After the services, some of you
men could set up just a few tables, four tables, and a round one
for a, what do you call those things? Showers, yeah, for a
shower. Look at me. I'm sorry. Look in verse eight of John one. He, John the Baptist, was not
that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light that was
the true light. I've entitled this message, The
True Light. Now, why does John use the adjective
true with regard to that light. The true light. Because there
are so many counterfeit lights. Second Corinthians 11 14 says
Satan himself, the prince of darkness, comes as an angel of light. That's how Satan comes, as an
angel of light. Let me read you this scripture
in Psalm 104, verse 2. The psalmist says, O Lord my
God, thou art very great. Thou art clothed with majesty
an honor who coverest thyself with light, as with a garment. Who can do that? God. His brightness is infinitely
greater than any created light, including the light of the sun,
and it serves as only a covering for his dazzling being. Immortal, invisible, God-only
wise, in light, inaccessible, hid from our eyes. Only Jesus Christ dwells in the
light that no man can approach to, whom no man can see, nor
hath seen, nor can see, to whom be honor and power everlasting. How glorious this description,
the light. Now in the midst of this divine
prologue, these first 18 verses of John, given to declare Jesus Christ
the Son of God. This almost seems out of place,
but it's not. Verse six, there was a man. There was a man, sent of God. Just a man, a sinful man, with the same sinful
nature that you and I have. Just a man, man at his best state,
what is altogether vanity. This is the man who was sent
of God. When Paul spoke of his office
as an apostle, He said, in nothing am I behind the very chiefest
apostles, though I be nothing. Paul understood that. You know,
he said in Galatians chapter six, if a man thinketh himself
to be something, when he's nothing, he deceiveth himself. This man knew he was nothing. His name was John, not Reverend
John, not Pastor John, not Dr. John. A doctor is a licensed practitioner
of medicine. And I don't want to see someone
from my health problems that's not a doctor. But I thoroughly
dislike a preacher being called a doctor. Doctor so and so. It's just not appropriate. Somebody says, well, you're just
saying that because you don't have a doctorate. Well, I don't,
no doubt, but I still do not like it. Just John. But what was special about this
man? There was a man sent of God. Now that's his qualification.
There was a man sent of God. As a matter of fact, this man
was prophesied of in the Old Testament. Malachi chapter 3
verse 1, Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare
the way before me. This is the man whom Christ said
of them born of women, There has not risen a greater than
John the Baptist. He was coming in the spirit and
power of Elijah. You remember when they said to
the Lord, the scribes say, Elijah must come first before the Messiah
comes. And the Lord said, he already
has come in John the Baptist. Let me show you a passage of
scripture. Just let me read it to you with
regard to Elijah when he's praying. Look what he says in verse 36
of 1 Kings 18. And it came to pass at the time
of the offering of the evening sacrifice that Elijah the prophet
came near and said, Lord God of Abraham and Isaac and of Israel,
let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel and that
I'm thy servant. and that I have done all these
things at thy word. I didn't do this on my own. I
simply did this because that is exactly what you told me to
do. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that
this people may know that thou art the Lord God and that thou
has turned their heart back again. Now here was this man's purpose
who was sent of God. The same came for a witness. to bear witness of that light. He came as a witness. You know,
there's actually training to teach people how to witness more
effectively. That on the surface is dishonest,
deceitful, and manipulative. To train someone to be a witness? Why, you see the corruption in
that and the manipulation in that right off the bat. A witness
is someone who has seen something. Like Isaiah, in the year King
Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. Now, a witness He's someone that
doesn't have second-hand information. He doesn't have something somebody
else told him. Well, what did you see? Well,
so-and-so saw this, and they told me about it. Sit down, then.
I won't get it. That is not a witness. Well, this is what I read in
a book. That is not a witness. A witness has seen something,
has heard something, and has some true knowledge of something. There was a man sent from God,
and he came to be a witness. Now, this is a very overwhelming thing to say, but
when I'm standing up here speaking to you, I claim to be sent from
God. Now, the only way that you can
determine whether I am is if I say what's in this book. That's the only way. To the law
and to the testimony. If they speak not according to
this word, it's because there's no light in them. John came to bear witness of
the light. You know, when Paul preached
to the Bereans, They didn't just say, well, he must be sent of
God. The scripture says they searched the scriptures daily
to see whether these things were so. And what did he come to bear
witness to? Verse seven, the same came for
a witness to bear witness of the light. Now, Christ had already
been called in these first few verses, the Word. Verse 1, in the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God as a distinct person from
God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning
with God, the Word, the expression. THE MANIFESTATION, THE COMMUNICATION,
THE REVELATION OF GOD. WHEN GOD SPEAKS, WHAT COMES OUT
OF HIS MOUTH? JESUS CHRIST. HE IS THE WORD
OF GOD. AND HE IS DESCRIBED IN THIS PASSAGE
AS THE CREATOR. ALL THINGS WERE MADE BY HIM AND
WITHOUT HIM WAS NOT ANYTHING MADE THAT WAS MADE. He's the
creator. That's how glorious Jesus Christ
is. He's the creator of the universe. And then in verse four, he's
described as the life. In him was life and the life
was the light of men. Now he has life in himself. Unlike
you and I, he's dependent on nothing and no one. He has life
in himself. He's the source of life. He's
the cause of life. And this is what this means more
than anything else. His life is the only life that
God will accept. If I don't have his life as my
personal life before God, I will not be accepted by God. I'll
be sent to hell. His life, the perfect life of
the Lord Jesus Christ is the only life that God accepts. And then we read in verse seven
where he's called the light, the same came for to bear witness
of the light. Now, what was the first thing
in creation? Light. God who commanded light to shine
out of the darkness has shined in our hearts to give the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Now, do you remember when the
children of Israel were before the Red Sea, and the pillar of
God, the pillar of fire, came down to keep the Egyptians from
them? The scripture says that pillar was darkness to the Egyptians,
and it was light to the Israelites. You know, Christ is light to
everybody who sees, to everybody who are his, but he's utter darkness
to everybody else. They don't get it. I think of
when the Lord struck the land with darkness in Egypt, darkness
that might be felt, thick darkness. What does it say about the land
of Goshen where the children of Israel were? There was light
there. In the tabernacle, there was
a light continually burning. Now look what it says with regard
to him bearing witness to this life. The same came for a witness
to bear witness of the light for this purpose that all through
him might believe. Now you'll notice men is in italics.
It was supplied there by the translators and once again it
doesn't really leave any shading light on the text. He came that
the all, all of God's elect, all of God's people, all for
whom he died might believe. He bore witness to that light
and it cost him his life that all men through him might believe.
Now, every time I preach, I hope, I want folks to believe. This
is not something we're indifferent about. He came to bear witness
to that light that was the true light. that lighteth every man
that cometh into the world. Now, the light of creation leaves
everybody without excuse, doesn't it? So what scripture says, they're
without excuse because of the light of creation. Everybody
can see that God created the universe. Somebody says, I can't
see it, it's the only thing that makes sense. There's nothing
else that makes sense. Everybody knows this instinctively,
intuitively. Somebody had to make this, and
nobody made him. His eternal power and his eternal
Godhood. Everybody has that light in every
continent, in every country, among every people. Everybody
has that light. But there are many who live and
die without the light of the gospel, that never hear the gospel. But let me say this, if you do
have light, He gave it to you, and He is Himself that light. Now, I don't have any doubt that
what that's talking about is the light in John chapter 18,
verse 12, or John chapter 8, verse 12, when He said, I'm the
light of the world. And He said that with reference to that glorious
story about that woman who was taken in adultery in the very
act. There was no doubt about her
guilt. And at the end of that story,
the Lord said, woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no
man condemned thee? You remember they'd all left
one by one. She said, no man, Lord. And he said, neither do
I. Now here is the glory of the
gospel. God looks at me right now and
there's nothing to condemn me for. That is the gospel. Christ put
away my sin to this extent. He gave me his righteousness
to this extent. that God looks at me and finds
nothing to condemn me for. Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? God justified them. Who is he
that condemneth? It is Christ that died. Yea,
rather that it's risen again who's even at the right hand
of God. There's nothing to condemn me
for. When I stand before God in judgment,
he's gonna look me over Perfect. He never sinned. He always did
that which is right. Now, only the gospel answers
how that could be. Now, John has more to say about
light than any of the other writers of scripture combined. And when
Eric read 1 John 1, I got excited because that's where we're gonna
end. 1 John 1. And I thought, I hope everybody's
thinking about what's that mean? What's that saying? Well, let's
go there. 1 John 1. This is the light that he's speaking
of. 1 John 1. John says, that which was, from the beginning, speaking
of his eternal existence as God Almighty, which we have heard,
now he's speaking of a witness, 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.
I love the way he calls him the life, don't you? The life was
manifested. And we have seen and bear witness,
just like John the Baptist did, and shown to you that eternal
life, Jesus Christ is eternal life. Not just, well, eternal life
is living forever. No, Jesus Christ is eternal life. which was with the Father and
was manifested unto us. That which we've seen and heard
declare we unto you that you also might have fellowship with
us. I love Henry Mahan's definition
of fellowship. Fellas in the same ship. Fellows in the same ship. Now,
this is what fellowship is. It's fellowship around being
in the ship, being in the Lord Jesus Christ, Him being my salvation,
Him being my righteousness. That's what fellowship is. It's
not just folks getting together and talking, and that's good,
I'm all for that, but fellowship, this is fellowship right now.
Fellowship around the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. I mean,
we're believing the same thing. There's fellowship in the gospel. And he says, truly, our fellowship
is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. Now, I wanna have fellowship
with John, don't you? Because his fellowship's with
the Father. I wanna have fellowship with the Father, too. I wanna
have fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ. And this is why
John says we're writing. Look what he says in verse three.
And these things write we unto you for this purpose, that your
joy may be full. The gospel of Jesus Christ is
a thing of joy. To stand before God without sin
is a thing of joy. To be in Christ is a thing of
joy. To know that everything's working
together for my good and His glory is a thing of joy. To know Him is a thing of joy. We read Romans 15, 13 of the
joy and peace of believing. Now John says, these things write
I unto you, that your joy may be full. Now this then is the
message, verse five, which we've heard of Him, and declaring to
you That God is light. That's the message. God is light. You won't see who you are without
this light. You won't see who he is without
him giving you light. You won't see the gospel WITHOUT
HIM GIVING YOU LIGHT. IF YOU BELIEVE THE GOSPEL, YOU'VE
BEEN ENLIGHTENED BY GOD HIMSELF. GOD IS LIGHT AND IN HIM IS NO
DARKNESS AT ALL. HE'S LIGHT AS OPPOSED TO DARKNESS. HE'S RIGHTEOUSNESS AS OPPOSED
TO EVIL. IN HIM IS NO DARKNESS AT ALL,
NO SIN, NO EVIL, NOTHING TO HIDE, HOLY, HOLY, Holy, you could say
so many light, light, light, good, good, good. Verse six, if we say, and this is a phrase
that John uses over and over again through this epistle. If
we say, a lot of people have a lot to say, don't they? If
we say that we have fellowship with Him, I have fellowship with
God. I talk to Him, He talks to me.
I pray, He hears. I have communion with Him. I
desire for Him to be pleased with me. I desire fellowship,
communion with Him. I have fellowship with God. If we say we have fellowship
with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and we do not the truth. A man who claims to have fellowship
with God and yet he walks in darkness, he's a liar. He's not practicing the truth. Now the way most people interpret
that is, if we claim fellowship with Him, but practice secret
sin in the dark and do things that nobody can see and nobody
knows about, we are liars. We don't really have fellowship
with Him. We're not truly saved. We make these claims of fellowship
with God and yet we sin in secret. We're liars. Where would that leave you? If you have any honesty at all,
it would leave you unsaved. But bless God, that is not what
it's talking about. And I hope you'll be able to
see that as we go on looking at this passage of scripture.
And the context will bear this out. 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,
there's that word, the light, as he is in the light, Don't
you love to think of the Lord Jesus Christ being in the light
that no man can approach to right now, dwelling in the light of
God. 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, cleanseth us, present, active, Cleanses
us from all sin, you know what that means? We're sinning and
his blood cleanses us from that sin That doesn't mean if you
sin in the dark You're a hypocrite Sins never okay I'm not excusing
sin in any way but The blood of Jesus Christ God son cleanseth
us from all sin Look in chapter 2 verse 1, My
little children, these things write unto you that you sin not.
That's his purpose in writing. These things write unto you that
you sin not. Well, let's consider what it is he wrote to them and
we'll come back to verse 7 in a minute to see what it means,
but he says in verse 8, If we say, there's that term
again, if we say, That we have no sin. In this verse of scripture, sin
is a noun. It's not referring to any particular
sin committed. It's speaking of a sinful nature. If we say we have no sin, and
like I said, that's not just talking about a particular sin.
That's talking about a sinful nature where Paul said, I find
in a law that when I would do good, evil is present with me. We know that the law is spiritual,
but I am carnal, sold under sin, He even talks about being brought
into the captivity of sin, which is in his members. And every believer knows exactly
what that means. If you don't know what that means,
it's because you're an unbeliever. God hasn't given you any light
with regard to what you really are. You just haven't seen. If
God's done anything for you, you know that this is so with
regard to you. Look what he says. If we say
that we have no sin, a sinful nature right now, we deceive
ourselves and the truth is not in us. If someone makes that
claim, they've lost all credibility. They've deceived themselves.
and the truth is not even in them. Somebody makes that claim,
I'm not gonna buy anything off of them, they'll rip me off.
I mean, I just don't trust anyone who will make a claim like that.
I don't have any sin, it tickled me. Years ago, my sister Susan
was applying for a job, And they said, have you ever thought about
stealing anything? And she said, well, sure. You don't get the
job. They're not going to hire her. And she should have had
better sense to answer like that. But that stopped them from giving
her a job. You ever thought about stealing
anything? Sure you have. Sure you have. That person who makes that claim
has lost all credibility. Now look in verse 10. If we say
that we've not sinned, that's a verb there. That's talking
about any individual act you do. I don't care what it is. And it's in the perfect tense,
a completed action, whatever you do, Whatever it is, it is
sin because you did it. The scripture says the plowing
of the wicked is sin. And I've said this so many times,
if there's anything that seems to be a wholesome activity, it's
going out and plowing, perhaps to grow food for the poor and
do whatever you can to help people. I mean, but the scripture says
the plowing of the wicked is sin. And what about this man? If we say, there it is again,
if we say, if we say we've not sinned, we make him a liar because
he says we have. And his word is not in us. Now look at verse nine, sandwiched
in between verses eight and 10, if we confess our sins. Now that word confess means more
than anything else, agreement. A confession of faith, for instance,
is what everybody says they agree on. This is what we all believe.
It means agreement. If we confess our sins, does
not mean that you're able to confess every one of your sins
before God, because you're not able to do that. You don't know
what most of them are. And you don't have enough time
in the day. If you confessed all your sins, you would be nonstop,
24-7, confessing sin. Isn't that so? You would. So
if it means confessing each individual sin, you can't do it, but let
me tell you what it does mean. It means you agree with what
God says with regard to your sin. You take sides with God
against yourself. And that's what it means to confess
sin. You take sides with God against yourself. You agree with
what God says. The only way you're going to
have true conviction of sin is just simply agreeing with what
God says with regard to your sin. May God enable all of us
to do that, to quit vindicating ourselves, to quit justifying
ourselves, and to agree with what God says with regard to
our sin. It's all my fault. It's evil. God says that. All I do is sin. I've never not sinned. Every action, every prayer, the
sermon I'm preaching right now, it doesn't matter what it is.
If I did it, it's sin. If we confess our sin, If we
agree with God with regard to our sin, this is what is so amazing. It says he is faithful and just
to forgive us for our sin. It doesn't say that he is merciful
and gracious, although he is. He's faithful. Because the reason
you confess your sin in the first place is it was all included
in the covenant of grace that you would do that. And he was
faithful to enable you to do it. He's just being faithful
to himself. You confess your sin, that's
God being faithful. He's one of mine, she's one of
mine, I'm gonna cause him to do it. That's God being faithful
to himself. It's not your faithfulness, it's
God's faithfulness. Not only is He faithful, He's
just, absolute justice. You see, the reason He forgives
me of my sin is because He justified me. The reason for forgiveness
is not confession. It's not because you asked. It's
not because you were sorry. The reason for forgiveness is
because you've been justified by what Christ did. You were
one of those people for whom he said, Father, forgive them. And when he died, all your sin
was put away. You were justified and God is
just. TO FORGIVE YOU OF YOUR SIN. I
MEAN, ONE OF THE GLORIOUS THINGS ABOUT THE GOSPEL, IT'S SO JUST,
IT'S SO RIGHTEOUS. EVERYTHING ABOUT IT, SIN IS NOT
IN ANY WAY ENDORSED OR OKAY. GOD IS JUST TO FORGIVE OUR SINS. NOW, VERSE 7, The light of how God is just
and justifies the ungodly. That's the light that's talking
about. The light of how the Lord could look at that woman and
say, where are your accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? Neither
do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more. The light of the gospel. If we walk in the light, 1 John
1, 7, if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, He's in
the light, I'm in Him, I'm right there with Him. Union with the Lord Jesus Christ.
He's in the light, I'm in Him, I'm right there with Him. I have
light as to how God can love me, as to how God can embrace
me, as to how God can accept me. in the beloved, if we walk
in the light. As he is in the light, we have
fellowship with one another, don't we? I mean, that's true
fellowship. Fellows in the same ship, believing
the same gospel, rejoicing in the same light. Rejoicing in
who Jesus Christ is and what he accomplished. How God's made
a way to be just and justify ungodly sinners. Oh, we have
fellowship with one another. We love the gospel. That's fellowship. Fellows in the same ship. We
have fellowship one with another. And the blood of Jesus Christ,
his son, cleanseth. You know what that means? It's going on right now. Didn't
the Lord say you're clean every whit and the only place you need
washed is your feet? Every day, walking through this
world, being with ourselves, we get our feet dirty. I don't
have to be out in the world to get my feet dirty. I just gotta
be in my study to get my feet dirty. It's me. And the blood
of Jesus Christ, God's Son, continually cleanseth us from all sin. Now that is the light John bore
witness to. The same came for witness, to
bear witness to that light that was the true light. Anything
else is false. Let's pray. Lord, how we thank you for Your
Son, the light that dwells in your very presence
in the brightness of your glory and gives us the light as to
how you can be faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and
cleanse us from all unrighteousness. How we thank you for the gospel
of Jesus Christ. Bless this message for your glory
and for our good. We pray for your blessing on
the coming Bible school. We pray that you will be pleased
to bless the teachers in preaching the gospel and that you would
make yourself known to these children according to your will.
Bless us for Christ's sake. In His name we pray.