Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 11, 2020 | Don't Settle for Christian - Where You Walk

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October 11, 2020 | Don't Settle for Christian - Where You Walk · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, how are you?
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful day.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, Grumpy.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Inside joke.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a weird title, isn't it?
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Don't Settle for Christian.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: So let me set that in perspective for you a little bit.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: A couple of weeks ago, some of us, uh, Don and Ruth Ann, myself and some others, uh, spent a week out at an ATV All-Train Vehicle Jamboree in Utah.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And had a good time riding four-wheelers.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh because we had a couple of terrific photographers on the trip, we decided to see a couple of national parks.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And on the way back, 15 days ago, this time in the morning, we were at uh the most famous national park, I suppose, or at least the most popular one in Utah.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Arches National Park.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's got, as you would imagine, arches in it.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we got up at oh dark 30 in the morning, well before dawn, so that, and and yeah, I got a couple more people.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um The Haynes were also with us.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: We got up really early so we could so we could drive out to the park and get in before it got too busy, and also so that we could take photographs of the sun coming up over the arches, maybe see some wildlife and so forth.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um and so it's really nice.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the issue is that as you drive that 18 miles uh through the park, they have all of these pull-offs, these overlooks.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so you pull uh you pull off, these overlooks, you get out, get out your camera, and you take these long-distance pictures.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: But in a number of them, they have these signs, and the signs will say something like for a closer look or whatever, take this trail 2.1 miles, and so forth.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens is if you do that, and and we did not get this word, we did not settle for taking the long-range picture.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: We generally hiked, and as a result, we were able to get close so that the people who are good photographers could get photographs like this one, though I've stolen this off of Google, as as I do with almost everything else.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: But um so we were not willing to settle for the experience that uh that uh that many, many, many most, you know, majority of the thousands upon thousands of people have every day.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so my title is significant in the book of 1 John.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Don't settle for Christians signifies that being a Christian is wonderful.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: You've you've seen Christ, you've uh you've you've believed in Jesus Christ, you've looked at the cross, you've looked at the resurrection, you put your faith in him, and as a result, you have fire insurance, you're going to heaven, you have eternal life, forgiveness of sins, you have a lot of things.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: But book of 1 John, John remember, wrote the Gospel of John to tell us how to become a Christian.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: And now he writes 1 John, which is sort of a takeoff on Jesus' upper room discourse in John 13 through 17 to his disciples to tell us how to go further in the faith.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, in a in a sense, in this book of 1 John, if you have a Bible open or your or your cell phone open, and uh okay, you kids, if you use a cell phone, really look at 1 John.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: So uh John starts off uh this epistle with sort of a personal word in the first four verses, and I consider this word so significant to the theme of the book that I've sort of written out in my own words what he's saying in the first four verses.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'll show you that in a minute.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I believe that John's personal word to us goes something like this.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you've believed in Jesus, right?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: You maybe you read my verse, John 3.16, and you understand that God so loved the world, that he gave his unique son, that anyone who believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you've believed in Jesus.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Congratulations.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: You're now a Christian, you're a child in God's family, and by the word child is uh common in the book of 1 John.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's addressing children in God's family.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, uh there's a special word that's often translated as in chapter 2, verse 1, dear children, and it literally, technia, is a is his own special word.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: It means little children, dearly beloved little kids.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: So congratulations, you're now a little kid in God's family.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big family.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: You have 2 billion, 2.4 billion brothers and sisters around the world.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what's more, James, Peter, and I, and the other apostles are your brothers too.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we've got an exciting invitation for you.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Don't settle for being a child.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Be our friend and companion.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: We have a close relationship, a sweet fellowship with Jesus and his Father.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're a circle of friends.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the circle would only be better if you join it.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's not hard.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you how.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's verses one through four.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Verses three and four, you can see where how John says this when he says, We are proclaiming to you in this book what we ourselves, we the apostles, ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And stop for a moment.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't it be amazing to be able to have Lord Jesus as a close companion like John did?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: In the previous verse, he said, What we have seen and heard and what our hands have handled.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, John and Jesus knew John as the beloved disciple.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And on the night before he died, remember, John did touch Jesus throughout the meal.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: He leaned against him.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's how close they were.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And John now says, I want you to enter into that circle of close companionship.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: I know it wants you to know us apostles and Jesus as more than just a father and a brother, as a friend, as a constant companion.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says, so that you may have fellowship.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: By the word, we have a class meeting downstairs right now, which is called koinonia.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's the word right here.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Fellowship.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: It means a sharing relationship.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: You share something, a fellowship with us.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we're writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: C.S.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis in his book on friendship wrote that the difference between friendship and love is that in love you look at one other person, you know, and that's as big as you want the circle to go, or as big as it should go.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: But in friendship, friendship's always enriched and is happier and has more joy the more people join it.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you'll notice that in 1 John 1, 1 through 4, John points at the Father and His Son Jesus Christ and says, they invited us apostles into the fellowship, and we are now inviting all of you into the fellowship, and we'd love for you to join us.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Don't settle for less than this.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Don't settle for child when you could be a friend.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Alright?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, uh, and I couldn't help thinking of um, not a good picture here, but King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, right?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the King Arthur would invite more and more knights until they're eventually, I think, over a hundred.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: But John is inviting us to join sort of the Knights of the Round Table, this circle of fellowship in this book.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And he's saying our fellowship circle would only be better if you join it.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not hard, let me tell you how.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if I were to boil down all five chapters of this book, I would say that the three most significant keys that John gives to joining this fellowship circle are honesty, obedience, and love.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so John talks about honesty in the passage we're going to look at this morning.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Speaks about obedience in the chapter two, speaks about love in chapters four and five.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: So let me dive right in to one of my favorite passages, probably one of your favorite verses in the Bible, a verse that you probably have used many times in your life, 1 John 1 9, right?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: You familiar with that verse?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Great verse.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: I know a lot of people who is for whom it's the their favorite professor up at Calvary, favorite verse in the Bible.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: So this I'm calling the honesty key, and I'm really excited about sharing this passage with you.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: I've shared it with this church twice before in my 40-some years, but um I'm approaching it a different way today and excited about it.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: So let me just read through the passage.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is sort of the NIV with a few tweaks from me.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the passage goes like this.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: There it is.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: We've heard this message from him, Jesus, and his father, and now we're gonna pass it on to you.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: God is light, in him there's no darkness at all.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and then do not live by the truth.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: But if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And his word has no place in our lives.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: One quick note about the sort of structure of these six verses.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: They fall into three pairs.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Verse five says, God is light, no dark, and that leads into a false claim.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: The false, you know, all of these false claims start off if we should say or if we should claim.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: So if you should claim that you have fellowship with him and you're walking in the dark, it's a false claim.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, he says, walk in the light.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Key verse, verse seven, walk in the light.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: We have a false claim related to that.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Third, confess our sins and a false claim related to that.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: We'll go through those, but I decided for today not to go through those as I normally would, and that is taking them verse by verse.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna tackle them in sort of a different way.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna ask and answer ten questions that flow out of this passage that I think are raised and answered by these six verses.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Question number one is why is fellowship with God such an unexpected privilege?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why is this such an amazing idea?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, verse five answers the question with basically saying, because of who he is and because of who we are.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Verse five says, this is the message of him.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's an amazing assertion.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't surprise us about God, right?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because we've always known him back when he was, you know, in a pillar of light, he always exists in constant radiance.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Moses could only look at the back of him, or whatever that means in Deuteronomy, because he's so bright.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, he dwells in unapproachable light.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: No one can approach him.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: He's always, he's just, he's like the sun, right?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's light.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what does that mean?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it means a couple of things in the Bible.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: It means it's the light, he is the light that exposes good and evil.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: John chapter 3, Jesus said, you know, people who do evil and wickedness don't come to the light because they don't want to be exposed.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: So sort of a light that exposes.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's also the light of purity.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: God never done anything wrong, never even stepped a toe into the darkness.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: He is what we call impeccable.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: So is Jesus.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we have the statement that God is light and him is no darkness at all.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why does he make that a special point?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is that in those days, there was a view, a sort of a Gnosticism, but it was Gnosticism didn't start for another hundred years, but it was sort of like our Star Wars movies, where they believed that God was sort of like the force and he had his light side and his dark side, right?
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And you see that you see that hint in movies today in Hollywood quite a bit, that people are boring unless they have a dark side, right?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: People are far more interesting in many of our novels and many of our movies, if they're not just good, but they're also bad.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the point being made here is that this false teaching of this day was wrong.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: God does not have a light side and a dark side.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: God is all good.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, he exposes evil.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem with that, of course, is immediately we know we don't qualify to to fellowship with him, right?
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because we're a mixture, you know.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Dawn's about 80% light, 20% dark.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm more like 60, 40, right?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, but but there's darkness in all of us if we're honest.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what this passage is about.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: So why is fellowship with God, companionship, such a stunning privilege?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because of who he is, he's all light, and we're not.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Question number two What lie that I tell myself makes fellowship with God absolutely impossible?
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: What disqualifies any or makes impossible any fellowship with God right at the start?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is in the next verse.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Verse six, if we claim to have fellowship with Him and walk in the darkness, we lie and we don't live by the truth.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, logically, that makes sense, doesn't it?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: If God's in the light, right, then we have to be in the light, we have to be walking by it.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to walk according to the light and be perfect, but we have to walk in the light of honesty and exposure and as one commentator says it in the light of truth, to have any fellowship with them.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: But if if we claim to have fellowship with them and walk in darkness, could be moral darkness.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: We deliberately are living in sin.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes, you know, there are people who come to church and they put on a front as though they are walking with God.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And everything's hunky-dory.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And how are you doing this morning?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And they mean that literally.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact of the matter is they're not.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're walking in darkness, and therefore they're not good.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: They're not having fellowship with God.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're not walking with him like a companion, okay?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Or they could just be uh concealing the fact that they're sinning.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: So whatever.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: If they're refusing to be exposed to the light and they say they have fellowship with him, makes no sense, right?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's a logical impossibility.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: We are lying and we're not living by the truth.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're representing something that's false, and we're living by falsehood.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: Question three, what then is the only way to have fellowship with God?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is in verse seven, get in the light with him.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And notice again, it's walking in the light, not according to the light, not in perfect morality, because we can't do that, but we're walking in that light of exposure and honesty as he is in the light.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: We have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the first great verse of walking with God in this text.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it's one of the great verses in the Bible.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's a verse that you ought to know.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Get in the light with God.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you're walking in the darkness, don't say I'm good.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Don't say, you know, no problem.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh get in the light and uh uh and then you'll be able to walk walk with God.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll come back to this phrase, the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin because it reappears two verses later.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So again, John, I think, behind the scenes is chatting with us, and John the apostle is saying this, I'm so happy that you've seen the light.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so happy that you've seen yourself as a sinner, seen Christ as your Savior, you've seen and you've believed for eternal life, but don't settle for just seeing the light.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, walk in the light for fellowship.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: You see that?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: You see the jump there from eternal life to abundant life and life to it in its full?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Question four, when I'm walking with the Lord, how is it easy to fool myself?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: When I'm in the light, when I'm actually walking with the Lord, when when I, you know, I feel like I'm all, you know, I'm all good with God, how even at that moment is it especially easy or tempting for me to fool myself?
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is in verse eight that I can sort of universalize and say, you know, there's nothing wrong with me.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the number of Christians today that are in, uh, that believe what this says is false teaching, who believe in sinless perfection, is only a tiny fraction of what it used to be.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very popular view a hundred years ago.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a popular view in John's day.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: There were people who believed that because they had inside knowledge, these Gnostics, that somehow they were on a higher plane and they were completely above sin and that they were as spotless as God.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And some of you, if you've been in the Mormon religion, then you understand that's that resonates a little bit with Mormonism, in which our goal is to become, you know, uh gods, actually.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: We and Jesus will eventually walk together in the celestial kingdom and become gods.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: So uh so it that you can fool yourself that way.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know very many people that do, but but you know, you need to recognize with David and with Paul that even if you know nothing wrong with yourself, that doesn't mean that there's nothing wrong with you.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: David says in Psalm 1, Psalm 19, who can discern his errors?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Cleanse me, Lord, from my hidden faults.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And and Paul in 1 Corinthians 4, 4, says, My conscience is clear, but that doesn't make me innocent.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think of biblical examples, you know, the book of Judges tells about a horrible time in Israel's history, a couple hundred years, when every man did that which was right in his own eyes, and there was no, they didn't have the word in front of them, and so forth.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so you could have a hero like Samson, who it appears really believed that he was walking with God, and he was God's hero, and God was not seriously judging him, although he eventually paid with his life.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: But he did some really squirrely things, morally and in some other ways, but but he lived in a world that, if it's possible, was even darker morally than our world.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so my point is that Samson could have been all, you know, good with God in his own mind, and yet he is, and he's he's presented as a person who's got all kinds of flaws that maybe he himself didn't even realize.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you will find that.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you'll be working with someone who comes from a part of the city or part of the town where they haven't been raised like you have.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: They have been they've been raised completely apart from the church or apart from any moral upbringing or moral parents.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they're so excited to come to faith, and they begin walking in sort of a way with God, and you're wondering, okay, shall I tell them that it's really that they shouldn't, you know, be smoking reefers?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, should I tell them that?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, my my my room when I got seminary, uh my roommate had just trusted Christ, you know, several months before.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: He'd been at a university, a prestigious university in Southern California.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: He'd come to Christ through Campus Crusade.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm talking to Bruce, and we became really tight.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's a professor at a Lutheran seminary in Washington now.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: But but but I but I he was so excited about his faith, and I said, Wow, what happened?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: What'd you do?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well he said, I was so excited that I took my girlfriend and and I bought a six-pack of beer and went up in the mountains and and and and and we spent the weekend in my sleeping bag with a six-pack of beer.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: And this is only when I came back I started realizing that's that wasn't actually the way to celebrate becoming a Christian.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so so there are times, I didn't mean to tell all that, but and Bruce, if you listen to this, I'm sorry about that.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: His name's actually uh Joe.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Joe.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: So um so so who can discern his heirs, right?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, question number five then goes when I'm out of fellowship with the Lord, how do I get back in?
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is in verse nine, this great verse.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Confessor.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Say, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this verse is so important.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've got four questions just about confession of sins in here, all right?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the first question, and these questions just flow right out of each other, and they're not complicated.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: The first is what does it mean to confess sins?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the word confess, maybe some of you know, is the Greek word homo-logeo.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you may recognize homo means the same, like homogenized milk or homosexual or all of those.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Homo homo means two things that are alike each other.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Lageo, like lagos, means the word.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it means to say the same thing, to agree with someone else, to admit something, to acknowledge something.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to confess, says that God's saying something.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: What I did there.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: I shouldn't have lost my temper, you know.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: Or that I, when I deliberately cut the other person off in traffic because they'd done it to me, that was a sin, or what I just said, or what I just looked at.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: God goes, you sinned.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, homologue.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Confessing your sins means you acknowledge, you agree with God about that, and you say, You're right.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: I sinned.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's that simple, but it's that hard to do, right?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's not natural.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this causes some people a theological problem.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: They say, Why, why, hold it, why do we need confession of sins?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Weren't we forgiven forever at the cross?
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, in Pilgrim's Progress, the uh pilgrim comes up, sees the cross, and his burden of sins falls away.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we have a song about that.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, we have a couple of verses in the New Testament, in Ephesians and Colossians, that say just this.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's speaking of salvation forgiveness, eternal forgiveness.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I said earlier in this message, if you've believed in Christ, you've not only gotten eternal life in the Holy Spirit, you've gotten forgiveness of sins.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Forever and ever, God will not hold your sins against you in an eternal way.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, the answer to the question, why do we need forgiveness of sins, is because we still need what some scholars call family forgiveness, others call daily forgiveness.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is the kind of forgiveness Jesus spoke of in his model prayer.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: We call it the Lord's Prayer, when he said to his disciples, you know, pray our Father started in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then you get to this point where he says, forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a kind of a forgiveness that the prodigal son experienced.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't becoming a son at that point.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: He'd been a son, he had wandered away, and he came back, and his father, and he said, For all, Father, forgive me for I've sinned, and his father forgave him.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: D and FD, disciples need forgiveness daily.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the kind of forgiveness that 1 John 1, 5 through 10 is about, because it's not written to non-Christians telling them how to become Christians.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's what John's gospel is about.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: But the book of 1 John is about how to take that next step into intimacy and fellowship and companionship, and disciples wander away and they need to return to God and get that family forgiveness that every parent gives his child when his child confesses, or sometimes even before they confess, right?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because a child sometimes will do something that's wrong.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just say a child, you've told your child repeatedly not to run in the street, child runs in the street, finally gets hit by a car, and that child is in the hospital, and you go to that child, child cries and say, I'm sorry, please forgive me.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you will say, of course, I've already forgiven you.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've, you know, I don't hold this against you at all.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so sorry for you, but I am glad that you recognize that you did something wrong and that you're paying for it.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: So this is an important question.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Why do we need forgiveness of sins?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a question that's a little weird is it says uh God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: We understand faithful because God's making this promise, and we need a God who's faithful enough when he promises to forgive us and bring us back into fellowship that he will faithfully do it, even though, I mean, this is the same sin we committed yesterday and the day before and last week, and yet we're confessing it again, right?
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yet he's promised faithfully to forgive us.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it just for him to do so?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: We don't think this way, but the New Testament and God constantly think, you know what, I have to be just.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: People on earth constantly they believe in sloppy forgiveness, they constantly say, oh, no problem, oh no problem, you know, if if people who lie about you, gossip about you, hurt you, do things wrong, you know, we have this, we don't understand that someone always pays for sin.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Someone has to, right?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if next-door neighbor boy deliberately throws a rock through your front window and you say, no problem, no problem, I forgive you, even though he doesn't say for you.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: The truth is he won't have to pay for it, but you're going to have to pay for it, right?
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if a child runs in the street and gets hit, then your child pays for that disobedience.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: So someone always pays, and and and parents who, for instance, you see it all the time, who allow their children, preschool children, to constantly throw tantrums in public without curbing that or disciplining that.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: The parents will pay later on, right?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: They'll pay for years and years as they're raising the child and be in agony.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Other times, you know, the child himself pays for it.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: But so God says someone has to pay for those sins, even that my children commit, that send them into the dark.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just for me to forgive them because of the cross.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: What can wash away my sin?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing but the blood of Jesus, what can make me whole again, nothing but the blood of Jesus.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus and his Father forgive you from your sins based upon what happened back at the cross, which is why verse 7 says, if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't have to die again, looks back at the cross.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so it is just for God to forgive you.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's the concern he has.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Question eight, what sins need to be confessed?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: And here I couldn't help thinking of the TSA and going into an airport and looking back when they stopped me and realizing that I forgot and I left my keys in my pocket or something else, and you have that light that shows, you know, shows where you have metal or shows, you know, where you've misbehaved.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if you, by the way, if you don't, there's no chance of you getting on the plane and having fellowship with a pilot or whatever.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: No, you can't even get there unless you go through the light, unless you get in the light and allow the X-ray to take a look at you.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do when the X-ray shows, when the body scan shows that that there's a problem there?
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, verse 9 says that you should acknowledge, yeah, there's there's an issue there.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I I forgot.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: I left my uh I left my epistle, or in my case it was a knife.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: I left my knife, you know, I left, actually, it was Robert's fault, and it and Robert put his knife in my bag or something.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you acknowledge that.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: What sins need to be confessed?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is obvious, the sins that God exposes.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: When you sense in your heart from the Holy Spirit, when you hear that voice from God, when the light shines, for me, it's oftentimes when someone else confronts me and says, you know, I was bothered when you said that or when you did that.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: And at that moment, you know that's the Spirit.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's the sin that you need to confess, right?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: You need to confess every sin that is exposed.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: What about question nine of 10, next to the last question?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: What about the sins that we're unaware of?
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, notice this, he says, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, most translations say our sins, but the actual, there's no hour in the original.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually a definite article.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: In Greek, it's called the article of previous reference.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: That is, it's the reference to the sins that we've confessed.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: He can forgives us those sins that we confessed, but he wants to let us know something that he's already hinted at in verse 7, and that is he's all he'll go ahead and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that we're unaware of, all those hidden faults that we haven't confessed, those thoughts that we didn't even know were bad, he goes on and he will take care of them all if only we'll be honest enough to agree with him about the ones we know about.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he'll take care of everything.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: He will, as verse 7 says, if we walk in the light as he's in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sins.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: From all this is a very general word.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: Sins are the specific things we confess.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Unrighteousness can include all kinds of foibles, you know, things that offend people or even offend God that we haven't gotten rid of in our lives and are unaware of.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, final question, question 10.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: What is the one thing worse than sin?
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Answer denial of sin.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: Saying, no, I I'm not gonna agree with you about that.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a sin.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the way I am.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's my identity.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I can do that because I can look at that because my wife is, you know, or I can say that because my husband did it, and we excuse ourselves.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: If we claim we haven't sinned, what happens?
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: We make God out to be a liar, and his word has no place in our lives.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't, does it?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because he's spoken into our lives and we've kicked his word out.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: We've denied that we've actually sinned.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's it's an astounding thing.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so you see, you have this choice.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: I love the old cartoon of Dennis the Menace coming and kneeling down before his bed, and his prayer to God is, I've come to turn myself in.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, you have that choice.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: You can either come to turn yourself in, or you can refuse to turn yourself in.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, or I think of uh an illustration from athletics, from sports.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: I love sports, used to play sports back when I could move, you know, but but you know, when you play sports, especially a team sport, I don't know about you guys, it used to bug me so much, softball, basketball, whatever.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: When someone would say, fail to guard their man or whatever else, and they wouldn't take responsibility.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they wouldn't go, my bad.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you love it when an athlete, you know, points at himself instead of at someone else and say, well, you should have, you know, whatever.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's just sort of a simple my bad.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or let's just go into finances.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a very popular statement 100 years ago about this verse was keep short accounts with God.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what that means is like, you know, sometimes somebody will say, you know, you owe me such and such.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: And they let you know that, and you suddenly realize, yeah, uh, yeah, you forgot to pay them everything.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now the question is, what will you do at that point?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: Will you agree with them and will you write them the check?
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Or will you say, you will you just delay it?
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: And will you, or will you even deny it?
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: Keep short accounts with God.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: I love the story.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we sort of needed to be like a 17-year-old boy, Madison, South Dakota, who who had stolen a car and uh and driven it to Perkins and was came in to eat breakfast.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: And and then he saw that there were two policemen in the next booth.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: They were just finishing up their meal, and to their astonishment, a teenage boy stood up from the next booth, he came over, he laid down, spread-eagled on the floor, and he said, I stole a car, it's in the parking lot, please don't shoot me.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that's sort of the attitude you and I need to have before God, right?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: When it comes to sin, we need to spread eagle ourselves before him and say, you know, I did, I did that, I realized that was a sin.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I confess that.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Don't claim you have no sin.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: And yet the problem is kids do this from a very early stage in life, right?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: And we laugh, and I laugh at it.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: I have a granddaughter who my uh my younger son was telling me, you know, she had all the the peanut butter or chocolate or something all over her face.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and and the parents come in and go, uh, did you get into the cookies?
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, I didn't.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they're caught red handed, but they deny the crime.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that's that's not as serious as adults doing it.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, isn't it interesting?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is part of who we are.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of natural to us.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite authors, Walter Wanger, and wrote the book of the Duncal, some other good stuff, wrote, I thought in one of his Christian books, he wrote, My denial of my sin protects, preserves, and perpetuates that sin.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why it's so serious.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: We need to get rid of sin.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: God wants to get rid of sin.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sin has no place in the light.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: Only truth, only honesty has a place in the light.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: To confess your sins to God is not to tell him anything he doesn't already know.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Until you confess them, however, they are the abyss between you.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: But when you confess them, they become the bridge.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: Honesty is the first key to fellowship with God.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Being honest about your sin moves you from darkness back into light.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the first and most fundamental basic lesson about walking with God.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Search me, O God, and know my heart.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray this together out loud with our eyes open.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: Search me, O God, and know my heart.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: No darkness have we who in Jesus abide.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: The light of the world is Jesus.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: We walk in the light.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: When we follow our guide, the light of the world is Jesus.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Let's bow our heads in prayer.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you for this amazing promise that you are faithful and you can be just when you forgive us of our sins.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: And when we confess them, we get back in the light and have this astounding opportunity to be your daily companion, to be your friend, to join you and the apostles, all the great saints down through the years who have loved you and who know you personally.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to know you like that.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: We want to know you as a friend.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: We want to walk with you as a companion in Jesus' name.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming.