the good news, verse nine, to confess our sins, to confess our sins is to be assured of God's forgiveness and cleansing. Verse nine, if we confess, again, that's the present tense. So probably an ongoing activity viewed as an ongoing activity. It's our habit as Christians. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Verse 9 actually expands on the concepts in verse 7, you'll notice. Now, ongoing habitual confession of sins means owning up to them as being sins, right? Calling them what they are in light of God's truth. I bring it into the light. I'm not afraid to see it for what it is and admit it. And you're not flippant about it. If you see it for what it really is, it's going to give you sorrow and grief over your sin. Okay? We confess to God, and often also we confess to others, depending on the sphere of our offense. If we've sinned publicly, we confess publicly. If we sin against others privately, we confess to them privately. But we can't claim to confess our sins if we pray a quick prayer about them, but won't admit our wrongdoing to other people who already know about it or need to know about it. Now, certainly there are sins of the heart that we need only confess to God. Even then, though, we can often find spiritual strength by appropriately describing besetting sins to trustworthy Christian friends. That's part of Christian fellowship and helping each other. So how privately or publicly we should deal with our sin can be an entire subject on its own, of course. But the big point here is that we confess. We own up. We own up to our remaining wickedness. And we don't do that vaguely. We do it specifically. We include specific instances of our sin. I think there are a lot of Christians who are fine making a general statement that, yeah, I know I'm still a sinner. I know I've still sinned. but ask them to admit to any specific instance of sin and their pride rears up and they're much slower to do that. So we're not trying to minimize, if we're these people who confess their sins, we're not trying to minimize or rationalize our sin. We're not trying to blame shift and we're not trying to deny our guilt. We seek to reconcile with God and man by confessing how we've mistreated them. We own up to our guilt with remorse and repentance. And we don't hope that by ignoring our own sin, everyone else will just forget about it and move on. Don't do as my mother tells me she did in her childhood, at least once. As I recall her telling it, She locked herself in the bathroom as a little girl, so her mother, in hot pursuit, couldn't immediately spank her. The sad thing is that it worked. My grandma seemingly forgot about it by the time my mom came out again as a little girl. Now, thankfully, the Lord made first my mother, then her mother, new people in Christ, but that's another story for another time. But don't miss the point. Don't just try to ignore your own sin or run and hide until everyone forgets about it. And some people act like God's gonna forget about it if they just keep living their life. Well, that happened so long ago. God understands. Even if others forget, God won't. And by the way, don't encourage a family culture or a church culture in which real forgiveness and reconciliation get replaced with something much worse. Replaced with the exhausting pitiful cycle of evil being swept under the rug. The elephant in the room, the sin in the camp is simply ignored as much as possible. That's not forgiveness. That's an atmosphere of darkness and evasion. It's a recipe for spiritual disaster. Now remember as well, though we must never neglect confessing to people we've wronged, that's not the most important confession. We can't delay to confess to God. We need to seek him out in sincere prayer and let nothing distract or dissuade us from going to God. If you don't know this or just haven't thought about it much, you need to know this. This is a basic habit of the Christian life. and one which the most mature Christian will need to call himself or herself back to all the time. We'll slide away from it little by little. You go to God. First of all, you're thoughtful enough as a Christian that you notice how you're sinning against God. You recognize your offenses and you go to God quickly. If you want to be close with God, you don't let things stand in the way, pile up. That's a big part of Christian prayer, the practice of Christian prayer. Psalm 32, verses one through six says, blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. Here's that emphasis again. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord. And you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Therefore, let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found. Surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him. Notice David there, the psalmist, calls those who sin and need forgiveness, godly. You can be godly people walking in the light and you will still sin, all the time, in a sense. You will sin quite regularly, and the more godly you are, the more sensitive you'll be to your sin, so you see More sins than you ever noticed before in you. That actually is a sign of progress. You're getting somewhere, okay? It says, if we confess our sins, 1 John 1, 9, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Colin Cruz again. God forgives their sins, his people's sins, and he purifies them from all unrighteousness. God's forgiveness means that he no longer holds people's sins against them. He cancels their debt, as it's called in Matthew 6 and Matthew 18. It's a debt with God that he forgives. He no longer holds it against them. And then he says God's purifying them from all unrighteousness. like he said in chapter 1 verse 7 he purifies it purifies cleanses us from all sin that means that he removes the defilement that their sins had produced so that's two things the relationship is what it ought to be again in the sense of forgiveness god smiles on you even as a father he he he will not bring that sin up again it's done he doesn't hold it against you they keep working with you so you don't keep doing the same sins the same way over time but you're forgiven as his child and then the second thing is that purification he keeps cleaning you up cleansing you from all unrighteousness but it's very important how john words this He doesn't just say, if we confess our sins, God does forgive us and cleanse us. He says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to do those things, to forgive and cleanse. Faithful, God is faithful. As I said earlier in the service, he keeps faith, he keeps his promises to forgive repentant sinners. His promises to sinners are true. If you believe that God is light, you must believe that his promises to sinners are true. You think he's lying to you now? That he's gonna forgive you? Really forgive you? So when you're tempted, when you're tempted to wallow in guilty despair and not ask God's forgiveness, get your focus off of yourself, off of your own unworthiness. Because the issue is not, the issue is not whether God will forgive such a loathsome, backsliding, repeat offender as you. The real crucial question is whether God will keep his own promise never to turn away a sinner who confesses his sin and pleads for cleansing in Jesus' blood. God, the faithful God, will delight to keep his promise to the most wretched sinner because it glorifies him and it honors his son who shed his blood for this. For God to turn away the repentant sinner, or even to be reluctant to forgive us, would be for God's promises to be exposed as lies. It would be for God who is light to turn wicked. So don't you hide in the shadows or just sulk and think, well, God doesn't really like me now. It's not worth talking to him about it. You don't know your God and your Father. Isaiah 55, 6 to 9, one of the most encouraging texts in all scripture. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord that he may have compassion on him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. That's a categorical promise. He will abundantly pardon if you go to him. For, God says, my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. You may be reluctant to forgive, not me, God says. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Now, not only is God faithful to forgive us of our confessed sins, but he is just to do so. He is righteous and just. See, when God forgives repentant sinners and continues to have fellowship with them, that doesn't mean he's violating his own righteousness. He's not mixing some darkness with his own light. He's not just turning a blind eye to sin, refusing to call it what it is, or refusing to righteously condemn it in punishment. But as John has already said, Jesus' bloody death on the cross utterly dealt with the sins God forgives. God does not permissively or arbitrarily decide not to punish your sin, believer. You can't just act, you can't just ask him to act like it never happened. That's not what you're doing when you're asking for forgiveness. Instead, God has already carried out justice on your sins when his son bore his condemnation, his curse in your place. That's what Jesus' blood is about. That's why Jesus' blood was shed, to deal with your sins. So that, as Paul says in Romans 3, verse 26, it was to show His righteousness at the present time. The fact that Jesus' bloody death on the cross was put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that God might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. God made a way, the only way, which is the cross, to be perfectly holy and righteous and just and yet justify you, call you righteous in his sight when you are not righteous. That's the gospel. So in light of all these wonderful truths, I turn to Psalm 25. I encourage you to also. Psalm 25. The whole Psalm. Here is the heart of a believer walking in the light while confessing and needing forgiveness of sin. Listen to how David, the psalmist, expresses himself here. He's walking in the light while confessing and needing to be forgiven of sin. Verse one of Psalm 25. To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. Oh, my God, in you I trust. Let me not be put to shame. Let not my enemies exalt over me. Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame. They shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous. Make me to know your ways, O Lord. Teach me your paths. You see, this is his constant prayer to the Lord. Verse five, lead me in your truth and teach me for you are the God of my salvation. For you, I wait all the day long. Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions. According to your steadfast love, remember me for the sake of your goodness, O Lord. He's focusing on the fact that God is faithful. though David is sinful. Verse eight, good and upright is the Lord. Therefore he instructs sinners in the way. It's because of God's goodness that he, that he has a relationship with sinners. Verse nine, he leads the humble in what is right and teaches the humble his way. All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies. For your namesake, oh Lord, pardon my guilt for it is great. Who is the man who fears the Lord? Him will he instruct in the way that he should choose. His soul shall abide in well-being, and his offspring shall inherit the land. The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant. My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he will pluck my feet out of the net, out of the traps that are set for me. Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged. Bring me out of my distresses. Consider my affliction and my trouble. and forgive all my sins. Consider how many are my foes, and with what violent hatred they hate me. Oh, guard my soul and deliver me. Let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in you. May integrity and uprightness preserve me, for I wait for you. Redeem Israel, oh God, out of all his troubles. There's one verse. back in our sermon text, verse 10, to address. Earlier in verse eight, John said, to deny our sin is to lie to ourselves. Now he says in verse 10, that to deny our sins is to call God a liar. Verse 10, if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. His word is not in us. That's a stark statement. It means God's words of truth find no place in those who would deny their own sinfulness. He is light and they dwell in darkness. There's a few other texts listed that I'm not touching for sake of time. But when Jesus said something similar in the Gospel of John chapter five, he was clearly addressing unbelievers. John says here, if we say that we've not sinned, we make God a liar and his word is not in us. Jesus said, John chapter five, verse 37. And the father who sent me has himself borne witness about me, his voice, you, you Jewish religious leaders who are opposing me, his voice, you have never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you. For you do not believe the one who he has sent. search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life and it is they that bear witness about me yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life so it's a serious thing if god's word is not in us that means we don't believe him we don't have faith in him so in conclusion again the big idea through his son god brings sinners into his light and truth so what So will you trust in His Son, whose blood was shed that sinners could be forgiven and cleansed to walk in God's light? And will you trust Him enough to call your specific sins what they are? As God says to us in Proverbs 28, 13, whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. Let's pray together. Father, help us to walk in the light as you were in the light. And I pray for some here who have never stepped into the light. Maybe they considered it. But those who do not yet have fellowship with you and have eternal life with you, which is to know you, Father, and your son whom you've sent. Please bring people who are outside in the dark, bring them inside into the light and into fellowship with you. And for we who are in fellowship with you, help us to have great joy knowing that yes, we are sinners, but we are in fellowship with you nonetheless, and you will cleanse us from all our sins. Help us to persevere in the, in the task of confessing and being forgiven of and cleansed from our sins. We ask this in Jesus name. Amen.