Thursday, August 22, 2024

PT-8 "The Nature of God" (1 John 1:5)

 

EVENING SERMON FOR 8/22/2024 10:48 PM

 

My Worship Time                                                                  Focus:  PT-8 “The Nature of God”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                           Reference:  1 John 1:5

 

            Message of the verse:  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. 

 

“Now, I want to just mention one other thing that I think will help you. We now understand that when we talk about God as light, we’re talking about life, God as the source of life. But there are a couple of things that we want to attach to that. I think they can be easily understood throughout Scripture. There are some properties of God’s life that are important to understand. To say that God is life is a general statement, but let’s get more specific. When you look at Scripture you will often find light associated with two things. First of all, it is associated with truth, and secondly, it is associated with virtue.

“When you read through the Scripture, you will find that light often indicates truth, there’s an intellectual side to it, a knowledge side. And on the other hand, you will find that light often speaks of moral conduct. And to show you that - because I think you need to fill up your concept of light - God as light obviously has those two properties of being absolutely true and absolutely pure. God’s life is true and holy.

“And it’s an editing process right here in my mind as I stand here to decide how many verses I want to show you. But, for example, here’s just a familiar statement, “Thy Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” That looks at Scripture as light that is true. Proverbs 6:23, “The commandment is a lamp and the teaching is light.” So there’s an intellectual aspect to this light. The light of God, the life of God, is inextricably linked to, characterized by truth. That’s very important to recognize. You can’t even talk about the light of the gospel without talking about the truth of the gospel. You can’t talk about the Word of God as light without talking about its truthfulness.

Psalm 119:130, “The unfolding of thy words gives light.” So that the life of God is characterized by the truth, it features the truth. Very often, as I said, you’ll read the Scripture and you’ll come across passages of Scripture in which light refers to the truth. otherwise dark minds. But you’ll also find - and I won’t take the time to go through all kinds of Scriptures on this because our time is nearly gone - light also appears in Scripture in a moral sense. It appears as holiness, virtue, righteousness.

“For example, in Isaiah 5:20 - and there are so many illustrations, I’m just picking a few favorites of mine - it says, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.” Another way to say that, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness. In that little comparison, darkness equals evil and light equals good. That kind of discussion appears a number of places in the Old Testament as it does a number of places in the New Testament. We read one earlier, Ephesians 5 and verse 8, if you kind of follow along. “You were formerly darkness, now you are light in the Lord, walk as children of light for the fruit” - verse 9 - “of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth.” There you have them both.

“What is the characteristic of this life? The characteristic is righteousness and truth so that you are learning what is pleasing to the Lord and you are no longer participating in the unfruitful deeds of darkness. All of those things are exposed to the light. You have arisen from the dead, and Christ is shining on you because you’re living in the light. So when you think about God as light or God as life, understand that the two great properties of that life are truth and righteousness, truth and holiness.

“And that becomes very important for John because if you say that you are a possessor of the light, that you are in the light, you’ve received eternal life, then what we should know about you is that you are devoted to the truth and to righteousness because that is the essential nature of that eternal life which God imparts. That’s back to 1 John 2:9. “If you say you’re in the light and you hate your brother, you’re not in the light, you’re in the darkness because the property of that light is righteousness and righteousness doesn’t hate, it loves. So when we think about this eternal life, it touches precisely where we live in a practical sense.”

“If you have eternal life, it manifests itself in your devotion to the truth and your commitment to holiness because this is that eternal life which comes from God. That’s why John says, if you say God is light, and He’s given you His life, then I can say that since the life of God is characterized by truth and righteousness, if He’s given His life to you, then your life, the life that God has granted you through faith in Jesus Christ who is that life, if that has happened, then the manifestation of that life in you will be in your commitment to truth and righteousness.”

8/22/2024 11:01 PM

 

 

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