Jesus, The Light Of The World Series

Jesus, the Light of the World John 8:12, 9:5

The Light of the World is one of the powerful titles that our Lord Jesus assigned to himself twice in the Bible, once in John 8 and once in John 9.

Read Jn 8:12 and Jn 9:5; Pray

Question – How many of you were afraid of the dark when you were a child?

One Dutch study – 74% of children reported being afraid of the dark during their childhood.

Another British study – 64% of adults still report occasional fears of darkness and 17% reported that they slept with some kind of light on at night.

A little boy was afraid of the dark. One night his mother told him to go out to the back porch and bring her the broom. The little boy turned to his mother and said, "Mama, I don't want to go out there. It's dark."

The mother smiled reassuringly at her son. "You don't have to be afraid of the dark," she explained. "Jesus is out there. He'll look after you and protect you."

The little boy looked at his mother real hard and asked, "Are you sure he's out there?" "Yes, I 'm sure. He is everywhere, and he is always ready to help you when you need him," she said.

The little boy thought about that for a minute and then went to the back door and cracked it a little. Peering out into the darkness, he called, "Jesus? If you're out there, would you please hand me the broom?

I don’t know if Jesus handed him the broom of not that night, but I do know that Jesus is the Light of the World that casts out the darkness of our souls!

A number of years ago, National Geographic, had an amazing article on the “Power of Light”. The articles introduction caught my attention:

“Light reveals the world to us. Body and soul crave it. Light sets our biological clocks. It triggers in our brains the sensations of color. Light feeds us, supplying the energy of plants to grow. It inspires us with special effects like rainbows and sunsets. Light gives us life- changing tools, from incandescent bulbs to lasers and fiber optics. Scientists don’t fully understand what light is or what it can do. They just know that it will illuminate our future.”

A MORE RECENT NATGEO ARTICLE SAID THIS: There has been light from the beginning. There will be light, … at the end. In all its forms—visible and invisible—it saturates the universe. Light is more than a little bit mysterious. Modern physics has sliced the stuff of nature into ever smaller and more exotic constituents, but light won't reduce. Light is light—pure, but not simple. No one is exactly sure how to describe it. A wave? A particle? Yes, the scientists say. Both. It is a measure of light's importance in our daily lives that we hardly pay any attention to it. Light is almost like air. It's a given. A human would no more linger over the concept of light than a fish would ponder the notion of water.”

It went on to say, “The more you look at the topic, the more you realize that our lives are built around light, that our daily existence is continuously shaped—and made vivid—by that ambiguous stuff that dates from the beginning of time. From our technology to our spiritually, we are creatures of light.”

I believe an article like that has spiritual insight for us as Christians, don’t you? As I read further, verses about light in the Bible just raced through my mind. Wow I thought! In the beginning God said, Let there be light, and there was light! God said that on the first day of creation and if you go back and read Genesis you will find that the Sun was not created until the 4th day. There was light available on earth 3 days before the Sun was made. The Bible tells us that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all! It is no wonder that Jesus, the Son of God, and God the Son would proclaim himself to be the Light of the World when he was here on this earth! But what did he mean by that declaration or title that he gave Himself? Listen to John 8:12 again:

Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

The context for this revelation by Jesus is significant. Jesus declared Himself to be the light of the world during the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem. This great Old Testament observance recalled the wandering of Israel in the desert before their occupation of the land of promise. According to oral tradition, at the beginning of the Feast of Tabernacles two large menorah were placed in the women’s court of the temple, standing about 73 feet tall and that the glow of this light could be seen throughout Jerusalem. Jesus more than likely pointed to that great light radiating from the temple mount and uttered, “I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.”