But the cats have enemies also. The dogs are their enemies, aren't they? They are just hereditary enemies --- The cats and the dogs! And humans, we have enemies as well. We have all kinds of enemies. Sometimes we think of automobiles or possibly germs as our worst enemies but really we have an even worse enemy than that. Our worst enemy really is sin. The life that is real, and that's what I've been preaching to you about since we started this series on I John, but the life that's real has the most serious enemy of all. And that enemy is sin.

John, in these verses that we read to you, names sin nine times. Nine different times he names sin. He uses as an illustration of sin the contrast between light and darkness. Or in other words, the way he presents it, God is light and sin is darkness. He speaks of the constant battle between God and evil or between God and Satan or many other ways one could present the same general idea.

Another contrast here that John uses is that contrast between saying and doing or as we said, walking and talking. There is a contrast between saying and doing or the difference between walking and talking.

Now if we read here as we did in I John chapter 1, verses 6, 8 and 10, and then if we look at chapter 2, verse 4 --- let's read that one again now --- "He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not him." These verses all speak about this problem of walking and talking or about this conflict between light and darkness, between God and the devil.

We find as we think on this and study it together that the principal lesson one gets right in the beginning of this idea is this: it is not enough to just talk a good Christian life. We must go far beyond that; we must also walk or live what we believe. It is not sufficient just to talk a good Christian life.

If we are in fellowship with God, that is walking in the light, then our lives will back up what our lips say. Too often we find this is not true. Many people who claim to be Christians show no evidence of it at all in the way they walk. That is, their lips say they are Christians, but their walk says they are not.

Living in sin, or walking in darkness, that is what John calls it! Living in sin and walking in darkness our life will contradict what our lips are saying. In other words as I've said to you before, if we say with our lips that we're Christians, that we love the Lord but we live like the devil, then all the unsaved people around us are going to think this or say it to themselves when they think about being a Christian. When they think about our testimony, they're going to think, "Well, I can't hear what his lips are saying because his walk or his life speaks so much louder than his lips that I just can't understand or hear anything that his lips say."

This problem is mentioned in many places in the New Testament. We find that it calls the Christian life a walk or refers to the Christian life as a walk. In fact, as you may remember the early day Christians were often called "followers of the way," which would be a way of saying "the walk," wouldn't it? Yes, it is all about the walk of a Christian.

The walk begins with one step of faith. And that one step of faith, of course, is trusting in Christ as Savior. After that the lifelong walk should continue. But salvation, this beginning, this first step of the walk is only the beginning, not the end. Walking should involve progress in spiritual life. The new Christian must learn to walk in the light just as a little child must learn to walk. But the big difficulty in this is sin. The thing that makes it so hard for the new Christian to learn to walk properly is S-I-N.

Sin is not just the outward disobedience which we often think of as sin, but it is also the inner rebellion or desire. It's like that little silly story that I told you a while back in another sermon. Remember, the little girl who was standing up on the front seat of the car going to the store with her daddy. And the daddy, of course, loving the little girl and knowing that she might fall if he had to stop suddenly or had an accident she might get hurt badly, told her to sit down. And she didn't pay any attention to him. So he went on a little further and she didn't sit down, so he said, "Tammy, sit down." And she still didn't sit down. So in a minute he said, "Tammy, if you don't sit down right now, I'm going to stop and spank you." So what did the little girl do? She sat down. But then she looked over at her daddy and said, "Daddy, I'm still standing up inside."

Now that's rebellion, isn't it? Of course, I picked one of Tom's little girl's names there. A perfectly innocent little girl, it didn't have anything to do with this story, I just picked it up out of the air. It happened to be a handy name that I thought of for a girl. And she wasn't in the story at all, not really. But that's a good illustration of rebellion --- the inner rebellion or desire that we're talking about.

Lawlessness or independence of the law of God --- now what is the law of God for a Christian? The law of God for a Christian is God's will for you, isn't it? It's not just a written code here that we follow very strictly, although it is all contained in the Word. But God's law as far as you are concerned is His will for you! And independence of this will of God for you or lawlessness from this will of God for you is the worst possible form of sin. It's the very worst thing that a Christian can do. The believer who is wanting to live an independent life cannot possibly walk in fellowship with God. Because the two things are opposed to each other, aren't they? They are directly opposed to each other!

Amos 3:3 speaks of it very briefly when it says this: "Can two walk together, except they be agreed?" How can two walk along together when one of them wants to go to Johannesburg and the other one wants to go to Pretoria? You can't do that, can you? You can't walk along together with one of you going to Pretoria and the other one going to Johannesburg, it just won't work. That's what Amos is talking about here in chapter 3, verse 3.

But the big problem is Christians do sin. There's no doubt about it whatsoever. Christians do commit sin. Abraham, in Egypt, lied to Pharaoh, didn't he? "Well," you could say, "in a way he didn't lie to him because she was his half sister," but still he deceived him, didn't he? He deceived him. That is recorded in Genesis chapter 12. Then if you look over later in Genesis chapter 16, (talking about the fact that Christians do sin) you find in Genesis 16 that he later tried to help God fulfill God's promise to him. And he married Hagar and begat a son. God forgave him for this, but he still reaped what he sowed. In fact, his descendants are reaping it today, aren't they? The Arabs over there and the Jews are still at each other's throats just even now, aren't they? And it all started back there when Abraham tried to help God fulfill His promise to him by begetting the beginnings of the Arab nations. So he's still reaping what he sowed, or his descendants are.

God will cleanse our record. We need to understand this. But He does not always change the results. And the best illustration of that I know is this: if a man goes out here and gets blind drunk, then drives and has a terrible automobile accident. His arm is cut off in the accident and then a few weeks later he comes under the preaching of the gospel and gets truly saved, really born again, and serves the Lord faithfully the rest of his life! His life clearly shows that he truly did get born again, he never touches another drop of liquor. But he still doesn't have his arm, does he?

Now that's what we're talking about. We sin, God forgives us when we confess and repent. But yet, He doesn't always go back and undo the harm that's been done by that sin. He doesn't go back and do that.

Peter is a good example of this principle. He denied the Lord three times and Christ forgave him. And yet it no doubt, hurt Peter's testimony. He perhaps could have won some of these people that he never could win because he denied the Lord. The point we're talking about now, Christians do sin. And there's no need pretending that we don't. We do!

Receiving the new nature does not eliminate the old nature in our flesh. The new creature which we are spiritually does not do away with the old, sinful body, does it? But there is constant warfare between the old and the new nature and it's very well described in Galatians. Let's read a verse or two there, Galatians chapter 5. There is constant warfare between the old nature and the new nature. That is, the old, sinful nature of the body and the new, spiritual nature when we are born again in salvation. Galatians 5, beginning with verse 16: "This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these;" and then he goes ahead and gives a long list of them.

And skipping on down to save time, down to verse 21, we see: ". . . of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past," (after he gives that big, long list of sin) "that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." And then he goes on and says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

And one could go on down to verse 25, "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." So this walking is what it's all about, isn't it? It's not just the talking that counts but it's the walking also. Only the Holy Spirit can enable us to put to death the old nature, the sinful nature, the fleshly nature, and produce the fruit of the Spirit.

The funniest story perhaps that I ever heard illustrating something along this line is the story that I read one time about a church member who finally became very angry. The preacher had preached for about two weeks every service on sin. And so, she finally became very angry and she went to speak to the pastor privately. She asked him about this business of preaching so much to Christians about sin. And, of course, he had a perfect, legitimate reason to do so because John spends practically the whole book here on it, doesn't he? --- Talking about Christians and sin. And, in fact, in just our little, short passage tonight he speaks about sin nine different times.

In order to enjoy this life that is real John is talking about here in I John, that is this true Christian life, this eternal life and this Christian living that we have in Christ, then we must deal with our sins. Unless we do deal with our sins, we can't enjoy this life that is real. And there are three ways that John shows us how men try to deal with their sins. There are three main ways that men try to deal with their sins. Only one of them works but we need to look at all three of them briefly.

We can try to cover our sins. And that won't work --- on a long term basis, it just never works. We can try to cover our sins. When we were saved, God called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. And that means that as long as we stay in the light, every little wrong step that we make is shown, isn't it? It's manifested. It becomes obvious because we're not walking around out there in the darkness where nobody can see us; we're in the light.

First Peter 2:9 has this to say about it: "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light." There's no possible compromise between light and darkness. They cannot coexist, can they? It's either light or it's dark in a place, isn't it? There's no possibility of having this half of the room light and this half of it dark. It just won't work! It's got to be either light or dark.

Now a question: "How do Christians try to cover their sins?" We said that one of the ways that man tries to deal with his sins is that he tries to cover them. And now the question is, "How do Christians try to cover their sins?" First, by lying to others. You say, "Oh no, pastor, I wouldn't do that." Well, First John 1:6 says this: "If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth." That is plain enough, isn't it? A lot of Christians, or at least a lot of people who say they are Christians, walk in darkness, don't they? People who do that are, as John said, "lying"!

After lying to others, one soon lies to himself. And that's when it really gets serious --- Deceiving yourself. One of the ways that we deceive ourselves about sin is we compare ourselves with someone else that we know is what we call "much worse than we are." That's our favorite way of deceiving ourselves about sin, isn't it? And about our own goodness. We compare ourselves with someone that we consider "much worse than we are."

There's the example, of course, of David and Bathsheba in II Samuel 11, beginning with verse 2 and many verses following. When he first started off, you know, he was tempted and fell into adultery and then he just went on and on and on, getting in deeper and deeper, trying to cover up and that's the way it always is when we get into sin, isn't it? Unless we come back to the Lord and confess and get back in the light again, then it just gets worse and worse. Or as the little kid says, "Worser and worser," doesn't it? Always, "worser and worser."

The next step after lying to others and then deceiving oneself, the next step is trying to lie to God. You know, "Well, God, do you know I'm a pretty good fellow? I go to church every other Sunday morning. And besides that, I send my kids to Sunday School sometimes even when I don't go." Trying to deceive God or trying to lie to God! You can guess about how far that goes with God!

First John 1:10 speaks of this: "If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar," making out God as a liar, trying to deceive God, "and his word is not in us."

Believers, when they get to this stage where they first have been lying to others by their hypocritical living, and then they've begun to try to deceive themselves, then they progress to the stage of trying to deceive God or lie to God. When they get to this stage, believers are highly critical of other Christians. You know, they want to point the finger at all other Christians and think, "I'm better than that fellow that says he's a Christian. And I'm better than that fellow that says he's a Christian." And when they get through, it makes them feel pretty good! But they won't apply the Word that they apply to this other fellow to their own lives in the same critical way that they do to the other man. They just don't want to do that --- don't want to do it at all!

Another thing that a believer may do in trying to cover up his sin, he may lie about his fellowship. We find that in verse 6. Or he may lie about his nature. You know, you've heard expressions like, "I could never do anything like that! How could he do that?" And the truth of the matter is maybe if we'd been in his place, we might have done it, too.

We lie about our nature and then the next step is we lie about our actions, don't we? Sin spreads. David's example, of course, is a good one for that. It started out as just seeing a woman and lusting after her. Then it ended up in adultery. Then the next step was deceiving a trusted friend, trying to cover it up. And then finally, it ended up with killing a trusted friend by sending him out on the front lines of the battle and ordering the other troops to pull back and leave him there so he'd be killed. So unconfessed sin just gets worse and worse and worse --- It spreads, like leprosy.

Real honesty is a very important factor in living the life that's real. I mean genuine honesty, down deep inside. That is, to be honest with self, to be honest with others, and to be honest with God. Unless we are this way, we can't truly live the life's that real, a proper Christian life.

A dishonest person, that is one walking in darkness, loses out in many ways. One of the ways that this person walking in darkness loses out is that you cannot read the Word profitably while walking in darkness. How could you read the Word profitably while walking in the dark? You can't, can you? It's impossible.

Another way that one loses out in walking in the dark is that they lose fellowship with God and God's people. Because you can't walk in the dark and walk with God; for God is light! And God's people who are in proper fellowship with Him are also in the light. Therefore you are losing fellowship with God and His people.

Prayer becomes just an empty form to one walking in darkness. It becomes just empty words, doesn't mean anything at all. You're not talking to God at all, and He's not listening, either, unless you are ready to confess and get back in the light.

Another way that they lose out is worship and church services just become a dull routine. And that's terrible, isn't it? The most important things in a Christian's life should be the worship services, the church services and his own service in the church in witnessing to others and in bringing in new people to hear the gospel. That should be the most important thing in a Christian's life. And if it's not, we need to do something about that. We need to check it out and be sure that it is the most important thing in our life. And if it's not, it should be.

Second Corinthians 6:14 says: "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness?" Now Paul over there in II Corinthians is just confirming what John has already said to us here in I John chapter 2, isn't he? It is the very same thing in slightly different words.

When living dishonestly, keeping a record of our lives and pretenses is just about a full-time job, isn't it? Abraham Lincoln, of course, you've all heard of him, one of the great, early American presidents at the time of the Civil War. But one of his favorite sayings was this --- he said that if a man is going to be a liar, he had better have a very good memory. Because he'll forget what lie he told, otherwise, and he'll get in trouble. He will get caught all the time if he doesn't have a very good memory. When a person uses up energy pretending, he has none left for living. He can't grow as a Christian. He's so busy putting on this false front that he can not truly grow as a Christian.

David tried to cover his sins, as we've already mentioned. And it cost him his health. He became very ill. It cost him his joy. He lost the joy and happiness that he'd had before in the Lord. It cost him his family. He lost nearly all of his family. And it almost cost him his kingdom as well.

The question next then is, "What should we do?" What should we do? Well, the proper way to deal with our sin is to confess our sins, isn't it? Rather than trying to cover them up, which we can't do anyway, we can confess our sins. Christ is our propitiation. That is, satisfaction for God's holy law.

First John 4:10 (I read this one to you I believe this morning): "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." That is, He satisfied the holiness of God and fulfilled God's law which says that the wages of sin is death and Christ paid for our sins with His own death. At the cross, sin was judged and punished. And then, free forgiveness is offered to the world through what Jesus did on the cross --- and in no other way.

Christ is our advocate; John speaks of that in our text. He is the sacrifice or the propitiation for the whole world but He is the advocate only for believers. Now think about that. He made the sacrifice; He died for the whole world. But He's spoken of as the advocate only for believers.

What's the difference? There's a lot of difference. He pleads our case daily. He's our High Priest now. He intercedes for us daily. That is, for the saved. But not for the unsaved. So there is a difference between the fact that He died for the sins of the whole world. And yet, He's called the advocate only for believers.

If we go on a little further as we think about this, we see God's cleansing has two sides. Yes, God's cleansing has two sides. There is the judicial side of it. That is, the blood of Christ gives us right standing or justification before God. God, in other words, can forgive because Jesus' death satisfied His holy law. So there's the judicial cleansing. And then there's also the personal cleansing involved. And that is inwardly. As David said in Psalms 51, verse 10, when he cried out and said, "Create in me, O Lord, a clean heart." "Create in me a clean heart, O God." That is the inward cleansing in addition to the judicial cleansing --- the personal cleansing in addition to the judicial cleansing.

Now there's a problem about this, "when we confess our sins." There's a pretty good illustration of it that I read one time. A man was under deep conviction, a Christian, or at least a man who said he was a Christian, who said he'd been saved. And he came down to the altar and spoke to the preacher one night at the invitation period of a service. The preacher kept him and counseled with him after the service and they went into the pastor's office, discussing the man's problem. And the man said to the pastor: "You know," he said, "I've got a problem," he says, "I just don't have that close fellowship with the Lord that I did have and I just don't feel right anymore."

And the preacher said to him: "Well, the thing that comes between us and God is sin." So he said, "Let's get down here together and we'll pray together." The Pastor said, "You start the prayer and just confess your sins to the Lord and ask Him to forgive you and He'll do it if you're one of His." So they got down on their knees in the preacher's office and started to pray and the man started his prayer this way: "Now Lord, if we have committed sin . . ." And the preacher stopped him right there on the first sentence of his prayer and said, "Wait a minute, Brother." He said, "Don't drag me into this. And besides that, what do you mean, if?"

Now that's the problem, isn't it? That's the way we like to confess, isn't it? "If we have committed sin, Lord, forgive us." Now that's no confession at all --- that's no confession!

When should we confess our sin? Well, there's only one answer to that. Immediately, when we discover it. That's when we should confess it, isn't it? Proverbs 28:13 says: "He that covereth his sin shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy." So the time to confess our sin is as soon as we have discovered it. Something even that we did in all innocence, not knowing that it was wrong, when we discover that it is and was wrong, we should confess it, shouldn't we? And get it sorted out immediately.

And then the third way and the last one that we'll talk about, the third way to deal with sin after trying to cover them or confessing them is that we can conquer our sins. We can conquer our sins. We can have the victory over sin. Oh, that doesn't mean that we can have this sinless perfectionism that a lot of these knot-heads go around trying to pretend they have. And every time they pretend they have it, they're committing a terrible sin of hypocrisy when they do. I'm not talking about that. But we can overcome sin. We can conquer our sin in the strength of the Lord.

Christians do not have to sin. If we look here in chapter 2, verse 1 of our passage for this evening, "My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not," he says, "I'm writing this to you, to help keep you from sinning. But then he goes ahead knowing that many of them will sin, even all of them will at some time or other, he said, "And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father." It's not hopeless when we sin. If it were, we'd all be completely finished, wouldn't we?

The secret of victory over sin is the phrase that we read earlier in chapter 1, verse 7: "Walk in the light." If you walk in the light, you don't stumble like you do when you're walking in the darkness, do you? You don't trip all the time. You don't bump into things all the time. You don't fall down and skin your knee like you would if you were walking in the darkness all the time. So the secret of victory over sin is walking in the light.

Walking in the light means to be honest with God, with ourselves and with others. That's what it means, really honest. It means that immediately our sin is revealed to us, we confess it to God and claim forgiveness. That's what really walking in the light means, isn't it?

If our sin injures another, then we ask his forgiveness also. Some sins don't seem to affect other people. Although, a lot of times when we think a certain sin didn't affect anyone else, it really did. But some sins, perhaps, do not affect someone else. But if it does injure another, then we should ask his forgiveness as well.

It also means obey God's Word. Walking in the light means we obey God's Word. "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path," as it tells us in Psalms 119, verse 105. Obedience to God's Word shows our love for Him. There's one way that you can always prove your love for God, and that is to obey His Word. No matter what the circumstances are, if you'll do that, that proves your love for Him.

You may say, "Well, what about this obedience question?" Well, we should obey. That's true. But there are many different kinds of obedience. We can obey because we have to, like a slave obeys. Because if he doesn't, he knows he'll be punished; therefore he has to obey. That's not the way we should obey, is it? We can obey because we need to, like an employee. You know, a man that works for another fellow. He doesn't really have to obey his boss, but he sure needs to because his family needs food at the end of the month, don't they? So we can obey because we need to, like an employee. Or a better way, and the best way is we can obey because we want to, because of love. That's the greatest kind of obedience, isn't it?

To conquer our sins we must abide in Him, else we cannot walk even as He walked. First John 2:6, which we read to you earlier, says: "He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked." If we do abide in Him, then we ought also to walk as He walked. That is, walk as Jesus walked. As Christ lives out His life through us, we're able to follow His example and walk as He walked. But unless this happens, we cannot walk as He walked.

Paul said in Galatians 2:20, "Christ liveth in me." That's the way it should be, isn't it? "Christ liveth in me." We don't live right by imitation, but by incarnation. That's the way we live right. We don't live right by imitation; we're not good enough imitators. But we live right by incarnation, that is by the new birth, His Spirit dwelling in us. That's the way we can live right. And we can't live right any other way. When we begin to act apart or to pretend to impress others, then we have already stepped out of the light into the shadows, haven't we.

So, in summary, we might say this: the life that is real, that is a genuine, honest-to-goodness, Christian life cannot be built on deception. Walking in the light makes life much easier and much happier, because we live only to please one person when we walk in the light. We live only to please one person, and that one person is God. Living to please God gives us a sense of peace and purpose which is something that is missing from many people's lives today. In fact, it is absent from most people's lives!

James 1:22 says: "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only." In other words, we must walk what we talk. It's not enough just to know the language. That's what a lot of Christians seem to have; they've spent all their time learning the language and that's about all they know about it, the Christian language. But it's not enough just to know the language. We must also live the life that is real. WE MUST WALK WHAT WE TALK!