The sermon by Scott Brown, titled 'God is Light,' focuses on the themes of light and darkness as presented in 1 John 1:5-7. It emphasizes that God is the ultimate source of light, truth, and purity, contrasting with the darkness, which represents sin and separation from God. Walking in the light involves living according to God's truth and commandments, leading to genuine fellowship with God and others. The concept of 'koinonia' is highlighted as a deep, shared fellowship rooted in divine truth. The sermon also discusses Jesus Christ as the embodiment of this divine light, who reveals the truth and purifies believers. In contrast, walking in darkness entails disobedience and a lack of true fellowship, both with God and fellow believers. The sermon underscores the importance of aligning one's life with God's light, which transforms perspectives and relationships, providing answers to life's fundamental questions and guiding believers in their spiritual journey.

Our text today is from 1 John chapter 1 verses 5, 6, and 7. This is the message which we have heard from him and declare to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. Father, thank you for your word that brings truth.

Thank you for your word that brings healing. Father, we ask that you would cleanse us with the washing of your word. Help us to have ears to hear and hearts to understand. We thank you. Please be with Mr.

Brown as he brings us your word. Lord, let his lips be used by you to speak to us today. These things we pray in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. I've been very thankful over the last few weeks that in our working through John's letter we've been brought to this whole matter of fellowship with God that we would be drawn to fellowship with God, that we would be driven to fellowship with God in the midst of all of the things that have been happening here.

And here in the section that we are dealing with this morning, John brings us into the world of fellowship of darkness and the fellowship of the light. And he makes it very plain here that to walk in darkness is to be deprived of everything that's beautiful, everything that's good, everything that is from God. And you see how walking in darkness, it puts you on your own, it disconnects you from light, and you live in a darkness that actually can be felt and it can be seen because you're separated from the light, from the love of God, and you cannot have the fullness of loving fellowship with people because of the darkness, the disobedience really from the things of God in your life. So it shows a picture of a journey of walking. And there you are in this walking through this world and and you are either filled with or deprived of the life-giving fellowship with God and the blessings of fellowship with people in the world that God has put there.

And so this is why you know John is explaining that fellowship with God is the source of every good and I pray that we'll be able to see that somehow through these verses here. Now as you see in the outline I have a number of introductory comments that I'd like to make just to help us see some of the the elements that surround this whole section. And first of all, what we observe here is the nature of God and the nature of fellowship. And there's nothing more important in your life than to understand the nature of God and the implications of your fellowship with him and with with others and Here we find him being presented as a fountain of light He he is the father of lights and We were even reminded of that this morning. We woke up and and the Sun came up God has put lights in the world He's the father of lights he places many lights in the world to remind us of his great and marvelous light and so John is is speaking of the nature of God and the nature of our fellowship with him and through that he weaves several thoughts through this letter, all throughout the letter that speak of the greatness and the beauty of this fellowship.

And he uses words like life. It's a fellowship with life. It's a fellowship with joy. We spoke about that last week. And here today it's a fellowship of light.

Later on we'll see that it's a fellowship of love and all throughout you'll see that it's a fellowship of truth this is the kind of fellowship that God draws his people into and This word fellowship is something that John is concerned with right at the beginning and he uses that as a foundational principle To understand the kingdom of God the word coin in Ea we talked about that last week Can can every child here pronounce the word coin in Ea? I hope so. It's a beautiful word that helps us to grasp some of the marvelous things that God has done And so so in these first four verses we see that it's that it is a fellowship of life It's a fellowship of joy and now it's a it's a fellowship of light Now when we get to the matter of light we come to something that's really very compelling to us in the natural world. We are concerned about light, physical light, and it's striking to me how man cannot stop trying to create more light. Have you noticed that?

Have you noticed the technology that is advancing today in order to advance the throw of light, the intensity of light? And light is something that man works hard to increase in its houses, in its buildings, in its stadiums, in its outdoor venues. People are very concerned about bringing light into darkness in this world. It's a compelling impulse in man. He cannot keep himself from doing it.

He cannot lose his fascination with lights. There's a famous company close by that made its name really in innovating with LED lights, which has really captured the whole world in a whole different use of light because light is penetrating, it's pleasing, and men want light. And when you find such innovation, I think what you find at work is the image of God in man to try to replicate something that God has put in the world so that it would remind man that God is light. I don't know if you ever noticed this, every little boy loves a flashlight. Why is that?

Why is it? Well, every little boy that I've ever known is obsessed with flashlights and often loses several flashlights in his young lifetime. But flashlights are marvels today. I mean, go to the internet and see all the different kinds of lights that you can get. These brightest, monster, high intensity lights that will go a mile.

It's remarkable what has happened. But is it possible that God has actually engineered that flashlights would be in the world so that every little boy would see that there is light, that there is a lamp unto their feet. That every little boy would turn on a flashlight and he might remember that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all and that Jesus Christ is the light of the world and that God will lead you through this world by His lamp, by the lamp of the Word of God. It's such a great hope for any little boy or little girl who loves a flashlight and the next time you turn one on, you six, eight, ten-year-olds, remember God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. And His word is a lamp unto your feet, and a light unto your path.

So John is dealing with this whole matter of light, but we also know that as Jesus said, men loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. So they set aside the word of God because they hated the light. And Jesus said that this is the condemnation, that light has come into the world, and men love the darkness rather than the light. But here in this passage, we learn that God is light. And now, in this reminder that God is light, there's also a reminder of two kingdoms.

There's the kingdom of light, and there's the kingdom of darkness. And John, over and over again in his epistle, is telling you about these two kingdoms. And it's the kingdom of light, the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of love, the kingdom of hatred. And he speaks of it and gives these contrasts that are here. And what John is doing, he's testing the profession of faith that his readers have made.

Because he's desiring to show them what it means to walk in one kingdom or another, the kingdom of light here in this text and the kingdom of darkness. Now, as we're talking about these kingdoms, I think it might be worthwhile just to mention briefly that John is speaking of a kingdom where there's a very different view of God. And in the world that we find ourselves living in now, which is increasingly pantheistic, increasingly worshiping nature, increasingly exalting and worshiping trees and animals and things like that, Notice that John does not say, and this is very important, light is God. Light is not God. Rather, God is light.

Nature is not God. Nature is not the ruling force in the universe. And so John is here to say that actually God is light. He was contradicting the religion of the Egyptians who worshipped the Sun and The God the Sun God Ray and and the God Horus who was the rising Sun. He was He was contradicting those cultures around him that said that light is god.

Now, the American Indians believe that light is god. There's a city in America, in Colorado, called Sundance, out of this religion of the Indians that the sun is God. But John is speaking of the fact that God is light, not light is God. Also he's speaking of a matter of walking. He uses the word walking, walking in the light, and walking in darkness.

And he's talking about your life trajectory. He's talking about a journey that you're on. And He's giving you this picture of a journey of life, and that life is either a life of light, or that journey is a journey in darkness. And it's very helpful to understand the journey that you're on, and how you make your way down the road of this life. Because if your journey is a journey of darkness, how great is that darkness?

But if it's a journey of light where the Word of God, Jesus Christ himself, is the lamp unto your feet, you'll find the sweetness of life in that journey of walking down that road of life. And you see how, you know, embracing the darkness, It only hurts you. And John wants to make that very, very clear in his epistle. And then finally, I just want to point out that this is one of the God is statements in the Bible. It's very important that you understand two things in this world, who you are and who God is.

Those are the most fundamental things to know. But here John is telling us that that God is light. Now in John 4 24 we learn that God is spirit. In John 4 16, 1 John 4 16, we learn that God is love. In Hebrews 12 29, we learn that God is a consuming fire.

So there are many things that we should be very careful to understand about God because God has revealed himself in these ways. And here God is light. And so let's move into the text now. As you can see, I have it divided into three sections. This message of Jesus Christ that God is light.

And then he speaks of walking in darkness, and then he speaks of walking in the light. So we'll try to take each one of these individually. First of all, we'll begin with this first principle in verse 5 that God is light. This is the message which we have heard from him and declare to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. Now I'd like you to focus on the word message.

This is the message. Do you see that? It's something that we should not miss in John's argument here. He says this is the message that we have heard. Now who's we?

We are the apostles. John is saying he saw, he touched, he handled, he considered Jesus very personally. So this is the message which we the apostles have heard from him and that is Jesus. John is saying that he heard a specific message from Jesus. And Jesus taught John and the other apostles something about God.

Jesus taught them that God was light. And so this was known by divine revelation. Now the apostles who knew the Old Testament would understand that the Lord did speak of light in the Old Testament. And he was speaking of Jesus like in Isaiah when he says, your son will not go down. He was talking about Jesus.

And there are various places in the Old Testament where God is presented as light. But Jesus taught the disciples that God was light. Now, we don't have any record of Jesus saying these words, God is light. You can't find them in the New Testament. But he said it in many, many ways, this very same thing.

And so John is really, in some ways he's reminiscing about the times that Jesus told them about how God was light. And he was thinking back on it. How the Lord Jesus Christ taught him. Now it's interesting that John is an apostle who loves to talk about light. Yet John neither can get over light.

He always wants to talk about it. And so in his gospel and in 1 John he's talking about the light all the time. And I think he's just, the disciple has become like his teacher. And he loves the things his teacher taught him. So Jesus taught his disciples that God was light.

Now One of the most helpful things that we can remember about Jesus teaching about light is that Jesus connected God's light with his own light. And Jesus claimed that his light was his father's light. And you learn this in John 12 verse 46, where Jesus said, I am the light of the world. In John chapter 12 verse 46, Jesus cried out and he said, he who believes in me, he who believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. And he who sees me sees him who sent me.

I have come as a light into the world that whoever believes in me should not walk in darkness." Jesus believed that his Father's light was his light, that he was the manifestation of his Father's light in the world. And so that's why Jesus speaks of himself as the light, because he believed that he was the living earthly manifestation of his father's light. And so the Lord Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, is God in the flesh. This is why in Hebrews chapter 1 verses 2 and 3, the author of Hebrews tells us that in these last days God has spoken to us by His Son whom He appointed heir of all things. And then he says, He is the brightness of His glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power.

Jesus is the brightness of the glory of God the Father. And this is why Jesus Christ always manifested himself as the light of God and the light of the world. You remember the woman who was caught in adultery in John chapter 8? She had men who had accused her of committing adultery. And the scribes and the Pharisees they brought This woman to Jesus and they they set her in their midst and the Lord Jesus Christ Said He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone.

And the reason he did that is because the Pharisees knew the law, and they knew that in the law you had to have witnesses. But she really didn't have any witnesses. And so they all walked away, because there really were no witnesses. And Jesus said this, he spoke to them saying, I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness but have the light of life." Jesus Christ shines his light into the darkness of all the opinions of man, all of the judgments of man, and he knows, he sees, And he reveals it all as he did there on that day with the woman caught in adultery in John chapter 9 Jesus said that he was the light of the world He says in verse 4 I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day the night is coming when no man can work, as long as I am in the world.

I am the light of the world." Now, he said that, and he did something very, very vividly and very, very vivid and memorable. He spat into some dirt and he made clay. And he said, I am the light of the world. And then he rubs that clay into a blind man's eyes and that blind man saw for the first time and and John says in commentary of That moment he says since the world began it has been unheard of that anyone opened the eyes of one who is blind. No one had ever seen anything like that before.

But Jesus Christ, proclaiming himself to be the light of the world, makes clay and puts it in a blind man's eyes in order to demonstrate that he opens blind men's eyes. The blindness of the blind, the blind of whom no one can heal their eyes, Jesus Christ can do that. This is the power and the beauty of his light. He can open up any blind eyes. Nothing holds him back.

He can do things that no one has ever done in the world. Now, I have catalogued dozens and dozens of sections in the Bible, and particularly in the Gospels, that speak of Jesus Christ as the light of the world. And, time would fail me to go through a tenth of them. But they are so beautiful. When Jesus Christ speaks of the light, you see the most marvelous things taking place.

And this is one reason why we should love the light and hate the darkness, because His light is so good and it's so wonderful. But He says here that God is light. Now What does that mean? Most of the people who write about this, and I'm confident they're absolutely correct, they speak of light as having at least two meanings, truth and purity. So when Jesus is speaking of himself being the light and God being light.

He's speaking of truth and purity and And he's and he is speaking of the truth of his word This is what it means to walk in the light to walk into in the light is to walk in the truth of the word of God. To walk in the light of that lamp to your feet. Walking in the light, by the way, is not the same thing as transparency. Walking in the light is not in this passage sharing your innermost thoughts. It's not letting it all hang out.

Walking in the light is not revealing all of the secrets of your heart nor is it telling you to know about and tell about the sins of other people. That's not walking in the light in this passage of scripture. Walking in the light is to be governed by the light of the revelation of God and the work of the Spirit of God and walking in his commands is what it means to walk in the light and there there is this light that is shining and it's shining on you it's revealing you it's exposing who you are so that you would begin to walk in obedience to His light. And so this light is shining in you, it's on you, and then it shines out from you. And so walking in the light is walking under the government of God.

And this is how we know that fellowship with God is the source of every good. Part of our fellowship with God is our fellowship with the Word. When you have fellowship with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, you're having fellowship with the words of these persons of the Holy Trinity. And Peter makes this very clear. In 1 Peter chapter one verse 19, Peter testifies to the light, which is the word of God, which was from Christ.

And he's remembering the transfiguration and how light rising in the heart is really the light of the Word of God. He says this in 1 Peter chapter 116, for we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. And then in verse 19 he says, and so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place Until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts here The light of God is the prophetic word. It's the light that shines in your heart And it dawns like a morning star and it rises in your heart and then he says Knowing that first no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation For prophecy never came by the will of man but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. This is the light of God.

The light of God is the word of God rising as a day spring in the heart of man. And what we learn from this, among many other things, and this might be one of the most critical applications or interpretations of this verse five, and that is this. When you read God is light, it's revealed to you that Christianity begins with God. It begins specifically with God who is light. And what this means is that the Christian has a very, very different orientation of his life.

The Christian is oriented toward light, toward the light of God. And so a Christian is not like the average person walking in this world, because a Christian begins with God. Man always begins with man. Christians begin with God. Those of you who've studied the period of the Enlightenment, the great Enlightenment philosophers like Descartes, I think, therefore I am, Immanuel Kant, there's only human knowledge, which really can be traced really back to the devil himself, but the Greek Philosopher protagoras said it this way man is the measure of all things.

But in Christianity, God's light is the measure of all things. And one of the most disastrous mistakes a man can make is to go to himself, to be consulting himself as the measure of all things. To continue to live in this world of I think, or this world of I feel, it's the most disastrous things that human beings can do. Is to be lost in their own feelings and thoughts about things that have been grown up really pretty much as a result of being born into a dark world where the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. But a Christian has a completely different frame of reference.

He has a different center. He's being pulled in completely opposite directions than the other people in the world. And so when you read these words, God is light, It's really a matter of a declaration of authority, the authority of God, the authority of the Word of God in your life. And John's words here make it very clear that we must be delivered from ourselves. We must have our own light be replaced by the light of God because in reality the light in us and its worldliness is really darkness And we need our darkness to be replaced.

And this is one of the greatest blessings of the Christian life, is that God is very faithful. And so a Christian wants to understand what is God's light. And having that light is the source of every good. Fellowship with God is the fountain of life that we need the very, very most in every situation. Now light has many functions.

Light exposes, it reveals, it penetrates. Light clarifies, light shows the way. Light makes you see. Light will change your whole life. It'll transform your every perspective on everything.

Once you have the light of Jesus Christ, you'll never see the world again the same way. Because you have a different light. You don't think like you used to think, nor do you think like the worldlings think. This word, this light of God that is revealed It all it always answers the most important questions You know, why am I here? What is this world all about?

You know the great puzzles of life are all solved by the Word of God. Why evil? Where is history going? What is good? What is moral?

What does love look like? Light just opens your soul so that you can see what's there, showing you the imperfections, the dark corners of your own soul so that they might be filled with light, the light of life, the light of God Himself. You know, James said that every good and perfect gift is from above and comes down from the father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. And then he says, of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth. It's that word of truth that brings us forth, that brings the light into our hearts and causes us to be born again.

And then James says, he says, Therefore, because God is light, because He's the Father of lights, He says, therefore, lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls. And so it is true, fellowship with God is the source of every good. And he says here, in him is no darkness at all. That's very important to see. There is no darkness in God at all.

And that's why in the Nicene Creed you read and describing God, God of God, light of light. And he, the authors of the Creed were trying to grasp this complete absence of darkness that is in God. And you can trust Him in every way, because there is no darkness in Him. And it should help us to be reminded again of what I think is one of the most helpful things to always remind ourselves of. And that is that to walk in darkness is to be deprived of every good thing, every beautiful thing.

And it puts you on your own. It gets you stuck in yourself. It makes you more and more like you and less and less like the God who saved your soul so that you would walk in everlasting light. And then in verse 6, after this declaration that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all, he speaks of walking in darkness and the implications of walking in darkness. In verse 6 he writes, if we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

And so he is speaking about this tragedy of walking in darkness and how you're deprived of two of the greatest blessings that a human being can have, fellowship with God and fellowship with others. To be deprived of these is a terrible tragedy in the world. But he begins this with these words, if we say, if we say that we have fellowship with him. And he's revealing a fact that you find existing even among the gathered people of God. And you have people who say certain things.

And he's saying that people will say things that are contrary to reality, and that men will profess that God is light, or they'll profess that they have fellowship with him but behind closed doors or just in the realities of their hearts out in the day they walk in darkness. They're one thing when they're with other devoted Christians or perhaps leaders, but they're very different when they're alone. I'll never forget a story that I heard a man tell one time. It was a story about Robert Redford, the actor. And he was getting ready to get into an elevator.

And a fan noticed it was Robert Redford, got in the elevator, and as the door was closing, the fan said, are you the real Robert Redford? And he said, only when I'm alone. And the door closed. And this is a reality that all people have to face. Who are we when we're alone?

Who are we really? Regardless of what we say, who are we when we're alone? And John is speaking to this matter of when people say one thing, but they actually are something else. And he's speaking of the emptiness and the vanity and the eternal danger that is upon those who say things but they are not true of them. I have an old commentary by Philip Dodridge who was a preacher of the English revival in the in the 18th century he has this commentary set called the family expositor and I was reading it this week and I'll paraphrase what he says about this verse he says That John's leading design is to demonstrate the vanity of faith separate from morality, to promote love among the hotheaded, and to arm his readers against the snares of false teachers and the Antichrist himself.

And so John here is dividing people in this sense. He's dividing people of light and of darkness. And people of darkness will often say they have fellowship with him, but you can tell by their fruits. They don't bear the fruits of the light, which are explained all over the scriptures. But rather they walk in darkness.

And what does it mean to walk in darkness? And Ian Hamilton defines it this way. I like this definition. To walk in darkness is to live outside the revelation of God's character and will in Scripture. In practical terms it means living in defiance to God's commandments and one of his commandments is that we love one another.

Now John also connects light with love. He does so in chapter 2, and he says this, he who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in darkness until now. He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness is blinded his eyes. And so John is connecting walking in darkness with lack of love and walking in the light as fulfilling love.

And so there's this realm of darkness and there's this realm of the light. And walking in darkness is walking in disobedience. Now walking in the light is walking toward Jesus Christ. Walking in the light is code for true Christianity. And I believe this is what he's talking about.

He's talking about Christians and non-Christians. And he's saying that the Christian is walking in the light. He's not saying that the Christian is perfect. He's not saying that the Christian never sins. He's not saying that the Christian doesn't have parts of darkness living in his mind and in his heart.

He's not saying that at all. But he is saying that the Christian is walking with Jesus Christ, the light of the world, And in that walk, Jesus Christ is revealing his sins to him in that sense. But walking in darkness is the greatest tragedy that there is. Now John is giving conditions of salvation and he's giving various conditions in 1 John and this first condition of having fellowship with God is walking in the light. Like If you say you have fellowship with God, then you are walking in the light.

That's a condition of salvation. In other words, you're not a Christian if you're walking in darkness. Not to say that you don't have things to repent of. That's not what he's talking about. But it's a walking in darkness that he's speaking of.

And John shows you whether you're having fellowship with God or not, or whether you're simply saying that you have fellowship with God. And the way that you know that you have fellowship with God is that you desire to keep His commandments, that you have affection for them, you're drawn into them and away from yourself and away from the darkness of this world. You know this darkness is so harmful. You know somebody in Bible study reminded us that in the plagues of Egypt, darkness came over the Egyptians. And Moses reports that it was a darkness that could be felt.

A darkness that could be felt. And darkness can always be felt. Now I remember when I was a little boy, my parents took us to Carlsbad Caverns. It's a very, very deep cave in New Mexico, I believe. And the rangers would take you 600 feet down.

And these gorgeous caverns, huge with stalactites and stalagmites and light shining over these remarkable structures that were you know so far underneath the surface of the earth in the presentation they would switch the lights off And it was the blackest darkness you could feel the darkness. It was astonishing. It was It was scary and then the Rangers began to sing Rock of Ages cleft for me down in the midst of that black darkness. And if I remember correctly, a ranger turned on a candle. And that one little candle had such a dramatic impact on this huge underground cavern.

But there is a darkness that you can feel and there's only one way to find light in that darkness and that is through fellowship with God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And I've felt in the difficult days that we've been in, this has been our greatest need, that we would run to Him, that our fellowship with him would be true, that we would test whether our fellowship is true, and that we would find all of our thoughts and our emotions and our hopes and everything through this situation from him and from him alone. And the only way that that can happen is if we're saturating ourselves with the Word of God and hungrily and lovingly and happily seeking His Word to replace the darkness of our own thinking so that we would have the light of Jesus Christ in all of our considerations. But with this phrase, if we say we have fellowship with Him, He's talking about that situation that Jesus spoke of when he talked about the people who did not know him but they had a lot to say about him. And he said to them, why do you call me Lord, Lord, but do not do what I say?

And in Matthew chapter 7, he comes to very religious people and he says to those who have made a declaration, they say, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, done many wonders in your name, cast out demons in your name. And that's what they're saying. And Jesus turns to them and he says, I never knew you. But the heart of the matter was, they did not love his light. They loved their own light.

And so John is speaking about this matter of walking in darkness and what it is like. Now to walk in darkness is to fill your life up with the ways of this world and to be satisfied by them and not disturbed by them. To be satisfied with the sounds of this world, to actually like them, to let your family be affected by them, is such a dangerous place to be. You know, the songs of this world, the films of this world are so dangerous in this sense. And it always terrifies me when I find people who love the films of this world and the music of this world.

It terrifies me. Because to walk in darkness is to like it and to be satisfied with expending your time in it and not caring about it as if it was nothing. You know, to walk in the darkness is to be deprived of everything that's good. It's a darkness that can be felt. And if you feel it today and you know it, you know the Lord Jesus Christ is here to say I'm the light of the world.

Come come to me. Come out of the darkness and into my light into the light of the word of God. Now walking in the light causes us to have fellowship with one another as well. And so in verse 7 he says if we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship with one another. Now, here again we encounter this word koinonia, and he is speaking of the results of the fellowship.

And there are two results. And The first is that if you walk in darkness, you have no authentic fellowship with God. And you do not also have fellowship with other believers. And so if you're saying that you have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, then there are two realities. It's a lie first, and secondly, you don't have fellowship with God, and thirdly, you can't have fellowship with one another.

Those are the disastrous consequences. But if you walk in the light, then you do have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from sin. And so, this walking in the light has a very powerful impact on our lives. And what we find here is that our fellowship with God draws us into fellowship with one another and sweetens our relationships. Because fellowship with God is always the greatest source of good in any situation.

Fellowship with God is the greatest good that you can have in your work life or in your family life, or in your life with your wife or with your children. Fellowship with God is the greatest sweetener of everything. And it is true that a church where the Word of God is the lifeblood of that church, and I mean the true lifeblood of that church, where the people, not that they just come and hear sermons, but that when they go home, they see the light of God as their lifeblood. They see the light of God as their lifeblood. They see the light of God to be the creator of everything in their life.

And he's saying here that If your life is revolving around the light, which is the word of God, then you will have this treasure as an earthen vessel to have fellowship with God, and you will also have love and fellowship with your brethren. And this is the essence of koinonia. Remember what koinonia means? Sharing. A shared life.

Sharing God's life with you, and you sharing God's life that you have received with others. That's fellowship. Fellowship isn't hanging out. Fellowship isn't the same thing as having camaraderie. It's something far deeper.

It's far more real. It's actually connected to something. It's connected to something real. There's a real root with real life flowing in it between you and God. And that is what fellowship is.

It's a sharing of that life and that living in broken fellowship with God bears witness in broken relationships with believers and an unregenerate state because it bears witness that you're not really connected to the life of God because you cannot love your brother. And John says, it's a lie when you say you love God but hate your brother. But also, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all unrighteousness. And this is, not only does fellowship with God open up a life of love, but it bears witness to a true salvation and a true regeneration. So a Christian is a person who has come to himself with a question and he's alarmed at himself.

And he's asking, who am I? And he says, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death? And it is the blood of Jesus Christ, his son alone, who can deliver from this body of death. And the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. And we walk in the light because we've been rescued from the kingdom of darkness.

Because we have been covered by the blood of Jesus Christ his son now we walk in the light because we have been rescued by him we don't turn a blind eye toward our sin in walking in the light. But we know that he's made a provision for our sin, to satisfy the wrath of God against us in all of our sin. And so here he's speaking about How fellowship with God is one in the same being Justified by God through the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ Now he uses these words here the Son of God and he's he's speaking of Jesus Christ the Son of God who humbled himself and he took on the likeness of flesh. And he came, he passed through the heavens to come and rescue sinners. And he became a man, and he was crucified, and he was buried, and he rose again on the third day.

And in all of that, he bore the sins of mankind. It was his blood that caused the cleansing. It was his blood that made the fellowship possible. And that's what John is saying, that it is true conversion and the right application of the blood of Jesus Christ to the sinner that has caused this fellowship to take place. And this is why Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, He turned to His disciples and He said, You are the light of the world.

A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. And He was talking about people who have fellowship with the light. How are you the light of the world? You are light to the world because you have fellowship with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And you are not living your own way.

You don't want your own way anymore. You want the ways of his light, the ways of his word. And the only way the church, and the only way this church can really be true light to the world is to walk in the word of God, to walk in obedience to that light, and to have fellowship with God through His word. And so John brings us back to this very fundamental principle for the Church of Jesus Christ. The only legitimate way she can make her way in the world is by fellowship with God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

And there's a very specific way that the church does that. It doesn't just do it out of their own thinking and emotions. The church makes its way in the world by living according to the light of the Word of God, which is why it's so critical that we begin and continue and end the day with meditations of the Word of God. It's how God mediates his light into the world. It happens with our true fellowship with him.

It happens when we say, open my eyes that I May see wondrous things from your law, O Lord, and help me to speak it and live it somehow in this day that I'm in the midst of now." And yet, how easy it is to lose a consciousness of that, of the closeness, the fellowship, the connection. But this is our greatest need. It always has been our greatest need. And it always will be the greatest need that we have in the world. Because to walk in darkness is to be deprived of everything that's beautiful and good That God has provided and it makes you on your own with your own self becoming more like yourself and you just become a responder in this world rather than a source of light in all the different places that you walk.

God has made it so that there would be an everlasting light in the world. It shines from God into the heart of the believer. And then, out of that true fellowship with God comes light. And you know when we gather together on Sundays, this actually is one of the great purposes for which we gather, that the light of God would be shining. And this is why in Isaiah 58 God tells us when you come when you come together on the Sabbath don't come with your own words don't come with your own ways come with light from heaven come with something so good and if if we would have truly blessed and happy times together that are governed by God, then they would be times like that where we've set aside our own words and our own ways and we speak the word of God to one another with sincerity of heart.

We sing to one another psalms and hymns and spiritual songs teaching one another. We have conversations with one another. Sometimes we pray with one another when we're gathered together. But all of this has one purpose, so that the light of Jesus Christ would be found in the world. And through the fellowship of God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit The true light would shine in the world Now I want to I want to end the time here now by reading a section from Jonathan Edwards book Charity and its Fruits and I want to read it because of course it's a commentary on 1st Corinthians 13 but he he is speaking of of heaven in this section that I want to read and in speaking of heaven he's really speaking of the greatest manifestation of the light of God, which is completely unmixed and uncontradicted.

Edward says in this book that heaven is a world of love. But I'd like to read this section that speaks about heaven because light comes from heaven. There in heaven dwells the God from whom every stream of holy love, yea, Every drop that is or ever was proceeds. There dwells God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, united as one in infinitely dear, incomprehensible, mutual, and eternal love. There dwells God the Father, who is the Father of mercies and so the Father of love, who so loved the world as to give his only begotten son to die for it.

There dwells Christ, the Lamb of God, the Prince of Peace and of Love, who so loved the world that he shed his blood and poured out his soul unto death for men. There dwells the great mediator through whom all the divine love is expressed toward men, by whom the fruits of that love have been purchased, through whom they are communicated, and through whom love is imparted to the hearts of all of God's people. There dwells Christ in both his natures, the human and the divine, sitting on the same throne with the Father. And there dwells the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of divine love, in whom the very essence of God, as it were, flows out and is breathed forth in love, and by whose immediate influence all holy love is shed abroad in the hearts of all the saints on earth and in heaven. There in heaven, this infinite fountain of love, this eternal three in one, is set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it as it flows forever.

There this glorious God manifested and shines forth in full glory in beams of love. And there this Glorious fountain forever flows in streams yay in rivers of love and delight and These rivers swell as it were into an ocean of love in which the souls of the ransomed may bathe with the sweetest enjoyment in their hearts as it were, deluged with love. And this is a picture of the fellowship of God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. And it is ours. It is a gift of the grace of God that we possess today and tomorrow and for all eternity.

Oh Lord, we pray that you would give us true fellowship with you, that all of our hearts would be consumed and captured by our fellowship with you that we would not preach ourselves but we beholding the face of your Holy Son would be transformed from glory to glory Amen.