Walking in the Light

Well, let's grab our Bibles and let's go to 1 John, Chapter 1. We'll complete the chapter this evening, 1 John, Chapter 1.

And as you're turning there, remember that John is an older man. He's in the twilight of his ministry, of his apostleship, and he is writing to the church, actually several churches in the Asia region, and he's encouraging them to stay with the truth, the original truth of Jesus Christ that he and the other apostles had preached. False teachers had crept in, false doctrine has crept in, and some even of the genuine believers are tempted to veer away, and maybe in some of their thinking had already veered away, and then false teachers are being directly addressed. He'll call them bluntly and straightforwardly the antichrist. He'll say there of the antichrist spirit, he had no patience for those who would distort true doctrine for their own selfish gain. But here we come to 1 John, Chapter 1, verses 5 through 10.

Let's read it together, 1 John 1, 5 through 10. This is the message we have heard from him and announced to you that God is light, and in him there's no darkness at all. And if we say we have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. So this is one of the ways, John said, you can know what it means to be a true child of the light and know that you're walking in the light. So he lays out, compare yourselves or look at yourselves, but not just yourselves, I think he's saying also, look at what those false teachers look like. Look at those that would contradict my teaching and my doctrine.

Look at their lives and you'll see they don't match up with what I'm talking about. His evidence of the true child of God. And he uses the metaphors of light and darkness. I read this some time ago about Will Hughton. He was a preacher and Will Hughton came to be the president of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and there was a prominent atheist in the city in those days who was very depressed and was contemplating suicide. And he told someone, if I can find a real Christian, if I could watch them and they're really true, in John's wording, he'd say, really walk in the light.

He said, then I'll believe. And of all things, the story goes that he hired a private investigator to follow Pastor Will Hughton's steps. And he did that, the private investigator came back and said, there's not a mark on this man's life. He lives what he professes.

Story goes that this man became a believer and was baptized there at the Moody Church in Chicago. It had made me wonder what would happen if a private investigator followed my life. What would be the report of a private investigator followed your life?

Would the report be they're the real thing? Or in John's vernacular, they truly walk in the light. Three things I want to pull out of this text as we unpack it this evening. First of all, the true light revealed, then the true light rejected, and thirdly, the true light realized. Roman numeral one, the true light revealed in verse five. Notice how he words it there again in verse five. This is the message we have heard from him.

And we have, how does he say it? Announced to you that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. Now, if God is an intelligent being and he is, and if man has been given by his God creator, some degree of intelligence and he has, then it makes sense that God would communicate with man and he certainly has done that.

And that's what John's talking about. We've heard this direct revelation, this communication, this manifestation from God. The other Bible text will say this word from God. We've received this communication from God and the communication with God is, now listen, not a truth, but the revelation of truth.

There's not many different truths. There's not many different routes or paths to truth and to God. There's only one route and one way and one light and one truth, and that is through God's ordained means of revealing himself, and that ordained means is his son, Jesus Christ. He's the one John is talking about here. He's the truth of God.

He's the light of God. Now, truth is transcendent. Truth is not subjective or relative to anything else.

It stands alone. It stands no matter whatever else happens. Before it, during it, or after it, around it, truth stands above and beyond. It transcends all of the things. God's truth is absolute. God's truth is self-sufficient. God's truth is self-authenticating, and God's truth is objective. That means you don't just kind of, by way of some sort of a slow osmosis out of your own capacity, come to know the truth. No, truth is outside of you. Truth is there and it exists, but it has to be communicated to you, and that's where John's coming from.

To become a Christian means you've come to know the truth, and you come to know the truth through God's Son. He sent into the world to manifest the light, manifest the truth to all men. Well, that's where we come next. A in our outline under the true light revealed is the source of true light.

What is the source? Well, we've talked about it already. Verse eight, he says, this is a message which we've heard from Him. John didn't say, I heard it on my own.

He said, no, it came to me through Him. That is Him, the Lord Jesus Christ. He, Jesus, is God's revealed truth. Listen to John 12, 49 and 50.

For I did not speak on my own initiative. Now, this is the same John, by the way, but this is the gospel, not the epistle. I didn't speak on my own initiative, but the Father himself who sent me has given me commandment, what to say and what to speak. Quoting Jesus, He continues, and I know that His commandment is eternal life. Therefore, the things I speak, I speak just as the Father has told me. So, first of all, Jesus, I'm saying what God the Father told me. Now, John 14, 10.

Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own initiative, but the Father abiding in me does His works. So, He says, Jesus says, the first, the source is God the Father. God's revealed Himself perfectly through me, God the Son. And now, John says here, now we are as God's apostles taking this same word, this same truth and revealing it to you in our preaching, and of course, later on for us in the written scriptures. So, you have God the Father, revealing the light and the truth to God the Son.

God the Son, revealing the light and the truth to the apostles, and then God using the apostles in their preaching and coining for us the New Testament text gives us the finished canon of God, the finished truth of God. You might say, well, I don't know if I have enough faith just to believe that those men wrote it and put it down and that's really God's truth and God's light to us. Well, I'll confess to you, it is faith. It is faith.

I don't have some sort of scientific observation to give you on this. I just know that it's, listen, self-authenticating. I've never seen a man humbly opening the word of God, pour himself in it, read it and pray, God, show me yourself that didn't come away and say, that's the word of God.

It's self-authenticating. God the Father reveals the light and the truth through God the Son. God the Son revealed the light and the truth through the apostles. That's John saying here, we've heard it from him.

They wrote it down so that we've got it for all the ages of church history. Listen, this is what Jude calls the faith once for all delivered to the saints. And by the way, there's not gonna be any other.

This is it. It's finished in this canon of Scripture. And so one of the main reasons I'm convinced John is saying it this way is there's been an evolution, actually a devolution maybe, of thought, most of it came under this broad banner of Gnosticism, a false teaching of the day, and they were adding to the finished faith once for all delivered to the saints.

They were putting something else in it. John says, no, let's go back to the original. We heard it from him. And what I'm telling you is the truth. So that's the way it's revealed. It's revealed from God the Father through God the Son to his apostles, John being one of those apostles. Now, Roman, or rather the second subpoint under the true light revealed is the substance.

He says something about the character. I use the word substance, substance may be a much better word, somewhat better word, would be the word nature, the substance or the nature of this truth or this light. Notice how he says it here in verse five. And God, rather I should say that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. So John uses the metaphor here that God is light. I think the idea here is that God is of holiness. And throughout the pages of Scripture, we have the simple contrasting metaphors of God being light, which speaks of his purity and his cleanness and his ethical uprightness and his holiness, his righteousness. And then man and obviously the satanic world and the demonic world are of darkness. Man has fallen into sin and he's not holy. He's not clean and he's not pure. So John says you need to be aware, church, that those who know Christ are those who are striving toward walking in the light.

We'll develop that out a little bit more later. Now one thing about God being light is that when God turns the light on or in the case of sending his son Jesus, when God pulls the veil back and allows us to see God and we saw him in Jesus Christ and we see him in the writings of the apostles, that is in the biblical text. When God begins to reveal himself in his light, in his holiness, what does it do? Well, not only does it show him as holy, it shows us as unholy. It convicts us in that it exposes us and it condemns us. No wonder the apostle Paul said in his ministry as he preached the truth of Christ and Christ's holiness was proclaimed and man's sinfulness was obviously delineated from that.

He said, you know, it's an amazing thing as I go around and preach, Paul said, to some I'm an aroma of life to life and to others I'm the aroma of death to death. Those who would not receive the light, those who did not embrace the light to them, this is a death. It's just death to them to think that they have to give up their sins and give up their worldliness and give up their love of things that are of darkness. But that's what happens. And that's why, by the way, child of God, if you go out in the workplace or go out in the schools, go out in the office, go out to the ball field and I'm not saying you gotta be a holy Joe and carry your Bible and yell in people's faces.

That's not what I'm talking about. But you just live like you love the light. You live like you love the Christ of the light. You just live the kind of morals and the kind of ethics and the kind of kindness and goodness and uprightness that Christ wants you to walk in.

You know what you'll find out? It won't take you too long before those who love the darkness don't love you. Your very life is a conviction. Your very life becomes an exposure of their darkness. One of the other things that happens, not only does when we walk in this life, does it become an exposure and a condemnation of others, but when God's light comes into the world, are we walking the light in this world?

Also, we're aware of our own inherent darkness. We're aware that we needed a sinner, that we in and of ourselves have no good thing and no pure thing and no righteousness of our own. That's why the Apostle Paul would also say, I'm the chief of sinners. I don't think Paul was in any way saying, hey, I measured it all out.

I've tested everybody on the earth and I'm the worst. I don't think he means that. What he means is every single one of us should feel we're the chief of sinners. If you've been near the light of Jesus Christ, if you've been in the word of God, if the light of God has shone in your soul, then you start with yourself, not with others.

And say, I am the one in need. I'm the chief of sinners. So the true light revealed, John said it's been revealed through his son Jesus Christ. That's who we learned this from and that's where the light comes from and the light being synonymous again with God's truth. Now, Roman numeral two, the true light rejected. And by rejected, I mean that when men walk in the darkness and they love darkness and they will not receive the light of Christ, not become a Christian and a child of God, then they're rejecting the light and their lives have a certain characteristic to it. First of all, I talk about the darkness of liberalism.

I just use that word for lack of a better word, actually. The darkness of liberal. And what I mean by liberalism, I mean the general concept of men thinking that out of themselves, they have the answers. That men believing out of their own ability and in our world today, it's the scientific ability.

Of course, in this new wave of radical liberalism, science doesn't matter anymore, just your emotions. If you start feeling emotionally right about something or if you think something's emotionally and your emotions is right for you, then oh, it's just right. And everybody's got to reward it and applaud it and celebrate it.

But nevertheless, it all comes from the same place. Man looks in himself and thinks there's this inherent virtue, this inherent rightness or goodness. And actually, all he's doing is embracing darkness. So whether you're talking about theological liberalism, social or moral, liberal ideas, embracing things God says is sin and wickedness, indulging in sins, even political liberalism, political liberalism has its root in reject absolutes, God's word, and let's come up with our own concepts of good, bad, right, and wrong. The only problem is they keep changing what's good, bad, right, and wrong.

I mean, in the last few years when it comes to morality and gender issues, they change every two months. And that's the kind of dog chasing your tail nonsense you get into when you depart from the light, the absolutes of God's word. Now, if we ourselves, and John's writing to a church here, I think he's exhorting them to say, if you're loose in your lifestyle, if you're indulgent in your fleshly desires and live that kind of lifestyle, then you're walking in darkness. Isn't that what he says there in verse six?

Let's read it together. If we say we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and we do not practice the truth. Literally it says when we say we have fellowship with Him, it literally means we up and say that. We're walking in darkness and then we have the audacity, what John is saying. You have the audacity to say, oh, I'm one of the light. I'm in the light, I'm one of God's light children. He said, you're a liar.

You are a liar, you can't do that. You cannot embrace and love the one who is holy light and one who knows none of the darkness and say you're walking in Him and you openly, willfully embrace and walk in the darkness. Those two can't go together. Now, I believe there's a side note here. He's charging the church, but he's saying to those infiltrators, those usurpers who've come into the church, the false teachers, and folks, listen to me. If you'll investigate all the heresies, all the cults, all the false teachers through all the ages, give it some time. You'll find there's dirty immorality in their lives and in their past and in their paths. Just give it some time, it'll expose itself.

It'll come out. And John's saying to the church, you've had some time to see some of this darkness come out of these guys. And when you see the darkness, that they're actually not fighting it and repenting of it as they find it in their lives, they're embracing it and often justifying it. And can I say it again?

There I say it again. The president of the Southern Baptist Convention says God whispers about homosexuality. Why would he step over there toward the darkness? That is so radically unbiblical. I mean, there's just no way you can twist and turn the Scriptures. Now certainly we all have compassion for all sinners because we're sinners. But that doesn't mean we take something God calls darkness and say, you know, it's just a shade of gray.

It's just kind of gray. I'm telling you, true believers can get off track sometimes on these things, but that's the path of darkness and false teaching. That's what John is exposing here. When he says walk in darkness, he means a willful habitually walking in darkness. Now, this is a very straightforward and simple statement.

There's no room for ifs, ands, or buts. We want to make sure that we are not in brash rebellion against authority. We're not participating in lying or stealing or gossiping, abandoning church, filthy language, carousings with the world, but literally the New Testament calls them drinking parties. He's not saying a Christian may not struggle there from time to time. He's saying that's not something you can embrace and not something that can be the purpose and pattern of your life.

If you say that, if you do that rather, and you say you walk in darkness, you're a liar. The truth is not in you. Well, the darkness of liberalism, but that man-centered coin, the coin of man within himself has the answers and knows what's good and righteous and holy and can decide for himself how he wants to live his life. You know what the other side of that coin is? It's legalism.

Liberalism's on one side, and you can be just as man-centered, just as looking at yourself with legalism. Look at verse eight, if you will. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

And then verse 10, if we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and the truth is not in us. And I think the point is that the Judaizers or those of the day that would fall into legalism would say, we've reached a certain mark. We've kept the laws, we've kept the rituals and the ceremonies of the temple, and we've checked all the boxes, so we're good. We have obtained through our rules and our, if you will, viewpoints on what's right, we've attained a standard before God that makes us acceptable in God's sight.

That is a wicked profession of darkness. Legalism is a system we work out whereby we can feel like in our own energies or powers, we've arrived at some form of perfection. And they feel like they can get this way both in their nature and in their practice. But we foolishly deceive ourselves. Well, first of all, he says you're deceiving yourself about the truth of indwelling sin, if you think that somehow you've become to a no sin position. He said, if we say that we have no sin, I think it would be right in the spirit of the text to say sin nature. If you don't think that there is the inherent indwelling of sin in you, you've missed something. You have a need from your very nature for a savior.

Not even, don't even get to your habits or actions or patterns of sin, your very nature is sinful. Fellowshipping with God, the God of holiness will cure this problem altogether. If you fellowship with the God of holiness and the God of light, then you will soon see that no system of works and no system of law and no system of doing religion right and no system of keeping certain rights and rituals could ever eradicate the nature of indwelling sin. We are wrecked and polluted and hopelessly corrupted we are marred and branded in the innermost part of the soul with the mark of depravity and sin. He said, if you think that's not there, you're deceiving yourselves.

That man can't, there's nothing he can do to make that nature change. Now he can polish up a lot of the outward things, he can change a lot of the cosmetics on the outside of his life, but he cannot change the fact that his nature is one of indwelling sin. Falling short of the standard of God and God's holiness.

Well, he says you're deceiving yourself if you believe that. You know the greatest deception ever perpetrated upon mankind is the notion that somehow he can perform his way to acceptance before God. The notion that somehow you can perform your way to acceptance before God. What you need to do is before you take the first step to perform for God is to fall on your face and say I'm ruined, I'm bankrupt, I can do nothing.

That's the path home. That's the way to find God's grace and mercy through Jesus Christ. Well, not only this denial of indwelling sin, but secondly, the second some point under the true light rejected would be the denial of personal sin, actual sinning.

And that's what comes out in verse 10. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. Unfortunately for Christians and non-Christians alike, we all commit sins. And when we do sin, we should not say that we haven't.

We should not act like we haven't. If God's word says it's sin and you say it's not sin, then one of you is a liar. Actually, you're calling God a liar. Again, the Pharisees, the religious authorities and leaders of this day had this kind of thinking that they had arrived, not only did they reject that they had an indwelling nature, an indwelling nature of sin, they rejected that they participated in sins. They thought they'd reached a status of righteousness. That's why Jesus said concerning them in Matthew 5.20, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. When I was a young Christian, I read that verse and it kept me awake at night.

I thought, how in the world? Those guys came up with 400 laws or so in addition to the biblical laws of the Old Testament and they would just go to the most extreme measures to walk in and observe all of these disciplines and keep all of these laws. How could I surpass that? And then I realized it one day, it's not surpassing their human performance, it's surpassing the object of what we focus on for our righteousness.

They focused on themselves. And our righteousness exceeds that because we focus on the finished work of the righteous one, Jesus Christ. That's why when Tom led us in that song, it says, and before the throne, I stand in Him complete. I don't stand in my works complete.

I don't stand in my performance complete. That's what the scribes, that's the scribes and Pharisees' approach to righteousness. No, I have a higher righteousness than you take all the performance of all the men, of all the earth, out of them all together.

They come up about this far and Jesus is beyond the moon. That's what He means. Well, that's the one we're to look to. That's the one we hope in.

That's the one we trust in. So the point is, knowing God and fellowshipping with God means that we're not of those who purpose, embrace, living a life of sin. And we're keenly aware that we ourselves have an indwelling sin principle, indwelling sin in the old flesh man, the old unredeemed humanity that we still walk in till we get glorified. We're keenly aware of that and we confess this before God and we say, woe is me, I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean lips, like Isaiah said. And we walk out that kind of brokenness about our sin, but listen, balanced with joy about our Savior.

Brokenness over my sin, but joying in my Savior. Now see, John's writing this so that not only could these Christians walk better for the Lord, but they would begin to identify who's teaching contrary to this? Who's teaching either the liberal side or the legalistic side of the coin of man-centered theology? Look, folks, whether they're radical liberals or radical legalists or somewhere in between, if it's man-centered, it's darkness.

It's not of God. So, John says, the true light who is Jesus Christ, when you know Him and fellowship Him and walk in Him, it begins to expose those who are looking to man-centered wisdom, whether they manifest it as legalism or liberalism. Now thirdly, the true light realized, verses seven and verse nine. In other words, by realized, I mean, what does it look like when we are walking and embracing the true light? It's being realized, that is, in our lives. Well, first of all, let's say something about our purpose.

Look at verse seven. If we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we walk it out. Since our Lord is light, we have, since we're reborn of the Spirit and love Him and treasure Him, we now have the genuine purpose of our lives to be close with Him and to walk like Him. We want to be near Him. We want to walk like Him, the best we understand.

And by the way, that's quite a pilgrimage. I'm so aware that in the early years of my Christianity, the thoughts I had about how to live for Jesus were sincere, but they weren't very solid. And then as I grew and as I studied the Bible and good men taught me and preached to me, I began to grow in my grasp of, oh, no, that's what it means to walk in the light.

One of these things that was a real change for me was the whole concept of who you show compassion to. I mean, I early on thought, if I didn't live like a caveman in a cave and give everything I had to every need I ever came across that I was somehow sinning against God, but I noticed that in the great men of God that I studied throughout the ages, some of them like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were extremely wealthy. And Jesus had a treasure, and the Apostle Paul would stay in the household of Philemon, probably one of the nicest houses in town.

Now, he was willing to stay in a jail if that's what God's will meant, but he didn't go out and try to prove something by it. My point was we have concepts, and they can be genuine, but as we grow in Christ, we begin to learn how God wants them to be expressed. And then I began to learn that, no, God knows you can't meet all the needs of the world.

There's no way you can possibly do that, but you know what? You can try to meet all needs of your local church. And I begin to see that over and over and over, especially in the New Testament text, of how our hearts and our love and our devotion and our care should be for everybody as best we can, as far as it is possible, the Bible says, do good to all men, but especially for the household of the faith. There's a special love for one another.

I don't apologize for that. The world can't get that, doesn't understand that. Matter of fact, the world would say, I'm selfish, or we're self-centered, or we're inwardly focused. No, that's just the balance Scripture gives the child of God. And what I'm saying is, as we walk in the light, as time goes on, the Scripture matures our grasp and understanding of what walking in the light looks at. Now, I'm not suggesting to you in any way that I've mastered this, but I do know that by God's grace and goodness, I understand it better than I used to understand, because you can exasperate yourself to morbid introspection and depression if you get things like love and compassion and how to exercise it out of whack, out of balance with the Word of God. So, our purpose is to live for Him and to walk in His light.

I got off on a tangent there, but I'm pulling back off the tangent now. That's our purpose. Now, be under the true light, realized, is our practice.

Look at verse 9. If we confess our sins, He's faithful and righteous to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's the practice of our lives.

We purpose to walk in the light, to be near Him, to walk like Him, but we also find ourselves occasionally stepping out in darkness. But we want it to be our practice that we confess our sins. Folks, when you were converted, you didn't just repent. When you were converted, you didn't just confess you're a sinner. When you were converted, you began to be a confessor, and when you were converted, you began to be a repenter of your sins.

That's your practice now. You walk with that blessed are the poor in spirit Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount. There's an aspect of me that is, I'm poor in spirit about the prospects of me being good or doing good, but I'm very confident about Christ in me doing good through me.

Well, that's the practice of my life. I've now become a confessor, and I've now become a repenter because unfortunately, as a child of God who loves the light and wants to walk within the light, I sometimes take a step into darkness. So a Christian is not one who does not sin, but his view of sin has radically changed.

He hates that he likes it. The sins that my flesh loves, I hate now, and I have a longing as the Apostle Paul said in Romans 7, who will deliver me from the body of this death? When will I be through with me?

When will I get rid of the old me? You know, one of the glories of heaven said this to you many times, but you're gonna get it again tonight. One of the glories of heaven is you will finally serve Jesus perfectly because that's what we wanted to do. If we love Him or if we know Him, if we're children of the light, we wanted that all along, but we kept falling short of it, but one day we will finally serve Jesus perfectly. Will our purpose? To walk in the light, stay close to Him. Our practice is now we're confessors and repenters in this light, wanting to see more and more of how we fall short and wanting to learn more and more how to please Him and serve Him.

And I might, well, let me go on to see our provision. Our purpose, our practice, our provision to make all this work, of course, is Jesus Christ. Look at the last part of verse seven. If we walk in the light and see Himself as in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. I would say that really what John is pointing out here, and think about it for a moment, why did he throw in that phrase, if we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another?

That was interesting to me, just like John just throws it out there. It's like he's talking to individual Christians. See, in all sense, like time says, John says, time out, don't forget the context of the local church. Don't forget that an essential component, a God ordained means for you to walk best in the light that you can is you've got to be in a fellowship.

And only those who are in the light get to fellowship together, because if you're in the darkness, we can't fellowship with each other. Only the born again regenerate children of God are added to the church, i.e. what our Baptist forefathers established is the truth, baptism of disciples only. We don't baptize children because they're not yet of the light. They're not yet born again.

They're not yet regenerate. They can't believe yet. We baptize one another and add them to the church as they receive the light, as they're saved, as they're changed. And then they love what we love. They treasure what we treasure. They have the purpose that we have.

They're practicing being repenters like we're practicing being repenters. And we have fellowship. Now listen, and as we have fellowship, that is a provision of God to keep us going on for God's glory in this dark world.

Oh my goodness, how desperately we need. Can I say how desperately we depend upon a strong biblically spiritually healthy church, local church family so that we'll have the provision we need to stay in the light in a dark, dark world. Christians strengthen Christians. Well, I believe that's part of the provision.

I think that's why he throws it out. We have fellowship with one another because look, these folks were under severe persecution. You didn't have to tell them how much they needed each other. They knew they needed each other.

It wasn't like you had to spell that out. Now in today's world, we're not persecuted for our faith, anything like that out in the culture. Now we're beginning to be, but not like they were, losing their jobs, losing their life, friends and loved ones locked in prison.

They're scattered all over this part of the world because if they stayed in the city they were in, primarily Jerusalem, they would be persecuted, maybe even killed. So when they found one another, they hung on to each other. They had to have each other and how that strengthened them. I'm telling you, listen, in Christianity, it's more true than any other entity in the universe.

It's a little strong. Let me say in the world, what am I talking about? That no man is an island.

No man is an island. We are made by God to need a local church to need each other. It's a provision for us to walk in light. But now there's a provision that supersedes this one because it's before this one. It's essential to this one even happening.

And what is that provision? The provision of Jesus' continual, note that word, continual cleansing and forgiveness. The provision of our Lord and Savior's continual cleansing and forgiveness. You better be glad He didn't do a one-quick cleansing when you ask Him to save you.

No, He signed on to be your continual cleanser. Jesus signed on to be your continual forgiveness. I saw something online about the Catholic Church was allowing people to go straight to God if they couldn't get to the priest under this social distancing that the coronavirus has caused us.

You can't be close to anybody. And so the Pope decided, well, you can just go straight to God. Well, the Pope's become a Protestant.

I mean, that's what we've got here. We have a priest we continually go to, now listen to me, and he continually cleanses us. We continually look to him and he continually forgives us. Woo, what a provision that is. What a provision! What a provision for those of us still housed in a package, in a flesh, a makeup that has indwelling sin as its very nature.

I need that continual provision. Oh, look, look how good this is. Look what it says about Him. End of verse seven. And the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.

There's a lot of sin you can't even, you don't even know God enough and righteousness enough and light enough to know that it is sin, but He still cleanses you from all sin. And notice what it says in verse nine. If we confess our sins, He, that's Jesus, is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins, plural, again, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness because of His literal shed blood, Jesus Christ, the Captain, Jesus Christ, the Mighty One, Jesus Christ, the Great One, is also Jesus Christ, the Faithful One. Child of God, you may worry about a lot of things in this world, but you must not worry about the faithfulness of your Savior to you. He's reliable to forgive me continually, to cleanse me continually.

He's faithful and the Bible says righteous, which means faithful, He's reliable, righteous, He has the qualification to get it done. Now, it's one thing for me to represent one of you and go to somebody else and say, you can count on this guy, I'll vouch for him. You hire him in your company and I'll vouch for him, he's a good one, aren't you? You can trust his product, you can buy it, I'll vouch for him.

That's one thing for me to do that. It's quite another thing for God the Son to go to God the Father and vouch for you. Father, I can vouch for them.

I've got them. You can trust me. He's quality. You know what would happen if the Pope were to stand before almighty, triune, holy, transcendent God and say, I want to vouch for somebody? The Pope would say, who are you?

You don't look anything like my son. You know what would happen if Mary, who was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus, went before God the Father and tried to vouch for you? Do you say, Mary, what do you think you're doing? Why in heaven's name would you go through the means of the head of some religious organization in Rome? And by the way, they say the Pope speaks for God when he speaks on theology and matters concerning the church and he speaks perfectly. Have you seen the Pope? He looks kind of sickly to me.

I mean, I get sickly too, so I'm not running him down. I'm just saying he's a mortal man like we are. You go to somebody infinitely better, more qualified than the Pope, more qualified than Mary, more qualified than any earthly priest, you go to Jesus Christ. He's the provision.

He's faithful and he is qualified. He's righteous. To continue forgiving us of our sins, we are consistently, listen now, because of his provision, we are consistently under the veil of cleansing and forgiveness.

In Jesus Christ, we've entered within the veil and we're in the realm of continual cleansing and forgiveness. John says, walk in the true light. Don't listen to the false teachers. Don't listen to these folks who add things.

It's not Jesus plus all this other stuff. Especially to be careful of those who say they've become children of the light, yet there's some dark things. They're not just humbled and repented of those dark things. They're embracing dark things. John says, be aware of all that. Be aware of all that. Cling, cling, cling only to Jesus and to one another and trust his mighty, faithful, qualified provision for us. Praise his name.