Come Clean

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Good morning. I don't know if you've ever seen this TV show. I'm sure many of you have. There was an old TV show that ran in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and then even had some specials into the 1980s called This Is Your Life. It's a very famous TV show. What it did was it took people, mostly celebrities, on a tour of their own life. So they would go through these different phases of their life, and they'd have people from those phases speak over a microphone. They couldn't see them, and they made the celebrities kind of guess who those people were. So it was their best friends from high school. It was their drama teachers. It was their just main influencers. They brought them out in succession kind of in different phases of their life. And they told all these really wonderful little-known stories about these celebrities that people wanted to know about. wildly popular. In part, it was popular because it gave the audience a sense of

who this celebrity really was, how they grew up, where they came from. And it actually did a better job of explaining who these celebrities were than if the celebrity would have just got up there and talked about themselves for a couple of minutes. It wasn't as good as it was better than that because Because when people talk about themselves, you know, they're going to kind of shade it. People are going to typically tell good stories about them or they're going to just shade it a certain way. However, when you have many people over a succession of time to come out and they tell stories about you, you get a sense of who they really are. And when you hear about many people talking about you, typically the truth is going to come out. of us, this is not just celebrities on this is your life, this is all of us, right? That when it comes to transparency and when it comes to self-assessment, it's really difficult for us to pull off.

It doesn't come naturally. We don't see ourselves naturally as other people see us. In fact, it's actually really difficult for us to sometimes be honest with ourselves. And so today we're going going to be looking at 1 John 1:5 through chapter 2 verse 2. So 1.5 through 2.2. And that's going to be a total of about eight verses. So 1 John 1 is a pretty short chapter. And then the verses that we are looking at today, we're going to see why transparency and self-assessment are so difficult. And we're also going to learn how we can become people who know ourselves, people who are able to be honest with ourselves and transparent. So we're gonna begin in verse 5. We're gonna almost go a verse at a time with a few exceptions, but we're gonna just kind of break it down real real slow. So we're gonna start on verse John 5 and you can follow along in the verse on the screen or you can read along with me.

First John 1 5 says, this is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light and in Him there's no darkness at all. Okay, so God is light and there's no darkness. When you talk about God being light, that really means two different things. The first is that God is transparent. When it says that God is light and there's no darkness, it means that God is completely open about who He is and what He's about. Now, I don't know if you've ever thought about this. I'm not saying God doesn't have mystery, of course he does, but God doesn't lie to us. God doesn't shade any part of his story with us or who he is. That God is actually extremely open about who he is and what he's done. And in fact, the whole canon of Scripture right here, your whole Bible, is all about him. What he did, what he's doing, what he's going to do, what his attributes are, how he's handled

situations, God's actually pretty open for us to discover how he thinks what he's like, who his friends are, who his friends are not. We can see all of that in Scripture. When it says that God is light, God actually is inviting anybody, anybody at all who wants to know him to have a relationship with him. When it says that there's no darkness, it's saying that God's not tricking you. nothing up his sleeve. He's open. And in our culture, both the culture of Berlison and in American culture generally, that's very easy to talk about. When you talk about how God is open and honest and that God accepts people, you will get some Amen's from all over the place. Even people that barely believe in God, they're gonna be really excited to talk about how, oh yeah, God is extremely open and loving and transparent. And all of that is true, but that's not the only thing that it means for God to be light. See, John is writing,

the Apostle John is writing this to a church, and we're going to see, he's going to move into this, but we're going to see that he's talking about God being light for a reason. And so, what else he could mean by God being light, not only is that he's transparent, but that God is perfect. That God has no sin in him at all. In fact, that God actually doesn't tolerate sin at all. In our culture, that's extremely difficult to talk about. You want to be booed and hissed from all corners. Start talking about how God hates sin. It is not polite dinner conversation to talk about how God cannot and will not tolerate sin. This is a hard truth. And in our culture, when somebody is intolerant of something, we think, oh, they need an education. They need to be enlightened. They need our help to see how they can tolerate this thing. But God doesn't do that. God doesn't tolerate sin at all.

Instead, God just says, I'm light, there's no darkness in me, and I don't tolerate sin. of facing that head-on and dealing with that, people, you and I, everybody else, we have a tough time facing that, so we build in some workarounds on that. We don't really like talking about the fact that God is holy, right? That He requires holiness of us, and so we try a couple of different workarounds, and in those workarounds it actually produces two completely different ways of living. There aren't great ways to live, but depending on your work around, you can produce two completely different ways of living. One way of living can kind of make you believe that God is absolutely merciless. God is without mercy. If anybody messes up, God throws them out. only people that God will talk to are people with no sin at all. Okay? And this is reinforced, this idea is reinforced by this classic hellfire and brimstone preaching.

Right? When it talks about how God is really holy, can't stand sin, we think of that preacher or just shaking that finger in the spit, crawling out, or we think of the street preacher on the corner with the megaphone, talking about how God hates sin. And so when you believe that God is merciless, and that he throws out anybody that has sin, what you do is you try to be with God by hiding your sin.

You think, okay, if I can hide this stuff from God enough, then I can be with him. As long as God doesn't find me out, can be with him. The other way that we try to work around that, right, is not that God is merciless, but that God is permissive, that God lets small sin slide. So we try to be with God by making our sins seem small. And the way we think about it is this, a lot of people actually think about it this way, how else could anybody be with God if he didn't overlook some of it? If God didn't think some sin, some white lies, some whatever was okay, then how could anybody be with God? But it stands right here in verse 5. God is light. He's transparent. He's completely open. And God is light. He's perfect. He does not tolerate sin. We as people are neither completely transparent nor are we perfect. And this is exactly where the Apostle John is going in verse 1, John 5 through 2.

John, like I said before, is addressing a problem in the Church. And he had people taking this message that God is light and they were trying to have workarounds on it. They were trying to do something or say something about it or act a certain way about it that wasn't in line with the fact that God was light. And so the first one we see is in verse 6. In verse 6 it says, if we say we have fellowship with him, that's God, while we walk in darkness we lie and do not practice the truth. So some people in the church were claiming to walk with light. They were claiming light, but they were living in darkness. So they were lying. So here's my question. Why would someone lie about having fellowship with the light? What is the advantage to doing that? Well, I'm sure there's many, but one that stands out to me is that it saves your social standing within a church. It controls the

perception of people within the church. So you had people that were in the church and they were saying, God is light, right? And I walk with God. But John is saying, there are people that say, I walk with God, but they don't practice the truth. They actually walk in darkness, they're lying. They're lying about walking with God. They're lying because they want a safe face. They want to maintain their social standing within the church. And I would submit to you that the people that are lying here in verse 6, right, the people in the church that are lying about having fellowship with God but not, they believe that if they were found out, if If their sin were found out, that they would be disqualified.

They would be thrown out of the church. They don't want to be second class Christians. They don't want to be isolated. They don't want to be thrown out. And so they lie, they keep up appearances. They lie so that they can function within the church. I've spoken with several people, several people at South Brillison, several people in my 20 years of ministry. And I've seen a lot of people, you start bringing up specific kinds of sins and they just shriek. They just kind of fold in on themselves. In part it's because they believe they will be disqualified. They believe that I will somehow look down on them, that the Lord looks down on them because either they've committed a certain sin or a certain sin has been committed against them. And it's heartbreaking, but they truly believe that will be disqualified if that sin is found down. In fact, you see it in the beginning of the next verse,

in the first part of 1 John 1:7, it says, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. We'll get to that in a second, but I just wanna point out, you can see it, you can see it, there is a fear of isolation. There's a fear of isolation. The opposite is having fellowship with one another. And so in verse six, the reality and the fear is isolation. And so when we hide out of shame,

it isolates us from the people that love us the most. And maybe you've been there, maybe you've had an addiction, maybe you've had a secret sin, maybe you've been doing something that you weren't proud of, and you hid it and you lied. And what you found was that it walled you off from the people that loved you. That's a reality. The thing that keeps those people going in verse 6, the thing that keeps people lying is that they believe if my church, if my friends really knew me, they would reject me. If they really knew what was going on, if they knew how dirty I was, they would throw me out. This is the enemy. The enemy tricks us into shame and isolation. We fear disqualification, so we lie. We say we're fine when people ask us how it's going. When they say, how's it really going? You're like, no, really, everything's okay. We put on a fake smile, but we're miserable because we feel like the game that we're playing,

that everybody else is winning except us. The game we're playing and being spiritual, everybody else is real and we're the fake ones. That's what it means to believe in that. That's why people lie. And to this, John says, and we see in verse seven, to this John says, come clean. So first John 1 7 says, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, as God is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. No more isolation. When you come clean, you have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. John is saying the sin that you have hidden behind the door, the sin that stays in the back of your mind every time Jesus begins to knock on your heart with something, that sin is dragging you down. And you need to do the opposite of what you want to do with it. You need to do the opposite of what you have been doing. You need to come clean.

You need to come clean. Hiding it is only going to kill you. John says to bring that in the light. Why? Because God is light. When you bring it in the light, when you let other people see it, that's where fellowship with other people is. That's where fellowship with God is, is in the light. Look, our church, Every church that I know, right, is imperfect. But man, even on a so-so day, churches will imperfectly receive you if you bring that sin into the light. And it's up to us at our best. At our best, when we are walking together with God in the light, We will receive anybody who is willing to be vulnerable and say, I've sinned and I need to confess it. I need to bring it into the light because there is a kindred spirit here that we all feel because we've all been there. We've all had things that we needed to drag into the light. We recognize as a church that just kind of standing up in the middle of a church service

service is not always the best place to confess whatever is going on that people need safe spaces and trusted relationships to do this, to have confession. This is why we are starting life groups. This is why we have life groups, right? Again, they are starting the week of August 23rd. The deadline to sign up is today. What you do in a life group, you jump in with people that you trust. It's two to four people. Part of what you're doing together is confession. You're saying, this is my history. This is where I've been. This is what I'm struggling with and I need prayer. Man, it's so healing to do that with people that you know, that know you, that trust you, that you trust. And so I'm going to encourage you, if you've been thinking about jumping into a life group, now's the time. Jump in. We have an opening for life groups every five to six months. And so our next round of life groups is going

to be, we're going to open that up in the beginning of January. And so if you want to jump into one right now, in August, please do. When we bring sin into the light, in a life group or just even in a Christian friendship, the reality is that there's no condemnation because, like it says at the end of the verse, the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. And so John is saying, look, if you're lying about being in the light, if you're hiding your sin, come clean. It's so much better to come clean than to be in shame. It's so much better to come clean than to be in isolation. Right? Shame and isolation, however, are not the only thing that keeps people from walking in the light. John brings up another point for his church, and we're going to see it in verses 8 and 10. Some people are claiming light, but they are doing that without self-examination. So John addresses this

one in two different ways and he almost repeats himself. First John, chapter 1, verse 8, and verse 10. Verse 8 says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. And then skip down to verse 10, it says, if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. So in in both what you see here, and this is almost an exact repetition, it's not, it's a little different, but in both there is a lack of self-awareness, there is a lack of self-examination, there is something a person assumes is inside of them. So John had people in his church, and we have people in our church, and we have people that are in our community that assume something is inside of them, either the truth in verse eight or God's word in verse 10, same idea, right, that they understand and walk with God. They have the truth in them, but they are fooled.

It is not there. They believe, in verse eight and 10, they believe that the truth is in them. But it says, in verse eight right there, it says we deceive ourselves. If we say we have no sin, If we claim them, then it's a self-deception. We're not lying to other people. We believe it, but we're deceived. And so, how does someone wrongly assume that God's word is in them? How does someone wrongly assume that they have a relationship with God? Well, we've talked about it several times, but I want to bring it up again. the religion of Berlison. And the religion of Berlison can be tough to spot. So if somebody's following the religion of Berlison, they're a good person. They respect their elders, they open the door for people, they wave at strangers as they pass by, they're very cordial, and they say a blessing before the meal. More than that, people that follow the religion

of Berlison, they know all the Christian answers, all the basic ones anyway. And And so when you ask someone who follows the religion of further sin, hey, where are you going to go when you die? They will confidently say heaven. And when you say why, they will confidently say, because Jesus died for my sin. And man, those are the right answers. That is the truth. But then when you begin to dig a little bit deeper in their life, they're not involved in a church. They don't really pray regularly. They aren't involved in Christian community. There's no accountability in their life. They haven't grown spiritually in a long time. They struggle with doubt. And maybe you begin to ask them questions like, what do you do with Jesus' command to follow Him? Right? Does your life look like Jesus' life? And there's a lot of hemming and hawing at that point. People get a little nervous.

They begin to feel like you're being judgmental by asking them that question. And then eventually there's some excuse that rolls out about how hard it is to live a Christian life. And Jesus was unapologetic with this question. So for example, in Luke 9, 23 and 24, Jesus said, he said to all, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. And when Jesus says this here in Luke 9 and other places, including Matthew 10, what what Jesus says forces self-examination. Jesus is saying, you need to ask yourself, am I following Jesus? You need to ask yourself, am I losing my life to follow Him? Am I counting everything as loss in order to follow Jesus? Or am I just living for myself? And no one else can answer that question for us. You know, whenever we start asking the question of

somebody who follows the religion of Burleson, when we ask them that question about following Jesus, they can say, well look, you know, only God can judge me. Hey, that's fine, right? Only God can judge you. And you're right, nobody else gets to answer that question for you. But every one of us has to look in the mirror and say, I'm growing in Christ like this. I have spiritual fruit in my life. It's It's not perfect. I'm not perfect. Nobody's perfect. But there's a difference in between somebody who prayed a prayer one time and then somebody who is walking with Jesus. Because it is easy to slip into the religion of Burleson. They might say something like that they had that one emotional experience. Maybe they had this thing at camp. Maybe they had a great youth group experience. Or maybe they got baptized that time when they were a kid. Jesus, however, calls us to more than one-time experiences.

Jesus doesn't stop with them. In fact, we see it in 1 John 1:9. It says, If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just, and forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now you're saying, hey, this is a one-time thing, confessing your sins, that's a yes, if that's all the sinning you ever did. But the issue is we continue to sin and we continue to need to confess it. A straightforward understanding of verse nine says if you would examine your life and you would see your sin for what it is, and forgiveness is right there, then Jesus isn't asking us to come and act like a pious religious person. That's not what Jesus wants. He knows that ends in death. What Jesus wants is for us to be vulnerable with Him. What Jesus wants is for us to be, to come to Him and come clean. Jesus says when you come clean, you become clean. Right? When you are honest with what's going on in your life,

no matter what, when you're honest with it, that's a heart that Jesus can use. That is a life that will experience spiritual growth. when you begin to be honest with what's going on in your heart with Jesus. When you come clean, you become clean. And we see this reiterated in chapter 2, verse 1. Chapter 2, verse 1 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. Now, at the very beginning it says, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin, but if anybody does sin. That, if you just kind of read that out of context, it can seem like a very unrealistic expectation. Like the expectation is that, hey, you know, all you first-class Christians, you're never gonna sin again. You second-class idiots, y'all are gonna sin, but the first class was no, you're not.

That's not how it is, right? Because if that were true, it would undermine everything he has just said in chapter 1. Right? The expectation cannot be to be sinless. Right? Because he has just said, if you claim to be without sin, you're a liar. Okay? Just said it twice, actually. Verse 8 and verse 10. If you claim to be without sin, you are a liar. So the expectation is not that we are without sin. So what are we supposed to do with that if? What are we supposed to do with that? The if there, it says, but if anyone does not sin, the if there is not a dare, okay? It's not saying, okay, let's see who can try to live sinless today. That's not what it's for. The if separates the ideal from the reality.

The if separates the ideal from the reality. Let me explain. The ideal is that no one would sin. The reason that's an ideal is because Jesus has removed, by dying on a cross for us, He has removed the power and the penalty of sin. So ideally, theoretically, we don't have to sin. However, the reality is that we are not always walking in the light. We are not always aware or working toward a sinlessness, right? We all sin daily, hourly, often. I sin all the time. And the good news is that when I do sin, I have Jesus as my advocate to the Father. An advocate is somebody who is pleading our case and has done something to make it right. Jesus has gone to the cross and paid for my sin. And so what Jesus does is He takes that and He says, He says, look, what they've done, Father, is now covered by the blood. It's covered by my blood. The reality is that we all sin, but we all need Jesus as our advocate.

And this is John's whole point in these verses. When you sin, you have a crisis. When you sin, you have a crisis. Your crisis is that God hates sin. And you can do a work around, you can lie and say, no, no, I didn't sin. Or you can minimize it. You can say, well, it's not that big of a deal. What John says is that when you try to lie about it, that's bad. It's not going to help you. It's going to hurt you, actually. And when you try to minimize it, man, God's truth isn't even in you, right? You're, you're trying to act like a Christian, but you're, what you're not doing is you're not being vulnerable with God and saying, you know what? I've sinned. I'm sorry. I don't want to do that. Can you help me when you sit and don't hide it? Don't pretend like it's not there. And when you sit, don't minimize it. You need to recognize the reality that we all sin. The truth is that when you come clean about being unclean, you actually

become clean. I'm going to say that one more time. When you come clean about being unclean, you actually become clean. This is what the Lord is calling us to do. not hide, not run, but to come clean. You know, whenever we look at scripture and we're looking at that, we have a choice. And for some of you, as you heard us go through those verses, you begin to understand that you've been hiding, or you begin to understand that you have been minimizing everything that you've done to sin against God. Maybe you're following the religion of Burleson, Maybe it's something that you don't want to do anymore, but you don't really know what that next step is. And so what I want you to do is I want you to go to our website, which is southburleson.church and then go slash connect. SouthRosen.Church slash connect. What that will do, that will send you to a place where you can

fill out whatever you're going through. And when you fill that out, you get to mark how you want to be contacted. And when you fill that out, I will contact you personally, either phone call, email, or text. You get to pick how you want to be contacted. And when you do, man, we are excited. We want you to take that next step. Spiritual growth doesn't happen by accident, and it doesn't happen in isolation. You need a church, you need a family around you, and you need an organized way. Right? You need to do it intentionally. And to do that, we all need help. I need help. You need help. So let's do it together.

Get on southroost.church. slash connect and connect with us. Help us help you take that next step. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for this morning. We ask that as you speak to our hearts that we can reach out in desperation, in vulnerability, in transparency, that we would say, I'm a sinner. I need help. I don't know what to do next, But I know that I need to be made whole. I know that I can come clean and that you will accept me. We can do that together. Lord, help us to do that in community. And it's our name that we pray. Amen.