God is light, and in Him is no darkness, meaning His character is open and without deceit. The sermon examines three statements from 1 John that expose self-deception regarding one's relationship with God: claiming fellowship with Him while walking in darkness, claiming to have no sin nature, and claiming to have never sinned. These claims are lies that deceive oneself, as evidenced by the Bible's clear teaching on God's opposition to sin and the inability of humans to trust their own conscience or deeds. The ultimate solution is God's provision in the blood of Jesus Christ, which cleanses from all sin, and the only human response required is to receive Jesus as Savior.
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letter of John, the first epistle of John. And I'm going to ask you to turn to the first chapter tonight for about three verses. The first epistle of John. Now let's not Saint John in your New Testament, but over near the book of the Revelation, first John. Verse five says, This then is the message which we have heard of him, the Lord Jesus Christ.
God's son came to this earth to bring us a message. He came to this earth to tell us about God. He came to this earth to reveal God. And he's admirably fitted to do so because he is God. The Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, came to this earth that we might know what God is like. And this is the message which we have heard from him, and declare unto you that God is light. Now that doesn't mean that light is God.
We're not pantheists. We don't believe that that light is part of the essence of God. There's nothing mysterious about this. He's simply using a figure, in the same way that the Lord Jesus said one time to his own, I am the door. There wasn't any doorknob attached to one side and no hinges on the other side, and they understood perfectly what he meant, just as you and I would understand. If somebody said, if you want to get into the Board of Trade, Joe Jones is the door. Well, I know what you mean. I'll go and get acquainted with Mr.
Jones and see if he can get me on the board of trade. That's all there is to it. The Lord Jesus said, I am the door. Now the Apostle John says, God is light. That is, the character of God is such that he's out in the open. There's nothing underhanded and under the counter about God. There's nothing sneaky about his character. There's nothing shady and dark about it all. You know, of course, that men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. That's another verse from the Bible. People do not like the light.
There's a verse that says, men are drunken in the night. I said to my boys and girls at the home one day, why do people choose the night in which to do wrong? And a boy said, because nobody can see them then. And a little girl very quickly, little girls like to set their brothers right, a little girl very quickly spoke up and said, God can still see them. And that's right, but men forget that, and because they do not want to be seen, they do evil in the dark. But God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
If you're going to have to do with God, you're going to have to be willing to renounce sin. You can't have God and sin both. Just it isn't possible. You cannot have both God and and sin. If you choose the life of sin, if you choose to go on doing wrong, you're going to have to do it independently of God. For he says in the sixth verse, and this is one of three statements in this chapter which I want to read to you tonight, if we say, three verses begin like this, if we say First of all, if we say that we have fellowship with Him, if you say that you're right with God, if you say you know God, if you say God is your Father, if you say Christ is your Savior, if we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie.
I didn't write that. Don't get mad and go away mad at me now. I didn't write that. That's what the Bible says. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth. That's test number one. If your life is not right, now mind you, I'm not talking about perfection, for none of us can claim perfection. I'm talking about the trend in the course of your life. If you have chosen to live for yourself, you have no right to say that you know God. You have no right to call yourself a Christian. What you say, Mr. I was made a Christian by my parents.
Well, I respect very much your ideas and your parents, but it just isn't so. You did not become a Christian because your parents did something to you. You did not become a Christian because you had godly parents. That isn't the way we become Christians. We are not the children of God because we inherited it from good parents or grandparents. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth.
Verse eight. If we say that we have no sin, that is no sinful nature, if we say that we have nothing inside of us that is wrong, if we say that there is nothing inside of us to produce any evil, if we say that we have no sin, and the word sin usually, when it's just S-I-N, usually means the nature, while the word sins, S-I-N-S, usually refers to the output, the product of that nature.
I look at a tree and I say, what kind of a tree is that? And you say that's an apple. What you mean is that has the nature of an apple tree. and is capable of producing fruit. Now look at a basket full of something or other, and I say, what are those? And you say, those are apples. Those apples grew on that apple tree. Now if I say I have no sin, if I say there's nothing wrong inside of me, if I say that I'm not capable of producing evil, Then, he says, we deceive ourselves.
We mislead ourselves. Have you ever misled yourself? Well, it's very easy to do. You can't trust your own heart. The Bible says he that trusts us in his own heart is a fool. But you say the Bible says let our conscience be our guide, doesn't it? No, it doesn't say that. That isn't in the Bible. That's a proverb. That's an idea that a good many people have, but it isn't scriptural. You cannot trust your conscience. Why? Because conscience is just like a compass. I don't have any sense of direction.
Tell me this is North. That's fine, that's north. Somebody's better talker than you and convinces me that this is north, fine, that's north. I don't feel like anything is north. I just don't have any sense of direction. Consequently, I'm always getting myself lost. So I usually carry a compass. I have one with me on this trip. If I can't see the sun or get a sight on some stars that I'm familiar with, I'm just lost, that's all. One time a man gave me a compass, and I thought it would be a nice thing to mount that compass in the car. I didn't know you had to have a special kind of a compass for a car.
They have them, you know, the kind that go on just up above the windshield. You can mount them there, and they're not affected by the metal in your car. I didn't know that. I thought, well, this is a nice compass, and the way it's arranged, I can mount this on my car. So I did. And from then on, I was going north. I had no trouble at all. I was always going north, from then on. One day I trusted that compass before I'd noticed that, and I was all fouled up, and I blamed the compass. In fact, the matter was the compass was affected by the motor. All that big block of metal there in front of it, naturally it pointed that way, and I was fooled.
Your conscience was like that. Your conscience can be deceived into believing almost anything. I deal with boys and girls all the time. My wife and I have a home for children in Colorado Springs, and I've been surprised at things that kids can do without any bad conscience. It depends on the environment, depends on the way they've been brought up. I had a boy who came to the home one time who didn't see the least thing wrong with stealing, but he certainly looked down on anybody that got caught. He thought a fellow who was stupid enough and clumsy enough to get caught stealing why he wasn't worth shooting.
Stealing itself, nothing about that out of the way. After all, how are you going to get it if you don't steal it? He never learned there was any other way. He had absolutely no conscience about that. You can't trust your conscience. If you say that you have nothing wrong inside, you need to check up, brother. And if you'll check up by the Word of God, you'll know. Has you ever think your face was clean and find out your embarrassment that it was dirty? Oh, I have. It's an embarrassing thing, you know, to think that you're all fit to meet the meat company and step out in society, and then you get a glimpse of yourself and you find out you've got a big smudge, and you're very embarrassed.
You need a good-looking glass. You can't go over how you feel. I suppose it would be pretty hard to feel dirty, especially for a boy. But if you can get a boy to look in the glass, you may be able to convince him that he really needs some soap and water. If I could get you to look into the mirror of God's Word, I know that you would want the Lord Jesus for your Savior. I know that you'd want to be made right with God. I know that you'd want to be born again. And if you'll be honest enough to face it, you'll admit there is something in me which is not right. And then, verse ten says, if we say, this is the third one now, if we say that we have not sinned.
Now this is even more serious. If I say that I have never done anything wrong, that's the way some people handle this problem of sin. I was talking to a man one time who claimed that he never did anything wrong at all. He lived a life completely free from any wrong at all. He said, I always pay my debts, and I'm a good husband, and a good father, and a good citizen, and I've just never done anything wrong. So I said to him, well, what do you do about evil thoughts? And he just sort of backed away from it like that. He said, oh, I just don't call that sin.
Well, I said, that's really convenient now. Anytime you have anything in your life that isn't right, you just don't call it sin. Anytime you question whether this is right or wrong, you say, well, after all, there's no right or wrong. There's no real standard anyway. You'd be surprised at the people who believe that. I see some young people here tonight. I know what you're being taught. I have a number of young people in high school. I have a number in college. And we often get together and discuss some of the studies, some of the textbooks, some of the lectures, and frequently they tell me, well, our professor said that after all there really is no right nor wrong.
It's just the way you look at it. Don't you believe that? Because the Bible says, if we say that we have not sinned, We make him a liar. Do you think God knows? Don't you think that the judge is going to make the decision? If I were going to go on trial, I would want to know how the judge feels about the particular crime of which I'm accused. And if I knew that he was death on that particular crime, I'd tell you I'd shaken my boots, and I wouldn't sleep at night.
I can tell you how the judge feels about sin. I can tell you how strongly God the Father feels about sin. He allowed the Lord Jesus Christ to be put to death on a cross for sin. For he says Christ died for our sins. according to the Scriptures. I know how the Lord Jesus Christ feels about sin, because when He was here on this earth, He roundly rebuked sin in whatever form He found it. And then He willingly went to the cross and laid down His life for our sins.
I know how God feels about sin because the Bible condemns it constantly. I see the papers that Mrs. Coolidge passed away today. I recall the story from Calvin Coolidge's days. He was noted for his brevity. He never said anything if there was any way of getting out of it, and when he did say anything, he said it in as few words as possible. One Sunday he attended church services alone. When he got home, Mrs. Grace Coolidge said to him, How was the sermon? Good. Well, what was it about?
Sin? Well, what did the preacher say about it? He's against it. Which was a typical Coolidge comment on anything. Well, he couldn't have said anything plainer. That's exactly the way the Bible teaches. God is against it. There's sin in your life, you're going to have to face God about that sin. Now I'm going to tell you briefly what God has done about sin, then I'm going to tell you what you can do about it. Here in this same chapter we read, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleansed us from all sin. God did something about sin.
He didn't ask you to do something about sin because there isn't anything you could do. A few good deeds will never pay for the bad ones. A little bit of extra money dropped in the collection plate will never pay for your sins. The only thing that can take sin away, according to the Bible, is death. The wages of sin is death. Christ died for our sins, according to the Scripture, without shedding of blood. is no remission for sins. The blood of Jesus Christ God's Son cleanseth us from all sins.
You don't have anything to pay because you have nothing to pay. God knows you couldn't settle for one sin. So Christ came and did it. What does he expect you to do? Let me give you one verse of Scripture. as many as received him. From this same writer, John's Gospel, St. John, one and twelve. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become the children of God, even to them that believe on his name.
God wants you to take his son. not join a church, not get baptized, not go for religion. God wants you to take His Son. You'll have opportunity tonight to receive the Lord Jesus. We want to help any of you, any of you whom we can, if you've never received the Lord Jesus. If you're not sure, if you're among these who say, But things are not right in your life, and you know they're not right. You know that there's unforgiven sin.
You know that you're not fit to meet God as you are. We'd like for you to know tonight that Christ did all that was necessary. He did everything that God required. He paid our debt in full. And He said when He was on the cross, it is finished. And then He rose again from the dead. God said, Amen. It is finished, and He took His Son back up to heaven. And God offers you that Son to be your Savior tonight. He that hath the Son hath life. He that hath not the Son of God hath not life.
If you would take the Lord Jesus Christ home to you, to your cabin, to your tent, to your room, to night, You would go home, a child of God. I pray, God, you may do this tonight.