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1 John 1, we'll be reading verses
five through 10. The world that we live in today,
and this will not be news to any of you, but the world that
we live in today is lost in seemingly greater darkness than we've experienced
in our lifetimes. I remember as a child, and maybe
I remember former days in better ways than they actually were,
and Solomon encourages us not to do that, but remember that
there was at least something of a semblance of a Christian
mindset over our culture. Honesty, hard work, commitment
to virtue, identification and awareness of who we are, as created
in the image of God, and I know, I'm not naive enough to say that
a mere 30 years ago, 40, that the world was in this great and
wonderful place, and that over the course of my life, it has
gone to the place where it is now, and that it was just these
40 years that did it. I read in history, and you see
through history a repeated pattern of people drawing close to God
as a nation and God blessing that nation and those people
sustained by the presence of God in their land and the ideals
that he incites into that country through the individuals and the
homes and the families to be diligent about their lives and
to be thoughtful about how they live here that those things lead
to prosperity. They lead to increase, they lead to advances,
they lead to things that make life better. And unfortunately, because we're
in a fallen world, and we are fallen creatures, that ease and
prosperity, it often tends to drive us away from God, allows
us to depend upon what we feel is secure, what we believe is
secure. And that then leads to us abandoning
the very things that brought us to where we were as a prosperous
and healthy and helpful nation. And today, it certainly seems
to me that we are on a particular point in history where in our
land and in many others, there's just darkness over the land,
just upside down. And I want to read to you and
I want to talk to you today about the light of God. In the darkness
of sin. The light of God in the darkness
of sin. John writes to us. 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. If we say we have fellowship
with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the
truth. But if we walk in the light as
he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood
of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin. 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. The light of God and the darkness
of sin. We live in a time and in a world
that is always overshadowed in some way by the darkness of sin. Even on the clearest day, even
on the brightest day, Even on days that we feel the presence
of God in our life and we walk through this world, there is
always a shadow of sin here. That is why the psalmist in the
23rd Psalm talked about walking through the valley of the shadow
of death. Everything is tainted by it.
There is not anything in this life and in this world that is
not in some way tainted by the shadow of sin, nothing. No human relationship, no wealth,
no prosperity, even the trees and the planet. It's overshadowed
and it has been marred by sin. And that is the very beginning
of understanding, I think, of what life and why we experience
struggle here. I believe it was Tim Binion one
time who said that all suffering can be traced to sin. There's
not a single bit of it. Now, as Job found out, some of
it is because of things we have done individually. And in Job's
case, it's because we live in a world that is impacted and
overshadowed by sin. And sin brings darkness, confusion,
and fear. And God brings light and peace
and forgiveness. And yet, John here, and 1 John,
as we just read that ninth verse that is so often quoted to the
lost, and it's good to quote it to them, To those who don't
know the Lord, I profess to you today that that verse is true,
that God is able, He desires, He is faithful and just to forgive
you of all of your sin. And if in your mind you are thinking,
even this one, this terrible thought that I had, this terrible
deed that I have committed, this horrible thing that I have done,
even that one, yes. The word all in the Greek means
all. It's not confusing. It's not
such that we can't understand what he is saying. He said very
plainly, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. And so
for you that don't know the Lord, I encourage you with that truth. God can make you clean. He can forgive you. There is
only one thing that he will not forgive. And that is the sin
against the Holy Spirit. And I believe it's essentially
when he calls to your heart and you reject him and reject him
and reject him until time is no more. I remember in Ghana
one year, it seemed like this was an ongoing conversation among
several of us and the people that we were working with there.
If you commit blasphemy, do you ever have a chance again the
rest of your life? The Spirit comes and convicts you. Can you
ever be saved if you turn Him away? This is my conviction on
the matter. I believe if you are drawing
breath today in your lungs, God has offered to you and continues
to make available to you His Son and the forgiveness of sin.
But there will be a day when you will no longer be breathing
in the air of this fallen world, and you will enter into eternity
and you must be prepared. And at that point, you must know
the Lord. This world is lost in darkness
and it is a darkness of sin. I thought about this throughout
this week and I kept thinking about the days when I was younger
in high school in Southwest Missouri, Bolivar, where in late July and
early August and that summer heat out there on two-a-day football
practices and how you could stand there with your helmet and all
your gear on and you were just as hot as you could possibly
be, and you'd look out across the field, and you'd see those
waves of heat coming off of the ground, and it just made everything
kind of shimmer. The things that I was looking
at weren't shimmering. They were not moving. But it
looked as though they were. And the hotter you got, and the
later in the practice, the more it got that way, it seemed. That's
kind of what sin does to this world. It makes it look different
than what it really is. You kind of see things here that
you think you see. And one of the things that you
think you see is certainty. You think you see things that
are worth your time and your effort. You think you see things
that are worth your confidence and your trust. Someone, something. But it has been marred by this
thing called and labeled sin. And sin is just rebellion against
God. began in heaven. Satan, as he
lifted up himself in pride and attempted, and do you not see
the insanity that sin can drive a created being to? When Lucifer
says, I believe I will take the place of God. One who saw him
like we have never seen him. in heaven and in the created
world and the created things that he saw, Satan decides, I
think I will take his place. Make no mistake, Satan is insane. He's not in his right mind. And
neither is anyone else who sees themselves as able to stand in
this life without God. Insane. Not in our right minds. The mind is broken. And it seems
to me today that society's mind as a whole is broken. It's incredible where we have
come in such a short amount of time to turn away from the truth
of God's word and turn to fables of man and turn to things that
are just silly and inconsequential. and men who sound so learned
and so aware, and men who have so many degrees behind their
name and so many initials and are declared experts, and you
listen to them and to what they conclude, and you begin to think,
am I completely mad or are they? It seems to me, honestly, that
the amount of foolishness in the world is in direct proportion
to the number of experts that are in the world. Those who think
and believe that they can look at the rock and know where that
rock came from. I've always wondered, has the
rock talked to you? Did the rock tell you how I got here? Then
are we not merely speculating? Is not so much of what we think
is accurate and true and real, is it not really just speculation
on our part? Speculation, by the way, on a
mind that is not omniscient. We don't know. And I will tell
you today, there is always going to be a place where you get to
in your life where you are going to say, I don't know. I don't
know. And you will not be able to search
the ends of the world for somebody who's going to have the ultimate
answer to the ultimate question of your life. Who am I? Why am
I here? Where am I going? That one is
God. And it's found only in His light.
Not in the darkness of sin. Not in the darkness of a world
that has lost its way. Now, John says to us, this is
the message. And this is why the world has
so much trouble today with Christianity. This is why you and I, who believe
this book, and more importantly, believe the God who wrote this
book, believe in Him, believe in what He says. This is why
the world is going to have so much trouble with you and me
today, because of statements that John just made. This is
the message. The Bible does not say this is
a message. The Bible does not say this is
this is one path that you might take to enter heaven. The Bible
does not give us multiple pathways to God. It gives us the pathway
who is Jesus Christ. Bleeding and dying on a cross
for sin, the sins of all the world. yours and mine. But the darkness of sin will
make us think and make us believe that we can find our own way
to God when it is not the message, the singular message. This is
the message. It's not that one. It's some
idea of man. And I know that there are It seems today a majority of
the learned, of the successful in the world today, that look
at this Bible in complete and total dismissal. And they look
at anyone who believes this book in the same light, just dismisses
them as foolish and silly and unlearned. But I would ask you
anytime that happens, to actually listen. and see if they actually
have anything to contradict about what the Word of God says or
if they just belittle it simply because it is what it claims
to be. This book has stood the test
of time and it will because it is God's Word. Forever, O Lord,
thy Word is settled in heaven is what the psalmist said. This
is the message And then he turns it again and he says to us that
we have heard from Him. This is the message, the singular
message, the one true message from God to man, John says, this
is it. And of course, there's this whole
scripture, the New Testament itself, and the Old Testament
as it prophesied of Christ and the New Testament as it reveals
His life and the letters and all the way to Revelation. It
expands and expounds upon this singular message. But this singular
message, all the difference in the world is made when we hear
it from God. This is the message, John says,
that we have heard from Him, from God. I heard it from the
Lord Jesus Christ, who Thomas has already looked at and bowed
and said, my Lord and my God. This is that message, the one
we have heard from Him that makes all the difference in the world.
Hearing the message of the gospel from a man is good, but it will
not get you to heaven. you must hear the message of
the gospel from God. It's the only thing that will
set you on the path to a Christian life here and a Christian eternity
there, is hearing it from God. hearing from the Holy Spirit
of God. As we pray, and as we prayed
even this morning, once again, before we came, as we tried to
finalize our preparation, God, nothing I say will matter if
your Holy Spirit does not come and move and work among us, and
we do not presume upon you, as we so often think of that valley
of dry bones that Ezekiel stood before, and as God, you ask him,
Can these bones live? And Ezekiel did not presume upon
you, and he did not doubt you. He said, You know, O Lord. They can, God, if you will raise
them. This is the message we have heard
from him. It makes all the difference in
the world. I had heard the gospel for a very, very long time, many
years before I was saved, before God spoke it to me. before I
heard it from Him, and that makes all the difference. I would want
to say it makes all the difference in the world, but that would
sell it short. It makes all the difference in
eternity, this world and the next. To hear it from God, we
don't read in the Bible about men who gave their life to God
on the testimony of someone else. We don't hear Abraham leaving
his home because somebody came by and said, you know, Abraham,
you really ought to dedicate your life to God. You really
ought to live a Christian life. That's the way to live a good
life here. You know, Abraham, I read a book
the other day about how to live your best life now. About how
to live and be a good person. About how to go through this
life and just be somebody that when you die, they think of you
and they go, boy, what a wonderful man, Abraham, you were. It's
not what the Bible says. It's not why Abraham left his
home. It's not why he left his parents and everything that was
familiar to him. He left because God had spoke
to him. And you can say the same thing
about Isaiah and Amos and all of them, Hosea and all of the
prophets of the Old Testament. You can say the same thing about
the apostles. You can say the same thing about every child
of God that you read about in the word. We have heard the message
from him. makes all the difference in the
world, and I want to tell you today that that obligates you. When you hear the message of
God from God, that obligates you. Back before the days of
Twitter and Facebook and text messages, before the days of
television, before the days of radio, before the days of man's
ability to communicate to a vast number of people at the same
time, the king would send out a herald. to announce his rules,
his dictates, to announce the things that the king wants the
people to hear. And he would send out a man,
and his job, and it was to herald, it was to proclaim the message
of the king. And when that herald came to
your town and proclaimed to you the message of God, or message,
in this sense again, of the king, and he told you what the law
was, you were under obligation to obey what that herald says,
not because of the herald, but because of the word that the
herald brought, which was the word of the king. Now listen, you don't have to
listen to me. I would encourage you not to,
if my word ever contradicts the word of God, because that is
my commission. That is what God called me to
do, and every minister and preacher of the gospel message, this word
he has given, which by the way, you have in your hands. But when
the herald spoke, when he came to any particular town, and he
spoke, and he gave the king's word, people were to obey. And you might say, boy, that
really, there's a danger there, I see. Boy, what kind of power
that herald seemed to possess, and he could just take over,
and he could say whatever he wanted to say. How can we know
for sure that what he is saying is true? And I would say, back
then, the word would get back to the king. And that herald
would have a hard time. Today I would say that as well.
One day I am going to give an account and every minister of
the gospel will too. How he handled and presented
the Word of God, the Word of the King. So you do not have to listen
to me. But I beg you to listen to him. I beg you to try what
I say. By the Word of God. untold abuse
of men and the eternal souls of men and women have been perpetrated
by men and women who are not heralds, who are not heralding
the word of the king and instead substituting in its place their
own words. May that not be true today. And
I tell you today that this is the message we have heard from
Him and proclaim to you. This message that John was proclaiming
was a message that he had heard from God, from Christ, from the
Lord. And he says, now I proclaim it
to you. I want you to understand something
today. God, as my witness, I'm not lying
to you. I'm not making up a story. I'm
not encouraging you to something that isn't real. I am not telling
you something that God has not brought to me. I am not telling
you a message of salvation that I have not walked through myself. By the mercy and the grace of
God, He saved me. And I know He did. I couldn't
at that moment tell you a number of things that perhaps today
I could tell you about it, but I knew I had found him. Peace
came. I had heard from God, not with
these ears. I had seen God, not with these
eyes, but I knew him. I had observed him. I knew what
he had done in my heart because everything had changed inwardly
in my heart from burden to peace, joy. and I am bringing to you
today that same message. I have no reason to lie to you.
I have no purpose in deceiving you. There's no advantage. There's no gain for me to tell
you some lie or some fable, or to just go through the motions.
It's not what we're trying to do here today, I pray. It's just
go through the Christian motions. This nation has been going through
the Christian motions so long, that most haven't even observed
how dark it really is. I am proclaiming to you a message
that God brought to me. And it's real. It's true. It's true. You say, how can I
know it's true? You might say to me, preacher,
I have not seen this God that you speak of. I've not seen His
light. I don't believe that He is real.
I don't believe that if He is real, that He brings any light
to the world. Maybe you've explained and not
swallowed the silly science of our day, and you refuse to believe
that something came from nothing, and that is good, and I pray
that your mind at least works that much still. You might be
of the mind and say, yes, there's a God, I don't know Him, I don't
know if He ever will know me, if He's even concerned about
knowing me, and I can tell you today, He is. I can tell you
how much He is concerned about knowing you. He sent His own
Son and placed Him on a cross to die for you. That's how much
He wants you to know Him. And He is light, and in Him there's
no darkness at all, as we have seen. That is the message. He's
light. He's revealed Himself. He has
not shrouded Himself in darkness. He has not hidden Himself from
the world. And if you are saying to yourself,
I don't know, preacher, this God you speak of, and I don't
believe He's real because I have not seen Him, I wanna ask you
a question. Are you so certain that you are
right? Are you so certain? Because you
might say that you have not seen Him, that you've not seen this
light of which I am speaking and proclaiming to you today.
And you might think this is not real because I have not seen
it. I have not experienced it. And I would ask again, can you
be so sure? It is not that God has hidden
himself from the world. It is that the world has hidden
God from you. When God has done all that He
can and all that He will to proclaim to you who He is and what He
has done and the world around us and the nature itself cries
of its Creator. Don't be so certain that you
can say, because I don't know Him, He does not exist. Those
are two different assertions. Two different things. God is light and Him is no darkness
at all. If we say so, how then, how is
it that we remain in darkness? How is it that we can't and don't
see the light of God and instead see so much of the darkness of
sin? It is this, if we say we have
fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie. Do not practice the truth. In John three, we get a little
bit of a picture of what I think he is writing here in the first
letter of his. He said in John chapter three,
the gospel, and 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. People remain in darkness. And
so long as you walk in the darkness of sin, why would you ever expect
to see the light of God? So long as we walk, in the darkness
of sin, why should we? How can we ever expect to experience
and feel and see the light of God? John is saying, look, if
we say, and he starts these five if statements in the remainder
of this section of scripture, these five, if this, then that. And the first one is, if we say
we have fellowship him while we walk in darkness, we lie and
do not practice the truth. Sometimes I wonder at our blindness
and my own silliness at times. God, I don't feel you, I don't
see you, I don't sense you like I would like. And then God in
his mercy and grace comes and reveals to me the darkness that
I am choosing to walk in. And he again says to me, why
would you expect to see my light there? Why would you expect to see me?
while you cling instead to the darkness of sin, while you instead
choose to practice sin and not practice the truth. I tell you,
whether you walk in truth or walk in sin, that will tell you
how much light and darkness you experience. It's a direct relationship
to one another many times. He goes on in 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. This is really an incredible
verse. It's really an incredible verse when you think about it.
And when you keep in mind that God is speaking that John here
is writing to believers primarily, there is a give and take and
a back and forth and a logical difficulty that sometimes we
can come up against here. We're told that in order to have
fellowship with God, we must walk in His light and not walk
in the darkness of sin. And yet here, John says, if we
walk with Him in the light, if we walk with Him, Then he will
cleanse us from all sin. That is an incredible statement
and a logical thing that must be spiritually discerned. And
we're told in Scripture that the carnal man, the natural man,
does not receive the things of God. He doesn't understand them
because they are spiritually discerned. Let me ask you this
question that lies right on the surface here. How can a man be
walking with God and yet in the present tense be being cleansed
of sin? How can sin remain while he walks
with God? And some people have this idea
that the Christian life is about being perfect, about always having
the right answer, about always being able to stand and proclaim
the love of God with a heart that is overflowing with his
love and with not an ounce of doubt, with an ounce of fear,
without an ounce of reservation or hesitation. And yet here,
John says to us that if we walk in the light, God will cleanse
us. It's all present tense. This
is what he's going to be doing for us and with us as we walk
in his light. Look, the Christian life is not
about being perfect, but it is about being perfected. It isn't
about being that perfect little boy or girl, or that perfect
preacher, or that perfect mother, that perfect father. It is about
a heart that longs to walk in the light of God. And as we do
so, the glorious result of that is that God will continue to
strip from us sin and darkness. One after the other. And as we
walk in the light of God, and His light grows brighter and
brighter in our life, do you know what He's going to do with
that? Do you know what's going to happen? He's going to allow
us to see sin that we never saw before. He's going to allow us
to see things in our life that maybe previously didn't bother
us at all. That television show that we used to watch, those
friends we used to hang around with, That language we used to
use, those books we used to read, that before didn't bother us
at all. As we walk closer to God and walk more in His light,
He shines that light upon us, and we begin to see, oh, that's
sin. And in my heart and in my mind,
we can say, honestly, God, I didn't know. It was not from a heart
of rebellion, Father, that I did that. Father, it's not from a
heart of rebellion that at moments in my life, I don't know the
answers that I would like to have. It's not, God, because
I desire to rebel against You, that sometimes I wake up in the
mornings and I don't know which way to go, and I don't know what
to do. The Christian life is not about being perfect. It's
about being perfected. And one by one, day by day, as
we walk more in the light of God, and He begins to reveal
to us more and more of the darkness that overshadows us, that we
don't even recognize and know. And He begins to cleanse us one
day at a time of one sin and the next, until one day, one day, I will not have to lay aside one
more sin. because this body will pay the
penalty that is due, death. But my soul will go to that place
where it awaits to be reunited with a body that is perfect and
pure, and you talk about light. The light of God will be experienced
in that new body like I I hope and pray from this day to my
last, I contemplate and think about and see my life here and
light of that life there that I am going to, that I know is
there, that God has told me about, that I've heard from Him. What sin has God cleansed you
of lately? What sin is God cleaning? in
your life. If you don't have an answer for
that, I'm not sure you're walking in the light. And I didn't say
I'm not sure you're not saved. I found it interesting that John
used the words, you're not practicing the truth. He didn't say you
didn't know it. He said you weren't walking in
it. So if you were to If you were
to list, if you were to keep a list in your life of the things
that God is cleaning in your heart and in your life, what
is on that list? Because the more of God that
you have, the more light you have, the more light you have
reveals more sin that still besets you. You say, but I thought living
the Christian life was about becoming a person of such holiness
and such goodness that people looked at you and wanted to bow
down and think, boy, what a wonderful Christian that person is. That's
not at all. That's not it. And I know this largely because
of what we're being told here by the apostle John, because
he talks, and again, who is he writing to? He's writing to people
who are believers, people that know God, people that have seen
His light, but yet maybe have chosen to
walk in darkness and practice darkness and cling to the darkness
of sin. And in their life, more and more
clouds of sin and oppression come and hang over them. And
John says, this is going to be the case so long as you choose
to walk in the darkness of sin. But if you don't, and you walk
in God's light, as He is in the light, let me tell you this,
you can't walk with God and not walk in light at the same time.
It's not possible. It's this perfecting of a child
of God that John is after here. to make us understand that as
we walk with Him, we have fellowship with one another, the blood of
Jesus, His Son cleanses us. As we walk with Him, He is cleaning
us and continuing to clean us. And one day, He's gonna separate
us from this body of sin, this tabernacle of flesh, this tent,
this temporary dwelling. And He's gonna give us a new
one. He's going to give us a new one for us to dwell in. Man is man as he was created
in the original state, and he'll be man like that, I believe,
in eternity as well. He is perfecting us, drawing
us to him. Walking in the light, and we
just want to hit a few things here as we work towards the close. Walking in the light includes
confession of sin. That's how we do it. If we confess
our sins, verse nine, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
And here it is again, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. When you get saved, you begin
a journey from here to eternity. And your life here is measured
by days and weeks, months, perhaps years. God knew the number of
my days when on January 11, 1973, I came into the world. He knew
exactly how many days, He knew how many hours, He knew how many
seconds He was going to give me here. But from the moment
I was 11 years old and got saved, from that moment until that last
second of my life, I had the opportunity to walk in light,
in the light of God, or in the darkness of sin. And if we walk in the light of
God, we will confess our sins. He knows them. And we confess
them and we name them to Him so that we don't hide them from
ourselves. We confess our sins to God so
that we do not hide them from ourselves. God, help me to walk
more and more in Your light, not in the darkness of sin. And
Father, for me to do that, I know it is time for me to confess
my sin to You, and You will cleanse me, Father, from all unrighteousness. Day by day, as Your light shines
greater, and as I read Your Word and see in Your Word, and it
reflects back to me and mirrors to me Your perfect Son, and then
it shows me where I yet lack. You help me, Father, and can
cleanse me even from those things that that light continues to
reveal. Let's say it a different way,
verse nine, if we do not confess our sins. If we do not confess our sins,
He will not be faithful and just, not because He can't be, but
because He has given you and I a role to play. You're not
a robot and you know it. You're not. God has given you
a place and a role to play here. Walking in sin is a walk in the
dark. It's why the world won't make
any sense to you if you walk in it long enough. It's why everyone who's tried
to find purpose in this life through the things of the world,
and specifically the sin of the world that blankets our society,
It's why when they get to the end of that road, they're just
as lost as they can be. Because they're in complete and
total darkness. And you know what, if you're in complete darkness,
it doesn't matter whether your eyes are open or not. Doesn't
matter whether you're looking for it at that point. It'll just be darkness. Jesus
said, those who do not know him, he speaks of them more than any
other person in the New Testament. Jesus speaks of hell and that
place that those who deny him and rebel and reject him will
go. And he says, it's outer darkness. You'll open your eyes there and
you might look for light and you won't see any. Now I want to say this, the greatest
sin, said it before, others have as well, the greatest sin, what
would it be? Well, certainly it seems logical
and rational to think that the greatest sin would be to break
the greatest commandment, the one that was most important in
all of scripture. And we know what that is. Jesus
said, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Now, some might say, well, that's a very selfish God. That's an
unloving God. To ask us to love Him beyond
all other things, to ask us to forsake everything to follow
Him in the fallen mind of man, He will judge God unrighteous
in this command. He will say, God, you are unjust
for your command for me to love you with all of myself, that
there's not room, Father, for me to love others before you,
that you must be first. And there is a world of Christianity
today, and sadly, there are many behind pulpits today that will
tell you God is satisfied if you just add Him to your life
in some small way. Show up to church on Sunday. Write your check for 10%. Be
nice. Provide for your family. Do all
of those things and God is satisfied. And they do not proclaim to you
the truth of the word of God, which this is the greatest commandment. Jesus says, love me with all
of your heart. And now I want to tell you this
about that. Is that not exactly what a loving
God would do? to tell you to love Him with
everything, because He knows that if you love anything else,
you will be in darkness. Isn't that the loving thing that
a loving God would do? It is no tyrant who asks you
to love. It is not a God who simply wants
to torture you, that calls you to obedience even in the midst
of struggle. It is a God who loves you and
this is exactly what a loving God would do to call you to the
light that is in himself and the rejection of the sin that
easily besets and casts darkness over our lives and confusion
in our hearts and in our minds. The light of God and the darkness
of sin, that's our choice every day,
every moment, every hour. Am I gonna walk in the light of
God? Or am I gonna walk in the darkness of sin? Am I gonna walk
in the counsel of God's word? Or am I gonna walk in the darkness
of the counsel of men? Am I gonna cling to God with
all of my heart, mind, soul, and strength, and live in the
light of His love and in His presence, even in the midst of
terrible time here, struggles and trials? Am I going to count
them as more precious than gold? Am I going to walk with him and
experience greater light? Or will I choose my own path
and turn down my own path that leads to darkness? I pray that
you choose the light of God. I pray that if He is dealing
with you today, that you would seek Him until you find Him,
until you can tell me and others, I know Him. And then you too
can say, this is the message that I proclaim to you, that
I've heard from Him. I've heard it from Him. Now,
I'll close with this. As I spoke earlier of the herald, You ought not listened to me
merely because I'm a herald. You should listen to me because
I pray that what has been said is the Word of God. And if it's
the Word of God, then that does obligate you to respond. And
I would ask you this. You standing before the Lord
Jesus Christ one day out there in the future, it may be far.
It may be near. It may be when you're 90. It
may be yet today. You're standing before him. And you say to him that you had
turned away. You say to him and begin to make
excuse. You will be without words when
he says to you. But I sent my herald. I sent my herald. and even in
his imperfection, even in the imperfections that you could
count in that herald. He wasn't eloquent enough, he
wasn't convincing enough, he wasn't persuasive enough, he
wasn't holy enough, he wasn't good enough looking, he wasn't
impressive enough. God's gonna say, but he was my
herald and he told you the truth. It's gonna happen someday. I pray you're ready for it, that
God will convict your heart with his word, draw you close to him,
that you would repent and believe the gospel for you and for God's
glory and his honor.
The Light Of God And The Darkness Of Sin
| Sermon ID | 53212152587574 |
| Duration | 48:47 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | 1 John 1:5-10 |
| Language | English |
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