All right, we are going to continue in our sermon series,
whose sermon is it anyway?
We're going to look at 1 John 1 and 2.
We're going to be in a little bit of both.
Actually, I think for this sermon, we're actually just
going to stay in 1 John 1.
But I want to start because I want to, this is not a word
that we talk about a lot, or it is in a lot of cases here.
It's a word we talk about here, but it's a word that we don't
really talk about at parties.
It's a word that in a lot of sense should make us
uncomfortable, but if we're being honest, it's a word that
we actually are in love with.
It's actually something that we walk in and we, I hate to say
it, revel in at times, and I'm talking to myself first and
foremost, I'm talking about a word that you don't really
bring up at parties.
It's a word that we don't really put on our mouth a lot.
We don't like to bring it up really anywhere, but it's
constantly on our minds, and it's a word that we are really,
really good at as far as projecting onto other people and
rarely wanting to look at it of ourselves.
It's a word that has helped define kind of the reform
theology that we hold to here as a church, and it's a word
that in so many senses is the greatest damnation in our life.
I'm sure you could guess it, but it's the word sin.
That if we really are honest, sin is the dirtiest word that
we have in our vocabulary.
Now some of you are like, oh, well, Pastor, I could probably
tell you a couple more.
Please don't.
I'm not asking for that.
But understand those don't compare to what this word sin
actually means.
Sin, this word comes out of more medieval times, not the
restaurant where you eat, but more of the era medieval times.
It had to do with archery.
That this word sin is what happened.
We've talked about this before, but maybe people that have never
heard this, that sin had a lot to do with medieval archery.
That when they were doing the archery games, if you think of
like Robin Hood, they would all take their shot from whatever
distance.
Now if you're Jeff Dane-A-Borg, you're probably going to win
because my guess is he's the best archery shot here.
But even Jeff has sinned when it comes to archery.
Now Jeff has sinned in life just like all of us, but when you
missed the mark, you had someone by the target, which you would
want that job, to stand right by the target where everyone's
pointing and shooting arrows at you.
They would hold up a sign and yell, sin.
That sin is the missing of the mark.
And when we look at it in light of the scriptures, if we look at
it in light of who we are, this word sin, this word idea of
missing a mark should grieve us.
It should.
Knowing that every day we're sinners, knowing that every day
we wake up and sin manifests itself in all different ways.
Right?
We've got almost what, 240 people here today.
That's 240 different ways that sin has messed up your life.
Though some of our sin struggles may be the same, they're also
very, very different.
That if you're just going to look on, let's just look on this
side of the church.
All right, don't worry, you're going to get yours on this side.
But you look up here, we probably have what, 75 people in
this section, that sin has messed up every one of your
lives.
That you have an active force working against you, wanting
you to mess up, wanting you to hurt people, wanting you to do
everything that we just were commanded not to.
We have idol worshipers, we have blasphemers, we have
adulterers, we have all of that over here.
So thank you for coming.
On this side, we have the exact same thing.
Balcony, you're not, you're not, you're no different, right?
You just bring it to a higher level.
Don't forget to tip your waitress.
People online, you're perfect.
Just kidding, no you're not.
You're, you're, I'm not going to go there, but you're sinners
too.
But understand that we all, I think it's so funny, and again,
I don't plan it this way, I do believe it's the Holy Spirit,
that we're talking about sin on Preparation Sunday.
That next week, we're, those that will be here, those that
are members of a church, will partake in the body and blood
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Not that we believe, it turns into that.
We're not Catholics, that's how Catholics believe.
We don't believe that.
We believe it's a sign and a seal of the grace God has
afforded us because we need it.
Now I don't know the last time you mourned over your sin, but
that's what this sermon is going to talk about.
Because if we're not in a place to mourn over our sin, then we
are in a place that we don't understand salvation.
Let me say that again.
If we don't know what it means, and if we've not experienced
the mourning over our sin, then we don't actually understand
the weight of salvation.
Well, Pastor, you're starting to talk like people of wrath.
We talked about that the last couple weeks, that people of
wrath always have sin on the mind, always have sin in their
mouth, always have sin ready to go, and they lob it like a
grenade.
That's not, then you missed what I just said.
I'm talking about your sin and my sin.
We'll get to looking across the aisle, we'll get to the person
right next to you because guess what, they're sinners too.
But if we're not mourning over our sin, then we don't
understand the weight and the amazingness, if you will, of
the salvation in Christ.
That in sin, we are eternally separated from God, from our
great-great-great-great-great-grandparents,
Adam and Eve, sin entered the world, it's now in our DNA, and
we are bent, every morning, you are bent against God.
That is exactly what total depravity means.
Now, we're going to look at that in a very, kind of a really
expounded way over the season of Lent.
We're going to look at this idea and this theory of grace,
but understand that we need to start with sin.
We need to start with our sin because a lot of people, they
just want to jump right on to Christ's salvation, and that is
fantastic.
And I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it.
When I have a student or an adult come to me and say, I
want to profess their faith, you get all kinds of excited
because that means the Holy Spirit is at work.
You think about it, is that Satan at work?
Mike, if you want to profess Christ, is that Satan at work?
I'm waiting for you to do it, by the way, so whenever you're
ready, we're good.
But understand, that's not Satan at work.
Satan's not going to be like, hey, Jim, let's out, let's
profess Christ.
No, he wants the exact opposite.
But when someone comes to me and says, I want to profess
their faith, we have a wonderful conversation, and
then I say, tell me about your sin.
Because if you don't understand the weight of sin, the bad news
of sin, the good news of salvation doesn't mean much.
But a lot of times, we just want to camp out here.
It's all good, right?
Yeah, there's sin, but we don't want to talk about it.
We're going to just kind of sweep it under the rug.
We're just going to, you know, we've been forgiven, and now
we're good.
No, it's a daily struggle.
John had this word for the church in Ephesus.
Because I don't know which was worse, the church in Ephesus or
the church in Corinth?
And we're going to get to both of those in the coming years.
There are tremendous books.
I want to say maybe Corinthians was worse, because they ended
up getting three letters.
Ephesus only seemed to get one.
But that's just me trying to do the math.
But understand that when John was telling the church of
Ephesus, it is because the church of Ephesus, which was
once this booming metropolis of the church, it was kind of like
a, I don't know, like the center of Christian thought had been
pervaded by Greek thought, Greek culture, mythology, right?
And a very different understanding on sexuality and
identity and all of those things.
And I'm talking about, you know, the first century Greeks.
I'm not talking about 2024 in the United States, though there
are a lot of parallels.
You go back and read Ephesus, you go back and read Corinth and
the issues they had, it is some ways is like reading 2024.
But they've allowed, they lost their first love.
They kept their eyes off of Jesus when these other things
started to pervade.
This understanding of ideology, this understanding of
sexuality, this understanding of the understanding of being
able to live a holy life.
That in like the town of Corinth, you had the worship
service and then you'd have, I would say, more adult
establishments that believers would just stop at on their way
home.
You know, some of you may stop at Stracks for some chicken on
your way home.
Some of you may go right home and, you know, be like Daniel,
prepare for the Lions game on a wing and a prayer.
You know, some of the people in Corinth or in Ephesus, they
would leave the church, go to more of like a brothel.
That's how they celebrated the worship service.
And if you're here and you do that, please stop.
That's not at all okay.
But that was because they allowed this ideology.
They allowed the line of truth to be so deadened.
They've allowed the line of truth to be so covered up.
They've allowed the line of truth to be so subjective that
they earned a letter from Paul.
Now again, that's not necessarily like the biggest
issue.
But Paul did right because he mourned over their sin as he
mourned over his.
So that's where we have to start this morning.
I'm sorry if this is a heavy topic, but I warned you and you
all showed up because it's your fault.
Understand that it all starts there.
But pastor, I want to start with life and I will be with you
always to the very end of the age and, you know, the fruits of
the Spirit and all of those things.
You go into Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, you know,
you have put on the old or you've put on the new self.
The old self is gone.
What about when you say, you know, the old is gone, the new
is come.
Those in Christ are a new creation.
Absolutely, all of that is true.
But there is a force that doesn't want you to be like
that.
There is a force out there that wants something very, very
different.
And so the book of 1 John really, really gets us to an
awesome place.
But in order for us to get Christianity right, to get our
Christianity right, now even the word Christianity in 2024 has
become very political.
And you know me, I am not, I don't like that.
I don't like when the politicalness invades because
there's really nothing political to Jesus because
nothing rivals him.
All right, we're going to talk about that.
We're going to have that service the Sunday before the
election in November.
And it's not going to be, you know, pro-Republican, pro-
Democrat, pro-this agenda, pro-that agenda.
It's going to be pro-Jesus because that's what the church
needs to be.
So if you're already planning on wanting to make a meeting and
asking me who to vote for, please don't.
But I know there will be six of you that do because it happens
every four years.
Clearly you don't care what I have to say about local
elections, but when it comes to presidential elections, now
because I feel like you want to blame me.
Well, pastor told me to vote for him, so that's what I did.
Eh, not going to happen.
But understand that we have politicized even these kind of
things to the point where Christianity, though it's the
way of Christ, Christian means little Christ, we've been our,
you know, Christian nationalists and all of these
other things have made it so off center, so sin missed the
mark that we get really, really confused.
And I think in our confusion, a lot of us, including myself,
say, I'm just not going to deal with it.
I'm just not going to put it, it's not going to be a priority
to me.
If I sin, I sin.
Well, I think 1 John's going to tell us something different.
So we're going to start 1 John chapter one, the first four
verses.
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard,
which we have seen with our own eyes, which we looked upon and
have touched with our hands concerning the word of life, he's
talking about Jesus, the life was made manifest and we have
seen it and testify to it and proclaim to it the eternal life,
which was with the Father and was made manifest to us, that
which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, this is
the church of Ephesus, so that you may have fellowship with us
and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and the Son,
Jesus Christ.
And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
Leave that last slide up.
So this is John writing to the church in Ephesus talking about,
and again, none of us have this because it's 2024 and we weren't
walking with the real historical Jesus, but that's where we have
to start today.
The reason why it's written this way is because John is letting
all of them know, I was an eyewitness to this.
Jesus fed me.
Jesus called me.
Now, does that mean that I was hungry?
Yeah.
Because guess what happens, when you're hungry, what do you do?
It's not hard.
Eat, right?
Well, I'm fasting.
You're still going to eat.
And when you're found, that means you were what?
Lost.
So if John's going to start that way, we need to start that way.
You're all lost.
I'm lost.
We're prone to wander.
That is, we're prone to wander in our thoughts.
We're prone to wander with our mouth.
We're prone to wander with our actions.
Recognizing, understanding that and mourning it is dealing with
the real Jesus, is dealing with the real sin.
This is not some theoretical thing.
This is not John saying, I heard that I heard that I heard.
This is John who was with Jesus.
He was with him when he called him.
He was with him when he fed him.
He was with him when he died for him on the cross, right?
He establishes a new relationship for John.
John being one of the only disciples not martyred right
away but sent to the island of Patmos to have some real
interesting conversations with the Spirit.
And we're going to get to the book of Revelation, like I said,
in the fall.
But in order to understand right Christian culture, even that
is kind of an ugly word, but understanding the right
Christianity you have to deal with the real Jesus first.
And if you're here this morning and you're skeptical about the
real Jesus, I really hope this helps.
But if you're wanting to find holes in the story of Jesus,
you are going to do whatever you can to find him.
Because taking Jesus at his word, taking Jesus as his
person, taking Jesus as his sacrifice, ultimately does take
faith.
Now I've heard it said from different evangelists and
apologists that it takes a lot more faith to be an atheist or
an agnostic than it is to be a Christian.
And I probably have thoughts on that, but I'm not going to talk
about that today.
But it takes faith because none of us were there, not even
Wolder Hiley, he's only 99, right?
None of us were standing there with the real Jesus.
Something that has been shown and proved in the writings of
the past.
But if you want to say, oh, aliens put in the Dead Sea
Scrolls, if that's what you want to believe, there's nothing I
can do to get you off of that.
Right?
It's not my job to clobber you with this.
My job is to offer you what it says in here, right, the
interpretation that the Holy Spirit has for us as a church,
that Jesus was real, he spoke real words, he ate real food,
he hurt real hurts, he mourned real mourns, he died a real
death and he rose again.
Which also makes him the Christ and makes him the Messiah.
You had people wanting the king, you wanted people to have the
prophet, you wanted people to have the priest, you wanted it,
people, even the person of Jesus, were centered into three
different ideologies because they thought the priest was
going to cleanse the temple, they thought the prophet was
going to make way for something they didn't really know what,
or they couldn't really agree on it, or the king that was
going to conquer Rome.
And what did Jesus do?
D, all of the above.
But understand, did he conquer Rome?
No.
Rome continued.
Rome continued for, I don't remember how many years, but for
a long time, and they took over much of Europe, northern Africa
and the Middle East.
But the understanding of conquering, he conquered, oh, he
conquered.
What did Jesus conquer?
What?
Sin and death.
I think that's more important than the Romans.
Because have you ever been, you know, Mr. Molinar, have you ever
been attacked by a Roman, have you ever been persecuted by a
Roman, put in the Coliseum?
Would you last in the Coliseum?
30 seconds, yeah, that's good.
It's more than me.
But understand, we don't have that level of persecution, but
Roman culture?
I think we do.
That understanding of culture, the way it's set today, you're
your own God, right?
You write your own path, you draw your own picture, you live
your own life, do whatever you want to do, but Jesus will
still be here for you, right?
Jesus isn't the lifeline on who wants to be a millionaire.
Jesus is the lens and the life of which we all need to walk in.
And I say need to because you have to.
1 John makes that very, very clear.
That if we're not going to talk about the actual person lived in
history, right, because Christianity is, or the way, I
love that because in the initial it wasn't Christianity, right,
until we had Emperor Constantine much later.
It was known as the way.
It was full of dust and dirt in history.
If the actual man existed whose name was Jesus Christ, if he
actually walked the dusty roads of Judea and Galilee, and if he
actually like John heard, saw, and touched him, then Christianity
stands.
That there is historical evidence.
If you need that evidence in your life, you have it.
But I really want to poke holes in it, then you're going to do
it.
Nobody's going to stop you.
Hopefully people can point you back.
But if you're going to make holes in it, if you want to make
holes in it, I am not telling you that's a good thing.
I am telling you that you've got to be very careful what you
demand of the Messiah.
Let me say that again.
You need to be careful with what you demand from the Messiah.
Because even last week I had people that wanted to go onto
God's level.
I had people challenge me and say God was bound by the
commandments he gave.
Listen to how you started that sentence.
God, Yahweh, creator of all, was bound?
If you want to say that, that's on you.
I can't say that.
Who am I?
Right?
Who am I?
We talked about it last week.
When we're little kids, how does that work if we're going
to tell our parents what to do?
It doesn't go very well.
But if your desperate need to poke holes and be
intellectually superior in your Christianity, then you are a
fool when it comes to the end game.
Because at the end of the day, you can't figure out every
nano whatever of Jesus.
Jesus came, he taught, he loved, he sacrificed, he died,
rose again to conquer sin and death.
Thank you, Alex, that we would have everlasting life in the
Father.
That takes faith.
That takes a belief.
That takes the Holy Spirit working in your heart.
We call it in Reform Circles regeneration, that you are
being regenerated into something new.
You were dead in sin, you are alive in Christ.
But we do not subscribe to the holiness movement that you can
live a holy life.
That the light of Christ is going to come to you and you
are to walk in it.
Right?
All the days of your life.
And when you fall, we seek forgiveness.
We seek forgiveness from the people we hurt.
We try at best to make peace with one another.
Jesus tells us to do that.
Blessed are the peacemakers, not the peacekeepers.
Because sometimes keeping the peace is correcting.
That if we're going to take the real Jesus and we're going to
look at the real Jesus, then we need to model ourselves after
the real Jesus.
The real Jesus sat, ate, and had fellowship with people that
socially, culturally, religiously he shouldn't.
I.e. Gentiles.
The unclean.
So I think our call is to do that as well.
And if you're going to be a person of wrath and judge, well
you don't really measure up to my level of faith in Jesus, so
I'm not going to be in relationship with you.
You can do that.
That is completely your prerogative.
I think you misunderstand what the holiness of Christ means
because I think you may be the only Jesus they ever encounter.
I think it was Billy Graham that said in a room of 100
people, one person may read the Bible, the other 99 are going to
read that person.
That you might be, and we've said this before, the only view
of the kingdom someone might have.
Some of you love that and you get real puffed up about it.
Don't.
That's idiotic.
That it's a call.
It's an obligation.
It's hard at times.
But we need to be real about the real Jesus and we need to be
real about our real sin.
Because Jesus is continually teaching us.
He's teaching us the ways that he was with the Father, that in
Christ we have life because him and the Father were one, that
this is the plan set forth by the Father who could not and
will not and won't be in the presence of sin.
That's something we have to understand.
We were dead in sin.
We were going to be damned to hell, Gehenna, the fire, the
abyss, the eternal whatever.
None of that's good.
I don't know anyone that goes, no, I want that.
And if that's the case, you got your work cut out for you.
But understand that Jesus came that we may know the Father's
love, that we may know the Father's plan, and we may
receive, not earn, the Father's salvation in Christ.
In Christ alone our hope is found.
But understand that God, the creator, in our sin, non-
regenerated, will have nothing to do with us because our sin
covers us.
That's why the work of Jesus on the cross is the only real
solution for resetting our sin.
1 John 1 5 says this.
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaimed
to you that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.
I love the work that John does with light here.
We're going to talk about it.
That in order to understand the real solution that the real
Jesus brings about real sin is that sin is darkness.
But in God is light.
In God there is no darkness at all.
Understand we need to get this at all is key here.
There is zero darkness because if you ever have been, and I
know I've used the cave analogy before, you know, whenever the
lights go out at night, the first thing we do is we run to
shine what?
Light.
Whether it's a candle, whether it's a flashlight, whether you
turn on the generator, why do you turn on the generator
outside of maybe food spoiling?
You turn it on to get light.
That we have an adverse reaction to the dark.
How many of you were scared of the dark growing up?
Abby, why were you scared of the dark growing up?
I don't know what to do with that.
So sibling abuse was, Abby, you were the wrong person to ask.
But, perfect example, so they put you in the basement, they
close the door, right?
I mean, did you have electricity in the basement?
You're not that old.
No, okay, so yeah, it was so, the darkness was like a prison
to you.
So the light of Christ means something very specific to you.
Right?
Because the darkness is a prison.
I really wish I didn't ask you.
How many other people were scared of the dark?
We're going to try this one more time.
Holly, why were you scared of the dark?
Please don't say you were locked in a basement.
The boogeyman, that's very different.
You had actual physical hurt and pain and Holly is kind of a
crazy person, right?
And when it comes to the boogeyman, but I think we all
can agree, there's something about the darkness when we're
kids we don't like.
How many of you know that you saw something change in your
room when it was the dark?
Raise your hand, don't you dare lie in church.
Cheyenne, what changed in your room in the dark?
Everything.
All right, we need a new sermon series called the light of
Christ.
We're going to do that at some point in the future.
Oh, my word.
Okay.
Daniel, were you scared of the dark?
Why?
The blinds would change?
You would say, okay, so shadows, okay, that actually makes
sense.
I'm just going to stick to this side of the sanctuary because
we've crazies over there.
But understand that the darkness does something to us.
There's absolutely no reason why you should grow up scared of
the dark because dark comes, the melatonin takes over, you go
to sleep, you wake up and it's light.
In that, darkness should not be afraid until we wake up.
We should not be afraid until we attach ourselves to the
darkness.
And is that not sin?
Is that not how sin works?
That sin is going to attach to certain aspects of your life
demanding that your life become darker.
When you think about it that way, sin because so much of the
problem and the real Jesus with the real salvation and the real
light is brought to our darkness.
1 John 1, 6 says this, and this is true, if we say we have
fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do
not practice the truth.
The truth of your salvation in Jesus is that you are living by
the light of Christ.
And you are called to bring that light to other people.
You are called to bring that light to a culture that
desperately needs it.
Because I think we'd all agree our culture loves the dark.
They love doing things in the dark.
They love the shadows.
They love the boogeyman.
They love abuse in the dark.
They love all of those things.
Because sin has no time for salvation.
When you are in a dark room and you light a light, what happens
to the darkness?
It literally flees.
It runs away.
You cannot have darkness in the presence of light.
Try to understand that.
Now some of you science people with lasers and all that stuff,
you may come back to me.
I don't care.
Understand that if you are in the dark and you shine a light,
the darkness is fleeing the light.
So not only should we be mourning our sin, we should be
fleeing our sin as well.
Because if we say we have fellowship, if we say we are a
believer and we are living in the ideology age of the culture,
if we are allowing this culture to define us, and this culture,
and notice how it's slowly, we are going to get to this more
next week, slowly saying you are kind of on God's level.
You can make up your own stuff.
Then you are just completely investing in the dark.
That not only should we be mourning, we should be fleeing
the darkness that is in our lives.
The way that we can allow darkness and sin to grow in our
life is to deny it.
How do we deny it?
I am not as bad as that person.
That person, oh man, that person.
Look at the way they live their life.
Guess what?
You are right.
They are sinners because we all are.
A lot of times we like to do this to a world that doesn't
recognize Christ.
I struggle with that as a pastor.
Because the Bible talks about throwing pearls before swine.
Though that is true, when you are walking along someone that
does not follow the law of the Lord or follow Christ, and
they are living the way of the world, you can't be surprised.
But there are times we want to judge them on the basis of this
book.
You can, by all means.
That is totally fine.
I don't know how effective it is.
Because if you bring Aiden Hutchinson, right, in what
position does he play on the Lions, Daniel?
He is a defensive end.
You set him up and give him a tennis racket and say, okay, go
to Wimbledon.
What is he going to do?
He is loose.
He probably just tackles somebody and that is not allowed
in tennis.
Understand, because he is playing by different rules of the
game.
If we have a world that is so desperately following the
darkness that they are trying to heap darkness onto themselves,
they are not mourning their sin, nor are they fleeing from it,
but they are investing in their sin.
I wonder how much the church is doing that.
How much of our church is investing in sin?
Because John makes it very, very clear, and I am going to land
the plane with this.
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth
is not in us.
If we confess our sin, he is faithful, he is just, and he
will forgive our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.
If we say we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and
his word is not in us.
And he starts in chapter two.
My little children, Munster Church, I am writing these
things to you so that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin,
we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the
righteous.
He is the propitiation for our sin, and not for ours only,
but also for the sins of the whole world.
And by this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his
commandments.
Whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments,
is a liar and the truth is not in him.
So we have primed the pump.
We know we should mourn our sin, we should flee our sin, we
should not invest in our sin.
So what does it look like when we live in a culture that says
the exact opposite?
How do we handle that as a church?
How do we handle that as believers, knowing that the
kingdom is also here and not yet to be continued?
Let's pray.