EVENING SERMON FOR 8/16/2024 2:01 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The
Nature of God”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 1 John 1:5
Message of the
verse: “5
This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is
Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.”
What I have decided to do as I look at this verse is
to quote from a sermon that John MacArthur gave in this section in 2002. The important thing that I am trying to talk
about is that God is Light. I know that
in the past that I looked at this subject, perhaps when I was studying the
Gospel of John and remember that this is a very important truth for us to
understand and that is why I chose to quote from this sermon mentioned
above. It will take us a number of days to look at it as I do not want
to put so much on these SD’s that will take a long time to read and may
discourage people from reading it. Let’s
begin today to look at the first part of this sermon.
“John tells us about the nature of God. Other
gospel writers - Matthew, Mark, and Luke - tell us what God did. They
tell us what Jesus Christ who is God did, what He said. But John features who
He is. John is concerned
that we know something of the nature of God, not just His works, something of
the nature of Jesus Christ. If you read John in his gospel, chapter 4,
verse 24, John says, “God is spirit.” Here, in the verse that we’re looking at,
verse 5, he says, “God is light.” Over in chapter 4 and verse 8, he says, “God
is love.” John wants us to
know who God is, not just what He does, has done, will do.
“And the same is true with John’s approach to
Christ. If you read the gospel of John, Jesus is repeatedly presented as the
great “I am.” Presenting, first of all, His essential nature, as well as
telling us something of His mighty power in His works and the words that He
spoke. Here, John focuses on God as the foundation for what is to come, and he
focuses on the reality that God is light. And that becomes foundational for the rest of the
epistle, as well as for the very passage which I just read. God is light -
not God is a light, not God is the light, but God is light. God is essential
light.
“That reality is basically presented throughout
all of Scripture, and I want to take some time tonight to help you to
understand what that means. If I say to you, “God is spirit,” you understand
that; that is, God is immaterial. We follow that up with God is eternal spirit;
that is, He is eternally immaterial, He has no physical form. That’s very clear
in Scripture, that’s not hard to understand. And if I say to you God is love,
you understand that. You understand what it means to love, and it can be
demonstrated that God is love in His attitude toward the other members of the
Trinity, His attitude toward the human race, which Scripture says is clearly
manifest love.
“But when I say to you God is light, what does
that mean? What does it say when it says God is light? The reality of that is very, very important for an
understanding of the rest of this epistle because this is so foundational to
the nature of God. We do know in the Old Testament that God appeared as
light, that He manifested Himself, for example, to the children of Israel in
the account that’s given to us in the book of Exodus when Moses went up onto
the mountain while they were wandering in the wilderness to receive from God
the law. You remember he was told by God that he should go and lead the people.
“Moses was fearful about his ability to do that
and he said, “I’m not going to do that unless you go with me, your presence
goes with me,” to which God responded, “My presence will go with you,” to which
Moses responded, “How am I going to know that? Show me your glory.” You
remember the account in Exodus 33 and 34, how God tucked Moses in a cave
or some cleft of the rock and then God allowed a portion of His glory to pass
by. Not the full glory because God said, “No man can see me and live,” and the
glory that Moses saw was some kind of light - some kind of light.”
8/16/2024 2:15 PM
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