1 John 2 - Walking in the Light
Tom Shrader begins this study of 1 John by establishing the foundational truth that Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh - the Word of life who was from the beginning. He emphasizes that John writes as an eyewitness to Christ, having heard, seen, and handled Him personally. Shrader challenges believers to find their purpose and meaning in the person of Jesus Christ rather than in worldly pursuits, and warns against nine specific ways Christians can remain in spiritual darkness despite their faith.
“If a holy God coming to live on this earth in a body as human, just as human as yours and mine, if that doesn't blow your mind, then it's either too new to you or it's just too familiar to you.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: 1 John
Recorded: January 12, 1989
Duration: 40 min
Themes: light, darkness, freedom, guilt, despair, sin, hope, purpose, struggling with guilt, feeling hopeless, new believer, searching for purpose, dealing with sin, spiritual confusion, questioning faith, mature christian
Scripture: 1 John 1:1-4, John 1:1, John 1:2, John 1:14, Matthew 5:48, Colossians 1:17, Philippians 2
Theological Themes: incarnation, deity of christ, sanctification, walking in light, spiritual darkness, eyewitness testimony, christology, biblical authority
Full Transcript
Just by way of review this week, we did something that we hadn't done. Obviously, we haven't done it in a long time because we haven't started a book in a year, but even when we were starting books, we did something that was not typical for us. We spent the entire week last week in introduction. We took 45 minutes to look at what it is John's got to say, who He's talking to, and why He's saying it.
Let me just refresh your memory, so we've got a starting point. He started by saying this: I want to give you freedom. Now, there's nobody in our day and age that doesn't want freedom. We want freedom. We fight for freedom. Many of you have gone to war to keep America free and for the freedom we have here, and we thank you for that. I'm a patriotic citizen, and I served in the National Guard. I admire you guys that laid it on the line. But for freedom, we want freedom. John said, I want to give you freedom too. It's found in a person, but He said, I want to talk about the four kinds of freedoms that I'm going to give you.
Four Kinds of Freedom
Let me remind you. John said, I'm going to give you freedom from despair. We live in a world that is pretty dark, and you can get pretty cynical and pretty frustrated and pretty hopeless. And look at the problem and say, the problem is so big, not only am I hopeless, I'm really helpless. I mean, I could work and work and work, and I couldn't make a dent in this problem.
Most of us, let's be honest, have a tendency to go through that process in our mind. We'll identify a problem, whatever it might be, and we say, well, I can't solve the problem. So, since I can't solve everything, I won't do anything. And we get pretty cynical and we begin to despair. John said, I'm going to give you freedom from despair, as we talk about this person.
He said, also, I'm going to give you freedom from guilt. There's nobody that's walked around on this earth for any length of time that doesn't know that man is prone to sin. I constantly meet people that say, man is basically good. Man is good. If you can just get past the facade, man is basically good. And, men, we need to understand that as you deal with people and as you come to know them, you have one addendum to that. In fact, it's a pretty significant change. You cross out the word good and put in bad. Man is essentially bad. Man will essentially sin. Man loves to sin. That's why every man, everywhere, in any part of this world, has sinned.
The Reality of Guilt and Conscience
John's going to talk about that. And He said, when there's sin, there's something in your psyche that kicks in and you start to feel guilty about that. And that guilt is, you know, we say this all the time, guilt can be very good. Many of you are here, the lady from the hotel came down and she said, boy, the last couple of weeks, the studies have been larger. And I said, oh, they really have. And we have typically about a group of about 40 maybe, maybe less than that down in Mesa. And there had to be 55 or 60 guys there this week. And in Paloma, we had guys all over.
I said, it's a seasonal thing. The seasonal guilts have kicked in. We have guys that have made these new commitments and we are part of it. The real test will be, are they going to be there in March? Because there's something in our psyche that kicks in. There's this thing called a conscience.
A friend of mine tells a great story about the first time he ever heard the word conscience. He was seven years old and he and his brother had taken that day some playing cards, you know, diamonds, hearts, clubs, spades. And they had taken the cards and they put them on their bicycle. Remember how you used to do that? Put them on your bicycle and then you put the clothespin on there.
He said, well, we're laying in bed one night and my brother said to me, and my friend was seven, his brother was nine or ten, said, my conscience is really getting to me about what we did. That was mom and dad's best set of cards and they're bound to know that there's five or six of them missing. And so my conscience really got to me. So he went down, he said, I'm going to go tell mom.
So he went down and my friend heard him, kind of could hear his voice, but not what he was saying, knowing that it was confession. And then all he heard was smack, smack, smack, smack, smack. He said, it was at that time that I realized that I had no idea what a conscience was, but I knew I didn't want one. And he said, I don't want a conscience. I don't want any part of a conscience.
Because there's something in us that when we do wrong or what we perceive to be wrong, something kicks in and it's guilt. And, man, that's good. Unless it gets to the point that it just has you so paralyzed you can't function. John said, I'm going to give you freedom from that.
Freedom from Deception and Insecurity
He said, I'm going to give you freedom, too, from two other things. Deception. He said, I don't want you to end up out in the desert with Jim Jones drinking Kool-Aid. We don't want that. He said, I want you to know the truth.
And there's something, I don't know, there's something in the air right now, but I bet in the last week I've had four or five people come up and said, have you studied this religion, or have you studied this religion, or have you studied this group? And every time I've answered, no, I haven't. I really haven't looked at them. And I said, my policy has been real simple. If I know the truth, I'll know a lie when it comes along. And I haven't spent any time at all studying any of these other religions, or faiths, or cults, whatever term you prefer. They just don't fascinate me. I'm so intrigued by this that what time I have and what commitment I'm going to make to study, it's going to be to this word right here.
He said, I want to give you freedom from deception. He said, I want to give you the freedom from insecurity. He said, I don't want you to be insecure. I don't want you to live a life
that's kind of up in the air and not sure who you are, or what you are, or where you're going. Not a directional life. He said, I want to help you live a life that's focused. So John started and he said, I'm going to give you those four freedoms right there. Freedom from deception, freedom from insecurity, freedom from guilt, and freedom from despair.
One other word by way of reminder and then we start. John writes about 60 years after the death of Christ. Christianity is not exactly brand new at the time that John writes this letter. As we've seen some of the other letters written, especially we see them in Paul, as we read through Paul, you hear him say, hang in there. You hear him use phrases like, we're soldiers for the cause of Christ. We're fighting. Because literally that was what was happening. There was a frontal attack. It was a direct attack against Christianity early on. Aggressive, hostile, open attack.
John said, I want you to understand, there's something that's equally dangerous, maybe more dangerous, because it's subtle and it's hidden. Remember the illustration we used last week about the Ali Liston fight, the second fight. Jose Torres, who really knows boxing, says, the reason that the punch was so devastating that Liston got hit with, the reason that punch was so devastating is because Liston never saw it coming. John said, I want to write a letter to you that are in the church because I want you to watch out for that punch that you're not going to see. Those people that have popped up in the church and they're not teaching truth, they're teaching lies.
The Author's Credentials
John writes this book to no specific church, but to you and to me. This guy is someone you're familiar with. He's written a gospel, and this guy is pretty smart. I think he might have been an ancestor of Sylvester Stallone because after he wrote 1 John, he wrote 2 John. Then he wrote 3 John. He knew he had a winner here. He made them all shorter, and he just cleaned up on his reputation here on this first book. And then he wrote the book of Revelation. That's who we're dealing with, John the Apostle.
Let's read the first four verses and get into the study. John 1, verse 1. He said, "...what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our own eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled concerning the word of life. And the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us. What we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write so that our joy may be made complete."
A Literary and Intellectual Examination
Let's assume for a second, and it may not be a wild assumption, that you don't know anything about the Bible. Say you don't know anything. In fact, you were the guys, and you're always my favorites because I do it all the time, you were the guy that went to the index to try to figure out where 1 John was. Let's say you don't know anything about the Bible.
I want you to understand, we've talked about this a little bit, this Bible is an inspired and infallible word of God, but it's something else. It's also a book of literature. It's also a book that will stand up to the test of your intellect. I can go through, and let me show you how easy sometimes it is to pull things out of here. You could pick this thing up cold, and I'm going to guess most of you did. You haven't read those first four verses at all. You could just look at them, though, and there's a certain couple of words, or a certain thought that jumps off the page, especially in the first verse, especially in observation.
Because he's going to get what was from the beginning, and he's going to get the word of life and those things, and we may not know what they are, but just applying common sense, there's something we see about John in that first verse. Anybody bold enough to take a guess? Not that there's anything necessarily wrong. I don't know that there's a wrong answer on that, but there's something to me that is really clear just by casual observation.
John: An Eyewitness Testimony
Exactly. I mean, look at the words. Look at these words. He said, I heard this. I saw this. I handled this. I'm not somebody who heard about this word of life, whatever that is. He said, it's something that I saw, and something that I heard, and something that I handled. He said, I'm an eyewitness to this. If you were to take John to a court of law, he would be the best type of witness that you could have.
Now, the word of life is the person of Jesus Christ. He said, I heard Him, I saw Him, and I handled Him. I handled Him in the sense that for three and a half years we walked around and we lived together, we roomed together, and we spread the word together. But he said, then Christ died and was buried and rose again, and I even handled Him. I shared fish with Him, with this risen Christ.
So the first observation we'd make, even the most casual observation, is that we're dealing with somebody who's speaking on a first-hand basis. That's a casual, just pure, empirical observation. But now he begins to talk about the beginning, and he also talks about the word of life.
Connecting to John's Gospel
Keep your finger there in 1 John, and move to the left, to the start of the New Testament, to the Gospels, and go to that fourth Gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. John chapter 1. Now, this is the same John that's writing, this time he writes in the Gospel. It's important for us to understand this. This becomes a building block for the study.
John the Gospel, the first chapter in the first verse. John uses a lot of the same words again, puts them together, and essentially the same idea, but this time from a different perspective. He uses the same word, he said, in the beginning. There's the word, he used it back to start this last book.
Now, when John uses the word "beginning," he uses it in a different sense. When I say the beginning, I can mean the beginning of creation. I can mean the beginning of time, wherever that is. We just kind of arbitrarily pick a spot and draw a line and say that marks the beginning of time.
In 1 John, when John writes, he says, "In the beginning I heard Him and I saw Him." We're talking about a different beginning there. He's talking about the beginning of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
But in the Gospel, the piece we look at now, he said, "In the beginning the Word"—that's Jesus—"the Word was, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." In the beginning, and in this time he uses it, he means the beginning, the beginning whenever, the beginning. The problem with defining beginning for God is fairly complex, because God doesn't have a beginning, no more than He has an end.
The Word Was God
He said Jesus Christ, the Word, was God. He was there in the beginning. Verse 2: "He was, in the beginning, with God, and all things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being." He said, I want you to get one thing out of this: Jesus Christ was God. He was with God. He is God. That's important to understand, men.
In fact, drop down to verse 14, John chapter 1. This is the Gospel still, verse 14. He says it straight away. He said this: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." Jesus, God, became flesh and dwelt among us. It's a term that we use called incarnation. A holy righteous God became man.
I was in a lecture series the other night, and the guy's topic was the incarnation of Christ, talking about what we're talking about right now. And he said this, and I wrote it down. I thought it was interesting. He said, "If this doesn't blow your mind, it's either too new to you or too familiar to you." He said, if a holy God coming to live on this earth in a body as human, just as human as yours and mine, if that doesn't blow your mind, then it's either too new to you, meaning you don't understand it yet, or it's just too familiar to you. You've been around it so long that you've lost the amazement of it all.
Believing in the Incarnation
Seldom does any significant period of time go by that somebody doesn't come up and say, "Do you really believe Jesus Christ was God come in the flesh?" And I've got pretty much the same response. Absolutely, I believe it. And not only do I believe that, I believe this. I believe if you will intellectually, honestly open your heart and look at it, you'll believe it too. And not only that, if you'll openly and intellectually and honestly look at it, you'll believe it too. But something beyond that, you'll want to give your life to it.
There's nothing more significant you can do in this life than to give your heart to the Lord Jesus Christ. You want to talk about life? I mean, what's life all about? What's it all about, Alfie? What is life?
What's the Purpose of Life?
Life magazine, December 1988, asks some famous and not-so-famous people, "What's the purpose of life?" Let me read you some of these answers because they're pretty interesting.
Writer Tom Robbins writes this: "Our mission is to jettison those pointless preoccupations and take on again the primordial cargo of inexhaustible ecstasy." He continues and says, "Or barring that, to turn out a good juicy cheeseburger and a strong glass of beer." So this guy's way over my head.
Maya Angelou, another writer, says this: "Since age two I've been waltzing up and down with the question of life's meaning. I am obligated to report that the answer changes from week to week."
Jose Martinez, a cab driver, writes this: "We are here to die, just live and die. The only cure for the world's illness is nuclear war. Wipe out everything and start over." I think I've been in that guy's cab, been around with that guy.
Oliver North said this: "We are not here to glorify ourselves but to glorify He who made all of us and who will eventually judge each one of us on how well we did at the end of the journey we all take but once."
Humorist Garrison Keillor writes this: "What keeps our faith cheerful is the extreme persistence of gentleness and humor. Gentleness is everywhere in daily life. One never has to look far to see campfires of gentle people. Lacking any other purpose in life, it'd be good enough to live for their sake."
Coach Mike Ditka says this: "I believe I'm created by God to do the job He's given me while I'm here, to serve Him and then to return to Him. It took me a long time to understand this."
Janet Evans, the Olympic swimmer, said this: "I believe we go to heaven from here. While we're here we should set goals and achieve them and be happy with what we are and what we're doing."
Willie Nelson said this: "Matthew 5:48 says, 'Be ye perfect therefore as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.' The purpose of life is to reach perfection. To achieve perfection man must return again and again through many incarnations to conquer disease, greed, jealousy, anger, hatred and guilt."
Save the best, my favorite, to last. Leonard Nimoy, Mr. Spock, he said this: "I find the question 'Why are we here?' typically human. I'd suggest 'Are we here?' would be a more logical choice."
The Essence of Life
When you ask the question "What's life all about? What's the purpose in life?" you're going to get a variety of answers. Let me suggest to you that we today are talking about the very essence of life. Jesus has said this: "I am the way and I am the truth and I am the life." If you want to talk about life you cannot talk about it apart from the person of Jesus Christ. It will be meaningless.
You'll be pursuing a good juicy cheeseburger because that's all life is apart from Christ, and no matter how good you want to make it, if you are really honest, if you eliminate Christ and you're really honest, the only logical choice is what Jose Martinez said: just to die and get it over with. When we talk about life, men, and you're—
Trying to figure out what the purpose of life is and what the meaning of life is, you have to start with the life itself, the person of Jesus Christ. He was there in the beginning and He became flesh to dwell among us. Let me say it one more time: if that doesn't blow your mind, it's either too new to you or too familiar to you. If that doesn't just take you and say, "Oh yeah, I remember, God!" then you've lost some of that childlikeness. You've lost that ability to be in awe.
Imagine if you could, a man somehow taking on the form of and becoming an ant. That would be kind of an amazing thing. And yet, if we were somehow trying to equalize those, it would be an infinite difference between you and I becoming an ant and a holy, righteous God becoming a man. Jesus Christ, God, emptied Himself, Paul says, of all His glory and became a man.
The Servant King
Now, not just a man. He didn't become a senator. He didn't become a president. He didn't come as Donald Trump. He came as a man, a servant man, Paul says in Philippians chapter 2. A man who is here not to be served, but to serve. And He came for one reason: to die on the cross.
See, that's another thing. It's not just that God became man, it's that He became man for the specific reason of dying on the cross. He loved you and me, He loved the world so much that He came to die. Now, if that doesn't blow your mind, you're either too new to it or too familiar with it. And that's John's whole point. He said, "I'm writing to a world that doesn't believe that Jesus is God. I'm writing to all these guys, and I'm trying to tell them you can't talk about life until you talk about the person of Jesus Christ."
The One Who Holds It All Together
He's so intimately involved with us that He was involved in creation, and Paul says in Colossians 1:17, today He holds it all together. Do you ever do this? I have compulsive behavior. That's what all my friends tell me, whatever that means. I'm a compulsive guy. What I think it means is, I'm not into moderation. I've only done one thing in my life in moderation, and that was work. That's the only thing that I've ever approached with any sense of moderation at all.
I either want it all, or I don't want any. I was one of the guys that used to say, they'd come by the desk and say, "We're going to go and have a beer on the way home." And I'd say, "I'm not really interested. Now, if we're going to go and really drink, then I'll go. But having a beer has very little appeal to me." That's the way I did it.
I'm the kind of guy that would go out and decide, "Okay, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to run and get in shape." So then I'd spend three grand on looking sharp, feeling sharp, getting new equipment, do it once and say, "Ah, that's not for me." That's the way that I think. I am the kind of guy that would start a project and walk away from it. And even those that I complete hold very little interest to me once they're done.
I'm glad God's not that way. Because, see, He could have created all this and just set it in motion and say, "Okay, the law of thermodynamics will take over and I'm just going to watch now just to see what happens." But that's not what He did. Paul says He holds it all together.
A Scientist's Discovery
Remember Bob Hage when he was here? I think Bob spoke in this group. He was a scientist, is a scientist, worked with McDonnell Douglas, was involved in the Mercury project. And then one day they came to him and they said, "This president's got a crazy idea. We're going to put a guy on the moon." He said, "Whatever." So he started to work on that project.
And they decided they were going to put a man on the moon. And he said they're working on this and they've got one thing that is constant. He said, "There's one thing we're dealing with and our whole, all our mathematical equations are based on it. Being able to get the guy around the earth and down, and being able to take him to the moon and back, all our time, everything's based on this one thing. And yet here are all these great scientists." He said, "We couldn't define it. It was something called gravity."
He said, "I was telling this guy once that I knew we were playing golf. And he said, 'We're dealing with this thing called gravity, but we don't know what it is.' And this guy said, 'Oh, I can tell you what it is.'" Guy not a scientist, a salesman. He said, "I can tell you what gravity is. It's right there in Colossians chapter one, verse 17." And Hage had no clue what Colossians was. He said, "You might save me some time. What is that?" He said, "God holds all things together." He created it and put it in motion and then supervises His creation.
The Foundation of Life
See, that's what we're dealing with. And back to 1 John, John said, "I want you to understand that. I want you to understand that as we study this, as I continue to write to you, I want you to understand that everything we talk about starts with the person of Jesus Christ. I want you to have life."
And let me just say that very clearly to you. When we talk about life, we talk about it from a couple of aspects. Look at what he says in the second verse: "We proclaim to you eternal life." Now, eternal life has two aspects to it. Quantity—there's a lot of life in eternal life. It goes on forever. But quality—where do I spend this eternal life? He said, "Life is found in Jesus Christ. And eternal life is found in Jesus Christ."
And let me say, men, if you do not know where you're going to spend eternity, you need to come to the person of Christ. Acknowledge that you're sinful. And that should be easy for you. If it's not, we'll just call your wife and it'll take us a couple of minutes and we'll establish that you're sinful. And then once we've acknowledged that, then all you got to do is say, "Okay, I'm sinful."
Jesus was God come in the flesh, perfect to die on the cross to pay the price for my sin. At that point, men, you have eternal life. But I want you to understand that eternal life begins today. Jesus said, "I'm the way, the truth, and the life." But He said, "I came so that you could have the abundant life." It means right now, right here, have a quality of life that surpasses anything you can imagine. John said, we've given our life to the life.
And He said, when that happened, something interesting took place. Verse 3. He said, "We've seen this. We've proclaimed it." He said, "We want you to do this. We want you to join us so we could have fellowship with you and fellowship with the Father."
The Meaning of True Fellowship
Interesting word, fellowship, because we really don't use it much outside of Christian circles. It's kind of a Christian word. It's built around the principle of getting together under a common purpose. And there are groups all over that are fellowship groups, really.
The PTA is a fellowship group. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship group. There's a common bond there. The Board of Realtors have some common agenda that they work from. The Elks have a common agenda, whatever it might be. The ACLU has a common agenda, if you're involved in that. See me afterwards, and we'll take you over to the corner and explain to you what the agenda is. There's a common agenda. But there's a bond that's tighter than any elk or any secret handshake that you might have or any fraternal organization. It's the bond of the person of Jesus Christ.
I don't know how many of you had relatives in for Christmas. But it's kind of interesting. There's an anticipation. Maybe it's a brother or sister you haven't seen for a while. Or maybe a father or a mother or a near relative that you don't know that well. There's an anticipation that says, you know, this is going to be neat. We're going to establish it.
We flash back, and we think how much we had in common and how sweet it is. And they arrive at the airplane, and we can't wait to take them to the botanical gardens and show them how we've improved the zoo. And take them to a son's game. And go, wow, man, what a day. We killed that day. What do we do now?
And all of a sudden, you discover that this person who shares the same blood, maybe the same mother and the same father that you share with them, you don't have much in common. I mean, you're down to talk about, well, golly, what's your water bill? Boy, our water bill is out of sight. And it's reduced to that. Because there's no common bond. Or the common bond is a weak bond.
But that same guy who can't relate here or has a struggle here, all of a sudden will walk into his church or walk into this study, get here early in the morning, sit down with a cup of coffee, and within five minutes, he's having a more intimate, in-depth conversation, talking more about himself than he would with somebody who he shared a parent with. Isn't that amazing? Why does that happen? John said it's because you have a union. The union that we have with each other is based on our union with Jesus Christ.
Union Versus Communion
Now, John's going to tell us something else about this union. I can have union but not be in communion. I can have union and still not be communicating. Susan and I, ten-plus years ago, walked down an aisle, and we formed a union. The two became one, and we were excited about that. But there have been times that our union wasn't a real good communion.
I can't give you the exact details, but a couple of years ago, we had a situation in our house where Susan became so irrational. She took a stance that not only didn't make sense, I mean, it was beyond being feminine, which I allow for. I mean, it was totally irrational. So I pursued her much like a Melvin Bell would pursue Pan Am.
I said, "Let's talk about this, and let's see what it is that your position is." She began to use those buzzwords that we all listen for: always and never. I said, "Oh, Susan, I know that's not right, because I just know that's not right. I can remember a time, albeit five years ago, that I did that." And our communion was very, very weak. Now, we were still in union, but there was no communion.
John wants to make a point here. He said, our fellowship with each other is based on our fellowship with God.
God Is Light
Look down at verse 5. He said, "I want to tell you something here about this God, and then I want to talk to you about this communion." He said, "This is the message that we have heard from Him and announced to you that God is light and in Him there is no darkness."
He said, "I want to talk to you about God, and when I talk to you about God, it's important for you to know something. If you know something about light, you'll know something about God. If you look at light, that'll give you some clue about some qualities of God."
When we got here this morning, these doors were closed and this room was dark. He said something else. He said, in this light there's no darkness. And here's what I did to get rid of the darkness. I went over to that panel and threw two switches, and all of a sudden the light eliminated the darkness.
God is light. And where the light exists, it precludes darkness. They're mutually exclusive terms. He said, if you know something about light, you know something about God.
The Functions of Light
We've given you these three things before, but let me just remind you, there's at least three functions that light has. Light serves, first of all, as a revealer. Light allows you to see things as they really are. There used to be an old country-western song, "All the girls get pretty around closing time." And then sometimes you'd get to the light and say, "I think I left my keys in there," and then you'd scoot out the back door.
The light's a great revealer and it allows you to see things as they really are. And He said, when you have the light of Jesus Christ, you see the light of the world as it really is. And it also is a
great measure. We use light to measure. These astronauts measure the distance between planet Earth and the moon with a laser beam. The construction guys are now using lasers for light. Jesus is the standard. He's given us this book.
God is light and He's given us His word. Francis Schaeffer said this: if the Bible is not held as an absolute standard, society will set its own standard. You want a light? You want a standard? God's the standard.
Light also energizes. That's the third aspect of it. Light gives life. God is light. He gives us a standard. He reveals life as it really is and He energizes us. In Him, there's no darkness.
John's Attack on Gnostic Teaching
Now John, remember this. Grab hold of this as we close. John said, as he began to write, that he was writing to a group or implied a group named the Gnostics. We looked last week and said one of the first things the Gnostics believed was that knowledge was superior to virtue. It didn't matter how I behaved, it mattered what I thought. John is going to attack that.
Look at verse 6, verse 8, and verse 10. The first three words in each verse are exactly the same. "If we say..." Verse 8: "If we say." Verse 10: "If we say." Verse 6: "If we say we have fellowship with God and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth." Next week, we'll break down all those, but let me give you, as we close, the nine ways you can stay in the darkness.
Nine Ways to Stay in the Darkness
You want to eliminate the light in your life. You want to blow out God. You want to blow out the light. Here are nine ways you can stay in the darkness.
Here's the first way: Don't ever study this word yourself. Never get involved in the Bible personally. The best thing you can do, if you want to stay in the darkness, is go right now, as soon as you're done, and put this in some dark corner of your car, and don't ever touch it again until next week. Boy, that is really something you can do. You want to stay dark? You don't want to see life as it really is? Then don't get into His word.
Here's the second thing: Don't go where God's word is taught. Especially church. Don't go near a church. You want to stay in the darkness.
Let me say this clearly to you. We are not a church here. We are not here to replace the local church. That's not what we're all about. There's seldom four or five weeks that go by where somebody doesn't come up and say, "Boy, I'll tell you what, I got more out of that than I get out of my church. It's like that every week. I get more out of this than I get out of church." I always say two things to him. One, thank you. Two, find a new church.
Because if you want to stay in the darkness, what you want to do is find one of these we-believe-it-all type of churches where this is just kind of guidelines, and we don't need it. That'll keep you in the darkness.
Here's the third thing you can do to stay in the dark: Don't ever talk to God. Don't listen to Him, and then don't talk to Him. Now, that's a word we call prayer. Don't ever pray. Boy, that'll keep you in the darkness.
Here's the fourth thing: Don't ever tell anybody else about Christ or what He's doing in your life. Let me digress one second there. It amazes me that somebody will say, "Jesus Christ is number one in my life. He's Lord of my life. He's got control of my life." It's amazing when I say to that person, "What's He doing in your life?" and they don't have an answer. If you want to stay in the darkness, let God do something - see, God will do it - and then don't ever tell anybody about it. Boy, that'll keep you in the darkness.
Here's the fifth thing: Never examine your life. If you don't examine yourself, you're a fool. If you're not taking a hard look at your life, if you don't have yourself under a microscope with you moving the viewer up and down and looking at your life, you're a fool. You'll stay in darkness. You'll be able to get off track and stay off track if you can just live that unexamined life.
Clear Disobedience to God's Word
Here's the sixth thing: Don't obey God. Let God speak clearly to you, and then you thwart it. Now, let me acknowledge that there are some areas that God is not exactly clear on in His Word. But there are some that are black and white.
We got a call Monday from a lady. She said, "I'm in your Sunday school class. I know you don't know me. I've been there for like six months. I have a problem. It involves a man. In fact, it involves two men. I'd like to come by and see you." I said, "I need to check my wife's calendar because I can't meet with you unless she's here. Men should never meet with women one on one ever, especially when they're going to talk about men things."
So she came in and sat down. She said, "I was married, and my husband would not make love to me." I'm thinking, oh, that poor brute. Well, you just need to be... See, that's why you always have your wife there when you do that. She said, "Then I got rid of him. I married another guy, and he wouldn't touch me either." This is a very attractive gal.
She said, "Now I have a problem. I am a Christian. There's no doubt in my mind. But I'm sleeping with two different guys. My question is this: which one should I marry?" I said, "Well, let's take a look. Tell me about each guy." "Oh, well, he's really cute. The other one is not as cute, but he's a little more secure financially." I said, "Well, go with the secure financially for sure."
I said, "Tell me about the first one here, Bob. What's he like?" "Well, Bob's not a Christian." I said, "Well, that's easy. Bob's out. Tell me about this other guy. What's he like?" "Oh, he's not a Christian either." I said, "Well, look, this is clear. God said two things to you. One, cut off the physical relationship. That's a given. Two, if it's time to get married, God said, 'Don't marry an
unbeliever. If you're a Christian, don't marry an unbeliever. I said, if you want to have problems in your life, pick either one of them and marry them. I'll pretty much guarantee you that. Men, it may not be that specific situation, but if you want to stay in the darkness, you just go where God is very clear and you just say, "God, I know that's what You say, but I'm not really interested in that."
And then once you sin, here's the seventh thing to stay in the darkness: don't ever confess it. We look in depth at that next week. Don't ever acknowledge it or agree with it.
Number eight, if you want to stay in the darkness, when there's a sin or when there's a problem in your life, blame somebody else. That'll keep you in the darkness. Don't ever acknowledge your own responsibility. Always find some scapegoat.
Serving Two Masters
Here's the ninth thing that you can do that'll keep you in the darkness. This will really keep you in the darkness. Serve two masters. Jesus said you can't serve two masters. You can't serve money and you can't serve God.
Boy, you want to stay in the darkness, try that. That'll keep you really dark. It'll be so dark you'll never see the light. You'll never get a sniff of God.
You try pursuing your agenda and His agenda. You try to co-mingle His interests and your interests, to co-mingle His funds and your funds, to even try to arbitrarily establish what's His or not His. Just try to mix it together and you'll be so dark.
You do those nine things, men, and by next week, I can guarantee you, it'll be so dark and you'll be so lost and so confused and so in the darkness that none of this will make sense to you.
The Alternative: Walking in the Light
But see, there's another alternative. It's to walk in the light. When we get together next week, we're going to look at this. We're going to say, hey, sin's a reality. Now, what do I do with it? How do I deal with it?
The purpose of life is to find this Jesus Christ. What difference is that going to make to me today, tomorrow, next week? Next week, we deal with that whole area of sin.
Let's pray. Father, thank You. Thank You that Your Word is true. It's real, that we can believe it because You said it. Thank You that we can indeed find real purpose and meaning in our life through the person of Your Son, Jesus Christ, and it's in His name that we pray. Amen.