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The First Epistle of John Series
Sermon 3
Descending Deception
I John 1:6-10
Love One Another Gospel Church
Thor F. Carden
June 27, 2004

First Epistle of John Chapter One has taken 3 sermons – do not know how long it will take to do whole book. Will take a break between chapters to visit a few other issues. Next week is July 4^th and I will preach on Liberty from Pain – breaking free from the cycle of emotional pain.

A Pastor needed a new lawn mower but due to a cash shortage was looking for a used one. He came upon a young boy trying to sell a lawn mower on the side of the road. They agreed on a price. The preacher took the mower and began to crank it. He pulled on the cord a few times with no reaction from the machine. The preacher said, "I can’t get this mower to start." The little boy answered, "My dad says you have to cuss it to get it started." The preacher replied, "I've been a minister so long I don’t even remember how to cuss." The little boy said, "Just keep pulling on that cord, it’ll come back to you."

(http://www.gospelcenterchurch.org/preachers_life.html and dozens of other sites on the internet.)

Last week we talked about how I John 1:5-10 is an Hebrew poem written in Greek. We discussed parallelism and studied verses 5, 7, and 9 in some detail. God is light. If we bring our sins out of the darkness and into the light he is faithful and just to forgive them.

This week we are going to talk about the contrasting verses 6, 8 and 10.

If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness – Three descending deceptions – (1) 1:6 Lie to others

(2) 1:8 Lie to self

(3) 1:10 Accuse God of being a liar

The first is to lie to others, hypocritically claiming to be good.

is characterized by disobedience and a lack of relationship with God.

anything and everything that is hostile (enmity) and opposes itself against God.

disregard for and defiance of God's self-revelation as light.

is to live a life of sin.

If we say that we have no sin - Second of three deceptions – (1) 1:6 Lie to others (2) 1:8 Lie to self (3) 1:10 Accuse God of being a liar

The second step in descending deception is to begin to believe our own lies about our sinful condition.

If you say "I have no sin," you say it, and that is all. The words sound very pretty, but there is no fact to correspond with them.

"If Christianity were a religion, it would be the religion of sinners. The Christian life is a life of continued repentance, humiliation for and mortification of sin, of continual faith in, thankfulness for, and love to the Redeemer, and hopeful joyful expectation of a day of glorious redemption."

deceive ourselves - planwmen – deceive, from a word for wandering or being led astray

Lost, taking the wrong turn

"You must have forgotten to search your thoughts and to weigh your motives, or you would have detected the presence of sin. He who cannot find water in the sea is not more foolish than the man who cannot perceive sin in his members. As the salt flavors every drop of the oceans, so does sin affect every atom of our nature. It is so sadly there, so abundantly there, that if you cannot detect it you are deceived.

"If you have deceived yourself, you have put out your own eyes, and perverted your own reason! You have fed upon falsehood till it has entered into your very being, and rendered you incapable of truth.

"We deceive ourselves. Here the utterer of the falsehood has come to believe his own lie. he has blinded his understanding and befouled his conscience till he has become his own dupe. Falsehood has saturated his nature, so that he puts darkness for light and light for darkness. This is at once his sin and his punishment; he closed his eyes so long that at length he has become stone blind."

We become like an ostrich that seems to believe that by hiding its head in the sand it can not be seen or will be mistaken as a bush. Deceiving ourselves does not hide anything from anyone but ourselves.

If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar - Third of three deceptions – (1) 1:6 Lie to others (2) 1:8 Lie to self (3) 1:10 Accuse God of being a liar

Finally, after we deceive ourselves in order to maintain that deception in the face of God's truth we begin to call Him a liar.

1Timothy 4:2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;

"A growing problem in our society is that people have the burden of guilt without the sense of sin." - Adrian Rogers

(Here I put on a blindfold and walked to the back of the church by feeling along the wall. Then I asked if the congregation believed I could find my way down the street to the truck factory blind folded.) Of course not! In the same way our self deception works for a season but eventually we come across obstacles in life that reveal its weakness. At that point we can either take off the blindfold and acknowledge God's truth or we can start shaking our puny fist in his face and blaming Him. Making God a liar with rationalizations we have come to believe through self-deception is like that.

Lie = walk in darkness -

1 Thessalonians 5:5 Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.

John speaks of a "walk in darkness." The word "walk" indicates a pattern of living, not an occasional lapse, but a lifestyle

Obeying the Laws of the Light House

In U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, the magazine of the Naval Institute, Frank Koch illustrates the importance of obeying the Laws of the Lighthouse:

Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers in heavy weather for several days. I was serving on the lead battleship and was on watch on the bridge as night fell. The visibility was poor with patchy fog, so the captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities.

Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing reported, "Light, bearing on the starboard bow."

"Is it steady or moving astern?" the captain called out.

The lookout replied, "Steady, Captain," which meant we were on a dangerous collision course with that ship.

The captain then called to the signalman, "Signal that ship: ‘We are on a collision course, advise you change course twenty degrees.’"

Back came the signal, "Advisable for you to change course twenty degrees."

The captain said, "Send: "I’m a captain, change course twenty degrees.’"

"I’m a seaman second-class," came the reply. "You had better change course twenty degrees."

By that time the captain was furious. He spat out, "Send: ‘I’m a battleship. Change course twenty degrees.’"

Back came the flashing light, "I’m a lighthouse."

We changed course.

We should obey God because he is God. That should be enough but there is another reason to obey Him. We should obey Him because He is right. He speaks the truth like the lighthouse keeper in this story.

SEVEN ways believers "walk in darkness"

FIRST, some Christians have bought the lie of false teachers of the New Age.

They say "Just because something is wrong for you does not mean it is wrong for me."

Isaiah 5:20 "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"

In Right from Wrong, Josh McDowell reports, "70% of today’s generation (both churched and non-churched youth) claim that absolute truth does not exist, that all truth is relative… ‘nothing can be known for certain except the things that you experience in your on life.’ In other words, they don’t believe that anything can be definitely defined as right or wrong."

This is why teenagers shoot down their fellow students in cold blood, why abortion is available on demand, why bloody violence is entertaining… they don’t know right from wrong.

In fact, the only sin our modern culture recognizes is the sin they call intolerance, judging others according to our personal beliefs.

Sin is very real. Evil is very real. It is present within all of us. Instead of being honest about it, we say it does not exist and thus "deceive ourselves" proving that "the truth is not in us."

Because of the widespread acceptance of relativism, there are a great many people who say they love Jesus, go to church, give and volunteer but never admit that they are sinners.

SECOND, some Christians believe the root of sin has been eradicated within them.

Once a man approached the great evangelist D.L. Moody and stated that he had progressed in holiness to the point where he no longer sinned. Moody smiled and said, "Well, I’d like to ask your wife about that."

"The daily exercise of faith in Jesus Christ is a confession of sin, for nobody would need to believe in a Savior unless he had sin. So ought we to watch as those who feel that the battle is not fought, and therefore we cannot lay down our Armour and our sword. We should so live as those who know that the race is not run, and therefore they press forward. We ought to be prayerfully dependent upon God, as those who know that if they were left by divine grace they would go back unto perdition." (From Honest Dealing with God sermon delivered June 20, 1875 by C. H. Spurgeon http://www.biblebb.com/files/spurgeon/1241.htm)

THIRD, some Christians believe they have so mastered the flesh that they cannot sin.

A pastor and the lawn mower I talked about earlier.

"Confession means a life-long acknowledgment of our sin. We must take our places as them who have sinned, and never attempt to occupy the position of innocent beings." (From Honest Dealing with God sermon delivered June 20, 1875 by C. H. Spurgeon http://www.biblebb.com/files/spurgeon/1241.htm)

Romans 3:23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

"The love of approbation which, rightly checked and kept in order, has its uses, very readily pushes men on to pretend to be better than they are. Fear of censure is an equally powerful means of producing hypocrisy. We must by all means strive against the very beginnings of this frightful evil, for if it should ever get the mastery over us it will make us altogether untruthful, and consequently we shall be far removed from all power to walk with God. The Lord cannot stand with us on the platform of seeming and appearance, but only on the ground of what we really are, and therefore in proportion as we are untrue we cut ourselves off from God." (From Honest Dealing with God sermon delivered June 20, 1875 by C. H. Spurgeon http://www.biblebb.com/files/spurgeon/1241.htm)

Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

FOURTH - We rationalize our sin by substituting other less offensive words. What the Bible calls sins we describe as weaknesses, frailties, addictions and genetic disorders. In others we see prejudices, but we have convictions. Others have conceit; we have confidence. Others are lazy; we are busy. Others can’t control their temper; we show righteous indignation. Others get angry and bitter; we become "grieved in their spirits!"

Some plead that though it may be they have sin, yet they are not bad at heart; they look upon sin as a technical term, and though they admit in words that they have sin, yet they practically deny it by saying, "I have a good heart at its center; I always was well-intentioned from the very first. (From Honest Dealing with God sermon delivered June 20, 1875 by C. H. Spurgeon http://www.biblebb.com/files/spurgeon/1241.htm)

FIFTH - We rationalize our sin with feeble excuses. We blame stress when we are irritable and impatient. Fatigue makes us speak roughly. We think, "I would be a better husband if I had a better wife," or "I would be a better pastor if it weren’t for my congregation!" We say, "My kids drive me nuts, that’s why I yell at them." "I am the way I am because of my parents." "If you knew what my ex did to me you’d understand."

I cannot help that; I only followed my nature, and cannot be blamed, for I never meant to do anything wrong, either to God or man. I have always been kind to the poor, and have done the right thing all round. I know I have—of course we all have—erred here and there, but you cannot expect a fellow to be perfect.

SIXTH - We pretend to confess. "We have prayed," say they; "we have repented, we have read the Scriptures, we have attended public worship, and are as right as we can be: we have tenderness and contrition, and every right and proper feeling." All the while, the heart is cold.

It is almost as hard to seem to be as to be, perhaps I might say it is harder. Pity that men should be at such pains to make fools of themselves.

SEVENTH - we say that the problem is not us but our circumstances. We say, "We have not sinned" but others have sinned against us. We say, "It’s not my fault. I can’t help it. I can’t help myself. This is not sin, it is just the way I am." John tells us that with this attitude what we are saying is that God is "a liar." We are not shifting the blame to anyone but God for God controls all circumstances. If we say it is not our fault we are saying that it is God’s fault, that He is "a liar" when He says "All have sinned and come short of the Glory of God." Rom 3:23

Numbers 23:19 "God is not a man, that he should lie…"

The Lord always deals with things as they are.

Man invents fictions, but God creates facts.

We conceive of things as they appear, but God sees them as they exist.

1 Samuel 16:7 "…for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart."

Truth - alhqeian might be from Greek word for stone

Do not the truth – Truth is something we do.

James 1:22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

Matthew 21:28-31 – Parable of the two sons, yes and doesn't, no and does

truth is not in us – Truth is not just something we do (verse 6), it is something within us

Psalm 15:2

He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart.

Word - logoV - same as in John 1

His word is not in us – parallel to "the truth is not in us" in 8

Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

Hebrews 4:12-13 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 13 Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

Six Ways we "do not the truth"

First, we stop coming to church. We avoid the light of the teaching of God’s Word.

Second, we fail to read Scripture. This is one of the surest ways to shut out the light and destroy fellowship with God.

Third, we don’t participate in worship. While others sing and praise God, we mumble words or think of something else. We miss the light inherent in the dynamic of corporate worship.

Fourth, we avoid self-examination. We nod or say "Amen" at the right places during the message but never ask how we can apply the light in our lives. We never ask ourselves if we are closer to God that six months ago or if there is growth or fruit in our lives. Ja.1:21-25 teach us not to be "hearers" but "doers of Word."

Fifth, we compare ourselves with others. Instead of examining our lives in the light of God’s truth and holiness, we compare ourselves to someone who makes us look good.

Sixth, we never admit our struggles. We put on a mask and pretend everything is all right. This is a great injustice to younger believers. The mask makes for an unattainable standard, at least until we fail them, and they become embittered by our hypocrisy.

Verses 6, 8, and 10 are a descending deception. Notice how verses 5, 7, and 9 also descend? In 5 God is light. In 7 we are walking in His light. In 9 we are not walking in his light but we still have hope.

We don't want to believe it is sin.

We don't want to believe we really did it.

We don't want to face guilt.

We don't want to take blame.

We don't want to accept responsibility.

We justify in order to protect ourselves.

What does God's Word say? How do the Scripture read?

It is sin, we really did it, we are guilty, we are to blame. That is the truth.

But it is also the truth that he stands ready to cleanse us by His own blood.

"Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

Berean List

(Acts 17:11)

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