Friday, August 16, 2024

PT-2 "The Nature of God" (1 John 1:5)

 

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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