1 John 1: 5-6
Apostle John was combating the forces of false preachers and their wrong doctrines.
He explains how Christian faith and sin contradict to each other.
John makes some contrasting statements about light, darkness, lies and sin in this passage.
THE DECLARATION
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. 
First declaration - this message is from God (Through Jesus).
John was the closest associate and beloved disciple of Lord Jesus and also a best friend.
So when John claims that this message comes from God we have to take it seriously.
Second declaration – God’s eternal character
“God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”
Apostle John is saying here that Lord Jesus revealed to His disciples many things of God.
Lord Jesus Himself declared that He is light.
John 8:12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
In Jewish and Christian thought there are two convictions.
1. God always revealed Himself in light.
“God is light”
God is a Spirit Being – how can He manifest to mere humans?
God several times throughout Scripture reveals Himself as fire or as a bright light.
Scripture speaks of Shekinah glory of God – localized presence of God on earth.
This is quite opposite of God concept in the Eastern Religious thought.
In Exodus 3:1-5 God appears to Moses in burning bush – a flame of fire
In 2 Chronicles 7:1-3 Solomon and others witnessed the glory of God filled the temple.
2. The second conviction is holiness and illumination.
“In Him there is no darkness at all.”
The light of God shows His absolute holiness in a sinful world.
Darkness is defined as the absence of light.
John is emphasizing not only God is light but also there is no darkness in Him.
This is the only way the human can understand the contrast between light & darkness.
God is so pure, the only way to describe Him is that He is light .
In contrast there is darkness – the absence of purity – the absence of the holy. 
In John’s mind it is absolutely incompatible for light to dwell with darkness.
The holiness of God, the purity of God is incompatible with sin in human heart. 
In scripture darkness is equated with evil, sin or wickedness.
Where there is God’s light sin cannot remain under God’s light.
The absolute purity and holiness of God illuminates the darkness of the human soul.
John is clearly saying to us that living in darkness that is in sin, is incompatible with the Christian life. 
When God is light, He becomes our light and under His light we see our sin clearly.
THE CHRISTIAN WALK 
6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 
By definition we know that darkness is the absence of light.
Most people all around us live in a life style of perpetual darkness not having any knowledge of God’s light.
Everyone is perfectly able to see but they are waking in darkness of sin in their heart. 
Before knowing the Lord and His grace, we also lived in perpetual darkness of sin.
Fellowship is the key word here – a relationship.
Our fellowship begins with the Lord Jesus when we accept Him into our hearts.
A Christian fellowship with God is like walking in His light and under His light.
Psa. 36:9 “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light”.
We all live as Christian believers in the darkness of the world around us - we need help.
Our help is provided in the Word of God - we also have another helper, Holy Spirit to guide us.
Twin guides Bible & Holy Spirit escort us through the darkness of the sin filled world.
Now the big ‘if’ in verse 6 draws our attention to a serious view of our fellowship.
If we claim that we have fellowship with Christ but we still walk in our old ways of darkness that makes us liars.
If we fall out of fellowship because of sin - God's light was never dimmed or moved away from us.
We lost fellowship with Lord because we stepped away from His light.
A Christian walk is where the light guides him/her, rather than walking where he/she pleases.
A Christian fellowship is always under the light of Lord Jesus as He illuminates our path every step of the way.
The image John is attempting to create is that God’s light is like a spot light on every believer. That spot light keeps moving and guiding throughout a believer's life.

1 John 1:1-4
I place all his authorships around AD 80-95, Revelation being the last book written by him.
In Matt 10:2 John was introduced as sons of Zebedee along with his brother James.
Lord Jesus also gave them the name “Sons of Thunder” (Mark 3:17). 
John was an intimate associate of Lord Jesus along with Peter and James.
At the time of writing of this epistle Apostle John was confronting a variety of false teachings in the churches.
False teachers claimed that they have special insight in to the incarnation of Jesus.
They were denying that Jesus Christ had come in flesh.
His readers had 4 options:
Follow false teachers and depart from faith.
Accept John’s letter and remain true to apostolic faith.
Scrutinize false teachers and expose them.
Remain neutral and allow false teachers to have platform in their communities.
As their spiritual mentor John was seeking to prevent them to fall prey to such apostasy.
He was the sole remaining apostolic survivor who had intimate, eyewitness association with Jesus throughout His earthly ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension.
So he speaks to these believers with a fatherly affection and authority.
I. RESPONSIBILITY TO SHARE
John is refuting the false teachers and defending his faith in the Lord Jesus.
Here he is defending his faith on the basis of his knowledge of Jesus Christ.
John takes his readers to beginning of times – “That which was from the beginning”
Here he proves to his readers that Christ is eternal – that ‘eternal’ became flesh.
Christian hope centers on the reality of the Lord Jesus Christ.
John is using three verbs to affirm and confirm his eyewitness of the Lord.
He heard Jesus, looked at Jesus and he touched Jesus.
Today, we never saw Him, we never heard Him and we never touched Him.
But our knowledge of the Lord is purely based on what we believe in our heart.
Our witness is equally powerful that of John in the absence of physical knowledge.
That’s why it is important for us to defend our faith and share it.
In our present day world we are confronted with all kinds of false teachings.
It is more necessary for the believer of Lord Jesus to defend faith and share it.
II. TO MAKE OUR JOY COMPLETE 
We remember vividly many life experiences like trips to places or incidents in life.
We share with others whenever we get an opportunity.
That’s what Apostle John was doing here.
John is sharing undeniable and meaningful experience he had with Lord Jesus.
John is making a very critical point here.
His experiences with Lord Jesus are not only undeniable but also meaningful because he could even communion with the Heavenly Father also.
His experience with Lord Jesus is so powerful that he began to have fellowship with God.
John wanted others to have that fellowship with God and His Son Jesus Christ.
John desired others also to have that joy he has in the Lord.
When we are in the Lord we are different people – we have the joy of the Lord in our hearts.
We have to share that joy with others so that our joy becomes double.
We have to defend our faith and share our faith whenever opportunity comes in our way.

Malachi 4:1-6 
Malachi speaks of this future day of the Lord involved both expectation of a divine overthrow of evildoers and a vindication and rewarding of the righteous.
I. JUDGMENT PREDICTED (1)
What is the day of the Lord?
Old Testament prophets used this phrase in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Zephaniah, Zachariah, and Malachi.
This day is described as dreadful, destruction, distress, darkness and judgement day.
Even we find this usage in New Testament writers like Luke, Paul and Peter.
Scholarly consensus is that judgment of God occurs at the second coming of Jesus.
Apostle Paul says that it is significant, important, climactic, cataclysmic day in human history what I presume to be Armageddon.  
Most of the Old Testament writers refer to the day described in Rev 16:13-16 & 19:19-21 that Satan, the beast and the false prophet (known as unholy trinity) wage battle at Armageddon.
This day is definitely coming.
God is delaying His judgment because of His great mercy and also everybody is being given an opportunity to be saved thru Lord Jesus.
II BLESSING PROMISED (2-3)
Those who revere God’s name will have the opportunity to meet “Sun of Righteousness” – He is Christ the Lord.
Revere God’s Name means to hold God in high honor. 
It means to live our life in such a way that we bring only glory to God’s name.
They stand in awe of Him, place their trust in Him completely – have assurance of forgiveness of their sins.
A picture of sinner released from the chains of sin and celebrates with joy.
Another blessing is the believers will witness the punishment of the wicked.
III. OBEDIENCE REQUIRED (4)
400 years of deafening silence from heaven as no prophetic word from the Lord God.
God wanted the people of Israel to depend entirely upon Mosaic Law.
Remember means to obey His Law and put into practice.
Always obedience will be an outward expression of our love and devotion for God. 
God’s last challenge in the Old Testament is command for obedience. 
The same challenge holds true for us today. 
IV. RECONCILIATION PROMISED (5-6)
We need to keep in mind that Elijah never died as normal human being.
John the Baptist never admitted that he was Elijah but possess the spirit of Elijah.
Many scholars opine that Elijah could be one of the two witnesses cited in Rev 11th chapter.
The other one could be Enoch who never died like Elijah or some say Moses.
Prophet Malachi closes his prophetic book as well as the Old Testament with expectation.
God ends His final revelation with hope of eternity for those who obey Him.
Coming of the Lord Jesus was mentioned in this last chapter of Old Testament.
The Sun of Righteousness – till He comes the people of Israel were to obey the Law.
When the Lord comes He will change the application of the Law.
We are under God’s grace through Lord Jesus who provided the final payment for sin and no sacrifices are needed anymore.
We live out our lives in the light of our relationship with Lord Jesus.
We have a helper Holy Spirit to keep us focused in our faith walk.

Malachi 3:13-18
God’s prophets responsibility was to tell the people of Israel to leave the paths of wickedness.
That’s why they were always unpopular in the eyes of Israel.
He asked them to perform a difficult and dangerous task quit their sinful ways and return to God.
Prophet Malachi was also performing such duty for the LORD.
In these 6 verses we come across two categories of people - the arrogant and the faithful.
The arrogant speaking against God and the faithful feared and obeyed God.
But arrogant rebelled against His holiness and righteousness.
THE ARROGANT (13-15)
God’s people, Israel had in general three basic complaints against God.
1. They questioned God for blaming them for saying wrong things.
2. They thought serving the Lord is futile because there were no returns.
3. Evil and arrogant people were blessed and get away without getting any punishment.
A. We did not Say Anything Wrong?
They were complaining and grumbling against God.
But God listened to their complaints and confronted them.
Here we see that they are quickly denying that they had said anything wrong.
B. Serving God is useless
It is useless to serve God with their offerings or coming to the temple to worship God.
Such obedience to God has no purpose and it has no meaning at all.
In their rebellion arrogant Israelites entirely forgot that they were chosen people and redeemed people.
They were to bring honor and glory to God through their lives and devotion.
C. God is not fair 
God put a formula by default in societies where we see some rich and some poor.
God has a greater purpose for such disparity throughout human history.
We will never be able to understand why there is so much disparity.
Because of that we cannot grumble and complain to God that He is unfair.
God is always fair.
It was never in God’s plan to make all things equal or everyone looks the same.
In His master plan God has a purpose for everything that happens on the earth.
THE FAITHFUL (16-17)
They feared God and shared their feelings with each other.
They not only feared God but they also honored Him.
They were encouraging each other to honor God with their tithes and offering. 
Hearing and listening are two different things. 
Hearing requires no effort and can hear without listening to the words.
Listening is a conscious choice to pay attention and concentration.
Listening creates an intimate connection between the speaker and the hearer.
It proves that He had intimate connection with such people who feared Him and obeyed His Laws.
We see God enrolled such people who honored Him in the “scroll of remembrance”
God cannot and will not forget those who feared Him and honored Him.
In verse 17 God gives such people a future promise of eternity with Him.
And also God says that they are His treasured possession.
CONCLUSION (18)
We should not forget that God is always listening and paying attention to our conversations.
God always finds distinction between righteous and wicked.
We should never lose heart that wicked are prospering without subjected to punishment.
He will definitely judge them for their deeds.
It is important for us to understand that God listens to our conversations of our heart.
It’s time to come to grips with the fact that God is fair in all His dealings with us.
We need to understand that serving the Savior is the only thing that matters.
Fearing the Lord and honoring with our lives is remembered and rewarded by God.
Be very careful that God rewards according to what He listens from our hearts and lives.