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Yesterday we began to think together of that great fellowship that God has made possible between himself and us, through the manifestation of that eternal life that was with the Father and has been manifested to us in the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Now, this morning we must hurry on, even if we are to do no more than to get a bird's eye view of the epistle that has been set before us. So I want us this morning to think, first of all, of the principles on which we enter this great fellowship that forms the family of God.
The principles upon which we enter and are maintained in that great fellowship. And then we shall spend some moments thinking about the family of God itself, its members, little children, young men, and fathers, and specially of the love that marks that family between member and member and between all the children and the Father himself. We shall notice two dangers also to this family. The danger that comes from the world.
And secondly, if we have time, the danger that comes from the inside, from the church. So now let us look at the principles upon which we enter and are maintained by God in this great fellowship that is the family of God. And here we are going to find something basic. I know that in many respects we may regard the epistle of John as a series of tests by which we may test the genuineness of our profession.
But as it appears to me in these early verses, John is not so much giving us tests whereby we may test whether our profession of Christianity is genuine or not, but he is laying down those principles upon which we may enter the fellowship, and therefore he stresses to us that glorious provision that God has made, so that we may enter and enjoy this fellowship with God in utter and complete security. We may have this security, not through any pretense, but in all realism, without pretending that we are different from what we are, in honesty, in openness, walking completely in the light, without any fear that something will suddenly be discovered that will disqualify us, we may have that utter security that God loves to give every child in his family.
I fancy the psychologists will tell us that the secret of happy child's development is that sense of security the child has in the family and in the love of its parents. It would be an extraordinary thing, wouldn't it, if the father, the ideal father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, could not supply that same security to every child in his family. But first of all, we must notice that John begins these remarks in his chapter one and verse five by reminding us of the message that the incarnate eternal life brought us, namely that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
The symbol of light is easily interpreted. Intellectually, light tells us that God is a self-revealing God, self-revealing energy, who in revealing himself thus reveals what the ultimate reality behind our universe is. What the truth about things is. The truth behind a daisy is God. The truth behind an elephant is God.
The truth behind a molecule and an atom is God, for he made them. The truth about God, when completely told out, is found in Jesus Christ our Lord, the eternal life that was with the Father and has been manifested to us. God being light and revealing himself, therefore shows us the source of all things and the purpose of all things. So that his light becomes light for us to enlighten our pathway, a lamp to our path, a light to our feet, showing us the way to go.
It brings us knowledge, giving us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But simultaneously, that light that reveals, exposes. It exposes all that is not true, all that is not real, all that is mere pretense, that is false, is perverse. If light reveals, I repeat, light exposes. If light, therefore, intellectually is revelation, morally it is purity, holiness.
And as absolute holiness, God's light similarly exposes us in our sinfulness, our dirty, grubby souls. God is light, therefore. And now in Jesus Christ our Lord, he stands in the light. It does not mean that God had not revealed himself before Jesus Christ came into the world. The light already shone to different extents, in different places, in different times, says the New Testament.
But now in Jesus Christ our Lord, the true light now shines, and God is in the light. He may be known fully in Jesus Christ our Lord. And therefore, the question immediately arises, if God is light in this sense, how could we possibly come and have fellowship with him? We who are so dark and ignorant, so sinful, stained, and unclean.
How could we possibly come and have fellowship with God? Now I want us to notice a feature of John's writing that we shall find exceedingly important. For in answering this question for us, he tells us in ch- in verse seven of chapter one that 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 from all sin.
The one condition, and you will notice it is only one, the one solitary condition that we are asked to fulfill is this, that we must come and walk in the light as he is in the light. But when we ask ourselves, what does that mean, to walk in the light? Let us notice particularly and very accurately that John is now talking to us about where we walk. Look at verse six, if you will. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in the darkness.
That's where we walk. Again in chapter seven, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light. John is thinking about where we walk. What that means, we shall have to think about in a moment. Come down, if you will, to the end of his paragraph in chapter two verse uh six, and there he says, he who says he abides in him ought himself also to walk, even as he walked.
And now you will see a slight but exceedingly important difference. In the earlier verses, it was a question of where we walked, in the darkness or in the light. Come to the end of the paragraph, and it's not a question of where we walk, but how we walk. We ought to walk even as he walked. Though those two ideas may ultimately merge the one into another, we do well in our thinking, to start with at any rate, to try and distinguish them and see the difference in their meaning.
If we walk in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and therefore obviously also with God. What does it mean to walk in the light? Walk is a common Hebrew metaphor, of course, for behavior, for the way we conduct ourselves, for the way we behave in this world. But if we're thinking now of the importance of where we walk, let's first of all use an Old Testament illustration that may help us to grasp the importance of this notion of where we walk, as distinct from how we walk.
And having taken a look at an Old Testament illustration, then we can come and look at a New Testament example, to burn it in on our understandings, the importance of where we walk. So let's have slide number one, if we may, please. And here we go back to the Old Testament, to the Old Covenant, and to the, uh, arrangement that God made in those Old Testament days for his people to come and have fellowship with him. In those far off days, God was pleased to presence himself in a literal and physical sanctuary, called in the Old Testament the tabernacle.
Here is a general view of it. There is the main building. Here is the court around it. Here is the great altar where the sacrifices were. Here the laver where the priests washed in water. Here was the tent itself and the coverings, and underneath them the beautiful curtains that formed the dwelling place of God. Next slide, please. Another general view of it. Let's pass on. And here we come now closer up to the building itself, and we've taken the doorway away so that we may have access into the first division, which is called the Holy Plex.
Next slide. And let your eyes get accustomed to the light and the shadows if they can. And here is the inside looking down from the top, and here the first division here, and you may not be able to see for the moment, but there are three vessels here standing. There is a table here on the right, there is a lampstand here on the left, we shall see them in bigger detail presently, and here there is a third little vessel called the Golden Altar of Incense. On these big pillars here, normally the veil would hang.
The veil, the counterpart of which was rent in two from the top to the bottom when our Lord was crucified. And past that veil, I have taken the veil away so you can see, was the most holy place with the Ark of God's covenant and the propitiatory, the mercy seat with its cherubim upon the ark. Next slide, please. There is the same thing for you again, and I have put the veil in place. Normally it was there to exclude everybody all the year through, except on the great Day of Atonement. But this morning we're concerned with this holy place where the priests came continually to do the service of God and to have fellowship with God.
And I repeat, perhaps you can see it just a little bit more clearly now. There are three vessels here. There is a table here on the right. There is a lampstand here on the left, and forming the apex of the triangle, there is a little golden altar of incense at which the priest would stand to intercede for the nation. Let's move on to the next side. And here, first of all, is a model of the priest coming to that table. Now, the table in all languages holds a very easily understood significance, and this one likewise.
For on this table, at the beginning of the week, twelve loaves of bread were placed in the name of Israel, placed there for God, primarily for God. This was the table of the bread of presence, the table, so to speak, at which God himself fed. At the end of the week, however, the priests came and they took down the bread from off that table, put new bread in its place, and then the old bread they took into the holy place, and there they ate it in the presence of God.
The symbolism was as simple as it was delightful. Here was God offering men his fellowship, that man and God might eat at the same table. God for a week first, and then men subsequently. And though it was done in literal symbols, a literal table and literal bread in a literal sanctuary, behind it was the great spiritual principle that God Almighty seeks the fellowship of his people. And it may illustrate to us what we were thinking about yesterday, that our fellowship with God is not some nebulous thing, some vaporous mood.
In Israel, God and man had partnerships in that table and in the bread that was upon that table. And so with us today at higher levels, at the spiritual level, our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, and our partnership is in that great bread of life that feeds the heart of God and now feeds our heart. But we come back to the ancient, uh, symbolism. Here was a priest then who, obeying the invitation, wanted to come and have fellowship with God at that table.
Now, where must he come, and where must he walk? Let's have the next slide, if we may, please. There were, I say, two vessels, and I have slanted them so you can see them. They normally stood end on. Here is the table once more, but directly opposite the table was that seven-branched lampstand with its seven lamps of gold constantly burning in all their clarity and brilliance. And now you can begin to see, can't you, that if that ancient priest would come and have fellowship with God at that table, he will have to come and walk with the full blaze of that light shining upon him.
Next slide, please. There he is doing precisely that. We must not think, of course, that that lampstand was merely there as a practical necessity to give the man light in the holy place. Of course, it did that. But the positioning of these pieces of furniture was exceedingly carefully arranged. It was all part of the symbolism. Presently, we shall have reason to see how that altar there was very carefully placed where it was placed. So here the simple symbolism was preaching its ancient lesson.
If the priest would come and have fellowship with God at that table, he must be prepared to come and walk in the light. And you see, it's not a question just for the moment, so much of how well he walked. For all I know, the first day he came, he might have been so overwhelmed by the sense of the holiness of the occasion that his toe caught in the hem of his robe, and he went sprawling over, and he didn't manage to walk very well, or approached the table nervously or something or other, and didn't come with suitable dignity because he had a fit of nerves and forgot what to do at the appropriate moment in the ritual and got it all muddled up like some preachers do.
That wasn't the point, how well he walked. The point was where he walked. He could not come and have fellowship unless he came and walked in the light. And for any priest to claim to have fellowship with God and to remain outside in the darkness was sheer arrant nonsense, of course. And so we begin to apply that lesson to ourselves, surely. The lesson is simple. If we would have fellowship with God, we must remember that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
On what condition may I come and have fellowship with God? On what condition can I be con- ca- maintained in the presence of God and in his fellowship. The Apostle John gives us only one condition. Notice it, if we walk in the light, he says. He does not even say if, first of all, we are sinless. Of course he doesn't. For if we had to be sinless to come and walk in that light, we should never come. He doesn't even say if first the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin, then we may come and walk in the light, though in one sense that would be true.
He puts it the other way round. He says, if we walk in the light, we do have fellowship, both one with another and with the Father and the Son. But we say to ourselves, we come and walk in the light. If I come and walk in the light of God, shall I not be exposed in all my sinfulness, my perversity, my crookedness, my twistedness? Yes, of course we shall be exposed. But then you say that will make me feel so terrible, so bad, so unfit that I shall want to...
to cringe away from the light. And surely, if it exposes me as sinful, I shall not be able to stay in the light. But yes, you will. Says John, for if we walk in the light as he is in the light, of course we shall be exposed, and our sins be put in the light of God's countenance. But, says John, the blood of Jesus Christ will deal with those sins. The blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from all sin. We have used an Old Testament illustration.
Let us now use a New Testament illustration. The saying of our Lord, I am the light of the world, is written for us first of all in the Gospel of John in chapter eight. And the context of that remark is this. There came, says John to our Lord Jesus, certain Jews which had believed on him. At least they said they had believed. And Jesus said to them, if you continue in my word, then are you truly my disciples, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Now notice the first condition. Our Lord is announcing himself presently of the light of the world, and we remember the condition laid down in the epistle. John does not say, we now remember, if you come to the light, you can have fellowship with God. For important as it is to come to the light, it is not enough to come to the light.
Says John, we must walk in the light. Said our Lord to these men, if you continue, if you stay, if you abide in my word, then you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Immediately upon that, we see the effect of coming and staying in the light. For, said the Jews, but we were never in bondage, were we? What do you mean we shall be made free? I was talking, said Christ, of bondage to sin. At which they got very angry and told him to go and preach in the next street.
They hadn't asked him to come here. Didn't he know who they were? Children of Abraham, children of God. What was he doing suggesting that they needed to be set free from the bondage of sin? And presently they became so angry that they picked up stones to stone him, and he went away. They had come to the light, yes, but they were not prepared to continue in it, to walk in it. That brings us to the next point, the condition that we come and walk in the light carries with it the condition, of course, that we are prepared to be exposed as sinful.
Many people are not so prepared to be exposed, and they remain in the dark, says John. But whoso abides in the dark and says he has fellowship with God is talking sheer nonsense, lies, in fact. We must be prepared to be exposed and to admit all the sorry truth about ourselves, that we are sinners by nature, that we have sin, and that we have done wrong in practice and constantly do wrong in practice, that we have sinned. Far from denying it and trying to cover it up, we must be prepared for it to be exposed.
The wonderful thing is that if we are prepared to have it exposed, then God has the answer to it. For the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from sin, so that we may both enter that fellowship and remain in that fellowship, and know unbroken partnership with God. Now, it wasn't only ancient heretics that made the basic grievous mistake here and tried to say that it didn't matter if you sinned, and kept in the dark and refused to let the light of God expose them as sinners and the seriousness of their sin.
Modern people too are tempted sometimes, are they not, to do the same. You will hear people say, oh, but I am a good Christian, and then with the next breath, and you know, I've never done anything worthy of being damned. I'm not all I should be, but surely I've not done anything worthy of being damned. But that is precisely what we all have done. And the light of God, as it shines upon us, will show us that we have indeed done things worthy of being damned. It's no good trying to cover it up, or hide, or remain in the dark. We must come and walk in the light and allow it to expose us.
And the third thing is that we must be prepared sincerely prepared, to be delivered from the habit of sinning. The slave does not stay in the house forever, said our Lord. If you continue in my word, you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. We must be honestly prepared and cooperative with the Lord, and being willing to be delivered from the habit of sin. But on those conditions, we may have fellowship with God.
Hear the verse again. If we walk in the light, we do have fellowship one with another and with God himself. The Apostle John, however, hastens to warn us not to get his argument the wrong way round. Says he, these things I write unto you that you do not sin. But if any man sin, we have an advocate. John is not encouraging us to think that sin is a light thing, of course not. But for the moment, he is outlining for us the conditions on which we may come and have fellowship.
And therefore, as everywhere in the New Testament, these conditions are laid down. God, in all his realism, knowing all our imperfections, invites us to come. Does not wait until we are perfect. Nor does he demand that we shall be immediately perfect, and if we fall, we must be thrown out of his fellowship. For what now happens, says John, suppose a man does fall. Let's have the slide again, just to, uh, our next slide, please. Our next slide, please. There he is, standing at the altar.
Thereabouts he's fallen over. You will excuse my naivety. Have him, next one, please, the one fallen over. There he is. Excuse my naivety. I want to bring home the lesson to you. Suppose as we're walking in the light, we trip and fall. We thrown out forthwith. Why, of course not. We have fallen, but in the light, prepared to acknowledge our fault and our failure, prepared to confess it, still accepted in the presence of God.
How can we possibly be still accepted in, in the family of God when we've fallen over? Well, look now, if you will, at that third vessel there, the altar of incense. It was at that altar that the high priest came, or some other priest, daily to pray and intercede for his nation. And says John, using legal instead of priestly terms, if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he is the propitiation for our sins.
Let's have the next slide then, if we would. And I have given you here a side view so that you may see the positioning of that golden altar relative to the throne of God, the ark of God's covenant, where God was pleased to cause his presence to dwell. The veil came between them, but the altar was placed here because when the priest came to intercede for the people and burned his incense here, he was in fact addressing himself to the presence of God here at that mercy seat.
A vivid physical symbol of what we now are told is our Lord's present ministry at the right hand of God, where he ever lives to make intercession for us, and therefore is able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him. The Bible says that Jesus Christ, our advocate, is the righteous. He doesn't pretend to God that our sins are not as serious as they are. He certainly makes no attempt to cover them up, allowing them to appear in the holy light of God in all their heinousness and sinfulness.
Nevertheless, he intercedes for us, and we are here told the basis of his intercession. Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins. One further usage from that Old Testament period may help us grasp one feature of that word propitiation. The great day of atonement was the day in Israel's ritual when propitiation was made. And amongst the effects of that propitiation, one was this.
You shall make atonement, says God, for the tabernacle itself and all its vessels that remains among the people in all their uncleanness. God was observing that throughout the course of the year, his people very often sinned and failed. Their very presence, so to speak, defiled his sanctuary. How could he therefore remain with them five minutes at a time? The answer was he could remain with them in spite of their uncleanness, because of the sacrifice of atonement that made atonement even for the tabernacle of his presence.
John surely is thinking of that practical situation as members of the family of God, doing our best by God's help not to sin, but from time to time falling and failing, and very often sinning when we are quite unconscious of sinning. Doubtless, if we could see ourselves this very moment as God sees us, we should be horrified at what we see. How can God continue with us five minutes at a time? And the answer is because of the intercessions of him, who is the propitiation for our sins, and by his great sacrifice has made it possible for God to continue with us in our uncleanness.
And so maintain fellowship that by his spirit working in our hearts, he can bring us to confess- to knowledge of our sin and confession of our sin, to pardon and forgiveness and restoration of practical communion with God. Here then is the condition upon which we may enter this great fellowship and be maintained in this fellowship, and it spells a delightful and superb security. We need not any pretense.
We can be open and honest with God about ourselves. We need not make out that we are better than we are. So be it only we are prepared to come and walk, not just come to, but walk in the light, and be exposed, and confess our sin, and be willing to be delivered from our sin. And God has made provision for us to be maintained in that great fellowship of eternal life. But when we have emphasized to ourselves the importance, therefore, of where we walk, we must walk in the light.
Then we must go over to the other side and emphasize to ourselves how we walk. We are not accepted on the grounds of how well we walk. But if we are genuine believers, says John in chapter two verse six, if we claim to abide in him, and that is a reality, we do abide in the Lord Jesus. We are walking in the light. Then, says John, we have a bounden duty to walk even as the Lord Jesus walked.
It is not true that grace leads to carelessness. Our acceptance with God does not mean that, uh, we shall take the view then sin does not matter. The very reverse. To walk in that light, to see God as God is revealed in Jesus Christ our Lord, is surely to come to love God. To know God, and therefore to love God. To be entranced by the beauty of his character, the glory of his law, and above all, the grace of his son.
And therefore to long to walk as the Lord Jesus walked. Not only to long to do it, we have a duty to do it. And he that says he abides in the light ought himself also so to walk even as he walked. And so now we are given a test, this time not a condition to tell us on what condition we may come into the light, but a test by which to test ourselves whether we are in fact walking in the light.
It is possible to be like the Pharisees of old, the bad Pharisees, that is, not the good Pharisees. To imagine that we are walking in the light when all the while we're not walking in the light. The Pharisees imagined they were indeed walking in the light and keeping God's commands until the true light came into the world and they came in contact with him. Then, to their horrible surprise, they found out that they had not been walking in the light at all. So here is a test, whether I am indeed walking in the light or merely self-contented in a fool's paradise, imagining I am walking in the light.
And the test is this, of course. Does my love of God lead me to keep his commandments? Am I walking as the Lord Jesus walked. We shall not now complete the ambitious program that we were laying out for ourselves this morning. Never mind, we shall get in phase at least by Friday morning and eleven o'clock. It's the glory of these, um, self-rectifying machines. But perhaps this has been an exceedingly important, because basic part of our lesson about the family of God.
John will talk to us about our great duties. In the second movement of his thought, he will speak to us about our developing character as the children of God. Our stringent and rigorous duties to cooperate with the Lord in developing a godlike character, in overcoming the world, in fighting the evil one, in looking heresy in the face and heretics if need be, and maintaining the truth of God's word.
Strong, vigorous duties that will tax our strength. We should be unable for those duties. If in our heart there still lingered insecurity, am I or am I not a member of God's family? Could I at any moment be thrown out of God's family? For if I have not security in my heart as a member of God's family, secure in his love, secure in the redemption that is in Christ, I shall not develop the strength to carry the rigorous responsibilities that I shall find portioned out to me as a member, as a growing member, not merely as a little child, but as a young man and a father in the great family of God.
So may God bless this study to our hearts this morning.
