The Fellowship of the Light and the Problem of Sin Part 1 - 1 John 1:5-7

0:48And it's a privilege to be able to come before you and have this time and to be able to just look upon this letter that John left for us. We can take this time to get into the mind and heart of what was going on in John's mind, the eyewitness. Why did John write this letter? We began looking at it last week. We've introduced it already by looking at 2nd and 3rd John and some of the issues going on there. But why did John write this letter? Do you remember why he wrote his letter? Gospel. You remember in John chapter 20, verse 30? John tells us why he wrote his gospel. Verse 30, he says, Therefore, many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which were not written in this book. But these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. So John wrote that gospel, selecting material, putting it in place, arranging it the way he did. He could have written about a whole lot of things, but what he wrote about was sufficient to achieve his objective. And his objective for writing his gospel was so that we could look upon the things written and that we may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ. This is the one that God has anointed to be ruler and judge over all of humanity. That was seen in the authority that was given to him over every realm. This was clearly, if you believe and accept John's testimony, then you come away with no other conclusion that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life in his name. That life in the one that God has revealed.

3:00Is the one necessary, is what is necessary to have life. That's why he wrote his gospel. So, why did he write his letter? The letter of 1 John. Well, look over at chapter 5 and verse 13. What I love about John is he tells us why he's writing. He doesn't leave us to wonder. He's very articulate. It says, These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.

3:40So he's writing to believers, those who already believe in the name of the Son of God, that is Jesus. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life. He wants those who believe in His name to be assured that they have eternal life. He wants His readers who already believe in Jesus to come away knowing that they have eternal life. There's a difference between having a million dollars in your bank account and knowing you have a million dollars in your bank account. Big difference.

4:30There's a big difference in having eternal life and knowing you have eternal life. John writes, so that you may know that you have eternal life. Because there's a lot of deception going on, there's a lot coming against the church in John's day and in our day, and we need to know who the believers are and who the false teachers and false converts are. There's many masquerading around as followers of Christ that are not. We need to be able to tell the difference. More importantly, we need to be able to look within our own hearts and ask ourselves that question: Are we part of this fellowship of light?

5:36We looked at the first four verses last time. You remember? We'll just read those just to bring them back to your mind, what's going on. John writes in verse 1: What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of life, and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testified. And proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us. What we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also, so that you may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son, Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete.

6:23What is John's good news? God is his good news. Why does he proclaim it? So that to invite people into this fellowship, this eternal fellowship that exists between Father and Son, and this historical fellowship that is comprised of all the believers in Christ of all time. There is a fellowship, and there is joy in that fellowship, and the proclamation of this word is an invitation for you to join that fellowship of light. There is such a thing as a fellowship of light and a fellowship of darkness.

7:08To which do you belong? Which one do you have more in common with? To have fellowship is to share something in common. Do you have more in common with the light, or do you have more in common with the darkness? That's a question for all of us today. What is the dominating influence over your life? And then, more importantly, how can you really tell? Scripture says that our hearts are deceitful beyond remedy. They are, who can trust the heart diseased beyond remedy. It is sick. So, how can I trust my own heart?

8:03How do you know for sure which fellowship you are in? The fellowship of light or the fellowship of darkness? How can you tell? John writes to answer that. Because you need to know. You need to be able to take your heart out and put it on the table, shine God's light on it, and say, Heart, I will judge you by what the Word of God says, and I will test and see you and see where you are, where your fellowship is. What do you love?

8:37We need to be objective. So, we need to listen to the Word of God, and we need to see what the Word of God says about our life, and we need to bring it under the light. Are you a child of the light, or are you a child of darkness? And how can you tell? And how can you change it? John gives us the answer. So this morning, I want us all to test ourselves to see if we are part of the fellowship of light or the fellowship of darkness. And if we are part of this fellowship of light, I want you to know how you grow in that fellowship. And if you're not part of the fellowship of light, I want you today to know how you become part of it.

9:28I'm going to begin a section of 1 John that's going to begin in verse 5 and go all the way down to chapter 2 and verse 2. I'm going to read all of this, and it breaks down into three nice sections, and we will look at the first section today. But beginning in verse 5, let me begin reading. This is the message we have heard from him and announced to you: that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and 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. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

10:54John gives us three tests to see what fellowship we belong to. Three tests. Notice the words, if we say. You can see it at the beginning of verse 6. If we say, circle that. That's a division marker. Then he says that same thing again. If we say in verse 8, circle that. And then again in verse 10, if we say. Most versions say that, and some say something close, but circle those. That gives you the division of this section, three clear sections. And John does the same thing in each one.

11:42He relates them through this main axiom in verse 5. And then he tells us, it's a test to see whether you're in the light or dark, a test for you to be able to determine who is in the light and who is in the dark and how to. Grow in your fellowship with the light or how to come into the light. But look at verse 5. This is his main axiom. Verse 5 then applies to all of these tests, all these if we say tests that come. But let's look at verse 5 for a minute. This is John's main axiom. This is the message we have heard from him and announce to you that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. This is the message that we have heard.

12:35John is simply passing on what he has heard. Remember back in verse 2, the life, the life, that which was from the very beginning, the life, the eternal being, the life was manifested. He made himself known to us. The eternal life has made himself known, has manifested himself to us. John takes what has been manifested to him and he proclaims it to us. So what was revealed to him, he proclaims. That's really what preaching is about, teaching's about. Even John didn't make this stuff up. He just passed on what he had received. And that's what we're to do: to pass on what we have seen, what we have heard.

13:26But John is revealing something to us, that which was. He was made known to him. He is announcing to us. And what is he making known? That God is light. God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all, whatsoever, in the slightest degree. No darkness in him at all. So fellowship with the light begins with the premise that God is light. Fellowship with God begins with the nature of God himself. God is light.

14:09He is good. Light is a metaphor for truth that shines. It is a metaphor for God's goodness. He is good. He is not evil. Isaiah 5:20 says, Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness. God is light. There is absolutely no darkness in him at all. There is no disposition to lie. There is no disposition of error. There is no disposition of evil whatsoever in him at all.

14:48Therefore, John's going to go on to come up with three tests. Three tests. If you're in a fellowship with God, This is going to show up. To fellowship is to share, to have something in common. If you're going around saying, I have something in common with God, guess what? His light is going to show up. And that's what John's going to give us: three tests to see if we are in this fellowship of light and to be able to tell who is. But it comes back to our original question: Are you part of the fellowship of light?

15:32Your life pattern tells the story. What is the dominating influence in your life? That's how you can tell. Your pattern of living that we'll look at in verses six and seven tells the story. And I want you to, I want to introduce you to three people as we go through this series. The first is going to be the liar in verse six and seven. There is the liar. And then in verses eight through nine, there is the self-deceiver. This is the one who has completely deceived himself. And then there is the slanderer, the one who actually calls God a liar. Today, we're just going to look at the liar. We're going to look at the liar. I want you to meet this liar. This is the individual that lives in contradiction.

16:26And it's the pattern of his life that tells the story. Story. Look back at verse 6. If we say that we have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. If we say we have something in common with God, and I love how John says includes himself in there. If we say he's one of these, that there's these axioms, and he realizes he is subject to them as well. Kind of refreshing, isn't it?

17:03We're all bound to the same word. If we say that we have fellowship or something in common with him, with who? With God, to the eternal life, the one from the beginning, him is a reference to God, who also has a son named Jesus, the eternal being, the eternal life, the life of verses one and two. Him, if we say we are have something in common with him, or we're sharing life with him, we fellowship with him, and yet we are walking, that is, our routine is to go about, that is, our practical lifestyle, our routine says that we fellowship more with darkness or we walk, we go about in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth. We are lying and not doing the truth.

18:03And the lying here is deceiving others. We are liars. Not just to ourselves, that's certainly implied here, but the emphasis, we are liars, or the liar is the one who says he has fellowship with God, but goes around walking in darkness, entertained by darkness, entertained by the pattern that's going about life according to the basic pattern of this world. What is the basic pattern of this world? Sin. What is the basic pattern of sin? It's when we elevate ourselves to be the one most pleased. That's the road of evil. That's what the Bible calls evil, autonomy. When we do what we want, when we want.

18:54That is evil. We looked at this last Lord's Day evening. You remember those who were with us in the evening, we did a systematic study of this word sin and just looked at a few words that describe sin. Sin is crossing boundaries that God has established. And high-handed sin is moving those boundaries. What God says is wrong, and then we say, no, we're going to move that boundary and we're going to call it right. Sin is perverting things. Twisting things, distorting things.

19:35Sin is rebellion, elevating yourself as the one to be pleased over God. That is what sin is. Sin is deception. Sin is being violent, outspurts, outbursts of violence. Sin is being purposefully distracted by something else. Wandering away from God. Listen, we're not victims. When we wander away from God, there is a moral component. We go there because we don't like the light. We're not victims. We have evil hearts that want to serve our own interests. That is the fountain of evil.

20:24Sin. That's if you go about consistently crossing boundaries, you're deceiving. You are lying to the world, not just to your. You are a liar. There is something so inconsistent that if you claim fellowship with light and yet you are fellowshipping with the darkness or you're going about your practical routine in darkness, in sin, you are a liar. And you're not doing the truth. Since verse 5, God is light, and in him there is no darkness, it follows that those fellowshipping with God will be characterized by his light. If you're sharing in God, it's going to show up. Listen, just what we eat shows up. I mean, I can tell how much sugar my kids have eaten, right? Just by coming in the room, right? It shows up. Likewise, what you take in, what you believe shows up. You cannot have fellowship with God and fellowship with darkness at the same time.

21:47The liar claims fellowship with God, but habitually lives in darkness. Who are you? Who are you? Judge your heart honestly. That's the liar. Now I want you to meet the true follower. And John takes us there. Verse 7. This is the true follower. This is the one who is fellowshipping with God. This is the individual who is fellowshipping in the light. Verse 7. But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us. From all sin, what is the purpose of light? He uses a metaphor here. What does light do? It illumines dark places, right?

22:41It symbolizes the way God reveals Himself to show them how to live. God wants to be known. That's why He manifested Himself to John in the first place or to anybody. He wants to be known. Light, God is, and there is truth about Him. Truth resides in Him, He is truth. And so, light is that truth about God. And He gives it so that we can walk in it. Light also depicts the holiness of God, the moral goodness of God.

23:21So, to walk in the light is that pattern of living that is according to God's revelation of Himself, His self-disclosure. Do you go about life taking into consideration what God has said about Himself and about you? Do you go about life living in light of that truth or what He has revealed? Or do you go about life kind of like, okay, yeah, that's good, that's great. But when it conflicts with what I want to do, that's when I wander away, drift away, cross the boundary, or Whatever.

24:04Listen, notice back. If we walk in the light, if our practical routine goes about, this is the, he wants us to walk, be going about life in the light as he himself is in the light. Now, there's a comparison. Look at Christ. The individual, the light himself, lived in the light because he was the light. This is the way he lived, and that's the standard. We are to go walk as he is in the light. How did he live? Well, John, Jesus told us in John 5:19, Jesus said, Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself unless it is something he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, these things the Son does in like manner. The Son did what He saw His Father doing, nothing else. He walked in the light, and we are to follow Him. We are to walk. Here's John, we are to walk as He Himself is in the light.

25:16You see, God sends His light to impact the way we live. What is the purpose of light? It's not just to make people see, it is that, right? To be able to see, we couldn't see this message. Middle aisle here, if the lights were not on and all the light was blocked out of here, we couldn't see anything where to go. Well, light, the purpose of light is to show us the path so that we may walk in it. So, the purpose of light is both to show us the path so that we may walk in the path. Do you see the relationship? Light isn't just to show us, it's to show us so that we may walk in it. There's a purpose.

26:06God's truth reveals Himself so that we can relate to Him. That's the one who is receiving the truth and practicing the truth. Psalm 119, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Light enables us to see, and light enables us to walk. Are you walking in God's light? It's going to show up somewhere. What is that evidence? We've looked at the purpose of the light. What is the evidence of walking in the light? Look back at verse 7. John tells us: But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.

26:55There's the evidence of walking in the light, fellowship with one another. Another. Striking, isn't it? When you think about it, that's not what I was expecting him to say, especially as I'm translating it. I'm expecting him to say, but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with him. But that's not what it says, is it? We have fellowship with one another. Yes, we have fellowship with him. That's what this is all about: fellowship of light, having something, sharing something in common with God. And if we share something in common with God, guess what's going to show up? We're going to have fellowship with one another.

27:41How do you know if you are living in the fellowship of the light? The tangible evidence of it is your relationship with other brothers and sisters in Christ. The tangible evidence is fellowship with one another. When you're out of fellowship with the believers in Christ, sin is involved. Sin is in you. When you can not be thinking warmly, when you are not working in a reconciling manner and disposition, if you are on a trajectory of growing away. From the church body or believers. Guess what? There is sin. You are crossing boundaries. You are drifting away, purposefully wandering away. There is sin. That's your problem. And you're a liar.

28:46Very strong language that John is laying out. But he gives us so much grace. He shows us how we change that. See, fellowship with the church happens in church community. Your relationship to the church says far more about you than you realize. Church relationships are very important. Church is necessary for us to know for sure whether or not we are walking in the light. Saw a governor this last week, governor of Virginia, making this statement. He's trying to protect the spread of virus. You can appreciate that. But he steps into an area that he could have treaded a little more carefully, perhaps. And he made the statement that basically worship happens. You don't need the church to worship. You don't need to assemble to worship. You can go worship by yourself somewhere. Well, that may be true in a sense, and at times, but certainly not as what John is saying here. You cannot know for sure if you are in the light unless you are part of a church family. Assurance comes from interacting with those that God has saved. How do you know you share something with God?

30:27How do you know? By your relationships with those that He has saved. You know, many churches today are like pagan temples of old, each with the deity of someone's imagination. We walk in and serve. Yet, the Christ of Scripture is very clear that the fellowship we have with those Bible-believing Christians is an indication of our fellowship, whether we are fellowshipping with light or fellowshiping with dark darkness. A society that despises those Bible-believing Christians, fellowship in darkness. That's what John is communicating.

31:30Listen, if we walk as he walked, guess what? He was a slave to all. He was a slave to God and a servant to all, was he not? If I do not see myself as a slave to God and a servant to his people, and I mean people of every background, every tribe, every stratum in society, if I don't see myself as their servant, guess what? I am not fellowshipping in the light, because that's exactly how God was. God is, and Christ showed us.

32:17If I do not see myself as a slave to God and a servant to his people, then I am walking in darkness. Isn't it wonderful what one look at Christ does to the human heart? I can look upon the Savior. And as I gaze upon him, the hostility that I show or have to my worst enemy dissolves. As I look upon him, all that I could hope. Hold against my brothers or sisters or anyone else dissolves because of his kindness to me. That's the answer for this world. There is no peace on earth until we see him.

33:16And then he brings about an amazing, amazing transformation that puts people of totally different backgrounds together in the same body and makes them one. That's the work of the Prince of Peace. Well, we've looked at the purpose of the light. We've looked at the evidence of the light. Now I want you to see the benefit of walking in the light. Look back at verse 7. But if we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.

34:03Cleanses us from all sin, each sin, every sin. The blood of Jesus cleanses, has a cleansing, cleansing power. The blood emblematic of the death, Christ, His blood, His death. And those who have His blood on their lives are the ones who have had the Benefits of his death attributed to their account. God had to step on to the planet Earth in the form of a human so that he could lay down his life and shed his life for us.

34:51But here's an interesting theological question for all you theologians out there, which I hope is everybody, which really is everybody. The question is: are you a good theologian? Are you an honest theologian? Or are you a liar? But here, can sinners walk in the light? Can a sinner walk in the light? Let me ask another question. When we sin, are we fellowshipping with God? No. But can a sinner walk in God's light? Well, the answer is yes. The answer is not just a yes. We are commanded to do so. We are commanded to walk as He Himself is in the light. And John, as you're reading this, He knows we're not, we haven't arrived. We haven't been transformed into the state of sinless perfection. Sin is going to be an ongoing reality in the life of the follower. So, how do we deal with it?

35:58Well, think about Jesus, He was sinless. We are not. Jesus always did what the Father wanted him to do. We do not. We sin, and yet we are called to walk in the light. That's what we're called to do. So, for us, walking in the light involves dealing with sin according to his instructions. There is light about what you are to do when you sin. There is instructions. There is truth. There is the truth about the situation of sin. Number one, God loves the sinner. Number two, we are to agree with God about our sin. Number three, we are to confess that sin.

36:40We are to go to the cross. Listen, God knows. The truth is, God knows our sinful disposition. He loves us anyway. And he gave us instructions how to deal with sin when we do sin. You, his Old Testament scholars, know what the book of Leviticus is all about. God saves Israel from Egypt, takes them out into the wilderness, and he sets up his tent to dwell with them. Now, how is a holy God going to dwell with a sinful people? Well, the way to him is through sacrifice, and the way to dwell with him is through the atonement of innocent innocent sacrifice. That's how sinful man was to walk with a holy God, and nothing has changed. Just the revelation has been given to us a little more fully and a little more clearly. It's Christ is that sacrifice. But he cleanses us from all sin. Look at that phrase.

37:51The comprehensiveness. This is, he cleanses us from all sin, all wrongdoing. What a comprehensive cleaning work. He cleanses us from the guilt and the disease. He kills us, he cleanses us from the guilt. That is, we are guilty before a holy God. Something needs to avert the wrath, the offense that we have caused God. Something needs to deal with that. And so his blood cleanses us. His death cleanses us. His death takes our sin and removes it. That's what cleansing takes that guilt away. But we also need to be saved from the disease of sin, that desire to keep crossing those boundaries that God has established, to wander away from him, to rebel against him. We need to be saved from that disease. And so that's exactly what he does. He pays the penalty and leads us into a lifestyle which looks more and more like him.

39:09Such an individual is fellowshipping in the light. It's not perfect. Right? Don't hear that. John's not saying that. You don't have to be perfect to fellowship with God, but you do need to respond to him according to the light. The point of these two verses, verses six and seven, is that living in darkness is incompatible with fellowship with God. God is good and fellowship and has absolutely no fellowship with darkness. He is good, and evil has no place beside him. It is only the liar that goes around and says, I know God, and yet I walk in sin. That is the liar. And sometimes that liar can be us.

40:13We send a very confusing message to the world, don't we? Untold damage. Those who claim to follow Christ, those who claim to be the light, and yet walk in darkness. Have turned so many minds and hearts against the true light. Well, in John's day, there were these heretics, pre-gnostics, probably, that believed that one could achieve true spirituality by intellectual assent through secret knowledge. Keep adding to your knowledge, and one day you will achieve this sinless state or this place where all possibility of sin is removed from you because of your intellectual assense, regardless of how you live. And John says, they're liars. That's pretty comfortable, right? If we just make Christianity all about signing the right doctrinal statement, or just make it a big series of problems to be solved, and I tell you, many people find that kind of Christianity very comfortable because it engages the mind, and then you can talk, you can tell yourself, I'm fine, regardless, as long as I know these theological truths, that's what really matters, regardless of how they play out in my life.

41:46John's saying, that's a lie. You cannot be righteous without doing righteousness. Today, there are many. Religions, many philosophies, many causes that claim to know God and fellowship with Him. They're all around us. The rhetoric is, yeah, we've got a relationship with God. All is well with me, whether it's on the political campaign, whether it's on the different religious, different philosophies. There is this assurance that all is well between us and God, even though a closer examination reveals that we want nothing to do with the Christ revealed in scriptures. Listen, these early heretics wanted nothing to do with the Christ that John was preaching. Many today want nothing to do with the Christ that John is preaching. Right?

42:45You remember what 3 John was all about? Diotrophies. He had love problems, right? And what John is saying is: look, he doesn't love the brethren. So guess what? He is not a fellowshipper with the light. John 3:20, Jesus said, For everyone who does evil hates the light, does not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the light so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.

43:21John 8:12, Jesus says, I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but have the light. Of light, life. You see, we always find ways to fellowship with what we love. We may have a semblance of fellowshipping with God, but when it comes down to it, when that fellowship with God calls us to do something that we don't want to do, guess what? We'll move the boundary, we'll cross the line, we'll wander away. That's what we do, that's what the liar does.

43:57But if we love God, we love His light, and we will come into it, and it will show up in the way we relate to one another. It's very common for people to claim fellowship with God today and yet see no need for the cross, no need to confess sin, no need for repentance, no need for growth in repentance. Very first words of Jesus in Mark's gospel were: be repenting. Listen, we should be skeptical of all who claim intimacy with God and pay no attention to God's self-revelation of Himself or His commands.

44:48Time's getting away. Let's bring back to that first question: what is the dominating influence in your life? God or sin? God's way or your way? What fellowship do you belong to? What fellowship does your heart belong to? Well, there were false teachers in John's day who believed that they were spiritually mature, but their lives showed no indication of it. Sin always matters to God. Your sin always matters to God. And those who know God embrace what God calls good.

45:35Biblical Christianity is about discovering God's truth and then walking in it, obeying it. But at the same time, John is careful not to leave us with this expectation of sinless perfection. He gives us, and he will continue to do this, giving us ways, showing us how we are to deal with sin. But here's the wonderful truth. The wonderful truth of the gospel that we celebrate. We just read about if you have stains, if you are stained with sin, not just guilty of sin, but you have the disease of sin, God can be very frightening. And you can be compelled to run away from him, and yet he calls you to come into his presence. What about these sins? What about these stains? And those who are of the darkness, they flee. They hate the light because they don't want their deeds exposed. They don't want their stains seen. They don't want their disease made known. They want to hide it. And so they run from the light. But guess what? For the believer, the believer who takes God at his word, who looks at Christ, who comes into his presence according to the way God has instructed, those who come in, as they come into the light, guess what they start noticing? Not only is the guilt removed, but the stains that once drove them from God disappear in his presence.

47:15He removes those stains. And those stains, which much once marked us and were once drove us from his presence, are the very occasion that we glorify and magnify and love our God and understand his love for us. Listen, do not be afraid to come into his presence with your sin. That is where you are to come because he invites you into his presence so that you can be cleansed. That's the good news. Your sins disappear as you come into the light and fellowship with the light.

48:01So, if you've never put your faith and trust in Christ, you know what you need to do? Confess your sins, come into his presence. Do you know how you want to grow? Suppose you say, you know, I am a believer. You know how to grow? Be confessing, be repenting, keep coming into his presence and watch him transform you. He transforms you as you gaze upon him and behold him in his beauty. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time of year. We thank you that we are reminded that you stepped onto this earth, you gave us your son, perfect sacrifice and a perfect example. Forgive us of all of our crooked ways, forgive us of all our transgressions, forgive us of all the things we have perverted. Father, forgive us for every relationship that we have despised, especially those among the household of faith, among the church, among the husbands, wives, and other fellowship, other believers. Father, forgive us.

49:16Father, may you transform us. May you we come and we celebrate today because you give us the victory in Christ. Truly, he came to save us. Us from our sins in every sense of the word. And we thank you in Jesus' name.