I AM the Light of the World
Sermon Transcript
0:00:14.0
We’re in a series of messages title “Why Jesus”, seven reasons He is still the One and Only. And as I said in week one, we’re in the Gospel of John and we’re letting Jesus answer that question in His own words. I’m trying as best as I can to step out of the way and let Him answer the question in His own words. So we’re looking at the seven “I AM” statements of Jesus with John uniquely records in his gospel. Last week we discovered that Jesus is still the One and Only because He says, “I am the bread of life.” And this week we want to turn our attention to John 8, and verse 12 will be our summary verse. And I want to suggest to you that Jesus is still the One and Only after all these years because the Bible says, “Jesus spoke to them saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’” You know, it’s hard to imagine living in a world without light, isn’t it? But I want to take you back to the beginning, the beginning as it’s recorded here in our Bibles in the book of Genesis, where it says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The Bible tells us in the creation story that the first act of creation was when God said, “Let there be light.” You back up from there in the creation story, and the Bible tells us that darkness, complete and total darkness, covered the earth. Have you ever experienced complete…I mean, pitch black darkness? We live in a modern era where we enjoy the conveniences of, well, light on demand, thanks to a guy named Thomas Edison who is credited with inventing the light bulb, of taking the light that God created and taking the matter that He created and rearranging it a little bit. Edison didn’t create anything. He invented something. God alone is the creator, right? Edison just took the matter that was existing, and he rearranged it a little bit, and now we have light bulbs. You and I literally walk into a room and, on demand, we flick on the switch. As long as the electrical grid in our great nation stays in good working order and as long as we pay our light bills, we have light on demand, don’t we? But have you ever experienced complete and total darkness? Cathryn and the kids and I did a few years ago when we were on a family vacation. We were living in Texas at the time and we were coming back from Colorado, driving back from Colorado. And we decided to stop off just outside of Austin, Texas, in a place called the Inner Space Caverns. Back in 1963 the Texas Highway Department was taking core samples from that area for a future highway project, the I-35 project that goes through there. And they discovered these incredible caverns just beneath the surface of the earth. And three years later they opened up the Inner Space Caverns for public viewing. Well, we stopped off there because it’s a great destination, a great little tourist site. And we joined one of the little tour groups, and our tour guide took us deep, deep, deep into the belly of the earth. And the caverns were beautiful, just as they advertised. They were stunning. But it was kind of a dark and damp place. They had to put lights down there because there are no lights deep into the belly of the earth. And our tour guide did something that was a little bit disturbing. We went as far as we could into the belly of the earth. And we went into this large cavernous room, the biggest cavern they’d discovered below the surface of the earth there. And she turned out the lights. Every one of them. And it got about as silent as it just did in this room. I mean, it was the most eerie feeling. It was complete and total darkness. And it lasted only for about 30 seconds, but you could feel people around you sort of fidgeting. And when she turned the lights back on, everybody breathed a sigh of relief. We chuckled a little bit, and everybody started applauding. Why? Because, well, we love the light, don’t we? And we’re made for the light. God said, “Let there be light.”
0:04:49.0
Total and complete darkness is a very, very unsettling thing. I read that experts tell us that there are some places on the earth where the days are short and the nights are longer. Have you ever traveled to one of those places? And people living in those places where it’s mostly nighttime, they experience something called season affective disorder, or SAD, also called “the winter blues”. And they tell us that the lack of exposure to sunlight actually creates a mild depression in human beings. Can you imagine that? Well, I want to suggest to you that what’s true physically about our exposure to sunlight is also true spiritually, that the lack of exposure to the “Son” light—I’m talking about the Son of God who claimed to be the light of the world—the lack of exposure to the “Son” light makes us more than just sad. It negatively affects us. And that bring us to this second “I AM” statement found in John 8. Let me read it for you again. It says in verse 12, “And Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’”
0:06:11.2
Now, Bible scholars believe that Jesus spoke these words at something known as the Feast of Tabernacles. In Jewish religious life, there were several feasts or festivals that they celebrated dating back to the Old Testament times. They still celebrate them today, like Passover and, well, another one was the Feast of Tabernacles. The Feast of Tabernacles celebrated God’s provision for the Israelites during the 40 years of wilderness wandering. And one of the things God provided for the Israelites during that times was a directional light, a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day. And so the Feast of Tabernacles celebrates that other things that God did for the Israelites during those 40 years of wilderness wanderings. Well, on the first night of the Feast of Tabernacles, they have something called the Illumination of the Temple. And this is where religious leaders would erect these large candelabras. Think of a giant Olympic torch, only several of them. And they would light up the temple. And historians tell us that during the Feast of Tabernacles on the first night during the Illumination of the Temple, the blaze of light was seen all over Jerusalem. And many scholars believe that it could have been at that exact moment on the first night of the Feast of Tabernacles during the Illumination of the Temple that Jesus stepped into that scene and said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” What did He mean by that? Seems like a strange thing to say, doesn’t it? Was Jesus saying, “I’m a light bulb”? No. No, He is speaking metaphorically here. And so we need to unpack that metaphor a bit. But certainly it was no small thing when Jesus said, “I am the light of the world,” because, in one sense, He was suggesting you and I live in a very dark, dark world, spiritually speaking. John 1:3-5, the apostle John writes of Jesus and says, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” He goes on to say, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Yeah, we live in a very dark world spiritually speaking. And if you have any doubts about that, just flip on the 24-hour news channels, and it just seems to be one dark story after another, murderers and thieves, rapists and child abusers, terrorists, wars and rumors…just one story, one dark story after another. And, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve got to look inside our own human heart and admit there are some dark places in our own heart. Oh, we keep them concealed from everybody else as best as we can, but there are some dark places there. And every once in a while we go to that dark place, don’t we?
0:09:08.7
Jeremiah the prophet diagnosed the human heart many centuries ago. He said, Jeremiah 29:11, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can understand it?” He could have just as easily said the human heart is a very dark place where sin resides. Jesus diagnosed the human heart as a dark and wicked place. Matthew 15:19, “For out of the heart come evil thought, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander…” Do you want Him to go on? I mean, all of that is in our hearts. It starts in the human heart, a dark, dark place where we need the light of the world, who is Jesus Christ, to shine. Not just in the dark cavern below the surface of the earth, but in a dark, dark place deep down in our hearts. Well, before we go too far into that dark place, let’s unpack this light metaphor a little bit. What did Jesus mean when He said, “I am the light of the world”? Certainly not, “I am a light bulb,” or, “I am a light switch.” He says, “I am the light of the world.” Four things I want to suggest to you He is saying.
0:10:23.9
Number one, “I am God.” “I am God.” 1 John 1:5. And we’re gonna be going back and forth between the Gospel of John and 1 John. But 1 John 1:5 says, “God is light.” And, again, that’s not saying that He’s a light bulb. We’re speaking metaphorically here. The same God who spoke light into a existence, who chased away the darkness that hovered over the face of the earth back in Genesis 1, God is light. When Jesus said, “I am the light of the world,” believe me, all the Jewish leaders of that time, they downloaded all of their own Old Testament understanding of who God was. They knew exactly what Jesus was saying. For example, Psalm 27:1 says, “The Lord is my light and my salvation.” Isaiah 60:19 declares, “The Lord will be your everlasting light.” The prophet Micah says, “When I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.” Even Job said, “By his light I walked through darkness.” And so when Jesus said, “I am the light of the world,” He was declaring that He does the work that only God can do. Remember I said at the beginning of this series, there are some people who say, “Oh, Jesus never claimed to be God. That’s just something that the early apostles trumped up to enlarge His persona.” No, in every one of these “I AM” statements the Jews got it. That’s why they eventually drove Him to the cross. They thought He was committing blasphemy. They understood when He said, “I am the light of the world,” He’s saying, “I do the work that only God can do. I am God.”
0:12:05.7
But there is something else He’s saying in this. He’s also saying, “I am holy. I am holy.” Light in the Bible is a metaphor of the character of God. John loves to interplay between light and darkness in his gospel. “I am holy. I dwell in the pureness of absolute light and holiness.” Again, 1 John 1:5, “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” Not a smidgen of darkness, not a shadow, not anything related to the darkness is part of God’s character. And Jesus is not Darth Vader. He’s not the mayor of Gotham City. He is the light of the world, and there is not a hint of darkness anywhere in Him. He is the most holy and pure being we will ever encounter. Five seconds in His presence and you’ll be changed, because we are so unlike Him. Oh, as believers in Jesus Christ we are being changed into the image of Christ, but that’s a lifetime of process, isn’t it? It’s called sanctification, and we ain’t there yet. Right? At least, I’m not. But He is holy.
0:13:30.2
Thirdly, He’s saying, “I am truth.” John 3:21, Jesus says, “Whoever lives by the truth,” listen to this, “comes into the light.” So when Jesus, “I am the light of the world,” He’s kind of saying what He says in another “I AM” statement that we’ll talk about in a few weeks. He says, “I am the way, the truth and the life. And no man comes to the Father but by me.” And what strange words those are in a culture like ours that says, “There is no truth.” Or like Pilate did 2000 years ago, kind of scoffs at the idea and says, “What is truth? Your truth is your truth. My truth is my truth. I’m okay. You’re okay. What’s true for you and works for you works for you. What works for me works for me.” It’s called moral relativism. And that’s a dark, dark place to go. That’s a dark way to navigate your way through life, and you don’t know what’s right and wrong. You don’t know what’s true and false. You don’t have a light to guide you through the darkness because you believe there is no…there’s nothing that can be nailed down and said, “This is…” No, Jesus comes along and said, “I am the light of the world. I am truth.” Darkness hides the truth. Light exposes the truth. There in John 3:19-20 Jesus says “Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come to the light, for fear that their deeds will be exposed.” Why are people pushing against Christianity so strongly in our culture today? Because when the Light of the World shows up, or one of His representatives like us that we’ll talk about in a little bit…when the Light of the World shows up it exposes the darkness. And Jesus says, you know, people love the darkness rather than the light. You ever seen what happens when you turn the lights on and the cockroaches scatter? They don’t like the light. They prefer the darkness.
0:15:40.9
So Jesus says, “I am God. I am holy. I am truth.” Fourthly, “I am hope. I’m hope.” Think of a dark and tragic time that maybe you experienced recently or you read about or you watched on a news channel. You ever notice how, as human beings, we go and we light candles in times like that as a way of trying to hold onto hope. Or maybe you’re going through a difficult time, and you say, “Oh, but I see a light at the end of the tunnel.” It’s kind of your way of saying, “I’m gonna get through this dark time, and light is coming.” It’s how we speak of hope and we keep that hope alive. Somebody once said, “Man can live about 40 days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope.” Now, hope is not wishful thinking. That’s the world’s definition of hope. “I hope things get better tomorrow.” That’s wishful thinking. No, biblical hope and the kind of hope that you’ll find in Jesus Christ is the confident expectation that God will do what He says He will do. And it’s rooted in the promises of the Word of God. “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’s blood and His righteousness.” All right? That’s biblical hope. And when Jesus comes into this dark, dark world in which we live and says, “I am the light of the world,” He’s that light at the end of a tunnel. And the closer we get to Him and the closer He gets us, His light shines brighter and brighter.
0:17:20.8
Now, that’s not all to say that Jesus is just an abstract concept, you know. Light and hope and truth and holiness. No, He’s a real person, a person with whom you can have a relationship and a person to whom we must respond when He says something like this. “I am the light of the world.” So in the time that we have remaining I want to talk about our response to this statement, because we can’t just hear something like this and enlarge our minds around it without putting this truth to practice with our hands and our feet as we walk out of this place and become doers of the Word and not just hearers. So how do we respond to the Light of the World? Let me suggest two or three things.
0:18:07.1
Number one, to follow the Light. As simple as that sounds, we need to follow the Light. Go back to John 8:12. The Bible says, “Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world.’” Now, listen to this, “Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’” Circle that word “follows” in your Bible. “Whoever follows me.” Are you a follower of Jesus Christ? It reminds me of a couple things I remember in the Gospels. When Jesus was picking His 12 disciples, He went to a guy named Peter and his brother Andrew. And in Mark 1:17 He said, “Come, follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” (0:19:00.0) It changed those men’s lives. “Follow me”. You know, Peter was a professional fisherman. “Follow me, I’ll make you a fisher of men.” Problem is, all these years later most of us are content with being keepers of the aquarium rather than following Jesus so that He turns us into fishers of men. You got to be willing to follow Him, to drop the nets, as it were, and to become a follower of Jesus. Later Jesus said these words to His disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Have we got anybody here who is willing to pay the price and to count the cost to be a true follower, a radical follower of Jesus Christ? You know, there’s a lot of talk in our world today about leadership, and rightly so, because I’m a big believer that everything rises and falls on leadership. (0:20:00.0) That’s true in the Oval Office, that’s true in your business, that’s true in a church, that’s true in any organization. You get the right leaders in place, and hopefully you’ll have a bright future. I’ve got I don’t know how many books in my library. But I’ve got a couple shelves full of books on leadership. And it seems like every month somebody is coming out with another leadership book. I’ve been to I don’t know how many pastors’ leadership conferences in my more than two decades of ministry. But I’m waiting for the one that they put out there on followership. I’ve never seen a conference on followership. I’ve never seen a book written, a business book or something, on how to be a good follower. But here’s what I’ve learned over the years as a pastor who is supposed to be a leader in the church. I can’t be a good leader in the church until I’m first a follower of Jesus Christ. You can’t be a good leader in your home or in your marriage with your children or your grandchildren or where your sphere of influence is. You can’t be a good leader, a godly leader, without first being a follower of Jesus Christ. So I love all the leadership principles, but we need to figure how to be a better follower of Christ.
0:21:17.3
It starts by understanding that there is a dark, dark place in all of our hearts that needs the light of Jesus Christ. It starts at the cross of Christ, on your knees before the cross of Christ, admitting that you’re a sinner, a dark and dangerous and disobedient sinner who has broken God’s laws, and you want the light of Jesus Christ to come into your heart and you come a follower of Jesus Christ. Some of you can testify this morning to that time in your life where Jesus Christ changed your life. Old things were passed away. All things are become new. You used to be the leader in your life, the captain of your own soul, until you met Jesus Christ and you humbled yourself before Him. And you said, “I’m not longer the captain of my own soul. I’m a follower of Jesus Christ.” The Pharisees didn’t want to follow Jesus. Not at all. When Jesus said something like this, “I am the light of the world,” oh, they knew what He was talking about. But rather than following Him, they put on their “Son-screen”, S-O-N-screen. You get it? Come on. Help me out here a little bit. I’m working hard to keep your attention. All right? They put on their “Son-screen”. Now, listen to what happens in John 8:13 after Jesus declares, “I am the light of the world.” “So the Pharisees, the Pharisees said to him, ‘You are bearing witness about yourself, your testimony is not true.’ And Jesus answered, ‘Even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me.’” He’s got their brains swirling right now. He goes on to say, “’In your law it is written that the testimony of two people is true. I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.’ They said to him therefore, ‘Where is your Father?’” They’ve given up on the witness thing. “’Where is your Father?’ And Jesus answered, ‘You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.’” Ouch. That put them back on their heels. “You don’t even know God,” He says. “And these words he spoke in the treasury, as he taught in the temple; but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.” So here are the Pharisees pushing back on Jesus, coming up with all kinds of excuses. They introduce a legal technicality into His witness to be the light of the world. They say, “You can’t be your own witness. Our law doesn’t allow that.” And, in one sense, they were true. You read the book of Deuteronomy, and in Jewish law any piece of evidence had to be substantiated based upon two witnesses. So they’re saying to Jesus, “You can’t be your own witness. You can’t say who You are. And You expect us to believe that You are who You are just because You say it.” “Uh huh. Yeah, because if you want a second witness, my Father stands ready to be a witness. But, oh yeah, you don’t know my Father.”
0:24:29.0
You know, sometimes you’ve got to just give it back to the people, you know, who are coming up with all kinds of excuses. And that’s all it is, an excuse why not to follow the Light of the World. And I’ve heard all of them in my years as pastor. Like the person who says, “Yeah, but that Bible, it’s full of contradictions and errors.” Really? You came to your own studied conclusion? Because it’s not true. Or are you just passing on somebody else’s prejudice and bias that you’ve read on a blog post somewhere, where they said the Bible is full of contradictions and errors? I came to faith in Christ when I was in junior high school. During my college years I decided I needed to do a little study to make sure that everything I’d heard from the preacher was true. And you know what I discovered, like so many other people discovered? Christianity is an intelligent faith based upon reasonable evidence. And if you do your own studied research, you will come to the conclusion that so many other skeptics have come to, that the Pharisees never came to, and that Jesus is exactly who He says He was and this book is the Word of God. It’s the most reliable ancient document we have on planet earth. Another excuse I hear, “Well, those church people, they’re just a bunch of hypocrites. And they’re angry and mean-spirited.” Okay, join the club. I mean, you know, I’m just a sinner who is saved by grace. That’s all I am. And sometimes I may rub a person wrong here or there. But, you know, hopefully I’m growing everyday more and more into the image of Christ. But I’ve got dark places in my heart just like you do. But one day I invited the light of Jesus Christ into my life, and He’s made all the difference in the world. So don’t ever let a hypocrite keep you from meeting the Light of the World. Some people get hysterical, or should I say historical. And they want to bring up the crusades or all these kinds of things in church history. And I say, “Come on. Give me a break. We’re talking about your relationship with God, your eternal destiny.” It’s more important than just passing on somebody else’s bias or prejudice that you read about, three steps removed from any original study and research, even your own personal reading of the Bible. How many people have I heard said, “It’s full of contradictions and errors,” and they’ve never read it for themselves. I want to challenge you this morning to become a follower of Jesus Christ. And if you’ve never done it before, just read the living Word of God. Read it long enough until some of the light begins to shine into your dark heart.
0:27:23.8
So, first, we’ve got to follow the Light. And I hope for some of you today is a day of salvation, where, maybe for the first time in your life, you say yes to Jesus and yes to the Light of the World. Secondly, we need to walk in the Light. Let’s go from John’s gospel to one of the postcards he wrote at the end of the New Testament, 1 John 1:6-7. John the apostle says, “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” John talks about walking in the light. What does he mean to walk in the light? Well, maybe an illustration from your grade school science class would help. Are you smarter than a 5th grader this morning? Do you remember something known as photosynthesis that you learned in science class? I had to look it up again, but here’s what I learned a second time. I feel smarter than a 5th grader this morning. Photosynthesis is the process plants use to change carbon dioxide and water into sugar using sunlight. Sunlight is the ultimate source of energy that drives the metabolic processes in plants. Practically speaking, if you’re like me and you put a plant in the ground in the shade when it needs sunlight and it dies, now you understand the negative side of photosynthesis. All right? A plant that needs sunlight, it draws its energy and its life source from the sunlight. And I think it’s amazing how God, when He created the world…you know, the Bible says the heavens declare the glory of God. You’ll learn something about God if you just observe nature. And this photosynthesis process where plants will only live if they draw energy and life from the source of the sunlight, there’s a spiritual principle in that. I call it spiritual photosynthesis, all right. We need to draw our ultimate source and life and energy from the “Son-light”, S-O-N, the “Son-light”. And that’s how we walk in the light as He is in the light. We walk in the truth and He is in the truth is another way of saying it.
0:30:02.5
Now, John’s little postcard that he wrote here called 1 John, the theme of it is fellowship. It’s written to believers in Jesus Christ. Twice in those verses that I just read, 1 John 1:6-7, you’ll see the word “fellowship”. “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.” Do you understand the important difficult between fellowship and relationship? If not, just think about your marriage relationship. Cathryn and I are married. We’re in a marriage relationship. We have legal proof of that. We have a marriage license. I have a ring on my finger. We have a photo album or our wedding day. We’ve got all this evidence and all these witnesses to say that we are in relationship with one another. And we’ve been in relationship with one another for 21 years. But there are times over those 21 years we have not been in fellowship with one another. Do I have a witness this morning from any husband, from any wife who have experienced broken fellowship in their relationship with their spouse? Now, let me build the bridge here to your relationship with God. If you’re a follower of Jesus Christ by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you’re saved. You have a relationship with God. You are a child of God by faith in Jesus. That can never change. It can never be taken away from you. But there are times that we’re not in fellowship with God. We’re just not tracking with Him. He’s always tracking…you know, and what breaks our fellowship…remember that dark place in your heart that you go to once in a while? It’s called sin. And just because you became a follower of Jesus Christ, it didn’t eradicate the sin nature. It just put another nature in you, the Spirit of life and the Holy Spirit. And now you’ve got the old nature that wants to pull you this direction and the new nature that wants to pull you this direction. And you’ve got a choice to make every day, every moment of the day. That’s what it means to walk in the Spirit and to walk in the light. But if we choose disobedience rather than obedience at that very moment, guess what? It breaks our fellowship with God. And John would tell us, “You’re not long walking in the light. You’re walking in darkness. If we say we have fellowship with God but we’re walking in darkness, we lie and we don’t speak the truth.” Now, a little bit later John gives us the way to restore that fellowship. I’m not talking about restoring your relationship with God. You can’t lose that. You can’t lose a relationship where He and He alone is reaching down from heaven and has you in the grip of grace. He’s not letting go. But sometimes He’s got a tiger on the other end of that tail that won’t walk in obedience to Him. And when the Holy Spirit bring it to your attention or to my attention that we’re out of fellowship with the Father, John, a verses later, says in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And so I always encourage myself and others, keep short accounts with God. If there is something you do at 9:00 in the morning where you’ve stepped out fellowship, out of the light—you’ve chosen to disobey the Lord in some way—don’t wait until 9:00 at night to apply 1 John 1:9. Otherwise, you’ve lived your whole day out of fellowship and out of communication with the Lord. Keep short accounts with God. Restore that fellowship.
0:33:56.8
Now, here’s what I’ve learned over the years as a pastor. You have two believers who are married to each other and they’re having marriage problems. There’s conflict in the relationship. Not all conflict is unhealthy. But this particular conflict spirals into something that is really, really unhealthy. And you’ve got two believers who just can’t get along together, and they’re heading to divorce court. Here’s what I know is true. Somebody is out of fellowship with the Lord. Not every evidence of conflict is evidence…’cause some conflict is healthy. You might just have an honest disagreement. But when it spirals into something that is really, really bad, somebody is walking in darkness and not in the light if they claim to be a follower of Jesus. You follow me there? Same is true in churches, Christian businesses. I mean, whatever organization might claim to be a Christian organization. I always say the most dangerous person in the church is a church leader, starting with a pastor, who is not in fellowship with the Lord, who is going to that place in his or her heart where it’s a little bit dark, and not keeping short accounts with God. In time, that’ll be a bad place.
0:35:20.5
So we follow the light. The Bible tells us to walk in the light. Ephesians tells us, “Take no part in the unfruitful deeds of darkness.” Don’t go there. It won’t bear the fruit that God wants to bear in your life or in my life. And then finally, we’re to reflect the light, reflect the light. By way of illustration, I want you to think of the sun and the moon. I want you to go back to that grade school science class. Are you smarter than a 5thgrader this morning? You remember the relationship between the moon and the sun? Everybody knows the moon has no inherent light. But at nighttime we see the brightness, especially of a full moon. It’s not because the moon has a light. The moon is reflecting the light, which is the sun. Again, the heaven declare the glory of God. If you just look around nature, you might find a spiritual principle or truth that’s reflected in the scriptures. And this is true of you and me. We are not the light, but we’re meant to reflect the light. This is what John in his opening chapter to his gospel was talking about when he was referring to John the Baptizer. Remember John the Baptist? And in verse 6 of John 1 it says, “There was a man sent from God whose name was John.” Not the John of the gospel, but John the Baptist. “He came as a witness to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.” You get the relationship there? Human speaking, John and Jesus, John the Baptist and Jesus, were earthly cousins. But John was quick to say, “I’m not the Light. I’m just hear to bear witness to the Light, to reflect the Light.” Now, interestingly enough, if you follow this light metaphor throughout John’s gospel…Jesus says in John 8, “I am the light of the world.” In John 9 He says this. Listen to this carefully. “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Hmm. Well, wait a minute. What do You mean as long as You’re in the world You are the light of the world? Does that mean when he left and ascended to the Father, that the Light of the World is no longer here? Not exactly. All right. Scroll through your understanding of New Testament teaching and the teachings of Jesus. Land in Matthew 5 and the Sermon on the Mount. And here is what Jesus said to His disciples. The one who said, “I am the light of the world,” said to His disciples, “You are the light of the world.” Now, stick that feather in your cap for a moment. You’re a follower of Jesus Christ. Do you know that you have a responsibility? Remember the old song “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine”? That’s the idea here. And that’s our response today. If we don’t walk out of this place understanding the dark, dark spiritually blackened world that we live in and shine our little light as a reflection of Jesus Christ, who is the light of the world that lives in us…if we don’t do that in a thousand, ten thousand different ways, then we just leave this whole world in darkness. Because Jesus said He’s the light of the world only as long as He is in the world. But then He left us in the world, right, to be a thousand points of light.
0:39:03.7
It’s interesting that the founders of our country, even the colonists that came to these United States even before 1776, picked up on this idea. They brought their Christian faith and their Judeo-Christian values with them. A puritan preacher named John Winthrop in 1630 said to the people in New England that their little colony would become a city on a hill, watched by the world. Do you remember these words? “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, we shall be made a story and byword throughout the world.” Those are haunting words hundreds of years later, because there’s a part of me that sees how Christianity is maligned in our culture today. And I wonder if there’s a power outage going on in the body of Christ, to where Christ and His church are becoming a story and a byword throughout the world. The only way for that not to happen is for you and me to let my little light shine and your little light shine. God has kept you on this earth and He’s kept me here, and He’s put each of us in some sphere of influence where we as followers of Jesus Christ can be leaders in our homes, in our marriage, in our neighborhoods, in our place of work, in some places in culture where it’s really, really dark. Even the world gets a little nervous to go into those places. But God has put you there to follow Him, to walk intimately with Him in the light, and to reflect the light, to let it shine. Jesus said a light is not meant to be put under a bushel. I mean, how silly is that? Why would you do that? A city set upon a hill…for the travelers that are weary and are looking for a place of rest, that city on the hill is a place of hope. It’s just that little light bulb there. “Oh, let’s go that direction.” May this church always be a lighthouse in this community. This church started 35 years ago, and the lights shine brightly in this place. And, like a lot of churches over the years, sometimes it dims. And then it’s brighter and sometimes it dims. Listen. The brightest days are ahead as long as we follow the Light and stay close to Him. As long as we do our individual parts to walk in the light, make sure that when we come to this place and we interact with people, you know, we’re in fellowship with the Lord. Oh, we may have some disagreements. We always do. That’s fine. As long as we’re in fellowship with the Lord, it’s interesting, here’s what John says. “If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with God.” No, He didn’t say that. He says we have fellowship with one another. You have a responsibility to play in that. And I have a responsibility to play in that, to walk in the light. And then we collectively have a responsibility, and individually in our places of influences, to reflect the light. Say it with me. This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. I hope you mean that this morning. Let’s pray together.
0:42:53.5
Father, thank You so much for Your Word. Thank You for Jesus, who is the light of the world. Father, there are some here in this place who, in an honest moment, would admit, “Yeah, there’s a dark, dark place in my heart. And I go there more often than I want to go, but I need the light of Jesus Christ in my life today.” You’re always at work, Father. You’re always at work shining light in dark places, inviting people to step into the light, out of darkness and into the light, so that we’re no longer children of darkness, but children of light. And if that describes the desire of your heart this morning, with everybody’s head bowed and eyes closed…this is a holy moment. This is that moment in the week where you get to do some business with God. Maybe you didn’t expect to do that when you walked into this place this morning, but I’m gonna take you there for a moment. If you’re here this morning and you’ve never trusted Christ and God is stirring in your heart this morning and you need the Light of the World shining in your heart and life, just quietly in your own heart I want you to pray these words. “God, I’m here. I don’t know why. I don’t know how I got here. But I know I’m a sinner. I’ve gone to some dark places. But I need Jesus, who is the light of the world, to come into my life and cleanse me, to brighten up my place, to forgive me of my sin, to give me a home in heaven that the Bible says is a place where there is no night because the Light of the World shines constantly. Come into my life, Lord Jesus, and be my savior and forgive me. Thank You for the gift of eternal life, and thank You for being my Light of the World.” Father, for every one of us else in this place that maybe have voiced a prayer like that, we’ve made a commitment like that, maybe there are some who need to get right with You this morning. They’ve haven’t been walking in the light. They’ve been trafficking in the gray or being so bold as to walk in darkness. And this is a new day where we step back into the light boldly. If we confess our sins, You’re faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So in the many ways we can respond this morning, give us courage, each of us, to do that, Father. And we ask you in Jesus’ name and for His sake, amen.
0:46:09.9