Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

The Conversation published an article last year on the power of laser light.

The article opens with most powerful laser beam ever created.

It was fired in 2015 at a University in Japan, where the Laser for Fast Ignition Experiments (LFEX) has been boosted to produce a beam with a peak power of 2,000 trillion watts.

Apparently, lasers are far more energy-efficient than LEDs: While LED-based lighting produces up to about 150 lumens per watt of electricity, lasers could produce more than 400 lumens per watt.

To give some perspective, a 75 watt incandescent bulb gives you about 1000 lumens and our brand new lights in the hall are 5,000 lumens each running on just 45 watts.

The LFEX brightness would blind you in an instant even with your eyes shut tight!

The most ambitious laser being built today is thought to be the Extreme Light Infrastructure, an international collaboration based in Eastern Europe devoted to building a laser 10 times more powerful even than the LFEX and should be ready to fire by the end of this next year.

Lasers this powerful are the only means scientists have to recreate the extreme environments found in space, such as in the atmosphere of stars – including our Sun – or in the core of giant planets such as Jupiter.

When these ultra-powerful lasers are fired at ordinary matter, it is instantaneously vaporized, leading to an extremely hot and dense ionized gas, which scientists call a plasma.

This extreme state of matter is extremely rare on Earth, but very common in space – almost 99% of ordinary matter in the universe is believed by the science community to be in a plasma state.

Ultra-powerful lasers allow scientists to create a small replica of these extreme states and objects from the universe in such a way that they can be studied in a controlled manner in the laboratory.

Transition:

All that laser power is from the power of light!

Even with these scientists telling us about the amazing power of light, it ought not shock the churchgoer too much, because we find in scripture how our God is more powerful then these lasers; and actually He is all-powerful.

Even more, this all-powerful God is light.

In fact, our passage this morning, in continuing with our expository journey through 1 John, states the nature of our God: light!

Scripture Reading:

We saw from two weeks ago how John is addressing the false teachers creeping around the Ephesus area.

We talked about the purposes that he wrote to combat the heresies of the false teachers.

Second, he wrote to reassure believers everything they had first come to know about the Christ.

Transition:

I.

The Proclamation (v.5)

This verse embodies the text and is the basis of division in this Epistle of the positive and negative to the Christian lifestyle, especially on the positive side to start.

John says “And the message which we have heard … is this.”

Again, like we saw a couple weeks ago, we have a remarkable parallel between Gospel and Epistle; both books begin the transition with a “καί” (which connects the opening thoughts with the introduction in a simple way; cf.

Jn 1:5), and with the same kind of sentence: “And the witness of John is this.”

(in the literal Greek).

In fact, if you turn the Gospel, you’ll see:

It is close to identical openings!

back to 1 John, but I want to show you some things in the original language:

ἀγγελία = message—it is similar to ἄγγελος, which is angel—an angel is God’s messenger.

The important thing here to note is that it is similar, but not the same word that our apostle here used in verses 2 & 3 ἐπαγγελία (which is commonly used in the New Testament).

Ἐπαγγελία in the New Testament usually means “promise,” so the change from ἐπαγγέλλομεν (vv.

2, 3) to ἀναγγέλλομεν is purposeful: the first one means more “declare,” the word here in verse 5 is more to “officially announce.”

The message received from Christ, the apostle announces or reports to his readers.

Ἀναγγέλλω is used of authoritative announcements; of priests and Levites in the Septuagint; of the Messiah (John 4:25); of the Holy Spirit Spirit; and even of the apostles (Acts 20:20, 27; 1 Pet.

1:12).

So this means that John is speaking here with great authority.

What is more worthy of authority then the statement: God is light--not the Light, nor a light, but light; that is his nature.

This sums up the Divine essence on His intellectual side, as “God is love” in more on His moral side.

Light and love are not attributes of YHWH, but are parts of His nature.

So what does this have to do with the first four verses?

The connection between this opening passage and the introduction is not very obvious at first.

But John writes with his Gospel before him, and the prologue to that supplies the link.

There, as here, three ideas follow in order: λόγος, ζωή, φῶς.

There, as here, φῶς immediately suggests its opposite, σκοτία (darkness).

It is on the revelation of the Λόγος as φῶς, and the consequent struggle between φῶς and σκοτία, that the Gospel is based.

And this revelation is of the greatest importance to us as a human race!

We can either receive it or reject it.

Other living creatures have the power of life; however no created thing except mankind can recognize it as the light.

Why is this so important?

Because to know the Λόγος as light is to know the Father as light; for the Λόγος is the Living Revelation of the Father’s nature for us and to us.

The Pulpit Commentary says:

That God is, in his very nature, light, is an announcement peculiar to St. John.

Others tell us that he is the Father of lights (Jas.

1:17), the Possessor of light (1 Pet.

2:9), dwelling in light (1 Tim.

6:16); but not that he is light.

To the heathen God is a God of darkness, an unknown Being; a Power to be blindly propitiated, not a Person to be known and loved.

To the philosopher he is an abstraction, an idea, not directly cognizable by man.

To the Jews he is a God who hideth himself; not light, but a consuming fire.

To the Christian alone he is revealed as light, absolutely free from everything impure, material, obscure, and gloomy.

Light is energy--Divine creative energy.

Light always conquers darkness with never an exception.

Light improves the condition of order, beauty, life, growth, and joy.

Of all metaphysical phenomena it best represents perfection.

It is not merely a “Goodness and Truth without flaw; it is Goodness and Truth that are always seeking to spread themselves, to send forth rays that shall penetrate everywhere, and scatter the darkness which opposes them” (Spence Maurice).

What a message we have to this dark world!

The Brightest Light has conquered darkness forever!

This Light is everlasting life!

The Gospel light is our only hope as we stumble around in this dark life.

In like manner, darkness sums up the elements of all things evil.

It represents decay and death.

Everything of darkness is excluded from the nature of God.

And hence the Apostle John immediately emphasizes the equally authoritative announcement with an equivalent negative statement: (Literal Greek: Darkness in him there is not any at all) This is a DOUBLE NEGATIVE for extreme emphasis.

It is an assertion of the unchanging character of YHWH.

I want you to notice here that John does not say, “in his presence,” but “in him.”

Darkness exists, physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual; there is abundance of obscurity, error, emptiness, depravity, sin, and its consequence, death.

But not a hint of these is “in Him.”

The Divine Light has no spots, no eclipse, no twilight, no night; and as the Source of light, it cannot in any degree fail.

Are you giving this message to those in the dark?

are you proclaiming it with this kind of authority?

II.

The Exclusion (v.6)

Here we see the clear division into the negative tone from John, and however negative it may be, it is hard truth.

Tough love!

Here we have John’s first loving confrontation.

Verse 6 is really a continuing thought from verse 5.

If God is Light to the exclusion of all darkness, then fellowship with him darkness excludes fellowship with YHWH.

“If we say” is the star of a few of his THIRD CLASS CONDITIONAL SENTENCES which refer to these claims of false teachers.

The grammar suggests the supposed action as one likely to occur.

These conditional statements are great ways to know what exactly were the teaching of the heretics.

The false teachers minimized the seriousness of sin, and John includes himself in the possibility, and of course he and his readers did say that they had communion with God.

By “walking” In the N.T., walking is meant our daily life, our movement and activity in this world; this activity will inevitably express the κοινωνία (fellowship) in which we live.

To have communion with Him who is Light, and be continually living a life of darkness, is truly impossible.

We lie, and “do not the truth.”

As in verse 5, John solidifies this statement by denying the opposite.

But the negative is not a mere equivalent of the positive: the two negatives together here mean, "we are false both in our word and deed."

Truth with John is not confined to our language; it is exhibited in our conduct also.