Answering Life's Ifs, Part 1

Get honest about your walk.

Get honest about the path of your feet. Get honest with God. The word John uses for walking here are those who walk or walking in darkness refers to moral conduct. What he's saying is if this is how you're beginning to think and act, if you're being squeezed into the mold of the world, and by the way, it's always trying to squeeze you into its mold.

That's why we're told not to let it. You can't, while you are being allowed to be squeezed into the mold of the world, believe at the same time you're making headway with God. Sometimes people try to live in two worlds. They're faithful at attending church, maybe even serving on a committee or holding a volunteer role. But at the same time, they're trying to hold on to their sins. They're trying to cling to both righteousness and ungodliness.

Have you ever faced that struggle of being torn between your faith and your flesh? John challenges that thinking. He challenges us to step into the light and live there.

Stephen Davey is continuing through his series entitled After Darkness, Light. Stay with us for today's broadcast of Wisdom for the Heart and a lesson called Answering Life's Ifs. Pastor and author by the name of John Orberg wrote rather humorous illustration from his own family life to talk about sinful human nature and the need for confession. His daughters, two daughters, Laura was four years old at the time and his other daughter, Mallory, was two and a half. He writes, and this is going back to the 70s, he writes, we bought our first really nice piece of furniture back in those days. It was a pink sofa. But for the money we paid for, we called it a mauve sofa.

Do you remember those days? The man at the sofa store told us all about how to care for it. We took it home. Now since we had small children at the time, the number one rule in our home from that day on became don't sit on the mauve sofa. Don't play near the mauve sofa. Don't eat around the mauve sofa. Don't breathe on the mauve sofa. On every other chair in the house you may freely sit, but on the mauve sofa you may not sit, for on the day you sit there on you will surely die. But then one day came the fall there appeared on the mauve sofa a stain, a red jelly stain.

My wife called the man at the sofa factory and he told her the bad news. She assembled our girls in the living room to look at the stain on the sofa and she said girls do you see that? That's a stain.

That's a red jelly stain. And the man at the sofa store says it's not coming out, not for all of eternity. Do you know how long eternity is? Eternity is how long we're going to sit here until one of you tells me which one of you put the red jelly stain on the sofa. For a long time they just sat there until finally two and a half year old Mallory cracked and said Laura did it.

Laura said I did not. And there was dead silence for the longest time. I knew that none of them would confess putting the stain on that sofa because they'd never seen their mother that mad in their entire lives and I knew they wouldn't confess because they knew if they did they'd spend eternity and time out. Orkberg writes I also knew they wouldn't confess because in fact I was the one who got the jelly stain on the sofa and I wasn't saying nothing. He goes on to write the truth is we've all stained the sofa of our lives somewhere. Somehow our hearts are stained daily aren't they? Our hands are stained often. Our consciences are stained repeatedly. They're red stains.

How will they ever come out? Unlike this frustrated mother God knows all about it already. He knows who did what, when, and where. John will open his discussion in chapter one of his first letter that we've begun to study on the subject of stains or sin. And he's going to begin by reminding us that God knows all about it.

In fact we'll pick it up in a verse where we left off with just that kind of declaration. He writes in first John chapter one and now in verse five this is the message that we've heard from him that is Jesus and announced to you that God is light. God is light and in him is no darkness at all. He's a light that's a reference to his personal and total holiness, his perfection, his glory in his person. In fact Jesus is the light of the world. He shares the essence of his father in that gospel account which resonates with his first letter. You may remember when Jesus Christ pulled back the veil on his own humanity there on what we call the Mount of Transfiguration it says that his face shone like the sun and Peter, James and John no doubt shielded their eyes, clothing blazed with brilliant white light. The future dwelling of the believer in the father's house is a place with an ending light.

John adds you notice not only is God his light but he says in him there is no darkness at all. Now that would be different from the gods of their day. The gods of the Greeks and the Romans their gods cheated. They lied. They were immoral. They were unchaste. They were malignant toward mankind. They were quarrelsome with each other.

They were abusive. In fact one author said whenever men create their own gods they always end up creating them in their own image. But he says here our God is different.

The true and living God is a God of a light. There's nothing evil in him. There's nothing shady in him. There's no deceit in him. James will have there's not even a shadow of turning moral ethical turning changing. In him there are no dark corners.

There are no moral inconsistencies. He's all light. And guess what light does it exposes doesn't it? It exposes everything which means he is able then to expose all the stains in our lives. He's able to expose the dark corners of our hearts. Now maybe as I told you that story earlier by John and his mauve stuffy you might have been thinking well all you got to do is flip the cushion over and you get a free pass.

Right. Oh God can see under there too. So the question is what are you going to do about those stains. What are you going to do not about just the old ones but the new ones.

Those new stains that appear regularly. In fact the greater question will be how in the world do we ever hope to fellowship with a God of light who exposes everything when we consistently sin. Well John will answer that question in this paragraph. And in order to help the believer answer that question this old apostle puts together five different scenarios all beginning with a little word in or if in the English language. These are five conditional clauses to begin with a letter if or the word if. So in fact if you want to just in your Bible circle those five words those kind of serve as the outline of what he's thinking and where we're going today. Each of these five scenarios are going to warn. They're going to encourage even inspire the believer with the news of what it means to walk with God in the light. And I've put each of these five scenarios into five positive commands that I hope kind of get to the core of each of these conditional clauses.

The first one is simply be honest be honest. Notice verse six if we say that we have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness we lie and do not practice the truth. Now some would say and I've waded through a number of them that would say that John is not talking to believers here because it's not possible for a Christian to walk in darkness it's not possible for a Christian to lie it's not possible for a Christian to be deceived or practice the truth and I would say I'd like to talk to your wife or your children or your parents or your husband.

No. Would you notice that John throughout the paragraph refers to we and us. That's not W-I-I that's W-E. We and us. Now certainly he's going to expose the false teaching of the Gnostics but he isn't defining in this paragraph justification. In fact if you come to that erroneous conclusion this paragraph is going to send you into all sorts of confusion. He's defining sanctification. He isn't telling the unbeliever how to experience sonship by means of your faith.

He's telling the believer how to experience fellowship by means of your walk. It's possible for fellowship to be lost not sonship. It's possible for communion with the father of light who exposes everything about us to be hindered just as my young children might have disobeyed me and if I knew it at the time the last thing we would ever enjoy is fellowship.

But they would remain my children. You can't be unborn if you've been born into the family. You read the apostle Paul's own personal testimony of this battle in Romans chapter 7. Listen to him at the end of his life where he says to Timothy, I am the worst sinner on the planet, chief of sinners. Now while John is certainly exposing some of the teaching of the Gnostics and the Decedice and we'll pull that out as we go through this. This first warning is written to challenge the believer to get honest with God. In other words stop living the double life God knows.

He's the God of light. He sees. Get honest about your walk. Get honest about the path of your feet. Get honest with God. The word John uses for walking here are those who walk or walking in darkness refers to moral conduct.

The present tense indicates that this person is slipping into this habitual way of thinking and acting through daily life. What he's saying is if this is how you're beginning to think and act, if you're being squeezed into the mold of the world and by the way it's always trying to squeeze you into its mold that's why we're told not to let it because it can. Romans 12 too. You can't while you are being allowed to be squeezed into the mold of the world believe at the same time you're making headway with God.

Be honest. He writes in verse 6 notice how boldly you're lying. We lie he says. We lie when we think like that. We're pulling the wall over each other's eyes perhaps successfully. We're not pulling the wall over God's. He writes here we are not practicing the truth.

Good translation. We're not practicing it at that moment. See there were false teachers who were telling the believers in the first century their body was fallen.

It didn't matter what they did with it. It wouldn't hinder their spiritual life at all. John would say to them that's just a lie.

What you do with your body has a direct impact on your communion with the God of light who exposes the sin. So just be honest. Make sure that what you're doing matches what you are saying. To put it another way which we often say make sure your walk what measures up to your talk. He moves on to another scenario. Let me pull from this a second positive command.

This one simply says stay close. Notice if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin. Walking in the light is that one author wrote that conscious endeavor to live a life in conformity with the truth of God's revelation. And that will be a daily battle. And when you grow in Christ the battle doesn't subside.

It can grow even more difficult. Now John encourages the believer in this verse with two different misconceptions you might be tempted to believe. Let me pull them out for you. First of all this misconception that a transparent life is going to ruin fellowship with each other. That I've got to hide it.

I've got to hide it from people. I can't be honest. Open honest confession as you walk in the light exposing your life to the truth of God's light that actually forms the foundation for fellowship with each other.

Did you notice? He in this text doesn't say when you do this you'll have fellowship with God. He actually says you're going to have fellowship with each other. Honesty with God is the basis for harmony with God's children. Now the second thing that a believer might be tempted to think is that if you walk closely with God in the light exposing your heart and your life to his truth, the truth of his holy perfection, that there might be something that Jesus would find out about that would ruin everything.

Again the exact opposite is true. He writes here that the blood of Jesus Christ is effectively strong enough to cleanse from every red stain. There isn't anything that Jesus can find out about your life as you walk with him in the light. He'll say I didn't know about that or you did that today. Well that changes everything.

No. So don't be afraid to hold your life up to the light. No matter what you discover, no matter what you honestly see as you walk closely to him, Jesus Christ can effectively cleanse every stain. William Cooper from a couple of centuries ago struggled terribly with his Christian experience. He was the son of an Anglican clergyman who wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and he didn't want to do that.

He created tremendous conflict. He decided to go into law but then he failed to pass the bar exam. He was so utterly devastated and angry with God that he threw away his Bible and attempted to take his life. He was placed in an asylum.

It was run by a believer, managed by a believer named Nathaniel Cotton. And under Nathaniel's care and the introduction of truth back into his life, he recovered. In fact it was in that asylum where he was confronted with the wonderful declaration of truth of Paul in Romans 3 where Paul said being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus whom God displayed publicly as a satisfaction through or by means of his blood. God is satisfied with what Christ did. Cooper would go on to write there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins and sinners plunge beneath that flood what? Lose all their guilty stain. You walk with God in the light and you're going to have things exposed.

The blood of Jesus Christ is powerful enough to cleanse everything about you. Be honest. Stay close. Here's a third command. Simply put, get real.

Get real. Verse 8, if we say that we have no sin we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. Now you might think that a Christian would never do that.

Well let me explain what he's saying. The phrase that we have no sin refers to personal guilt. In fact you might for the sake of clarification circle that word sin right over in the margin of your Bible guilt. It's someone who effectively says my sin shouldn't make me feel guilty or my sin isn't really sinful. Can you imagine anybody saying that?

I didn't think so. Now the Gnostic teachers in John's day were teaching this very deception that you don't need to feel guilty about anything. Godly, ungodly, holy, unholy, pure, impure, whatever you do it really doesn't matter. Sin isn't really sinful and there's no need to feel guilty about anything you do. So if you want to enjoy life get over this concept of guilt. It's just going to weigh you down. It's going to make you feel bad. And it's just kind of culturally and bread anyway so get over all that old stuff.

That's as fresh today as it was when the Gnostics taught it in the first century. In fact one popular advice column I read said this quote the first step you've got to take is to understand that your behavior is really not your fault. Refuse to accept blame.

Heaping any kind of blame on yourself only adds to your stress, low self-esteem, worry, depression, feelings of inadequacy, independence. So let go of your guilty feelings. John would say if you start thinking like that you're actually in trouble. In fact he says the truth is not in us. Basically the truth is not operating in our lives. When we say to ourselves that sin isn't really sinful. See it'd really be easy to say John's talking to unbelievers. Yeah go get him John.

Oh wait I do this. I can't tell you how many times in ministry I've had people tell me Stephen you know what I'm doing and wrong. In fact I had somebody tell me not too long ago that I was way too black and white on this particular sin they were involved in. In fact he actually said to me what you need to do is get out more. John would effectively say in response no what you need to do is get real. Stop the wordsmithing. Stop the clever rationale to try and get around sin. In fact he says here's what's really happening in your life at that moment.

Verse eight again. It's the simple fact that this kind of thinking leads to self-deception. We deceive ourselves. The verb he chooses for deceive is from the Greek word planao. We get our English word planet from this. The ancients many of them believe that planets were erratic wandering bodies. They were wrong about that too. But he pulls that word out of ancient thought that's untrue as well.

He says when you start following those things which aren't true your life becomes this erratic wandering body. So get real. Fourthly this really remedies everything frankly. Be honest, stay close, get real and now fourthly admit everything.

How's that? Admit everything. Look at verse nine. If we confess our sins one author said that's the biggest if in a Christian's life.

If. If we confess our sins. The word he uses for confess here is a verb that means to agree with another.

Literally to say the same thing about something that somebody else says about it. So what he's saying here when you confess your sins you're actually saying what God says about it. You're going to sit lying aside and you're going to say oh this is what God says about that. So you're actually taking God's side against yourself.

Not very comfortable is it? It's like you're stepping out of yourself and you're turning around and you're saying self I am agreeing with God on that particular action or thought that you're having. I'm agreeing with him that it isn't just something unfortunate that it's actually sinful. If we confess.

My wife used to put our children as they were growing up through the paces of true confession and making apology because it was so easy for kids and it's so easy for us to go sorry I'm sorry. Oh that's easy to say isn't it. Yeah sorry. Next.

So she'd stop him. No name it. What was it.

Tell it to them. I am sorry for doing ABC. I was wrong. Will you forgive me.

You know how much time that took. That's true confession. And unfortunately our culture which has now redefined sin has nothing to confess anymore. And so as one author put it we what we once called sin is now an array of disabilities. All kinds of evil conduct are identified as symptoms of some kind of disorder. Modern culture has created a brand new gospel in that man is not a sinner he is a victim.

So culture is losing its ability really to be cleansed because it has nothing to confess and certainly no one to confess to. Case in point was a man who was shot and paralyzed while committing a burglar in New York. News article read that he was shot by the store owner who was within his rights but the attorney successfully convinced the jury that the man was first of all a victim of society driven by economic disadvantages.

The jury agreed the store owner was actually required to pay the man of settlement. Several months later the news followed up with this the same burglar now wealthy and in a wheelchair was arrested while committing another armed robbery. Another man won a similar kind of settlement he had mugged and brutally beaten an elderly man in the subway was shot by police while fleeing the scene. He sued the New York Transit Authority. Four point eight million dollars was compensated to him. The elderly man he mugged a cancer patient by the way was still paying doctor bills while the thief is now a multi-millionaire. And yet another case a drug dealer shot and killed eight children and two women at close range and without mercy. Jurors were led to believe and they so decided that drugs and stress were a quote reasonable explanation for his actions.

They ruled that he had acted under extreme emotional distress and found him guilty of a lesser charge. And that makes sense in a culture that is removing sin as sin. When you remove sin you remove guilt and there's nothing to confess there's nothing to be guilty of. And this is a downward spiral. You see it's a lot easier to say I am a victim than I am a sinner.

That's a lot harder to say. I shared something I came across not too long ago with the men's quarterly breakfast. It was great to fellowship with a couple hundred men who came and I'd come across this and shared it in a similar vein as we were honest with ourselves and our Lord about a CEO that had been removed by the board.

Prophets were down. New CEOs coming in the old CEO wanted to help him out and so he said look I know you probably don't want my advice but you're going to need it. And I have pared down my years of experience into three simple statements and I've prepared three envelopes for you.

Whenever you make a mistake you need help go to envelope number one and do exactly what it says and so on. The new CEO thought well I'll probably never need that. But sure enough months into the job he made a mistake. He called it wrong.

It was costly. It was obvious. And he remembered those envelopes and he went to the door pulled out envelope number one and it simply said blame me. So he did. He blamed the old CEO. It was his fault. He inherited the guy's problems. He had set the course and so you know this wasn't really my issue and everybody bought it and he was off the hook.

Everything went along well. About a year later he made another big mistake and he went right to that second envelope. Envelope number two and it read blame the board. And so he did. He blamed the board. He had inherited that board. They were a mess and they weren't following his leadership and everybody bought it and he was off the hook and everything was fine and a little less than a year later he made another mistake undeniable and costly.

He went and opened envelope number three which read prepare three envelopes. I mean sooner or later he ran out of people to blame right. The apostle would say well just go ahead and fess up the first time. Admit it. That's genuine repentance honest confession nobody to blame but ourselves. And this gets to the heart of our problem.

In fact C.S. Lewis said it this way. He said the problem with fallen man is not that we are imperfect creatures who need improvement. He said we are rebels who must lay down our arms.

He says that surrender is called confession and repentance. We're sure glad you joined us today here on Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Stephen is the president of Shepherds Theological Seminary in Cary, North Carolina. If you'd like to learn more about our ministry Wisdom International or Shepherds Theological Seminary visit wisdomonline.org. We have an email list that we use to send articles to help you grow in your faith. We also send occasional updates about our ministry. If you don't receive email from us we'd like to add you to the list. Of course signing up is free and we would love to be able to include you. While we hope it's a benefit to you you can unsubscribe anytime. All you need to do is send an email to info at wisdomonline.org and ask to join our email list. Do that right now and then join us back here next time for more Wisdom for the Heart.