Fellowship with God Part Two 1 John 1:7-2:2

 Fellowship with God Part Two

1 John 1:7: But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.

·        Walking in the light is the secret to “fellowship” with God. Fellowship is the actual experience of the Lord’s power, love, and life at work in you.

·        Fellowship is to come into a day-by-day experience of Christ manifesting Himself through you. This is exciting… it brings us joy.

·        And this experience is yours if you will live honestly before God and call the actions in your life what God calls them instead of living in any pretense.

·        That’s walking in the Light as He is in the Light.

1 John 1:8-9:  If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

·        The word tells us that we have been forgiven of all of our sin; past, present, and future, when we put our faith in Jesus Christ. Therefore we do not confess our sins to be forgiven, we are already forgiven. So why should we agree with our sin?

·        We are deceiving ourselves if say we have no sin… this breaks our fellowship (not our relationship) with the Lord…“this is walking in darkness.”  

·        But if we admit this sin, He helps us to “clean out the closet,” and walk in the Light.

·        Jesus told Peter, “He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you.”

·        The world is the domain of the “serpent” who is condemned to crawl in and eat dust, therefore as we walk in this world we will pick up the dirt of the devil’s domain and we need cleansing.

·        Otherwise--we are walking in darkness if we pretend we don’t need cleansing.

·        There’s at least three types of ways Christians can deny their sin:

v Some Christians do not like the light that exposes their sin; therefore, they keep themselves busy with worldly things so that they never have to look at themselves in the Light.

v Others think that since they have been forgiven of all their sin that there is no need for the Light, thinking, since I am forgiven… there is no sin in me so they ignore the Light (sloppy grace).

v Then there are those who rationalize their sin, and usually call it something else. We will look further into this type of Christian.

1 John 1:10: If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.

·       The Christian, who rationalizes his sin, knows he can sin, but he refuses to see his actions as “sin.”

·       He prefers to use words like weakness or failure rather than sin. This is the man that John is talking about.

·       The fancier names we put on it the more we like it because it sounds so much better than the “sin word” God uses.

·       Sometimes we will even go to a psychiatrist to get a better label to put on it and therefore it’s not my fault.

·       There’s no condemnation for taking prescription drugs, but there may be a deeper underlying spiritual problem.

·       Essentially, all of us do this at times by evading or avoiding the reality of our situation.

·       Our minds love to put new clothes on our wrongs to make them look right. We are all experts at this. It’s our flesh nature!

·       Some have called it putting lipstick on a pig. We want to make our pig look better than it really is.

·       We tone down our unpleasant reality to make it more acceptable because the word “sin” makes us so uncomfortable!

·       Our attempt to cover our sins is to try to excuse them… or make excuses for them and we cast the blame elsewhere. Maybe its our tiredness or pressure at work, or our neighbor’s bad behavior, or whatever are the reasons for our resentment, bitterness, and anger.

·       “I know I shouldn’t have said that, but it’s not my fault, I can’t help it. It’s because of the circumstances, therefore it’s not really sin.”

·       So if you are saying it’s not your fault then it must be God’s fault!

·        There are only two people in this relationship; you and God.

·       Lord you know I really want to be what you want me to be, but because of these circumstances I can’t…so it’s your fault. 

·       This is the oldest excuse in the world.

 Genesis 3:11-13:  And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” 12 Then the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” 13 And the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

·        Both Adam and Eve blamed God. Adam blamed God for the woman the Lord gave him, and Eve was blaming the Lord for the serpent. She was blaming God for her listening to the serpent.

·        But John calls this something worse; he says that we are calling God a liar.

·        The word says that since we have Christ within us we have an inner strength, but we are saying that it is impossible for us to do what God’s word asks of us.

·        Difficulties, pressure, and sickness make it impossible for me to do the things You say I can do. I know I cannot do it… therefore You are a Liar!

·        Just think about what we are saying, “Lord, what you say in your word is not true! Therefore your word isn’t true! ”

·        We stand in church and sing about the unchanging and faithful God when everything is good while we are in our comfort zone.

·        But when things get out of our control, we say it is not our fault… therefore it must be His and His word is not true.

 1 Corinthians 10:13: No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.

·        Well that’s not true.

·        I’ve been tempted beyond my ability to bear it. How many times have we said this in one way or another?

·        Do we realize that’s it’s impossible for God to be wrong and us be right? If that were true we would be God and not Him!

·        The truth is that we don’t like the pressures and circumstances we have to live under and we refuse to accept them.

·        Therefore, we don’t really believe in Christ’s power within us to get us through our circumstances, because we believe the reality of our circumstances more than we believe his word.

·        Therefore, we fail because we choose to meet our circumstances in our own power rather than with His strength and we blame God…it’s no wonder we fail.

·        It’s no wonder we lose fellowship and walk in darkness!

1 John 2:1: My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

·        Here’s John’s solution: there’s never any need to sin… but if we do sin, we have the perfect defense which the Father will gladly receive, and that is our Advocate, Jesus the Righteous rushing to our defense immediately!

·        But His defense is of no use to us if we keep trying to defend ourselves. There cannot be two advocates here, you either rely on His defense of you (which is the finished work on the cross which wipes away every stain) or you rely on your own excuses!

·        If you stop justifying yourself… he will justify you. If you stop making excuses, He will excuse you. If you will live transparently before Him and agree with your sin His blood will cleanse you of all unrighteousness.

·        His blood doesn’t cleanse excuses, it only cleanses sin.

·        But it is more than that, because I am admitting my weaknesses instead of trying to be strong. And when I do that the strength of Christ flows into my inner man, peace flows back into my heart, and I can go right back into the circumstances where I failed and find the grace of God is strong in my weakness, but it requires my admission of my weaknesses.

 1 John 2:2: And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.

·        Why does John say this in the context of our sin? Why does he compare us to the non-Christians?

·        He is reminding us that Jesus took the guilt on the cross of not only our debt of sin as Christians, but also the sin debt of the whole world.

·        There is no man who will be kept from God by His sins if he accepts the work of Jesus on the cross, no matter how extreme it is, at any time or in any age… if the work on the cross is received.

·        So why is it that everyone in the world is not reconciled to God? Why is it that the others who sins have been paid for at the cross are still living in hostility towards God? Why is it that men are still experiencing death and darkness rather than running to God?

·        You already know: because they don’t believe Him.

·        In this way we can still be very similar to the unbelievers because we are “unbelieving” believers!

·        When we will stop making excuses for our own bad behavior we will begin to see the full flow of the Holy Spirit of power, life, and love flow into our experience. It’s all available to us. Let’s see Jesus show us these things:

John 7:37-39: On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. 38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” 39 But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

·        I believe that Jesus describes for us what this “fellowship” with Him looks like… it’s rivers of living waters flowing from the center of our life.

·        These rivers cannot be quenched by anything that’s external to us because it comes from within, it can only be quenched from within.

·        We’re the only ones who can stop the flow of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

·        This fellowship is the day-to-day experience of Christ working, living, and manifesting Himself in your life through the Spirit.

·        And this fellowship is yours continually if you live honestly and openly before Him calling the things in your life what He calls them and completely avoiding all pretending and deceptions.

·        Walking in the Light is the key to this fellowship. And fellowship is the secret of His power.

John 15:1-4: “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.

·        Jesus compares this fellowship with abiding with Him and the Father. “Abides with Him” and “fellowship with Him are the same thing. You can be in Christ as a member of the vine and produce no fruit, this is relationship without fellowship

·        The Father is the vinedresser, or the “farmer” in today’s language. The farmer prunes the branches that are not producing fruit.

·        Said differently, the branches that do not produce fruit only produce leaves. From a distance, the branch “looks good.” It has the appearance of a good healthy branch, but it is not. You could call it a pretender.

·        There’s no fruit, it’s useless.

·        Obviously, we are the branches and we are expected to produce fruit in direct fellowship with the vine. The Father is going to get fruit one way or another. He expects fruit just like any farmer does. He will not put up with a useless branch.

·        Pruning can be painful to the branch, but it gets rid of the useless parts—our excuses and our pretending.

Matthew 21:18-22: Now in the morning, as He returned to the city, He was hungry.  And seeing a fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it but leaves, and said to it, “Let no fruit grow on you ever again.” Immediately the fig tree withered away. And when the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither away so soon?”  So Jesus answered and said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but also if you say to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ it will be done.  And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.”

·       When I was a child, my mother had a bowl of plastic fruit on the table. It looked very real, but it was only a pretension of fruit.

·       It was only pretend fruit. It was all show, and no go.

·       In the morning, as Jesus travels from Bethany to Jerusalem, he spots a fig tree with leaves.

·       Even though it was early for figs, this tree had the appearance of fruitfulness. Jesus inspects the tree for fruit. He is disappointed. All leaves, no fruit. All pretension, no satisfaction.

·       Jesus curses the tree and makes it wither from the roots, never to yield fruit again. This seems out of character for Jesus. It was a warning to Israel, but it is also a warning to us. Jesus judged the fig tree.

·       Then Jesus turns the conversation towards prayer and faith. Because without prayer and faith there will be no fruit.

·       Our personal lives can look “leafy.” But the root may be withered. There may be no fruit of holiness and no intimacy or fellowship with God. What’s worse—our leaves may even fool us. God knows, deep down we know too.

·       Someday, Christians will stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ.

·       We will be judged based on the fruit that we produced in fellowship with Him while abiding in the vine.

·       There will be no pretending then, only real fruit inspection.