Now, last Lord's Day morning, as we were
making our way to the communion table, we
simply dwelt upon one and the main aspect
of the significance of this.
When the Bible says that God is light,
it means fundamentally, first and foremost, that God
is morally pure.
It speaks of his holiness.
Holiness means separate from.
Now, God is separate in two senses.
Transcendentally, as people say, God's very being is
different from ours.
He is the eternal God, the creator, and
we are but creatures.
And he is separate from his world in
the sense that there is only one of
his, may I say so reverently.
There is only one of his kind.
All of us are on the one side
of the line.
We are but creatures made by him, dependent
upon him, answerable to him.
God, on the other hand, is self-existing,
sovereign Lord and creator and judge of all
men.
He is not dependent upon any of his
creatures.
He is the great independent one and the
only.
In that sense, God is separate.
Metaphysically, he is transcendentally the great Lord of
the universe.
But now, what we have here, first of
all, is this other aspect of God's separation
from all things.
He is morally separate.
God has absolutely nothing to do with evil.
He cannot look upon evil, says the prophet,
as we saw last Lord's Day morning.
Now, that is the best.
But now, that is not everything that is
meant by this synonym of light.
It would be wrong to pass from the
major statement of verse 5 without adding that
some secondary, though by no means unimportant, facets
of the divine nature may also be envisaged
right here when John says God is light.
For example, you will remember that Paul says,
in writing to Timothy, he says something like
this.
He refers to God as the blessed and
only potentate, the King of kings and Lord
of lords, who only hath immortality, dwelling in
light which no man can approach unto.
Now, this is a slightly different thought.
It refers to God in his majesty, in
his glory.
The two things are related, but here the
synonym of light is used to refer to
God as being so full of glory, so
full of majesty, so full of sovereignty, so
utterly sovereign.
Something of this was manifested in the transfiguration
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We read that his garments were white as
light.
And the light was not in the garments
that he wore, but the light was in
the depths of his being, and it shone
out through the light.
The majesty of the humble Galilean emerged from
within his nature and manifested itself.
He became incandescent, as it were.
You remember what they did?
There is only one thing you can do
when you see a person of this order.
They fell on their faces.
Again, some inspired writers employ the word light
as a synonym for God when they want
to stress his capacity to scatter the darkness
of ignorance.
Light is revealing, isn't it?
Whenever light comes in, things are revealed.
This is what the psalmist has in mind
when he says, The Lord is my light
and my salvation.
Wherever God is, things become clearer.
In thy light, he says in Psalm 36,
9, we shall see light.
And then again, we know this very well.
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet
and a light.
Why is the word a light unto our
goings?
For this reason, it is the word of
the Lord who is light.
Now, having said that, however, it is the
notion of God in his holiness, his moral
excellence, that dominates everything else.
And in consequence, this is the fact that
becomes what we may speak of as a
regulating principle.
In the promotion of Christian fellowship, we must
bring all our beliefs to the bar of
God's holiness.
We must bring our entire behavior to the
same bar of the holiness of God.
We must bring everything out into the light
of his moral purity and excellence.
And let the light of his holiness assess
things and adjudicate and determine what is right
in his sight and what is not.
Now, if we fail to do this, we
shall find after a period of professing to
be Christians that we're only dealing with shadows.
If I fail to allow the holiness of
God to assess and to judge me, then
I can only become involved with shadowboxing.
I shall never be dealing with the realities
of which the Christian faith speaks.
I shall never get into the holy of
holies.
I shall never know the sweetness of communion
with God.
I shall always be on the fringe, always
in the outer court of things.
And this is a terrible thing.
Now, it may well be that there are
many in the Christian church who feel themselves
to be here, in the outer court.
They've never somehow got in.
They don't know what it is to be
in sweet, deep, real fellowship with God.
Everything is seen from a distance.
If there is one particular key that unlocks
the door, there are more than another.
It is this key.
It is the doctrine of the holiness of
God.
And I have to set my sails in
terms of belief and behavior in light of
the fact that my God is holy.
Now, this is so important.
In fact, it would not be out of
place this morning if we went so far
afield as to try and show that the
whole gospel of the grace of God owes
its nature and owes its terms to the
fact that God is holy.
Now, this is outwith our main purpose this
morning, but let me say this much.
Why, for example, is it necessary for men
to repent?
But let me ask another question.
Why is it necessary, not simply to come
to Jesus for forgiveness of sins, why is
it necessary to be born again?
Let me put the question differently again.
Why is it necessary for men to have
the Spirit of God within them?
If any man have not the Spirit of
Christ, he is none of His.
Jude castigates people who are, and this is
the last straw as far as he's concerned,
they are without the Spirit, he says.
And it doesn't matter what else they've got.
They're without the Spirit.
And if they're without the Spirit, they're without
the camp.
Now, the reason is this.
It's because God is holy.
The call of the gospel is not come
to Jesus Christ and have a friend, to
go with you back into your old ways
of living and live just as you lived
before, but having a friend with you.
No, no, no.
Oh, He is a friend.
He is a friend.
There never was a friend like Jesus.
But the fact of the matter is this,
that along with the summons to receive Jesus
as my Savior and my friend, there is
the summons to repent, to turn around, to
turn away, to turn my back upon sin.
Why?
Because God is holy.
The God to whom Jesus Christ brings me
all the time is a God who is
holy.
Therefore, I must repent.
Therefore, I must be born again.
Therefore, I must have the Spirit of God
Himself within me.
My own human spirit is not capable of
fellowship with God.
Oh, I may be a great artist.
I may be gifted in one way or
another, but the Spirit of man cannot commune
with the Holy Spirit of God.
I must be purged.
I must be cleansed.
I must be made anew.
And the breath of God must be breathed
into me.
You see, all this is because God is
holy.
The whole of the gospel, every doctrine in
the book, I would say to you, though
I cannot pause to prove it.
Every doctrine in the book is what it
is and is given its distinctive complexion because
of the holiness of God.
This stands endless.
Now, you will notice in our reading this
morning, there is an indication of the importance
of this.
Let me just refer to it.
In reading of this theme from 1 Peter
chapter 1, you remember how in verse 16
there, Peter calls upon those whom he is
addressing, scattered throughout Qantas, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and
Bithynia.
He calls upon them to be holy, but
you notice what he does?
He says, be ye holy for I am
holy.
That's a simple way of saying it, you
say.
Yes, but you see what Peter has done
is this.
He has taken a word from the Old
Testament, from the book of Leviticus, and he
is now applying it to Christians in the
new dispensation, and he is saying to the
Christians, you have to be holy as God
is holy, just as the ancient people had
to be holy because God is holy.
Not because God was holy, but because he
is eternally holy.
In other words, what Peter is doing in
his own way is this.
This is a truth, he says, which applied
to the ancient people.
It's a truth which applies to God's people
today.
Now, if we wanted to pursue this, I
just throw it out to you.
You can do this at your own leisure.
If you want to pursue this, I suggest
to you that the answer to all that
happened to Israel in the Old Testament page
is due to the fact that Israel failed
to live in a manner that was consistent
with the holiness of God.
Until Jesus comes and says, the kingdom of
God shall be taken from you and given
to a people who will bring forth the
right fruit.
And many a church has lost its candlestick
because it has followed in the path of
Israel according to the flesh.
Because it failed to orientate its life according
to the holiness of God.
All the disciplines of God in the last
resort are related to this fact.
He is holy.
And because sin has worked such havoc in
our lives, this is the main discipline in
which all of us are involved.
We might use different terms to explain it,
but every man of us, from the pulpit
to the last pew in the church, wherever
you look, wherever we are, all of us
are involved in this.
This is the discipline of growing up Christianly
and spiritually.
It is to relate our lives to the
holiness of God.
The man who can do this is a
person who is growing up.
He is the person, or she is the
person, who comes to know in deep and
sweetest and satisfying reality what this fellowship is
all about.
Because we can only have fellowship with God
in His holiness.
Now that is the substance of the message.
And I trust that the Lord will write
this very deeply upon our minds and upon
our hearts.
John says other things about God.
He says God is love.
He says God is life.
The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews
says that our God is a consuming fire.
All these things are true.
But fundamentally, this is the message.
All those are true, but they're related to
this.
This is the base.
God is holy.
And in Him is no darkness at all.
Now, if that is so, if this is
so important and so cardinal and so far
-reaching in its impact and its influence, there
is one thing that we want to be
clear about, namely the source of this message.
You see, we can almost overhear some of
the Gnostic heretics that John had in mind
saying, All right, who are you to talk
like that?
Where did you get that from?
You see, the Gnostics were saying that it
really doesn't matter what you do in the
body because the body is evil anyway.
And because the body is evil anyway, it
doesn't matter if you sin morally.
These things really don't matter.
They can't affect your relationship with God because
it's only your spirit communes with God.
They had some notion such as that.
It's very difficult to put it into words,
but it was something of that order.
Sin did not matter.
That is the main thing.
They excused all kind of sensuality and things
of that order and within that general realm.
Therefore, one can overhear them asking the Apostle
John, Where did you get that from?
God is holy.
It was a new concept to them if
they were not Jews, if they were not
brought up on the scriptures of the Old
Testament.
And many of them were not.
Now, John therefore, very carefully here, tells us
something about the source of the message.
You notice how he puts it.
This then is the message which we have
heard from him and we proclaim to you.
I want you to notice two things there.
It appears so simple and yet it is
so very important in this context.
The author of the message is the one
to whom John refers to as him.
Look at the word.
This is the message we have heard from
him.
Now, who is he?
Well, the reference, of course, is very clear.
It's unmistakable.
The reference is to the subject of the
previous verses, verses 1 to 4.
Who is he then according to verses 1
to 4?
Well, he is the one, says John, who
was from the beginning.
He is the one concerning whom John said,
we have heard him, we have seen him
with our eyes, we have looked upon him
and we have touched.
Now, what he's saying?
What he's saying is this.
This message has come into the world very
especially and very definitely and has come to
the apostles from the lips and the life
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Says John, we're not spinning something out of
our own imaginations.
This is the message we have heard of
him, from him, from him.
So then, the apostle, in stressing the importance
of the message, equally underscores its source.
This is something that was taught by our
Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the
Incarnate Lord.
How very important this is.
Some people's concept of Jesus Christ is so
utterly one-sided.
They think of him simply as the gentle,
Jesus, meek and mild.
And they have such a beautiful picture of
him as they think beautiful, but which is
not necessarily moral.
But the real Jesus of history, the real
Jesus of history who lived with the apostles,
was one who taught not only the love
of God, but the holiness of God.
And says John, it is so important, we've
got it from him.
This is the message.
But we need to take this seriously.
I repeat, John has become known to the
communities of the world as the apostle of
love, and he is that.
And when we get on into the body
of this epistle, we shall see how John
says that we need to have love for
God as God has love for us, and
we need to have love for one another.
There is no withdrawing of that.
Love is absolutely indispensable, says John.
And God is love, and it all starts
there.
For God so loved the world, as in
John's Gospel 316.
We love him because he first loved us,
is here.
This is love, he says.
Not that we love God, but that he
loved us.
And he gave his son to be the
propitiation for our sins.
Oh, the love of God is important.
And yet, he says, this is the message.
This is fundamental.
This is basic.
Everything else must be seen under the archway
of the divine holiness, the divine light.
And then you notice John finishes this off.
He's quite an artist here.
The author of the message was the Lord,
he says himself.
We heard it from him.
And this is the message we have heard
from him, and we understood, declare unto you.
Now, I think that John's we has reference
there to the apostles, of course.
Because this message stems now from the apostolic
community who bear witness to the truth that
Jesus taught.
But you notice that John puts it in
the plural.
As if to say, how cautious.
As if to say, I'm not the only
one who teaches this.
This is what we teach.
This is what the apostolate teach.
This is what the apostles teach.
In other words, it's not the fancy of
a Paul, or of a John, or of
a Peter alone.
This is something which is so important that
the whole apostolic community stand as one.
This is what we heard from him, and
this is what we declare to you.
In other words, nothing has been lost in
transit.
We, the apostolic community, are pledged to declare
this unto you.
Oh, my friends, if only we could have
the sense of the importance of this gripping
us this morning.
God has revealed himself in his holiness to
men in Jesus Christ.
Sin could not simply be wiped off the
slate.
Sin had to be atoned for.
Sin cannot simply be forgiven.
There must be repentance.
A merely forgiven man cannot have fellowship with
God.
He must have a new heart and a
new spirit.
All this is because of his holiness.
The kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, then,
according to Pauline language, is a kingdom of
light.
Writing to the Colossians, he says that God
has qualified us to share in the inheritance
of the saints in light.
And he's transformed, or transfigured us, or changed
us – it's a remarkable word there –
from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom
of his dear Son.
He's translated us.
In other words, we've not simply been brought
out, but in being brought out from the
kingdom of darkness, we have been changed on
the way before we come into the kingdom
of light.
It's not just a taking out of men
from that kingdom, but a transformation on the
way into the new.
He's made us fit to share the inheritance
of the saints in this kingdom of light.
Christians, then, have been called from darkness to
light.
Peter says we should show forth the excellences
of him who has called us out of
darkness into his marvellous light.
Therefore, the summons to us is always to
come into the light.
In John chapter 3, verses 19 to 21,
John says this is the condemnation, that light
has come into the world, and men love
darkness rather than light, because their deeds are
evil.
Perhaps by nature we all found ourselves there.
But then the process is coming into the
light, that our deeds may be reproved, if
there are, or manifest, if they're right.
And the summons to all of us is
always to come into the light.
John bids us walk in the light.
This is wonderful.
When people have nothing to hide.
See, this is really what disturbs human relationships.
Man comes home from the office one day
and he is hiding something.
His wife gets suspicious.
Maybe nothing to it, but you know, he's
closed shop.
Or the boot may be on the other
foot, it may be the lady that's coming
home, doesn't matter, but you know the principle.
And when once you become secretive and opaque
and devious and shady, this is when fellowship
is disturbed.
This is when we begin to separate and
to become suspicious of one another.
But when we walk in the light of
God's holiness and are open and have nothing
to hide, now what happens is this, we
may see one another's faults a little more,
but we're all on the same footing.
And as the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses
our sin, we shall have fellowship of one
with the other.
This is the basis of Christian fellowship.
Christians are called children of the light and
children of the day.
Let us walk, says Paul in writing to
the Thessalonians therefore, let us walk as children
of the day, not of the night.
And it is in this context that Jesus
turns to his disciples and he says, now
you are the lights of the world.
We're not lights in the sense in which
he is the light, he is the eternal
light that was coming into the world, who
lights every man that comes into the world.
We are kindled lights, our lamps have been
lit by him, like John the Baptist.
We were not originally light, but we were
darkness.
But he, by the spirit of God, has
brought light into our hearts, light into our
heads, light into our souls.
And the children of Israel still have lights
in their dwellings, in their souls, in their
hearts, however dark it is in the world.
And because of this, Jesus said, let your
light so shine before men that they may
see your good works and glorify your father
which is in heaven.
And my friends, this is so absolutely relevant
and so absolutely cogent and logical because you
see, if you're among the people of God
this morning, our terminus, our goal, our end
is light.
Come to chapter 18 of the book of
the Revelation and you will find that the
great Babylon, who epitomizes the enemy of the
saints and of God, a great Babylon is
cast into the darkness of the day.
But the people of God into the new
Jerusalem, there shall be no more night.
And we shall need no lamps because the
land is the light whereof.
Oh my friend, heaven is a place of
light, unspeakable light, because not that defilers, not
that is unholy, not that is contrary to
the character and nature of God, nothing can
ever enter there.
This then is the message.
As we proceed to see its implications, God
willing, next Lord's day, let us be quite
clear about this.
Let us say to ourselves, may I suggest
to you that in your devotions today and
tomorrow and during the whole of the week,
you say this to yourself.
My God is holy.
To resolve many difficulties, many questions that you
may now have will be resolved on your
knees.
And you say to yourself what John says
to all of us.
My God is holy.
And my calling is to commune, to share
the whole of my life on the inside,
on the outside.
My thought life, my active life of doing,
to share the whole thing with a God
who is holy, that the same God in
his holiness may share with me all that
is his to give and to entrust to
me that I may use it for his
glory in the world that now is.
May God so bless us to his glory.
Amen.
Let us pray.
Fill thou my life, O Lord my God,
in every part with praise, that my whole
being and my ways may wholly declare and
with a unity and a harmony constantly declare
thy being and thy way.
Write thy word upon our every heart now
and as we go into this day, may
it not rather depress us, but may it
on the contrary show us that this is
the way into the fullness of joy of
which the apostle has just spoken in the
previous verse.
O Lord our God, save us from the
devil's lie, but the pure life is a
miserable life, and give us to know the
peace and the joy and the gladness and
the hope and the comforts that can only
come to those who commune with thee within
the veil from day to day.
And of course, we only ask this in
Jesus' name.
Amen.