water, which is thirst. And we're just
saying that we will never, never thirst again. Christ is the water
of life. And those who drink of Him never
thirst again. Turn to 1 John. 1 John 1. I'm going to read these
first ten verses. We'll pick up in verse 5. But
after I read this chapter, Doug, would you lead us in prayer after
I read this? That which was from the beginning,
which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which
we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word
of life. For the life was manifested,
and we have seen it. and bear witness and show unto
you that eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested
unto us. That which we have seen and heard
declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with
us. And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His
Son, Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto
you, that your joy may be full. This then is the message. which
we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light,
and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship
with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth.
But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have
fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ
His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that 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 that we have not sinned,
we make Him a liar and His Word is not in us. and Lord, we're so thankful that
you're the light of the world. Lord, you caused us to see and
know your truth, that you are truth. Lord, this world You let us hear your precious
gospel, that you let us know the truth,
that you came from glory, took on our flesh, sinful flesh, but you came without sin and bore all that we deserve. Lord, may this day bring glory
and honor to your holy name. Lord, forgive us when we fail. Lord, we pray for our children,
grandchildren, our families. Lord, that your will might be
done in each one of them. And Lord, let us know what an
awesome responsibility that we have to witness to our neighbors,
friends, families. Lord, we pray thy will be done
this day. We're so thankful, Lord, that
we can assemble in this place. Pray, Lord, she bless Brother
John this morning as he brings your word to us. Lord, may we worship you in spirit
and in truth. We ask you in Christ's name.
Amen. Title of the lesson this morning. This is the Gospel message. This is the message that God gave us. God came into
this world and gave us this gospel. We didn't get this gospel from
men. Paul said, I didn't receive it
from men. He didn't get it from the other
apostles. Paul said that Christ gave him
the gospel. And we know that the apostles,
they were with our Lord for three years, and the message that they
gave is one that they heard. They said, we have heard Him,
we have seen Him, we have touched life. We've touched it. And the
Gospel we have is the only Gospel there is. There's only one Gospel. Turn over to Galatians chapter
1. Satan is so subtle, this is why
he, you know, the Scripture says if it were possible that he would
deceive the very elect of God, that he makes it that close to
it. He's so deceptive. But there's only one Gospel that's
in Galatians, look in Galatians chapter 1, verse 6 and 7. Paul says, I marvel that you
are so soon removed from Him that called you into the grace
of Christ unto another gospel, which is not another. There's
not one. There's only one, but there'd be some that trouble
you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we or an
angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that
which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. Let him
perish. He said, even if an angel comes,
let him perish. It's written in 2 Corinthians
11, 4. For if he that cometh preaches another Jesus, this
is what I told a man one time. I said, you and I don't believe
on the same Jesus Christ. We're not believing on the same
one. That's another Jesus. If He wants to save you, if you
let Him, that's another Jesus. That's not the one of this Bible.
The one of this Bible is the sovereign Christ of God. That's
who He is. For if he that cometh preaches
another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if you receive another
spirit, which you have not received, or another gospel, which you
have not accepted, you might well bear with, it says, him,
but me, is what the translation is. You might well listen to
me. He said, you listen to me. There's only one Jesus Christ
who is set forth as the life. John says the life is coming
to this world, and we've touched it, we've seen Him, we've handled
Him. And this life was with the Father
before anything existed, before time was, before there's anything
such as time, He existed. This One who came from glory
existed before anything else existed. And he came from God
to reveal God. In Matthew 11, 27, it says, all
things are delivered unto me of my Father. And no man knoweth
the Son, but the Father. Neither knoweth any man the Father
save the Son. And he to whomsoever, there's
his sovereignty. He to whomsoever the Son will
reveal him. Do you know the Father? Do you
know God? Christ has revealed Him to you.
He's revealed Him to you. Now he says in verse 5, that's
where we'll pick up. This then is the message which
we have heard of Him. This is the message that He gave
us. This is the message that life
gave to us. This is the one who was in the
bosom of the Father. And this is the one who came
from the bosom of the Father, came into this world, and gave
us this message. This message. It says in John
5, 20, And we know that the Son of God has come and has given
us an understanding, that we may know Him that is true, and
we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This
is the true God This is Jesus Christ. This is the true God
and eternal life. He said over in John 8, 42, Jesus
said unto them, if God were your father, you would love me. They were claiming God to be
their father, the Pharisees. They said, we have one father,
even God. And he said, if God were your father, Here's a real
test of sonship, right here. If God were your Father, you
would love me. You would love me. For I proceeded
forth and I came from God. Here's His deity. They are standing
there looking at a man. And this man is saying, I came
from God. I am the Son of God. Neither
came I of myself, But He sent me. He sent me. The message starts with God.
If we are going to start right, we have to start with God. In
the beginning, God. I'm going to preach from Hebrews
here after this. In the first chapter, God. It starts with
God. God who at sundry times and in
different manners, speaking to the fathers by the prophets,
hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son or in Son,
in His Son. That's how He's spoken to us.
And declare unto you that God is light. This is the message
that we heard from Him, that we heard from Christ, that we
heard from life. Life came into this world, eternal
life, and then gave us the message, and this is the message, that
God is light. and in Him is no darkness at
all. God is pure light." That's what
he's saying here. There is no sin in God. Sin did not originate with God. That's what he's saying. There's
no sin. God is holy. When he's saying here that God
is light, he's saying that God is holy. In heaven, the seraphims
cried continually, continually, right now. They are crying, holy,
holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his
glory. God is holy. God is self-existing. This one who is light, he's self-existing. No one created God. We can't
comprehend this. We don't have the language. to
describe this, to describe God. But our Lord did. He said He's
light. He's light, which means He's holy. He's self-existing. God is spirit. Over in John 4,
verse 24, it says, God is a spirit. That should be read, God is spirit.
He's not a spirit, as if it were among many spirits, but God is
spirit. And they that worship Him, worship Him. Not with hands,
not with our hands. We worship Him in spirit and
in truth. In truth, according to the Scriptures.
God is infinite in knowledge. He's never learned anything. His knowledge is perfect. God
knows absolutely everything. There is nothing that He does
not know. He's perfect in knowledge. He's perfect in wisdom. This God who is holy, this God
who knows all things, this God who is infinite in wisdom, is
sovereign. He is absolutely sovereign. He
has done whatsoever He pleased in heaven and earth. None can
say unto Him, what are you doing? The potter has power over the
clay. God saves whom He will. And God
passes by whom He will. He'll have mercy. He said, I'll
have mercy on whom I'll have mercy, and whom He will, He will
harden. Everyone whom God saves, He chose
to save. Do you know anyone, anyone that's wise enough to
make those choices? I don't. I don't. Henry said one time, God will
say all that he can wisely say. He's sovereign. God is sovereign. And the Scriptures also teach
us that God is love. That is the very nature of God. Now, it's not this love that
we hear out here in false religion. It's just like some old grandfather
just doting over his children. No, God's love is holy. God's
love is holy. God's sovereign reign is holy.
God's knowledge is holy. His wisdom is holy. His goodness
is holy. His righteousness is holy. Scripture tells us that He is
omnipotent. God has all power. This One who
is the light, this is who He is. He has all power. He knows all things. His knowledge
and his understanding, his wisdom is all perfect. It is absolutely
perfect. And this is where the message
starts. It's where it starts. With a revelation of who God
is. We cannot be saved and be ignorant of who God is. Can't
do it. All thy children, everyone whom
God saves, He says over in Matthew, all thy children shall be taught
of God. He will take them personally.
He will be their personal teacher. And He will teach them who He
is. Until we learn who He is, we'll go wrong on every point.
On every step we'll go wrong. It says over in the Psalms, you
thought I was altogether like yourselves. But when God saved
you, you learn who He is and you realize that you and God
are opposite of each other. God is light. What am I? I'm darkness. I'm darkness. By nature, we are all darkness. We are all children of darkness
by nature. until God saves us, and then
you're a child of light. Scripture said you're children
of light. We cannot be ignorant of God and worship Him. You can't worship
someone you don't know. An unknown God, it's like, I
believe it was in Ephesus, they had that one altar there that
said to the unknown God, just in case one shows up, that we
don't know about. We're going to make an altar
here. You see, God, in his character,
as he revealed in the scriptures, was unknown to the world. The
Greeks had many gods. They had all kinds of gods. The
Gentile did. Then this message came along.
The truth came along. Light came along. Life came along
and revealed this is who God is. That there's only one God
and He's light. You want light? You know something
else that light does? It reveals. It reveals. If you take light, you walk out
and you got the sunlight. You walk out and you see light.
Light doesn't have a color, but it reveals color. It reveals
that. You see a tree. How do you see
that tree? You have light. Turn the light
off, what do you see? Nothing. You have nothing. The Gentile world was left in
darkness for the most part for 4,000 years. They couldn't see. They were walking in darkness.
God gave the light to Israel. He gave the types and the pictures
and all that to Israel. But the Gentile world was walking
in darkness. But then after the cross, after
Christ went back, the gospel went out, and the light, the light sprang
forth. The light came to us. God sent
the light to us. And now we see. We see who God
is. We're not dancing around a fire. I was watching TV a little bit
last night on, India, he was showing some India. Kind of a biography of India.
And they were dancing, and they were offering these offerings,
and they were pouring some kind of offering into the river, and
I sat there and I thought, they don't have light. They don't
have light. Here they are going through all
these rituals, worshiping a God that doesn't even exist, or gods
that doesn't even exist. And I thought, here we are. Here
we're gonna gather here this morning. We're gonna open God's
word. And we're gonna see, we're gonna
see God. We're gonna see Christ. We're
gonna see how God saves sinners. All because He's given us light. All because He's given us light. Now verse 6, it gives us a word
of warning here. If we say, saying something does
not make it so. You know, saying I'm a Christian
doesn't make me a Christian. I believe it was Matthew Henry
said, the name of a Christian does not mean you have the nature
of one. There's many who call themselves Christians, and they
don't know God at all. They use the name, but they don't
know who Christ is at all. So if we say that we have fellowship
with Him, that we know God and we have fellowship with God,
and walk in darkness." Now that walk is a tenor of your life. It's your life. It's the way
you walk. We lie and do not the truth.
If we say that we believe the Gospel and yet have no understanding,
no real understanding of the character of God, I just gave
to you. God is holy. God is just. God
is good. God is love. God is omnipotent.
He's omniscient. If you have no real understanding
of who God is, if you have no real understanding of the person
and work of Christ or the purpose of the cross, you're walking
in spiritual darkness. That's what He's saying. You're
walking in spiritual darkness. If you say you have fellowship
with Him and you walk in ignorance of the truth, There's a lot of people right
now. There's a lot of people who confess to know Christ. They've
made a profession. They say God has saved them.
I know one particular man that he made a profession years ago. I mean, years ago. This man is
now in his 70s. Years ago, the man has been a
drunk. He'd been a womanizer. But he told me a few months ago
when I saw him, he said, I know this, when I die, I'm going to
heaven. You know what he's basing that on? He's basing that on
a fact of something he did back 40 years ago. 40 years ago, and he believes
in once in grace, always in grace. And he thinks when he died, man's
been nothing but a drunkard. Scripture says no drunkard enter
into the kingdom of heaven. He's been a whoremonger, a womanizer. He's lost. I told him, you're
lost. You're lost. You're walking in darkness. You're
walking in darkness. Listen to this, Matthew 6, 23.
But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.
If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great
is that darkness. If the understanding you have
of God, of Christ, and of yourself, if it's not this gospel that
Paul speaking of through the Galatians, if it's not this gospel
of the grace of God in Christ, the sovereign grace of God in
Christ, He says, how great is that darkness? This is the worst darkness anyone
can have is spiritual darkness. It's the worst. Turn over to
Romans chapter 10. Brethren, the first verse, Romans
10, verse one. Brethren, my heart's desire and
prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. I bear them
record that they have a zeal of God. You remember Paul one
time was going about to kill He wasn't about to kill the ones
who confessed Christ. He hated that name. He hated
that name. But buddy, he believed nobody
was more saved than he was. I bear them record that they
have a zeal of God. They believe there is one God,
but not according to knowledge, not according to the scriptures,
not according to the scriptures. If I stand here and I preach
to you that Jesus Christ died for every son of Adam, and now it's up to you, that's
not according to Scripture. That's a lie. That's a bold-faced
lie. That's not according to the Word
of God. Religious darkness is the worst
kind. It's the worst. But, he says
here, but, in verse seven, if we walk in the light, that's
the tenor of our life, we walk in the gospel light, the gospel
of God, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. If the Spirit of God has given
us light in life, if we've been taught of God, then we have fellowship
with God in Christ. And that's the only way we can
have fellowship with God, is in Christ. And the blood, the blood of Jesus
Christ, God's Son, cleanseth continually. As we walk in the
light, as we walk in the gospel truth, as we walk in it, The
blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin. All sin. First we have the revelation
of God, who He is, and now we have a revelation of the atonement
by the blood of Christ that cleanses us from all sin and enables us
to walk with God. That's what enables us to walk
with God. We've been cleansed. We've been made righteous. We've
been made whole. In God's sight, there's no other
way to be made clean except through the blood. It says in Hebrews
9.22, in almost all things are by the law purged with blood.
And without shedding of blood is no remission, no forgiveness. No walking with God without first
being cleansed from all unrighteousness. But John tells us here that we
have a cleansing, that we have a cleansing from all unrighteousness,
from all our sins, from all our sinful thoughts that go on every
day, from all the sins of not only commission but omission,
ones we don't even know about. cleansed, gone, gone, made clean. Verse eight, if we say, now if
we say, and apparently some were saying it in that day, it's why
John's dealing with this. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. You know,
the scripture says the heart is deceitful above all things,
desperately wicked. Who can know it? Who can know
it? If we deny what we are by nature,
there's people that do that. The Pharisee said, we'd be not
sinners, like those Gentiles. We're Abraham's seed. They always stopped at Abraham
and always thought, why don't you just take that on back to
Adam? They would always say, we're Abraham's seed. Well, first of all, you're Adam's
seed. Every one of us. Every one of us. If we deny what
we are by nature, if we deny original sin, it's evident. John
said it's evident we don't know God. And the truth, listen, he
says this, and the truth is not in us. It's not in us. Truth is not just something we
believe. Truth is in you. If you've been born of God, The
truth, who is that? That's Christ. Christ said, I
am the way, the truth, and the life. Truth, Christ, is not in
you. He's not in you. But if we confess our sins, if
we own up to them and don't deny them, He is faithful and just. to forgive
us our sins every time. Every time. Every time we confess
our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Faithful and just. God can cleanse
and forgive us of all our sins and be a just God in doing so
through the blood, through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. That's what John's saying. If
we confess our sins, if we own up to them, if we own up to them. But if we say, here again, if
we say that we have not sinned, and I had years ago, I had a
man tell me this, a young man, he got saved. He told me, he
said he got saved. And he told me he didn't sin
no more. He didn't sin no more. And of course, at that time,
I didn't know anything. I remember once when I, I made
a profession when I was 20 years old, a religious profession. And I remember my brother, said
something to me about a sinner saved by grace, and I said to
him, I'm not a sinner anymore. God saved me. Oh, yes, you are. Oh, yes, you are. We never get past being a sinner.
We never get past that. Not in this life. Not in this
life. If we say that we've not sinned,
we are calling God a liar, for He says all have sinned. And
there's not a time that I don't sin. There's not a thought that
doesn't have sin attached to it. Paul said, when I would do
good, evil was present with me. That which I would do, I do not. That which I would not do, that's
what I do. That guy sounds like a mess,
doesn't he? It sounds like a mess. Yeah. Yeah, we are. I've sinned and I need a Savior. Don't you? I need a Savior. I need one who can save me from
my sinful self, from who I am and what I've done. And God has
provided that Savior in the person of His Son. In Christ, we can
have absolute, complete forgiveness of sins and be made whole, and
stand in God's presence spotless. Spotless. That's the way we stand
in His presence now. But in this body, I know I sinned. I know I did. And I confess it. And you confess it. And the promise is this. Every
time we confess, He's faithful and just to forgive. And not bring it back up. Not
bring it back up. I remember my grandson did something
once when he was just a little fellow. And his mother spanked
him for it. And for about three days later,
it was still, she was still bringing it back up. I thought, I'm glad
God doesn't do that. I'm glad he doesn't keep bringing
it back up. Every time I ask for forgiveness,
well, do you remember the last time you asked? No. He's faithful and just to
forgive us every time we ask. Every time we seek mercy, we
get it. We get it. If we deny sinning, we call God
a liar. And the gospel is not in us. Christ is not in us. Truth is
not in us. Salvation is a work in us as
well as for us. Because John says, the truth
not in you, He says, the word of God is not in you if you confess
these things. You say, if you deny original
sin, if you deny sinning, the word of God, the truth of God
is not in you. It's not there. Christ has come and revealed
the person of God. God is light. And in Him is no
darkness, no sin, no evil whatsoever. God is absolutely holy. And He
has revealed how He can be a just God and a Savior. That's through
the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone denies their original
sin and actual sin, the truth, the truth, it's not in you. Oh, don't you
like somebody to be honest with you? I want to say thank you. That's one of the things we can
thank God for, among many, for telling us the truth. You shall know the truth, and
the truth shall set you free. We've got to have it. God is
light, and in Him is no darkness whatsoever. All right.