1 John 1

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Father, we thank you that you sent your son. And we thank you, Lord, that you humbled yourself in the likeness of men and that you came here. And I pray that in this Christmas season, in the midst of the gift given and the family gatherings and the meals and the commercialization, I pray, Lord, that we will not forget that you are the reason that we even celebrate this season.

Father, I pray as we go to your word tonight that you will speak to us and that you will work in us, Father. I pray that you will be glorified through this. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Well, good evening everyone and Merry Christmas for our announcements today. Just a reminder, there will be no Christmas Eve candlelight service this year. And then because Christmas Day falls on Wednesday this year, there will be no Bible study this week. So I will see all of you again together here on next Sunday, which will also be our last service of the year. But just don't forget and I'll send out a reminder probably tomorrow so that I don't interrupt Christmas Eve stuff on Tuesday that we won't have service.

With that said, we have finished our series through first and Second Corinthians. So we are going to begin a brand new series. It won't be long, it's going to be relatively short. We're going to go through the, the Epistles of John. So we've already done, we've done the Gospel of John.

So now we're going to go ahead and we're going to do John, First John, Second John and third John. First John consists of five chapters. Second John and Third John each consist of one. So this is only going to take us just shy of two months, a very short series. But with that said, normally I would introduce that the book is about, but John introduces what it is about himself self.

So we're going to let John go ahead and do that and we're going to pick up, we're going to read the first four verses and by the way, I guess as I will introduce a little bit here, first John is going to go over fellowship with God, knowing God, obeying his commands and even loving one another. The first four verses.

There we go. What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have observed and touched with our hands concerning the word of life. That life was revealed and we have seen it. And we testify and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us. What we have seen and heard, we also declare to you so that you may also have fellowship with us.

And indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are right in these things so that our joy may be complete.

Something new. I forgot to mention before beginning that I'm going to experiment with and try. I don't know if I'll do it long term, is just adding my notes up here from my study for everyone to see. So from what was from the beginning. This is very John like in the Gospel of John, it begins with.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, right? So in his Gospel, he declares that Jesus Christ was there from the beginning, not, not the first of creation, but the beginning. He. He was the very person who committed the act of creation. So we just see in here that from the beginning is Jesus.

Now, if you look after that, he says, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have observed, what we have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. This is, this is interesting and very critical to this Epistle of John and very critical to the Christian faith. You'll notice if you look there. I have. We circled three times, right?

We have heard, we have observed, we have touched. And I've. I've highlighted those areas. And the reason this is critical is to defend our faith. A lot of people say, atheists, they say, well, the Bible is just a fairy tale.

It's a collection of fake stories. But we need to remember something here. The New Testament in particular was written by people who had seen the events, right? One of there are books, a great example, the Gospel of Jude or Gospel Sorry, of Judas, that's not included in the New Testament. Why?

Well, it's not included in the New Testament because the Gospel of Judas wasn't written until 200 years after the events that took place. So how can the Gospel, the writer of the Gospel of Judas claim to have seen, observed, touch, actually experience the events? And that's where we have what's known as a Canaan or a measure of rule. And why we have the books in the Bible that we have and don't have the books that we don't have. And one of the biggest qualifications in the New Testament specifically the.

The Old Testament's a little more relaxed when the New Testament specifically is the person who authored the book or the letter had to be an eyewitness.

So it had to have been written during a time that was close enough to the events that took place that there would be other people to dispute it. So on Easter, most years on Easter, I talk about the evidence of the resurrection. How do we know that he rose from the grave if we weren't there to see, if we weren't. If we weren't there to see the empty grave or see the resurrected Lord, how do we know? Right?

And I've gone over that evidence many times over the last several years. So this is critical for two reasons. One, we are hearing from some who saw with his own eyes, observed and touched with his Own hands. That's right. That is an eyewitness account.

And. And this letter was written at a time when it could be disputed, right? If Christ did not raise from the dead. And John declares there is a no, it could have been disputed in that time, and it wasn't. So this is important for that reason as well.

What we see here is it says that life was revealed, right? So I made a little note there. In Christ, life is revealed in Christ or that life, it says. And, and that's very particular wording in John when it says that life was revealed as he's referring to the fact that Christ himself or God himself, who was there from the beginning, became revealed to mankind. In the Old Testament, we see a lot of.

A lot of revelations of God, particularly when you speak of Moses, right? God revealed himself in the burning book to Elijah. He revealed himself in a small whisper. And we've seen different encounters where Abraham, where Adam. And yet God himself was still concealed.

He was known through the prophets, through the Word. In the coming of Christ, God himself had been revealed and life itself had been revealed. And they had seen it. And look what they say. We testify and declared to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us.

This is a very. Again, John is particular in the way that he articulates his words here. He says, declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father. Well, if the Father is it in terms of God and we don't have Jesus and the Son, sorry, Jesus and the Spirit, right? They were created, they weren't eternal.

And so John is very particular when he mentions Jesus here with mentioning that he's eternal, right? He was always in the past, always in the future, no point without him. And he was always with the Father. So he mentions again, we have seen and heard what we declare to you.

He may be referencing all the way back to his gospel, right? His very first letter, the Gospel of John. Or he may even be referring to what he'll be talking about in this gospel, where the point is, he says that we have seen and heard and we declare to you. We are telling you that Jesus rose from the dead, that you are a sinner, that you need help, and that there is a solution. He will talk about that solution tonight.

But look right under that, I have a blue box and an arrow pointing to it, says, so that you may have fellowship with us. This is the reason that John has declared to us these things, right? And indeed our fellowship is with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ.

So this is this is something we need to understand. Christian fellowship is rooted in a relationship with Christ. It's rooted in that if you do not have the spirit, if you do not have a relationship with God, if you don't know him personally, you cannot have fellowship with us. And when I say fellowship, I don't mean you can't come and gather with us and have dinner, but you cannot have the fellowship that is unified, right? In John 17, Jesus, he prayed that we would be unified, that we would be one.

We also saw that Paul emphasized unity and oneness in the same spirit in his letters to Corinth as we went through there. That fellowship only exists when you have fellowship with God. And that's what John says here. He says, our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son, Jesus Christ. And we are writing and declaring to you these things so that you can have fellowship with us in that same way way in that same fashion, right?

It's the same reason we preach the gospel, that we have church, that we go out and evangelize, right? Primarily, we want people to be saved. Primarily, we want people to. To go to heaven. We want people to know God and we want God glorified.

But we also do it so they can have. Right. They come into that fellowship with us when we do that. And if we have experienced that fellowship, then we also want others to experience that fellowship as well.

Let's move on to the next slide here, verses 5 through 10. He says, this is the message we have heard from him and declared to you, God is light. Light, and there is absolutely no darkness in Him. If we say we have fellowship with him, and yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and not practicing the truth. And 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. If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make a. We make Him a liar, and his word is not in us.

So a few things going on here. He says we've heard this message, and again, I emphasize that word we or phrase we have heard. He's not. He doesn't say we have read from people 500 years ago that God is light. He doesn't say we think or we reason, but he says we have heard it from him an Eyewitness account.

And this is what he says. God is light. What do we mean when we say that God is light? We mean several things. Apart from God, there is no light.

Right? Apart from God, everything is dark. You'll notice if you go back to Genesis, in all the things that God created, he did not create darkness. Darkness is already there. Darkness is the absence of light.

Right. God spoke into that darkness and he said, let there be light. And there was light, and that light overcame the darkness. And a really interesting parallel to that regarding John himself and the way he writes, if you go back to the first chapter of the Gospel of John, he says that Jesus is light and that his light had overcome the darkness. And we can prove that type of statement is true.

Because if you're in a dark room and you turn on any light source, no amount of darkness can overcome it. So we notice immediately God did not create darkness. Darkness is the absence of God. But John writes that God is light in another way as well. He writes that God is light in the sense that God illuminates or manifests in us what our sin is apart from God.

We can go on and we can sin and we can do evil and we can do. And we wouldn't know it or. Or at least we would be blind to it. But have you ever done something and felt bad or gone, I shouldn't have done that. Or even if.

Even if you didn't feel bad, there's bad things we do. We don't feel bad about it, but we know, oh, hey, that was wrong, that was bad. That's because God is light. And he has ingrained into us a conscious that is written with his holy code. And when we violate it, it tells us right away.

It says, you have done something wrong.

And then God is light in the sense that he will manifest all things, even the hidden things. We read about that extensively and the letters to Corinth. We also have read about it a little bit in the book of Luke in our Wednesday Bible studies that God will make manifest everything. All the hidden sins, all the hidden lies, all the things that we do and we don't want the world to know eventually will be found out.

Then it means God is light in one other way. And here is how he tells us that. Look at the next part. I've got this highlighted in red, or at least boxed in red. He says there is absolutely no darkness in him.

Remember I said John is very particular about the way he writes his death. He didn't just say God is light. And there's no darkness in him. But he says God is light and there is absolute light, no darkness in him. In other words, John says there's no room to question this reality, the righteousness and holiness and justness of God.

There is no evil thing, no sinful thing, no evil desire or intent, but God is pure in every way. That's something we. We can't say that about anyone else, right? There's no one I know who I can say, there is absolutely no darkness in them. For, for we have all sinned, we have all fallen, we have all violated those holy and just rules of God, but God himself and, and God manifest in Jesus there is no darkness.

So he says next, if we say we have fellowship with him and yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and not practicing the truth.

You can claim to be a Christian all day long. You can say, yeah, I believe in Jesus, I follow Jesus, I do X, Y and Z. And here's the reality. James. This is a very misquoted verse and we've talked about it.

But James says and asks us, what is faith apart from works?

We can verbally speak and verbally say, yeah, I fellowship with God. And in our works we do not. We don't pray, we don't read the Bible, we don't practice righteousness, we don't have the fruits and the gifts of the Spirit. So John says, basically, if you are talking the talk but not walking the walk, you are a liar.

I think that's a statement I agree with. Right? If you. You can say all you want that I follow Christ, but if you don't walk the way that he walked, if you don't commune with him, if you don't read His Word, if you don't fellowship with him, then you are not a Christian. You are lying not just to other people, but to yourself.

And he says that later. He says that you will deceive yourself and then walk in darkness. Also means that he doesn't. The words he uses, it's all metaphoric. And he does that on purpose because he doesn't say, if you say, I fellowship with.

With God, but don't actually do these things, that you're a liar. But look what he says specifically, walk in darkness, right? There are. We can live in darkness and say we follow God. We can lay in bed at night when no one's watching us and look at pornography.

We can sleep around with people when no one's watching, no one from our church is watching, or we're in a different city, so no one from Our town is watching. We can do evil and vile things that nobody knows we're doing that that's what it means to be walking in darkness. We are doing these not just evil deeds, but we're doing it in such a way that it's not manifest. It's not. It's not known, right?

Whereas if we're walking in light, that doesn't just mean righteousness, but our deeds are known. Not that we may be applauded, but if we are walking in light, we have nothing to hide.

There's nothing at all that you need to hide. If you are walking in light, then he continues.

So we. He continues. If you walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, so Jesus is not only the light, but he is in the light. Then we have fellowship with one another. That's the fellowship we talked about in verse four.

We have fellowship with God and with the Son, and we are unified in fellowship with one Spirit amongst us. But even more important, look what I've got here in red. The blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. Fellowship with God is a great thing. Fellowship with God is not simply the fact that you have a relationship with him, but it's the fact that you are cleansed.

You go from this dirty and filth form vile thing to this clean and this pure thing.

Now, I emphasize here, if you look at it, the blood of Jesus.

So fellowship with him means we get cleansed from all sin, but emphasis on the fact that it is the blood of Jesus that cleanses us. Why? Why? Because Romans tells us in chapter 6, verse 23, that the wages of sin is death.

That is the reward or the payment for sin is death. So by the blood of Jesus, by the death of Jesus, we are cleansed from sin. He then says, if we say we have no sin, right, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. So a minute ago he says, if you say we have fellowship and walk in darkness, you are lying, right? You're lying to others.

But if you say I have no sin, then you are deceiving yourself. This is a very interesting one. I've gone. I've actually gone out and asked people and you can watch. There are people who do it on YouTube and I don't particularly like watching the people who do it on YouTube because they do it for show.

But. But there are some legitimate ones. And nonetheless, I've gone out and asked people, are you a sinner?

99.9% of people you ask will say, yes, even, even if they don't believe in God, they'll say yes. And not in the context that they believe they're violating God's law, but in the context they know that they have done wrong things. And they define sin as just doing wrong, where we define it as violating the holiness and righteousness of God. But there are those few people that you ask, are you a sinner? Have you.

Have you sinned? And they say, well, no, no, I haven't. And I've had those people. So I ask, well, have you told a lie? And believe it or not, I've had people tell me no.

And I don't believe that there's anyone who has not told a lie. But regardless, I asked them, have you ever stolen? They say no. I asked them, have you done this, this, this, blah, blah, blah. And then I get to adultery, and I ask them, have you ever committed adultery?

Here's the thing, there's no one has not committed adultery.

And when people in this situation tell me no, I ask them, have you ever looked at someone and imagined doing acts with them or fantasized about them, or imagined them without clothing on.

Most of them will tell me yes, and I will. Then I can tell them what you have sinned, you've done wrong. And if they say no to adultery, then the apostle Paul gives us one other. Have you ever coveted. Have you looked at your neighbor's house and got jealous, or someone's car and gotten jealous, or someone's wages and gotten jealous?

The reality is, no matter how you look at it, there is sin in your life. And if you say, I have not sinned, I have no sin, then you deceive yourself. It's not just that you deceive me or the public or the church or. Or God. You can't deceive God.

He already knows. But you deceive yourself. And when you deceive yourself, that's a very dangerous thing.

The last two verses of this chapter. And by the way, we're going to get a little bit through the next chapter tonight. But the last two verses of this chapter are my favorite in this chapter right here. And I highly recommend that you highlight them in your own Bibles.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all righteousness.

This is a very beautiful statement. And I want to point something out. It does not say if we repent of our sins. He says, if we confess our sins. And I'm going to make a distinction here, and this distinction is very important.

You will never find in the Bible repentance after salvation.

And I find that very, very interesting. And I searched for it.

I searched the word repentance and in my electronic Bible. And you will not find repentance after salvation. Why? Because if you're saved, you've already turned away from your wickedness, right? And that's what repent means.

Repent doesn't mean to say, I'm sorry, this is what I've done. Please forgive me. Repent means to say, I renounce my way of living. I renounce what I have done, and I renounce governing my own life. And I turn to you, God, to take rain.

That's. Repentance is turning away from that. Now, does that mean that along the way, because we're human, you're not going to sin? No, we're still going to sin, and we still need to turn from it. But repentance isn't the focus here.

Here confession is, but confession to who? Depending on how bad your sin is, it might be confession to the church. Why? Because if you're addicted to drugs, you're not likely to get over that addiction without a support system. And so you might confess that to your church and say, hey, guys, I'm on drugs.

I need your support to help me overcome this. Or you might go to a pastor or your best friend or one of your parents and say, hey, I'm addicted to pornography and I need your help. Right? But. And while there is that aspect of it, that is not what it means here, because the cath in the Catholic Church, you got to confess every little tiny sin you do to a priest.

But specifically here, confession is to God, right? The admittance to God that, hey, I'm a sinner and I've done this and I've done this and I've done this and I've done things that I don't even know I've done. But that act of confession turns us back to God because we cannot admit that to God specifically unless we turn to him. So he says, if you confess your sins, he's faithful and righteous to forgive. It's a promise.

If you first repent, right, and receive the Lord Jesus Christ and confess your sins, he will forgive you. You. It's a promise. He will never turn back on it.

So that can introduce a problem.

And John is going to address the problem this introduces right here. He says, my little children, I'm writing to you these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ. The righteous one. He himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world.

Ok, so what is the problem? The problem is this. If I know that every time I sin, if I just turn around and confess that I'll be forgiven of it, in. In some people's minds that might say, well, I can sin all I want. It doesn't matter.

I have a promise that God will forgive me. I'm gonna. I don't have it on the slide, so I'm gonna just. I'm gonna read it to you directly from Romans. I'm gonna start in Romans 5 and look at what I'm gonna start.

In verse 20 it says, the law came to multiply trespass, and where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more. So that just as sin reigned in death, also grace will reign through righteousness, resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. So to very quickly summarize what Paul just said in these few verses before I read the next one, he said, the more sin you have, the greater your sin, the greater the grace of God to you.

So in some people's mind, that might be, well, if I get greater grace and greater love from God, from having greater or bigger or more sin, I should sin more. So Paul addresses this in chapter six, verse one. He says, so what should we say? Should we continue to sin so that grace will multiply? What he's asking is knowing that the.

The greater the sin is, the greater the grace is. He says he asked this rhetorical question, should I sin more then so that I could have more grace from God? And he says this, absolutely not. How can we who have died to sin continue to live in it? So he says, to be saved, right, you have to repent.

You have to renounce your sin, renounce your sinful life and this human life, and turn to God and receive him. So he says, if you have done that, how can you continue to live in it?

So if we jump back to where we are here, he says, I'm right in these things so that you may not sin, right? So in verse 9 and 10 in chapter 1, he says, if we confess our sins, he will forgive us and cleanse us from unrighteousness. It's a promise. But now he's saying, look, I'm writing that you will not sin. I'm not giving you a license to sin.

I'm not telling you it's okay to sin because you will be forgiven. Instead, I'm telling you to go into not sin sin, but if you do sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. So what he says is, I'm telling you to walk the righteous path. I'm telling you to follow God, to do what he does, do what he commands. But if you do have a slip up, we have an advocate.

We have Jesus Christ, who so. Right. And an advocate specifically as someone who can advocate for you, who can speak on your behalf. So in this case, Jesus is our advocate, meaning that when we go before the judge, right, God the Father, he will speak on our behalf and advocate for us and say, no, this person is saved, this person is mine. And not only will he be our advocate, He Himself was the atonement sacrifice for our sins.

He Himself actually bore that cost, which is why he can advocate for us. And then a very important thing here, he says, not only for ours, but also those of the whole world, right? The Jewish people, their mentality, even before Christ came, came for thousands of years. Their mentality was, God is only for us. And then when Christ came, you saw that mentality.

When Jesus would speak to the Gentiles, and then you even saw it when the apostles went out and started talking to the Gentiles, the Jewish people got a little protective and said, no, the Gospel is only for us. Or John says, look, it's not only for Jews. It's not only for my readers. It's not only for members of the church in Jerusalem, but God died for the whole. Jesus died for the entire world.

But an important note in that just because he was the atoning sacrifice for the entire world does not mean that the entire world will be saved. What it does mean, though, is that his atonement sacrifice is available to anyone in the world. You still have to want it and ask for it and receive it. But it's not restricted just to Jews or just to people of a specific region or specific church. When Christ died, He did it so that anyone who would trust in him would be saved.

Let's look at the next passage. He says, this is how we know that we know him if we keep his commands. The one who says, I have come to know him and yet doesn't keep his commands is a liar. And the truth is not in Him. But whoever keeps his word, truly in him, the love of God is made complete.

This is how we know we are in Him. The one who says he remains in him will walk the way that he walked. Have you ever said how you know? I think I know God. I think I have a relationship with God.

But how Do I know if I have a relationship with God? Well, John is answering that question right here. He says, this is how you know you know him, because you do what he says. You walk the way that he walked. And guys, there are people who certainly try, they don't know him, right?

We call this work based religions, where they have a whole bunch of rules they have to follow to get into heaven. And they try and they can't do it. And to be honest, even with the Spirit of God in us, we can't perfectly do it. But you cannot walk the way that he walked. You cannot keep his commands.

You cannot have the fruits of the Spirit, right? You can find the fruits of the spirit in Galatians 6 in fact, or not, Galatians 6, Galatians 5. And I'm going to go ahead and read what the fruits of the Spirit are to you. It says the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. These are the fruits of the Spirit.

And these are the things. If you want to know do I know God? The first, most obvious things to ask is, do I have a relationship with him, right? Do I read His Word? That's how he communicates to us.

Do I communicate to Him? But then also ask, do I walk the way that he walked? Do I have the fruit of the Spirit, which is love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self control? You cannot have those things without the Spirit of God. So if you can look and say, do I love?

Do I love my neighbor? Do I love the person down the street? Do I love that homeless person? Do I love the way that God loves? Right?

Do I have joy? Is my life characterized by misery or is it characterized by joy? Even if there's chaos in your life and you can have chaos, are you, do you have joy? Right? And don't look at the last week or characterize your life because there are periods and seasons of downtime.

But how about peace? And this is twofold. Do I have peace in my life? In terms of am I a peaceful person or am I an aggravating person going out and looking for a fight, but also internal peace? Jesus says, I give you my peace, not as the world gives, but as I give.

Do you have the peace of God that, that, hey, I have been redeemed, he has saved me, he has taken care of my eternity. Are you kind? Do you have goodness? Do you have faithfulness, faithfulness to God, right? To do the things he's asked you to do.

To not I. To not idolatate yourself, right? To whether it's pornography or drugs or whatever else. Do you have faithfulness to your spouse? Do you have faithfulness to other people?

If you say to someone, I will help you and do such and such, Are you faithful to do that? Gentle Self control.

Self control. Can you control your ability to not be angry? Control your ability to not. Not pick up that bottle of whiskey and down the entire thing tonight? Can you control your ability to not go over to your neighbor that has upset you and give him a beating or whatever?

Right? Walk the way that God walks. He says that is how you know him, that you keep his commands and you walk as he walked the next passage. So we only have two more. So we're about done.

He says, dear friends, I'm not writing you a new command, but an old command that you have had from the beginning. The old command is the word you have heard, yet I am writing you a new command which is true in him and in you. Because the darkness is passing away and true light is already shining. The one who says he is in the light but hates his brother or sister is in the darkness until now. But the one who loves his brother or sister remains in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him.

But the one who hates his brother or sister is in the darkness, walks in the darkness and doesn't know where he's going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

In my notes here, you'll see I wrote great big word in orange. It says danger.

I just talked about, do you have love? Do you love your neighbor? Do you love? And when John says your brother or sister. Yes, there is a literal aspect to do I love my biological brothers and sisters.

But that's not what he means, right? Your brother or sister is characterized by do you love your fellow people, your neighbors, your. Even your enemies? Jesus says, love your enemy. Love those who hate you.

Love those who persecute you. Love those who do harm to you. So this is where I wrote danger here on my slide. If you say, I'm in Jesus Christ, but I hate this person, or I hate that person, John says, you're a liar because you cannot be in Jesus Christ and hate people. You can be in Jesus Christ and have a dislike for someone.

There are people I don't get along with and I have a dislike for, but I don't hate them. There are people who have done extreme harm to me in my life and I have zero relationship with, but I don't hate them. Even the people who have done the most wrong to me and have hurt me in the most wrong ways, what I really want for them is that they know who Jesus Christ is. There are people in that same category that today I would say I don't like. But you can love while not liking.

And I love the same way that I use this in the same way with God. God loves all of us. He does not like the way that we often live.

So danger. If you feel in your heart I hate someone or I hate this person or I hate that person, right? This is. This is the danger zone. This is where you have to evaluate your heart and say, do I hate this person?

And if so, I need forgiveness from God, or is it I don't really hate this person, I just dislike them. And I need to do what the Bible says, which is love them and pray for them and do good to them and show them the light of Christ.

Right? If you have hate, you walk in darkness. It says you don't know where you're going and you were blinded by it. We're gonna read the very last passage of the night here, so. And we're gonna stop halfway through chapter two.

So we will pick up in chapter two next week and probably finish chapter three next week as well. He says, I'm writing to you little children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name, right? Because because of Jesus, you have been forgiven. I'm writing to you fathers, because you have come to know the One who is from the beginning. I am writing to you young men, because you have conquered the evil one.

I have written to you because you have come to know the Father. I have written to you fathers, because you have come to know the One who is from the beginning. I have written to you young men, because you are strong. God's word remains in you and you have conquered the evil one.

So I want to stress with what he says here. I'm not going to give a lot of comment on it.

He's writing to believers, he's writing to saved people. So keep in mind all of these things that he is writing is not to condemn any. Anyone. Not that he. He's not right to call people a liar or to tell them that they're lost.

He says, I'm right into you because your sins have been forgiven. You've come to know the One who is. From the beginning, you have conquered the evil one. You are strong. You do know the Father.

So he's writing to save people. But what He's Writing here, for one, this is useful if you, if you hear this tonight and you are not saved, this is useful to you, right? Because danger zone, you don't want to be in that not saved category. But this is really where it was written to believers is for self examination so that we can examine ourselves. Remember we talked last week when we finished Corinthians about examining ourselves so that we won't fall short.

And that's a similar thing here. So you'll notice three times he says, I am writing to you, right? And in that sense he is telling us he's right in this letter right here. And he's writing it for these reasons, because our sins are forgiven, because they have come to know Christ, because they're conquering the evil one. And then he says, I have written to you, so I do not know and can't claim to know.

When he says I have written, is he referring to the gospel that he wrote or are there other letters that he wrote that we don't have in the Bible? I don't know, but he has at least previously written to them.

As we come to this close tonight, as we come to this end, John is lots of theology in here tonight, lots of things for us to think about. But the most important thing is for those of you who are here who hear this, who will hear this recording, who will read this. I want you to know that if you repent, that if you turn from your sins, that if you confess them to God, a true confession, he is faithful and just to forgive you and will cleanse you from unrighteousness, he will give you an advocate to the Father, which is Himself. He will be the atonement sacrifice for you. He will pay the debt that you have, because you have a debt.

And John is telling you there's a solution.

So I think you already know how this begins, right? By admitting that you're a sinner, right? You can't confess your sins if you, if you can't admit that you have them by believing that Jesus is the God, man, creator of heaven and earth and all things contained in them, and that he came here in the likeness of men with believing that he really did die on the cross and really did raise again the third day from the grave, right? Came back to life and confessing him as your Lord.

We are right now three days away from celebrating the fact that he came. And he came for that very reason, so that you would be saved. And so if you are ready for that, if you're ready to confess, if you're ready to have an advocate. And the fruits of the spirit, if you're ready to be filled with love and joy and peace and patience. I hate that word.

And kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self control, you can do that tonight. And I'll ask you to just to verbalize that to God and ask God with me tonight in our closing prayer. We will partake of the Lord's Supper right after our service tonight. So I invite everyone who is here to stick around for that. After that.

That I just want to remind everyone, no service on Wednesday. That will be Christmas Day. And we are not going to have any meetings. And I want to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas. Let's pray.

Father, I admit that I'm a sinner who cannot save myself, who cannot, cannot undo the wrong that I've done and cannot pay my debt. Father, I confess to you that I have many sins. Innumerable sins. I ask you, Father, to forgive me of these sins. I ask you, Father, to.

To cleanse me, to purify me.

I believe, Jesus, that you are the Eternal One that created everything. I believe, Lord Jesus, that you came here and died for me and died for the world. Died for everyone who would turn to you. And I believe that you rose again the third day. And I confess you, Lord Jesus, my God and King.

And I ask you for this gift. Lord Jesus, I pray as we go into. Into the season. We are. We are in the season and we celebrate your birth three days from now.

I pray, Lord, now you'll be glorified in the season as your gift of redemption is received by men in the coming week and even through the next year. Father, I pray that you will be glorified and your kingdom will be built. In Jesus name, Amen.