Wanted: Christians who Walk Like Jesus

The town of Timisoara sits on the banks of the Bega River in a part of Eastern Europe called Transylvania. For many years life in Timisoara was as drab and dismal as the muddy gray waters of the river.

Transylvania used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but after World War 1, it was annexed by Romania. Following World War 2, Romania fell under the chains of Communism. Life in Timisoara grew more and more dreary, until its shops were empty and the faces of its people were full of fear.

In the 1960’s, 70’s, and 80’s, the Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, tightened his stranglehold of terror on the country. Even among the other oppressed nations of Eastern Europe, Romania was looked upon as a terrible place to live. Ceausescu’s secret police, the Securitate, wove a web of fear throughout the country. Everyone was being watched and informed upon. The people lived each day with dread.

Until one remarkable day, in December 1989, in the town of Timisoara. The Pastor of the Hungarian Reformed Church in Timisoara was a man named Laszlo Tokes. He was different from the run of the mill clergy in Romania, who were under the thumb of the government. Pastor Tokes, a newcomer to the pulpit, began to preach the Gospel. He began to administer communion to his little congregation, and teach them about Jesus’ love. He baptized new converts, requested new hymnals, and revitalized the worship services.

In Communist Romania, in 1989, this was a very dangerous thing to do. The Securitate took note of Pastor Tokes, and began to tighten the screws to make him stop. His heat and electricity were cut off. He began to receive threatening phone calls in the middle of the night. But he continued to preach, and the people continued to come to hear him, in ever increasing numbers. In just one short year, the congregation swelled from 150 to 5,000. Every Sunday, in the center of Timisoara, people jammed into the Hungarian Reformed Church, sitting or standing for hours to hear the life changing truth of the Word of God.

In the eyes of the government, this had to stop. So, at the beginning of December, the Securitate issued a summons to evict Laszlo Tokes from his pulpit and his home. They planned to come and get him on Dec. 15. On Sunday, Dec. 10, Pastor Tokes looked out over his packed church and announced simply, “Dear brothers and sisters in Christ. I have been issued a summons of eviction. I will not accept it, so I will be taken from you by force next Friday. They want to do this in secret because they have no right to do it. Please come next Friday and be witnesses of what will happen. Come, be peaceful, but be witnesses.”

Five days later, the secret police arrived to get Laszlo Tokes and his wife. But they could not get to the door of his apartment, for massed around the church building, like a human shield, were the members of his congregation.

The people of Romania had long been accustomed to friends and relatives disappearing in the dead of night, hauled off to prison or to interrogation by the Securitate. They had learned to bow meekly, without protest. They had swallowed their shame and looked the other way.

But on December 15, 1989, something new happened in Romania. The Christians in Timisoara said “That’s enough. No more evil. No more darkness. We are not afraid of you anymore.” All day long, the crowd swelled in front of Laszlo Tokes’ church. The news of what was happening spread like wildfire through the city, and other Christians joined in the silent protest. As darkness fell, the tension rose. Everyone was waiting for the Securitate to make their move.

Just then, a young man named Daniel Gavra pushed his way through the crowd till he was next to his Baptist pastor, Peter Dugulescu. Daniel whispered, “Look, Pastor,” opening his jacket so as not to be seen by the Securitate. The way things were escalating, Pastor Dugulescu half-expected to see a gun. But inside Daniel Gavra’s jacket was a packet containing dozens of candle stubs.

They quietly passed them through the crowd, and in just a few moments, the light from the candles began to pierce the darkness. More candles were found until the center of Timisoara was a sea of lights, lighting up the darkness.

By the next day, the crowd took their protest one step further. Someone shouted the dread words that were on everybody’s mind. “Down with Ceausescu! Down with Communism! Romania awake to Liberty and Freedom!” That was enough for the Securitate. Just before dawn on Sunday, Dec. 17, they opened fire on the people, with tanks, armored cars, and machine guns.

Hundreds were shot, including Daniel Gavra. His left leg was blown away by a hail of bullets. But for the Securitate, and for Nicolae Ceausescu, it was too late. The people had risen, armed only with candles, and thrown off the chains of darkness that had so long enslaved them. The revolution spread across the country, and by Christmas Day, the dictator was dead.

Later, Pastor Dugulescu visited young Daniel Gavra in the hospital in Timisoara. The boy was still recuperating from his wounds and, where his left leg once had been, now there was only a stump. But Daniel’s spirit had not been shattered. He said “Pastor, I don’t mind so much the loss of my leg. For it was I who lit the first candle.”

The triumph of light over darkness… is a story that is as old as time. It is a story that touches something deep within each one of us. Why is it that you can sit and watch a movie like “Beauty and the Beast”, or “Driving Miss Daisy” and find a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye.

What is it about the story of good defeating evil, of love and kindness winning over hatred and prejudice, that stirs such a responsive chord in our hearts? Why does the sounding board of our spirit resonate with that story? Because it is a story that is the very nucleus of God’s message to us.

We have been looking at the book of 1 John. It is a letter that was written by one of the men who had walked and talked with Jesus. Although many years had passed, John’s memories of Jesus were as vivid and clear as the day he met him on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

As he reflected on what he had seen and heard, John came to understand that Jesus was like no one who had ever lived. When Jesus came, the God of the universe, the author of life, and light, and love, had come into this world and lived here as a man.

That’s why, in the first four verses of 1 John 1, John says, “I have seen God, I have seen that which is from the beginning, I have touched the eternal life, I have heard the living Word, because I have been with Jesus.”

Next logical question is: “Okay, you’ve seen God. So what’s he like?” John says, “I’m glad you asked that question. Because that is precisely why Jesus came. He came to show us what God is like. And that is precisely why I am writing this letter. I’m writing this letter to tell you what God is like.”

“I want to proclaim to you; I want to testify to you; I want to declare to you what God is like. Are you ready?” Here it is, in verse 5…

1 John 1:5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.

Wait a minute. That’s all? That’s it? You don’t want to tell us if God has a long flowing beard, or wears a white robe, or how big he is? You don’t want to tell us anything more about him than that “he is light and in him there is no darkness at all?”

“Exactly,” John says. “That’s the message that Jesus brought, and that’s the message I’m passing along to you.” So what does this mean? Well, let’s think about light for a minute. What do you know about light? Well, it’s bright. It shines. It’s powerful. No matter how much darkness you have, that darkness always has to flee in the presence of just a tiny bit of light. Darkness can’t overcome it.

And light is fast, too. As far as we know, light is the fastest thing in the universe - 186,000 miles per second. The sun is 93 million miles away. It takes light just 8 minutes and 27 seconds to cross that distance. A Boeing 747 would take over 21 years.

Light is incredibly strong. It can travel for hundreds of millions of miles through space, and not get tired or worn out. For example, the distance that light travels in one year is 5.8 trillion miles. That is called one light year. The light you see from the star Betelgeuse, in the constellation Orion, left that star one hundred years before Columbus discovered America. It is 600 light years away.

But that is nothing. You can see the Andromeda Galaxy with the naked eye, and it is 2.1 million light years away. But that is still nothing. Astronomers are receiving and measuring light from stars that are 14 billion light years away. Light is incredibly powerful.

But light is also very mysterious. We’re not exactly sure what light is made of. At times, it appears to act like waves of electromagnetic radiation. But at other times, it appears to be more like little packets of energy called photons.

Even though we don’t know exactly what light is, we do know that it works. One of the things that it does is it reveals things as they really are. Every now and then, I have to tighten up the screws on my glasses. But when I take off my glasses, I’m as blind as a bat, especially for seeing small things, like glasses screws. But there’s one solution. I have found that if I hold my glasses right under the lamp on my desk, the light helps me see those little screws that need tightening. The light overcomes the limitations of my eyes, and helps me to see things as they really are.

And another thing about light - it is self-revealing. You don’t need light to see light. It reveals itself all on its own.

Now, getting back to 1 John, John didn’t write this letter to give us a physics lesson on light. But John is trying to tell us that light is the one thing in our experience that is most like what God is.

He is powerful - so powerful that one tiny bit of Him can overcome a world of darkness. How many people have ever lived? About 5 billion? That’s a lot of people! How many Son of God’s did it take to die for the sins of all those people. Just one. One Son of God is all it took to overcome a world of sin.

And God is strong. Sometimes you feel as though God is a million miles away. But you’re never so far away that God can’t reach you, because he just never wears out. I say this reverently, but God is like the Eveready bunny - he just keeps going and going!

And God is fast, too. He’s right there when we need him to be. He can cover large distances in just the blink of an eye. You can pray about something or somebody on the other side of the world, and God can answer that prayer immediately, even as you’re still praying it.

And God is penetrating. When he looks at us, he sees us as we really are. There’s nothing hidden from him. He is like a searchlight, shining into the dark corners, uncovering the hidden secrets, piercing the darkness of our lives.

These are all the things John saw when he looked at Jesus. There was a light-giving, luminous quality about Jesus that John had never experienced before. Jesus shone with the light of God.

And you know what’s amazing? You can shine like that too, if you walk with Jesus. There are some practical implications to this message that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.

In your bulletin today, there is an insert, on which I have given you a structural analysis of this passage. That’s just fancy name for a diagram of how the thought flows. John makes this definitive statement in v. 5 - God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. Then he shows, in v.6 and following, the implications of that statement when you apply it to people’s lives.

He gives us six implications. Three of them are negative - they are the ones in gray. But three of them are positive - they are the ones in white. They all have an “if - then” kind of structure, showing the cause and effect relationship.

The big idea behind this passage is that if you are walking with Jesus, who is the light, then his light is going to overcome the spiritual darkness in your life. But if darkness is what characterizes your life, it proves only one thing; that you are not walking with Jesus. Let’s look at each of these six statements.

1. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.

I’m sure you are aware that there are many people in our world who claim to be Christians. They claim to be connected to Jesus Christ. But John says, what do you see in their life? Do you see light or darkness? How are they walking? Are they walking in the light or in the darkness?

Walking in darkness doesn’t mean that you’re a bank robber or a serial killer. Walking in darkness simply means that you’re walking through life according to your own wisdom. Proverbs 3:5 says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”

A person who is walking in darkness walks only as far as his own understanding will take him. Jesus said “The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going.”

Each of the three negative implications begins with what a person claims. It doesn’t matter what a person claims. It doesn’t matter what you say, it’s how you live from day to day. It doesn’t matter how you talk; it’s how you walk that tells the truth about your life.

2. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, there are two positive results:

- we have fellowship with one another, and

- the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

When you walk with Jesus, you’re walking in the light. And that leads to fellowship with other believers. I’m sure you realize that one of the deepest needs of every one of us is to have meaningful, caring relationships with other people.

The lie of the devil is that you can have those relationships by doing your own thing, by following your own agenda, by leaving God out of your life, by walking in darkness.

The truth is that darkness isolates. When you’re in the dark, you really can’t make lasting connections with other people. You can’t find them, you can’t truly know them. You can’t reach out and meet their needs because you’re so lost and disoriented yourself.

But if you’re walking with Jesus, you’re in the light. And therefore you can see and appreciate other people for who they are.

3. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

One of the first things you have to realize about yourself if you’re going to become a Christian is that you are a sinner. A lot of people don’t like that. They hear the word “sinner” and they think it applies to other people but not to them.

The Bible says that if you claim to be without sin, the only person you’re fooling is yourself. You’re not fooling God. God knows what you are. And you’re not even fooling other people. They have your number, too! The only person you’re fooling is yourself. There’s no fool so great as the fool who thinks he is wise. There’s nobody so lost as the man who thinks that the darkness he is walking in is light.

Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, said that the first step on the pathway to the kingdom of heaven is to become poor in spirit - to realize that you are in abject spiritual poverty because of your sin, and to mourn, to cry out to God because of your sin. You can’t even begin to walk with Jesus until you’ve shed those kind of tears.

4. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Coming to Christ means learning to see our sin the way He sees it. The word confession is made up of two Greek words that simply mean to “say with” or to “agree with”. When you confess your sin, you are simply saying to God “I agree with your assessment of what I did, and of what I am. You’re right, God… I am a sinner. I have fallen far short of your glory. I have acted in ways that are completely unworthy of someone you created to bear your image.”

When you confess your sin to God, you cannot bargain with him. You cannot say “God, I admit it; I sinned. But on the other hand, God, you’ve got to admit I’ve been living a pretty decent life otherwise. I’ve done a lot of good things. And I certainly haven’t been as bad as some other people I know. So why don’t we just call it square on that basis?”

That is not confession. A person who does that hasn’t even begun to see himself as a sinner. He puts himself on an equal footing with God and you can’t do that if you ever expect to know God’s grace and forgiveness.

5. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.

If you refuse to acknowledge your own sinfulness, you call God a liar. It’s as simple as that. And if you call God a liar, what hope is there for you? You’ve placed yourself on the throne of your life. You’ve had a little coronation ceremony and crowned yourself king. You have established your own authority as the supreme authority in your life.

6. My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.

Have you ever seen that bumper sticker that says “Christians aren’t perfect; just forgiven.” Walking with Jesus will keep you out of a lot of sins. But we continue to struggle with our tendency to sin, and sometimes it gets the better of us. When that happens, it is great to know that we have an advocate who speaks to God on our behalf.

When I sin, as I often do, I imagine that somewhere in the heavenlies, a conversation something like this takes place before the throne of God. Satan stands up and says “Aha! Did you see that? Did you see what that Peter McKnight did? Ho! Ho! Ho! And he’s supposed to be a preacher! He’s one of your hired hands! But he’s acting more like one of my people. Are you sure he’s one of yours?”

But then Jesus steps in and says to God “Yes, Father, he is one of ours. And what he just did is one of the things I died for. You can charge that sin to my account. It’s covered. It’s paid for.”

That’s what it means to have an advocate. An advocate is one who speaks for you. One who looks out for your best interests. Jesus is our advocate, because He is the atoning sacrifice, not just for our sins, but for the sins of the whole world. The word atonement simply means to cover. When Jesus died on the cross, he covered our sins. He took away our guilt by taking it on himself.

The way to have fellowship with a God who is light is not to deny our own sinfulness, but to acknowledge it, confess it, and accept what Jesus Christ has done about it.

Life is too short and too important to spend it stumbling around in the darkness. God offers us the opportunity to come out into the light and walk with Him. Jesus came with the first candle, so to speak, and it cost him everything to light it for us.

In John 8:12, Jesus said “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

In Matthew 5, Jesus said to his disciples “You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”