Walking In The Light Of Heaven

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Sunday, 09 January 2011 07:59

January 9, 2011

“WALKING IN THE LIGHT OF HEAVEN”

1 John 1:5-7

by Pastor Ole Lillestolen

It’s not much fun to be in the dark! I remember one time we were crossing the road on a moonless night and no street lights, looking for our driveway, navigating by feel. Disoriented! The world feels so different when it is pitch black. Instead of being surrounded by familiar, comfortable things, a black night can seem full of scary noises and imagined boogey men! Light is a wonderful thing, and “God is light!”

The motto I’ve selected to encourage you to live by this year is, “Walking In The Light Of Heaven In 2011"; one of the most important things we can do with and in our lives. This morning I want to explore this theme with you by looking at what our text says about walking in the light of heaven.

BELIEVE THE LIGHT

John, who wrote this text, was one of Jesus’ twelve disciples, and he tells us, “this is the message we have heard from Him (Jesus?) and announce to you, that God is light.” John was a sort of a philosophical fellow who liked to use metaphors or similes to get a better handle on understanding things. He called Jesus, “The Word,” to convey the idea that one of the things Jesus did for us when He came into this world was to speak to us the words that reveal God’s plans, especially His plan of salvation. Here he describes God as being light, but again in that sense of being a source of revelation.

How would you describe God to your neighbor? What would you call Him? Of course, John also called God “Love” because God is a God who loves us! But, would you call God, “Light?” This trait of God is huge! In fact I’d not only say that “God is light”, but that “God is the light!”

But what good is a treasure if it is not known. What good is a truth if it is not revealed? What good is a promise if it is not heard? Some years ago Roger Whitaker sang a song named, “Why?” asking the question, “Will the last word ever spoken be “Why?”” This was one of those pacifistic songs which highlighted the very real futility of all of our wars. But, in contrast to “Why?”, can you imagine standing inside the gate to a lost eternity in hell, seeing heaven beyond the abyss, having to say, “I never knew!”

Before we can enjoy the treasures of heaven either for eternity or for today, we need to learn about them, and God has made it His business to reveal all about these treasures to us. God is light! God is the light!

Our statement of faith says that the Bible is our only source for faith, doctrine, and life! We profess that this Bible is it; that there is no other source in the world that we should trust for truth about life today or for eternity! One of today’s questions is, however, “Do you believe that the Bible is God’s revelation of Himself and of His plans for us?”

Some might wonder, on the one hand, about all of the other religions in the world? Don’t their writings also have truth to share? Can’t we learn from other religions or other sources of thought? We certainly can! And sometimes we can end up appreciating our Bible even more as we see its truths popping up in different settings.

We should not be surprised to find truth everywhere. What works, works! Truth is truth! Greed, jealousy, discontentment, and hatred aren’t just bad in the Christian world! They are universal problems of sin and it doesn’t take a revelation from God to recognize this fact and warn against them. There is only one system of truth for this world! The issue is not whether there is truth in other religions, but whether they present the “whole truth and nothing but the truth”!

Why do judges demand that we, “promise to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth”? Because half the truth is often the same as a lie! Let us remind ourselves as the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11:14 that in order to deceive and draw people into a lost eternity with himself, “Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” Satan uses half truths to convey whole lies! John tells us that not only is God light, but that, “in Him there is no darkness at all.” What comes from God is truth, “the whole truth and nothing but the truth”!

On the other hand, the issue of being able to believe that the Bible is uniquely God’s infallible, inerrant revelation of truth is a subject for a whole series of sermons. I believe that an honest examination of the Bible will create faith in it as the revelation from God.    But, the Bible does claim, in 2 Timothy 3:16 for example, that “All Scripture is inspired by God,” and that as 2 Peter 1:21 says, “no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”

TRUST THE LIGHT

The issue I’m more concerned about when it comes to believing in the Bible is that of trusting this light of God’s revelation. I mean there have always been many people who believe that the Bible is God’s word, but who don’t really pay any attention to it for their daily lives. It’s a common joke that many Bibles are great dust collectors!

My greatest concern for Christians is that they trust God’s word for their everyday lives!   Jesus tells us in Matthew 4:4, for example, that “man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.”

But, what does this mean? There’s an interesting promise in Exodus 15:26 from God to the nation of Israel as it was heading toward the promised land. God told them, in 15:26, "If you will give earnest heed to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in His sight, and give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I, the LORD, am your healer." The point was, if you pay attention to the word from God, you will avoid the traps everyone else is falling into, touching even your health!

How frustrating to discover that you’ve been doing something not knowing that it was really hazardous to your health. Think of all of the people who used to work with asbestos who ended up with lung cancer. And, did you know that in old commercials 9 of 10 doctors used to recommend smoking Winston, or was it Camel cigarettes? It ought to be that if you don’t know something is bad for your health, it isn’t!

The trouble is, ignorance of truth doesn’t change truth! Let us understand that sin is not just a legal issue; it is a life issue! Sin is not just a moral issue; it is a ‘health of all kinds’ issue! God’s light is there to inform us so we can avoid the consequences of ignoring the truth, but we have to dig to find and then trust that truth!

Never be satisfied that you have discovered enough truth to trust! It’s the uncovered truth that always gets you. My skin doctor knew the dangers of melanomas better than anyone! That was his job! Yet, even though he always checked his body for melanomas there was one place he never checked, his eye, and that was where he got this cancer from which he died!   There is always one more truth you need to know or to be reminded of, or to finally trust!

John says, in verse six, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” Where we get into trouble in this area is in trusting our instincts.

You know how it is with men, they never need a map or need to stop and ask directions, they have a natural instinct that infallibly guides them to where they want to go! Right? No matter how you cut it, trusting our instincts is walking in darkness! “There is a way which seems right to a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death!” (Proverbs 16:25) Trust God’s light, the Bible!

REFLECT THE LIGHT

Finally, verse seven tells us that, “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.” When we believe and trust the Bible and the Spirit of God as He applies that word to our hearts and minds, we will have fellowship with God. Furthermore, we will experience the cleansing power of Jesus’ blood in our lives.

That can mean being clean in God’s eyes, but it can also mean being clean both in our own eyes and in the eyes of those around us. Tim May told me about a website that he appreciates called, “I Am Second” and I found a video by “Josh Hamilton”, a baseball star who had a bout with drugs and alcohol, nearly ruining his career. When he was at the bottom of this experience he turned to the Lord and to Scripture to get the help he needed to climb out of this addiction. The wonderful thing of his experience is the sense of being clean, and for the whole world to see.

After his rehab, he became an all-star player and is a ardent witness for the Lord Jesus Christ as his light in life. Josh is reflecting the light of heaven by letting that light shine in his own life, believing in that light and trusting in that light.

It feels good to be clean and to have others see our cleanness! One of the big ways this plays out is in the way we love. To walk in the light is to experience the fruit of that light, the fruit of the Spirit within, which includes “Love”, the ability to love despite! Jesus said in John 13:35, “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

I think there’s a third thing we can count on in life besides death and taxes, and we all know it. We will hurt each other! The natural result is to build walls of bitterness and hatred. So, when people see that we do not respond to hurts the normal way, in our marriages and in our every relationship, they “Know we are Christ’s disciples” by our reflection of His light! So, if you are struggling with bitterness or anger, or if you feel that you need to get on track with Jesus either for the first time or once again, go back to step one, “Believe the Light”! Move on to step two, “Trust the Light!” and ultimately you will also “Reflect the Light!” Let us walk in the light of heaven in 2011!