God Is Light - 1 John 1:5-7

Everybody is afraid of something.  Some people have worse phobias than others but deep down, everybody has something of which they are afraid.  How about you?  What are you afraid of?  I know Darla is afraid of spiders.  Obviously Speedy is afraid of barbers.  Anybody want to share their fear?  What are you afraid of?

I found a website that lists all of the known phobias that people may have and it was just fascinating to me.  Here are a few special ones: 

Church- Ecclesiophobia

Bald people- Peladophobia.

Vegetables- Lachanophobia

Sermons- Homilophobia

Good news, hearing good news- Euphobia

I feel sorry for anybody that has these phobias (well, maybe not the vegetable one) and I don’t want to make fun of them at all.  In fact, there is a phobia that we all should have.  It’s called peccatophobia.  Anybody here have peccatophobia?  Spiders and snakes and vegetables probably should be feared but this…this will do more harm to you than anything else in this world.  It will kill you faster or ruin your life worse than anything else.  Peccatophobia is the fear of sin.

Yes, it’s a real thing and it would be the best phobia to have if you are going to have one because, for a Christian, sin is the worst thing in the world that can happen to us.  In fact, it’s the worst thing and the only thing we should be afraid of.  We have peace and joy in this life because we know that the Creator and Sustainer of the universe loves us and wants good things for us and we know that as His children nothing can pluck us out of His protective hand. (John 10:28)

But sin puts a barrier between us and Holy God.  It builds a wall that we can only break through with His forgiveness and 1 John 1:9 says that He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins when we confess them.  But until we have His forgiveness we miss out on some of His blessings and that’s a dangerous place to be.  I heard about the angry church member who asked her pastor, “Why do you keep preaching to us Christians about sin?  After all, sin in the life of a Christian is different than sin in the life of an unsaved person!”  The pastor said, “Yes you are right.  It is so much worse!”  (Wiersbe)

Not everybody realizes that, though.  Not everybody really fears sin.  They don’t think it’s that big of a deal.  They call it by other names.  They call it a mistake or an oopsie or even an alternative lifestyle and they continue living in that sin not knowing the damage that is being done to them spiritually and even physically.  It’s like saying, “Oh, it’s just a little Black Widow spider.  It doesn’t bite me very often.  I like to play with it.”  That’s ridiculous and so is playing with or tolerating or even justifying living with sin.

Now, the reason some people don’t realize how bad sin can be is because they don’t really know God.  They don’t really know what He is like.  Did everybody get this chart entitled “Making Disciples”?  I want you to look at that for a minute.  The last thing Jesus told His disciples was what?  Go and make more disciples.  In Matthew 28, the Great Commission, Jesus told His disciples to make more disciples.  What is a disciple?

My definition of a disciple is one who learns from Jesus and then teaches and encourages others with what they have learned. 

I went through the Gospels and identified 4 steps that Jesus used to make disciples and then last year, in January, we talked about those steps and what it would look like if Christ Fellowship did the same basic thing.  Well, last year we talked the talk and this year we are going to walk the walk.

We will be talking more about this but for the sake of time let’s just concentrate on that first column entitled “Attract”.  The first thing Jesus did to make disciples was He attracted them so for the first quarter of this year we are going to focus on attracting people to Jesus as well.  Our goal is not necessarily to attract them to Christ Fellowship, although that would be great.  Our goal is to attract them to Jesus. 

In Isaiah 53 it says, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”  He was not physically attractive and yet everywhere Jesus went He was always followed by huge crowds.  What was it about Jesus; what is it about God that would make Him attractive?  For the next few weeks we will be going through the great little book of 1 John and we will see what God is like.  We will see what makes Him attractive.

The book was written by John the Apostle.  We know he was a young man when Jesus was with them in person and these letters were probably written some 55-65 years later but they were written by someone who had been there and seen Jesus and touched Him and ate with Him and had shared everything for the 3 years of his ministry here on earth and that is how John start his book by saying just that so that people would understand his authority of writing these things.

So, turn to 1 John 1 and let’s look at just verses 5-7.  1 John 1:5-7.

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. ⁶ If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. ⁷ 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, purifies us from all sin.

Now, right off the bat I see something interesting.  That first sentence.  “This is the message we have heard from him (Jesus) and declare to you…”  What is John doing right there?  He’s being a disciple.  See it?  He says he learned something from Jesus and now he is teaching and encouraging us with it.  That’s what it means to be a disciple.  You don’t have to be a great theologian.  You just have to share what you have learned.

So what is it that John learned from Jesus?  He says he learned that God is light.  When I titled this message, “God is Light” I thought that’s just not very exciting.  No pizzazz.  Not very “attractive” and yet if we can get some measure of understanding about all of this it will be life-changing to us and that will definitely be attractive to other people.  So what does it mean that God is light?

Well, I looked up the word “light” in my big concordance and it didn’t really tell me much at first.  Light pretty much means light.  We all know what light means but I knew that John wasn’t saying that God is what comes from a lightbulb.  I wanted to know what John was thinking.  What did the word mean to him and so I continued digging and researching and finally found something I thought was very interesting and, in fact, very attractive about the word “light”.

If John was telling somebody about what comes from a light bulb he would use the same word that he would use to describe God and that is the word “phos” from which we get “phosphorous” or “phosphorescent” but in his language and in his time the description of God was much bigger and was based around three other words and those words are “knowledge”, “holiness” and “happiness”.  Repeat.  That’s a lot more than we can say for a light bulb, right?  When John says God is light, he is saying that God is completely knowledgeable.  He is completely holy and He is completely happy.  Is that fascinating to anybody else but me?

I’ve just never heard that before.  I’ve heard all the good comparisons about God being the illuminator of all things and that it is through His light that things grow and are seen but here John is not really saying that.  He is saying that as light, God is completely knowledgeable, holy and happy.  So, let’s look at those aspects of God to see what God is really like and then we will see what that means for us since in Thessalonians 5:5 we as disciples are called children of the light.

Omniscience is having all knowledge or being completely knowledgeable and it is a word that can only describe God.  Matthew 10 says that God knows when every sparrow falls and he knows how many hairs are on my head.  One of those sounds impossible and the other, for me, is not that big of a deal since I’m bald.  God’s omniscience, His ability to know everything is more than I can fathom.  It is a subject that my friend David tackled in Psalm 139.

  He says, “You have searched me, Lord,
    and you know me.
² You know when I sit and when I rise;
    you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
    you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
    you, Lord, know it completely.
⁵ You hem me in behind and before,
    and you lay your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
    too lofty for me to attain.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who can’t understand God’s omniscience but still believes it!  God is light because He is all-knowledgeable.  He is also all holy and I don’t know about you but I am attracted to a God that is holy because holy means to be set apart or different; separate from others.  I don’t want to worship a god that is no bigger or better than me; a god that is like me and that I can understand.

I don’t understand God and I’m okay with that because if I could understand God He wouldn’t be much of a God.  C.S. Lewis said, “How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing, it is irresistible.”

In Exodus 15:11 it says, “Who else among the gods is like You, O Lord?  Who is glorious in holiness like You---so awesome in splendor, performing such wonders?”  That’s what makes God attractive to people.  Where else are you going to go to get “awesome in splendor”?  Who else performs such wonders as Holy God?  That’s why we want to introduce people to God through His Son Jesus.  We want people to see God for Who He is.  He is omniscient.  He is holy; set apart, different and sometimes scary, yes, but always trustworthy.

Also…He is happy.  Do you believe that?  So often we think of God as non-enthusiastic or even gloomy. The exact opposite is true: He loves to be God, He takes great pleasure in all that He does, and He is enthusiastic about serving His people and working for their welfare. For example, God says in Jeremiah 32:41: "I will rejoice in doing them good." Jesus said in John 15:11, "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you." And Paul writes in 1 Timothy 1:11 of "the glorious gospel of the blessed God." Blessed means happy. So Paul is saying: "the glorious gospel of the happy God."

God is infinitely happy because he is infinitely glorious. And, the good news is that he invites us to enter into his happiness. Here is what John Piper writes in The Pleasures of God (p. 26): "It is good news that God is gloriously happy. No one would want to spend eternity with an unhappy God. If God is unhappy then the goal of the gospel is not a happy goal, and that means it would be no gospel at all. But, in fact, Jesus invites us to spend eternity with a happy God when he says, ‘Enter into the joy of your master' (Matthew 25:23). Jesus lived and died that his joy-God's joy-might be in us and our joy might be full (John 15:11; 17:13). Therefore, the gospel is ‘the gospel of the glory of the happy God.'"  Matt Perman

It is fascinating to me that God is happy.  I’m very glad that God is holy.  That brings me joy and peace to know that He is different from all others.  To know that God is all-knowledgeable scares me a little bit but really I’m very glad.  All of that makes God very attractive to me and I want other people to see those attributes of God.  But what does that really mean to me?  How does that affect my life?

Go back to 1 John 1 and let’s read verses 6-7 again.  “If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. ⁷ 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, purifies us from all sin.”

If God is light and we know that John meant that God is knowledge, holiness and happiness then what does it mean to walk in the light or to walk in darkness?  I told you we as a church were going to start walking the walk and that starts right here with personal responsibility to walk in knowledge, holiness and happiness.  We each have a personal responsibility to increase our knowledge, holiness and happiness but that only happens when we have fellowship with Almighty God.

The word “fellowship” means to have a partnership.  We actually partner with God.  We communicate with Him.  We walk with Him in His light.  He is light so walk in His light.  Walk in His knowledge, holiness and happiness in partnership with Him to make Him attractive to non-believers.  That means Bible study.  That means prayer.  That means faithful church attendance.  That means increasing your own knowledge, holiness and happiness but we can’t do any of that – in fact we will walk in ignorance, sin and misery when we are not walking in partnership with Him.

So, the choice is yours.  You can walk in the light of omniscient, holy, happy God or you can walk by yourself in darkness; ignorance, misery and sin.  John says in that last verse that the blood of Jesus – His death on the cross – purifies us from all sin.  He goes on to say just a couple of sentences later that if we confess our sin God is faithful to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

So repent of that sin – turn away from it – and ask for forgiveness today and make the choice every day to walk in partnership with God with nothing to fear but sin and wanting nothing but to be more like Jesus.  Do it today.