Into the Light: Stop Hiding

As he said, we are continuing in a series, Into the Light, walking through First John. And last week, we established the foundation, right? So John opens his letter not with a greeting but with a testimony. He says I was there. I heard him. I saw him. I touched him. The gospel is not mythology. It’s not some just religious feeling. No, it is eyewitness testimony about a real person who entered real history. And we also talked about this idea of having fellowship, this shared life, koinonia, with the Father, with the Spirit.

And so today, John is moving from the foundation of the faith to the friction that we might feel inside of it. Because here’s the thing. If God is real and Jesus is a real person who entered real history, then there’s a real problem that we all have to face. And that is that we don’t always live or act like it. We don’t always live or act like that.

And if we’re all being honest today, can we be honest this morning? Yeah. Can we be honest? I see a little bit of head bobbing there. But hey, if we’re all being honest, we all hide things in our lives, whether it be big things or small things, whatever it might be. But we all have this tendency to want to hide things that maybe we’re ashamed of, that we’re not proud of.

And last service, my parents were in the room. They’re not here this time, but I kind of told on myself a little bit. Whenever I was out of, I was a little bit out of high school. I was working on getting into college and stuff, and I was driving to the school to get like classes figured out and all that, and I got my first speeding ticket. Okay, my first speeding ticket ever. And I called my dad and I said, “Hey, I got a speeding ticket. I was going 15 over. It’s a pretty good one.” And so I’m like, “What do I do?” He said, “You’re going to pay for it.” I’m like, “Yeah, that makes sense.” And then he said, “But what else you’re going to do is you’re going to pay the lawyer to get it off of my insurance.” I’m like, “Okay, that makes sense as well.” And so I’m like $600 out of pocket.

And the thing I told on myself on last service with my parents here is the lawyers called us like a couple weeks later and said, “Hey, it’s all taken care of. You’re all good to go. We got it taken off.” And I, no joke, a week later got my second speeding ticket. And I, in that moment when the officer handed me that ticket, I said, “There is no shot I am telling my dad. There’s no way I’m telling him. I there’s no way.” And guess what? I just told him after eight years.

All right. So here’s the thing, man. We all have this tendency, this almost instinct to want to hide things. It’s something that we all do, whether, like I said, whether it’s big things or small things, but we all are pulled towards this thing. It’s almost like a natural instinct to want to hide things. And so today, if you’re with me, who’s ready to air out all of our sin today? You guys ready for, I saw some hands shoot up. Wow, look at you. That’s great. It was better than last service. Nobody really wanted to respond last service, but no, here we go.

Here’s the thing. There is this gap that every honest Christian lives in, and that is the gap between what we believe and how we behave, and who we say we are and who we actually are. And I think many times, including myself, man, a lot of us have found ways to almost manage this gap. Now, we:

• Minimize it. We say it’s not that bad. It’s not that big of an issue.
• Spiritualize it. We say, “I’m just going through something. I’m in a season right now.”
• Compare ourselves out of it. We say, “I’m not as bad as that guy,” or something.
• Perform our way around it.

Here’s the thing. John in this passage, he has seen it all. He’s seen it all through decades of pastoring churches. And he gives us three specific lies or self-deceptions that we tell ourselves when it comes to sin. But here’s the good news. He offers something better. He offers something better.

And to note this real quick, the structure of this passage, it’s almost legal in its precision. John gives us those three conditional clauses. He says, “If we say, if we say, if we say.” We’ll walk through those here in a little bit. But each one, it targets a different form of self-deception. And this isn’t harsh. It’s not mean. It’s surgical. It’s precise.

And so the question that we need to ask ourselves, that I would encourage you to be processing through as we go through this time together, it’s not the question of how bad is your sin, because we all sin. We all fall short. None of us are perfect, right? And so it’s not how bad is your sin. The question is, what are you going to do with it? What are you going to do with it? It’s all about how we handle our sin. So, who’s ready to learn how to handle your sin today? You with me? Yes.

All right. Well, let’s get into this. I have three points I want to give you this morning. I want to start off by reading first. So starting in 1 John 1 and verse 5, it says:

“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaimed to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.”

Point 1: God Is Light

The first point that I have for you this morning, simply put, that God is light. Can you say that with me? Say God is light. Yes. Which means that there is no in between. There is no in between. You are either walking in the light of God or you’re not. You’re walking in darkness.

And John, he anchors this entire section in a statement about the character of God. He says, “God is light and in him is what? No darkness at all.” None at all.

There was this evangelist, John Stott. He points out that John’s use of light, it’s not merely just metaphorical. In the ancient world, in the Old Testament, light is consistently associated with God’s holiness, with God’s truth, with God’s moral purity. While darkness is not just seen as an absence of light, but it’s the domain of concealment, of deception, of moral corruption.

And now, if you’re like me, whenever I hear this, “God is light and in him is no darkness at all,” man, that makes me feel good. And that’s such a wonderful and beautiful thing to know about our creator God. That in him there is no darkness at all. Until we really take time to understand what that actually means for our lives. Because here’s the thing, hear me. Light does not coexist with darkness.

When light enters the room, darkness does not dim. It leaves. It doesn’t hide in the corner and say, “I’m just going to stay here for a little bit.” No. When light enters the room, darkness has to leave.

And so John here, he’s saying you cannot be in genuine fellowship, this shared life, that koinonia with a holy God, while also living a hidden life, while also living in hidden sin. In verse six it names this first lie. It says, “If we say that we have fellowship,” once again that koinonia, that shared life, “with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” We deceive ourselves. We are not actually sharing in his holiness, sharing in his truth. We’re walking in darkness, convincing ourselves that we’re in the light.

Can I tell you that this is the person who attends church faithfully. This is a person who uses the right vocabulary around the right people. This is a person who serves in the right places, but yet has an entire compartment of their life that nobody knows about that’s never come out into the open. Maybe it’s a private sin, a hidden habit, a relationship being conducted in the darkness, in the shadows. Maybe it’s an addiction that nobody knows about. Fill in the blank. But where we have convinced ourselves that we are walking in fellowship with God. But the reality is that we’re walking in darkness. We’re walking in deception.

You know, there’s this documentary that I watched whenever I was younger. I’ve seen it a couple times, but it’s about the ocean, and more specifically about the fish that you might see in the ocean. And it talks about this one fish called the angler fish. Anybody know what the angler fish is? It’s that really ugly looking thing that has that almost like a light bulb on their head, that they live so deep and down in the depths of the ocean that no sunlight gets to them, right? And so what this fish does, it actually produces its own light. And you know, looking at this angler fish, I feel like it really shows a good picture of what deception looks like when it comes to hiding our sin. If you’re curious about it, the documentary that I watched on this is called Finding Nemo. You can find it on Disney Plus.

But here’s the thing. We create just enough internal glow to convince ourselves that we’re okay, but it’s not the light of God. And we’re at the bottom of the ocean, the darkness of the ocean, just giving enough light to manage through our sin so we don’t feel like we have to surface with it. So we don’t feel like we have to bring it into the open. But the reality is that we are surrounded by darkness, and we find ourselves almost justifying or arguing for the sin in our lives, and lie to ourselves that we are in the lie.

You know this word lie that John uses here in verse 6, it’s very intentional. He doesn’t say that you are mistaken, that you are confused. No, he says you are lying. You’re lying first to others, but then more dangerously to yourself. And why is this so dangerous? Because you cannot live in the dark and claim to live in the light.

Hear this. God is not fooled. God is not fooled. And eventually neither will the people around you be. God is light and there is no in between. You are either walking in the light of God or you’re not. Light cannot coexist with darkness.

So, let me ask you real quick. You all with me still? I feel like that was a lot. Feel like that was a little bit heavy. So, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to take a deep breath together. Okay. So, can you do that with me? Take a breath in, breath out. All right. Feel good? Okay.

Let me give you a reminder and an encouragement real quick. This idea of hiding things, hiding sin in our life. I believe that this is something that the devil will try and convince you that this is a you issue, that this is a, you are dealing with this and don’t tell anybody because nobody else is dealing with this. Can I tell you that this is not a you issue, that this is a humanity issue, that this has been happening since the beginning, since the beginning in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve whenever they sin and they try to hide from God. And this is not just a you thing, it’s a humanity thing. So don’t beat yourself up too much, and let’s continue, because we’re going to look at how we handle this. All right, you with me? Feel good? Yeah, there we go. He said give me some more responses here. Come on. No, I’m just playing. I’m just playing.

Point 2: Confession Is Not Weakness, It’s the Door

Okay, but here we go. Point number two. It says, “Confession is not weakness. It’s the door.” Confession is not weakness. It’s the door. Let’s continue reading, picking back up in verse 7. It says:

“But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. And the blood of Jesus’s son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. My little children, 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 sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”

Now I want you to watch what John does here in verse 7. He doesn’t just leave us with that diagnosis, that call out that we all maybe felt there. No, he pivots immediately and gives us the remedy. It says, “But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin.”

I want you to catch this. Walking in the light does not mean living without sin. Okay, I take that off your shoulders real quick. Walking in the light does not mean living without sin. We’ve already covered this. All of us fall short. All of us sin. All of us are not perfect. We miss the mark sometimes. And so it’s not that living in the light means living without sin. But what it does mean, it means living without hiding. Living without hiding.

I believe this can be so easily missed, this contrast that John is drawing here. It’s not between sinless people and sinful people. It’s between people who hide their sin and people who are honest about it. And walking in the light is a posture of transparency, of honesty, of openness before God, instead of trying to manage these things in the darkness and in the shadows.

But then in verse 9, it gives us one of the most important promises in all of scripture. It says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

I want to pause there for a second, because there’s three words in here that whenever we read this, it should stop us in our tracks. They’re very important. I want to walk through that with you.

Faithful

It says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful.” He is faithful. Meaning, he will always do this. This is not an every once in a while thing, whenever you do good enough thing, whatever it might be. This is an always response. And why? Because it is his character that produces this response. It is not what you can do. It’s not your performance that produces it. It is his character. He is faithful.

Just

And it goes on to say he’s faithful and just. I think this one can be a little surprising sometimes. We might think John would say merciful or gracious, but no, he says just. God’s forgiveness is not a violation of his justice. It is an expression of it. Jesus satisfied the legal requirement at the cross. When you confess, God is not just letting you off the hook. That’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is Jesus already paid the price. And that price that he paid is being applied to your account. God’s forgiveness is not a violation of his justice. It’s an expression of it.

Cleanse

And then it continues to say, “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Cleanse, meaning not just forgive on paper, but to cleanse, to scrub clean, to remove the stain, to restore to the original. This is not just a legal transaction. This is a relational restoration where there once was a gap between you and God. That thing that you were hiding. There was once a distance between you. Whenever you confess and you come to him with a heart of confession, that distance collapses.

My wife is actually in here for this service. I’ve been talking about you the last couple services. I don’t know if you know that, but here we go. So, my wife Amy, she’s our kids pastor and she’s awesome. But there are moments in our marriage. We’ve been married for almost three years in August, and there have been moments of what I would like to call intense fellowshipping. Okay? Where we have some arguments. We, you know, whether it be over little things or big things, right?

And here’s the thing for me. I have an issue. Okay? I’m going to call myself out a little bit here. I have this issue and I’ve always had it, and my parents, my siblings can attest to it. But whenever I get passionate about something, the volume of my voice just naturally goes up. Okay? I can’t help it. It just happens. I get louder. She’s nodding her head over there. She’s like, “Yes, that’s exactly what happens.” But I, growing up, I heard all the time like, “Hey, I’m right here. Please lower your voice. All right. It’s okay. You don’t have to yell. I’m right here.” And unfortunately, sorry, sorry, Emmerce, it kind of carried over into my life still. I haven’t figured out how to get rid of that yet.

But in those moments of intense fellowshipping, there have been moments where I’m in my head, I’m like, I’m not yelling, but my voice is getting louder, right? And I’m like, why are you acting like that? And start getting frustrated and all that stuff. And I have a fight response. Okay? So whenever somebody comes at me, I can very quickly go back, right? I go back and forth, right?

Emerson on the other hand does not. She has the flight slash like freeze response, where in those moments whenever I start getting a little too passionate, she kind of looks at me like a deer in headlights, doesn’t say a word, she’ll just walk away. She’ll just walk away and she’ll go off into a corner of the house where I am not there for a minute. Okay. And I, yes, now I know that that’s what’s happening. She just needs a second to collect her thoughts and all those things. The first time that happened, I was very thrown off. I was like, “Where are you going? What’s happening right now? We’re talking right now.” She’s like, “No, you’re yelling at me, right?”

But no, here’s what’s important about that. In those moments, we made a decision, a choice, an agreement at the beginning of our marriage, even before we got married, that if we had those moments of intense fellowshipping, whatever you want to call it, that we would not leave those moments without resolve, that we would not go to bed angry at each other. And in our almost three years of marriage, we’ve done a really good job at this.

But in those moments whenever that happens, I give her a second. Okay? I let her breathe for a minute. Give her a break from me. But then I go and find her, wherever that might be, whether it’s in our room or in the closet. She needs just, I need just, need to get away for a second. I’ll go find her and I’ll walk up to her. I don’t bring the argument back up. Say, “All right, let’s continue now.” No, I say, “Hey,” and I put my arm around her and I sit with her, sit with her whatever, and I say, “I am so sorry. I apologize. I understand now that I was probably raising my voice. I didn’t realize I was. In my head, I wasn’t yelling, but I know I probably was. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for acting the way I did about this. You don’t deserve for me to act that way,” or whatever.

And so I come to her with a posture of transparency, of honesty, of openness, of even a heart of confession, to say, “Will you forgive me? I’m so sorry. I messed up.” And can I tell you, whether it’s me doing me to her or her to me, man, we have not walked away from those moments before not wanting to be with each other still. Like, we walk away from those moments loving each other and being happy to be next to each other and holding each other, right? And we walk away from those. Why? Because we’re honest. We’re open. We’re transparent. And that distance that we maybe felt in those moments of those arguments and stuff like that, whenever we come to each other in those ways, that distance, it collapses. It goes away.

And can I tell you that the same thing happens when you come to the Father with a heart of confession and say, “I’m sorry,” with a heart of transparency. Say, “I’m sorry. Forgive me of my sins.” Man, whenever we confess, it does the same thing in our relationships with God. Confession is not weakness. It’s the door. It’s a door to what? To experiencing his faithfulness in your life. To experiencing his justness over the things that you’ve done. His cleansing power in your life for you to experience all that he has for you. Confession is not weakness, it’s the door.

And then in 1 John 2:1-2, it brings it home here. Says, “My little children, 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 sins. And not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”

And this word advocate, this parakletos in the Greek, it’s the same word Jesus uses in John 14 for the Holy Spirit. It means one who comes alongside, a defense attorney, if you will, someone who speaks on your behalf before a judge. And then the word propitiation, we’ve talked about this in weeks past. It means the wrath-satisfying sacrifice. The payment that turns the judge’s verdict from guilty to acquitted.

But then John’s phrase here, “not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” Man, it’s one of the most expansive statements in the whole New Testament about the scope of the atonement. Can I tell you this morning that there is not one person sitting in this room for whom Jesus’s atonement is not enough. What Jesus did on the cross for you is not enough? No, the blood of Jesus is enough.

Hear me? That thing that you’re holding on to, that sin in your life, that hidden thing that you got, can I tell you that it is not greater, is not stronger, more powerful than the blood of Jesus. Amen.

Jesus is not just your savior from sins in the past. He is our advocate in the present. Every time you fall, every time you fail, he’s there. What Jesus did for you, for me, on the cross is enough.

And before I want to walk through the lies that we tell ourselves that keep us trapped in the dark, I want to recap real quick. God is light. God is light. And you are either walking in the light or you’re not. You cannot live in the dark and claim to live in the light. And if that’s where you find yourself today, what’s the response? Confession. It’s transparency and honesty before God that collapses that distance. Confession is not weakness. It’s the door to all that God has for you. But who knows that if the enemy can keep you trapped in those lies and believing in those lies, that you will remain in the dark, and he doesn’t want you to leave that place. But who knows that God has something better. Amen.

Point 3: Stop the Lying

And so let’s look at point number three. Stop the lying. Say that with me. Say stop the lying. Say that with some ump. Say stop the lying. Stop the lying. Maybe one more time. Some more ump. Stop the lying. There it is. Yes.

Okay. So, John, he gives us three specific self-deceptions here. And I will tell you, it’s worth being honest about which one might be that you might fall into here.

The Performance Lie

In verse six, it gives us the first one. It says, “If we say that we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” This is what we’ll call the performance lie. I can maintain the appearance of closeness with God while actually living a double life, where we manufacture our own light, produce our own light, like that angler fish, so we don’t have to surface with it. We can keep it hidden. The antidote for this, can I tell you, is transparency and honesty before God. Stop hiding.

The Minimizing Lie

But then the second one, here in verse eight, it says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” We’ll call this the minimizing lie. Saying, “Oh, I’ve dealt with my sin. It’s basically okay. It’s not that serious.” And we make ourselves not only the deceiver, but the deceived. And can I tell you, we’re really good at doing this. We’re really good at making ourselves feel good about something that we know deep down is not good. It’s not, maybe I would say, of God.

The Theological Lie

And then in verse 10, he gives us the third one. It says, “If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.” This is what we’ll call the theological lie. The entire category of sin doesn’t apply to me. I’m past that. I’m spiritually mature enough that this isn’t an issue for me anymore. And this is not just a lie that deceives you. It’s a lie that calls God a liar.

Once again, the evangelist John Stott, he writes that these three statements, that they represent this progressive hardening:

1. The first is a lifestyle of hidden sin.
2. The second is a refusal to acknowledge sin’s presence in our lives.
3. And the third is a denial of sin’s very reality.

Each one of these, it moves us further and further from the light of God. If we’re all being honest today, we’re all somewhere in this passage. We all might be in different spots. You may be in different spots in different times in your life, but if we’re being honest, we’re all somewhere in this passage. The question is whether we are willing to be honest about where.

And so, where do we go from here? First, we identify which lie we’re more prone to tell. Is it the lifestyle of hidden sin lie? Is it the refusal to acknowledge sin lie? Or is it the denial of sin’s very reality lie?

And then we confess it. We confess it specifically today. I’m not talking about some general prayer saying, “Lord, forgive me for all the things I’ve done.” Don’t hide behind a general prayer. Be specific today. Bring it into the light.

And if you’re here and maybe you have something you’ve been holding on to for a while, you have a hidden thing, maybe consider today if it’s time to bring a trusted person into it. Someone that can be an accountability for you. And I said a person. Hear that? A person. I’m not saying go post it on social media. I’m not saying tell it in front of a big crowd. It’s one person. You know, walking in the light is not just a posture before God. In verse 7, it says it creates fellowship with one another. Accountability, as much as we might not always like it or agree with it, it’s not punishment. It’s what walking in the light looks like in community.

And so as we kind of come to a close here, I want to reiterate some things.

God is light. God is light and in him there’s no darkness at all. Hear me. That is not a threat to you today. That is an invitation. God is not waiting at the edge of your darkness to condemn you for it. He is waiting at the threshold of it with the only thing that can actually remove it. And that is the blood of Jesus’s son that cleanses us from all of our sin. And this is where the darkness in our lives is removed. And hear me, I said all of our sin. Not some, not most, all of it.

Hear me today. God does not demand that you come to him perfect and cleaned up. He doesn’t demand that from you. What he does demand is that you come to him honest and with a heart of confession.

I really, I’ve seen this. I’ve heard this. The kind of modern American Christian idea is that Jesus accepts you and loves you as you are. And I agree. I believe that. I believe that for myself, this is a part of my personal testimony, that he saw me in my brokenness and my sin and he set me free. And those of you who have accepted Jesus into your life, that is your story as well.

But for some people, we stop there and we say, “Jesus sees me and he loves me and he accepts me as I am.” And we use that to justify us staying in our sin and keeping our sin hidden. But can I tell you the God that I serve is faithful and he is just and he is good. So good that he sees us where we are and he accepts us as we are, with brokenness and sinfulness and all. But he’s also good enough that he doesn’t leave us where we were.

And God wants to do something in your life. He does not demand that you be cleaned up and perfect before you come to him. Let him do that. He’ll take care of it. He wants to mold you into the person, the child, the son, the daughter, the wife, the husband, the father, the mother, the grandparent, the child of God that you were created to be. He just needs you to come to him with a heart of transparency and honesty and the heart of confession. You don’t have to be perfect and cleaned up before you come to him. Just got to be honest.

I believe that there might be someone here today that you’ve been managing a hidden thing for a while. Whatever that might look like for you, but you’ve been holding on to it for a long time. Nobody knows about it and you’re tired. Your energy is spent. I believe John wrote this for you. Says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and he is just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” This is not a conditional invitation. This is a promise. It’s a promise that is backed by the full weight of God’s character.

Whatever you came into this room with holding and hiding, can I tell you? You don’t have to leave this room with it. You don’t have to leave this room holding on to it still. It’s time to bring it into the light and begin walking fully in who God has called you and created you to be.

And so what I’m going to ask everybody to do here, I’m going to ask you to just bow your head and close your eyes. And if you’re here today, I believe that there might be someone here, whether it’s your first time or you’ve been here for a while, but you have never made a decision to say, “I accept Jesus into my life.” And maybe the reason is because you have some things that are hidden in your life. You have some sin and you have this idea that you have to be perfect, that you have to be cleaned up before you come to him. Can I encourage you today? Once again, he does not demand that of you.

And today, it’s time to be honest. It’s time to be open and transparent with our Father in heaven. And so today, if you would like to make that decision, it’s time to bring those things into the light and begin walking in who God has created you to be. And you want to accept Jesus as the Lord and Savior of your life. Like I said, heads bowed, eyes closed. I just want you to raise your hand right where you are so I know who I’m praying with. If that’s you, you can raise your hand. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Awesome. Awesome.

So, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to pray this prayer. I’m going to ask you to repeat this prayer after me as a declaration of your faith. And if you didn’t raise your hand because you’re already a follower of Christ, that’s great. I want you to pray this prayer anyways in support of those who did raise their hand. And as a reaffirmation of your faith, come on, repeat this prayer after me. Say:

Father, thank you for loving me. Thank you for sending your son to die for me and for the forgiveness of my sins and the cleansing blood of Jesus. Help me to live a life that honors you from here forward. Jesus, today I choose to accept you as Lord and Savior of my life. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Can we give a hand for those who made that decision today? That’s so amazing. That’s so amazing.

Hey, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to ask everybody to stand up to your feet. We’re going to go back into a song of worship to close here. And I’m going to invite the prayer partners to come up to the front. If you raised your hand today, I say this to my teens on Wednesday nights. Do not leave this room until you tell somebody about the decision that you made. And I’m going to put that challenge out to you. We got people here. Find somebody. Tell them about that decision.

But also, if you’re here and you are already a follower of Christ, but man, this is where you find yourself. You have a hidden thing in your life and you have been convincing yourself you’ve been walking in the light, but in reality, you’ve been walking in the darkness. Man, today is a day to bring those things into the light and begin walking in all that God has for you. Amen. Amen.