Journeying With John (JWJ-03)
The Light of Life
John 1:3-5
When I was young I had the thrill of visiting one of the most amazing natural wonders you will ever see - the renowned Cango Caves. I would like to invite you to journey there with me as we start our message today. Home to the KoiSan people many centuries ago, the Cango Caves have a rather modest entrance - nothing to write home about - but instead of standing around outside - let’s go right on in. Our eyes adjust to the carefully placed lighting and we are wowed by the cave’s beauty. From every nook and cranny glimmer stalactites, stalagmites and helictites. The extensive system of tunnels and chambers run ahead of us for over three miles. Guided by the recessed lighting, we head for the largest chamber in the Cango Caves. As we step in, it opens up before and we are stunned into silence by it’s vastness.
This did not happen to me, but I want you to try and feel what I am now going to explain next. Let’s imagine for some reason, you look around and discover you are alone - for whatever reason you discover everybody else is gone - in this vast chamber. And then - is starts getting darker, and darker and darker. You start to feel claustrophobic as all remaining refractions of light disappear - and you are in a darker darkness than you have ever seen. There is no moon, no night light, no faint glow from your clock radio - it is pitch, pitch black - you cannot even see your hand right in front of your face. As a matter of fact, the darkness is so dark you can almost touch it. And your realize there is no sound - not even the coarseness of your breath or the pounding of your heart in your ears - all of that fades - and now the darkness clings to you - and it is deadly silent.
Now stay with me if you will - that was the easy part. Imagine now in that silent prison of darkness everything around you starts to fall away - the walls of the cave, the ground under your feet, the air you breath, everything is stripped away - and now you are alone in the deathly vast nothingness, silence, darkness. Stay there by yourself in your mind for a moment of you will.
That is where John the Apostle wants us to start this morning. Please open you Bibles to the book of John, the Gospel written by the Apostle of Love - and the first chapter - John chapter 1 and our passage is from verse three through to five.
We are studying our way through this incredible Gospel - and our guide is none other than the apostle John - he has, by the way, become my new favorite disciple.
John 1:3-5 - Read - Pray.
The title of our message this morning is simple - ‘Life and Light’ - and it flows directly out of out text. There are three things that come directly out of this passage that I think are essential for you and mer to understand this morning.
I would like us to see firstly . . .
1. There is a Love that Gives - John 1:3
Here is a profound truth - everything that is, God made, there is nothing that is that was not made by God the Father through Jesus the Son. There are a couple things I want us to notice about this creation:
It Was All Good.
In Genesis 1:31 God looked at what He had created, and made this statement - “it is very good.” Here is what He was saying - “What I have made is blessed and it is a blessing. It is good because it is an expression of Who I am.”
Each and every thing that is, was good when it was made - yes, even the mosquitoes and the ticks - even those things that in a fallen world cause pain and destruction - they were very good.
It Was All Love
Do you realize that the sole purpose of creation was the expression of the love and glory of God. God did not need creation - but His love needed an object to be loved. Love is not love that has no loving expression - and the immense love of God looked for a place to be expressed - and that place was you precious believer. All of creation is motivated from, caused by and is an expression of love. That is why it was ‘very good’ - and the word for ‘good’ means ‘loving, joyful, pleasant, gracious, good.’
Everything God made has value - and you, my friend, the crowning work of creation, have greater value than anything else that God created.
That is why you never met an ordinary human being - there aren’t any - no such thing. Every single person you ever met was extraordinary - staggering replicas or images of ultimate reality - but if they do not know Jesus Christ they are the living dead, walking in darkness.
In other words, man’s natural state is one of spiritual death. He exists, but he is without "life."
He is "Dead in trespasses and sins" [Eph. 2:1].
Paul says in Ephesians he is "Alienated from the life of God." [Eph. 4:18]. And in John 6:53 we read, "You have no life in you."
1 John 5:12 summarizes it this way,"He who has the Son has life. He who has not the Son of God, has not life.”
Do you know why Jesus came? He came to set things in order. By the way - do you know that that is what the word ‘world’ means in the Bible?
John 1:10 “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.”
It is the Greek word, ‘cosmos’ - it means literally something set in order, to adorn, to rearrange for aesthetic value. Now if I did not have the sense I do I would probably have told you that it occurred to me this week that it is the same word that is at the base of ‘cosmetics,’ and that ladies are simply putting their face in order when they put their makeup on. And then it occurred to me that the reason men do not wear makeup is probably because there is no amount of reordering our faces that can help - but because I know better - I will not mention either of those to you this morning.
Listen to me if you will precious believer - when God made you He made you well, He made you love, and He made you well ordered, like Him.
Life without Love is a violation of intrinsic value. Love without life is a frustration of original purpose.
And when sin robbed man of the clarity of that expression, of the vastness of that image, or the depth of that life, God sent Jesus to seek and save those who were lost, those in darkness.
1. There is a Love that Gives
Please notice secondly with me if you will . . .
2. There Is a Darkness That Kills - John 1:5
John is developing two distinct thoughts parallel to each other in these verses. He is talking about darkness - and that darkness refers to two things.
The first sense in which John uses the term ‘darkness’ is in reference to the state of things prior to creation in general, and the creation of light in particular. That is the type of darkness you and is started to see in our fatal journey in the Cango Caves at the start of our message. Now the truth is that if we are honest we would acknowledge that a world of nothingness is beyond our comprehension - we simply have no appropriate reference point to understand it by - the closest we have is pitch darkness - but that is hopelessly inadequate to describe the pre-creation state of things.
But then John develops that thought and starts to talk about a second darkness - the darkness of a mind that has not been opened to the light of the gospel.
We are not talking about . . .
● Intellectual Darkness - the place of ignorance or limited mental capacity
● Emotional Darkness - the pain or sorrow or perhaps depression that affects us from time to time
● Technological Darkness - a term sometimes associated with primitive or underdeveloped peoples
● Moral Darkness - the lack of moral solidarity that preys on the weak, exploits the vulnerable and engages in reprehensible behaviors.
John is talking about Spiritual Darkness - spiritual darkness is a term the Bible uses to describe both the force behind as well as the reality of the inability to perceive and understand spiritual truth. You see my friend, the problem with those in darkness is not simply that they choose not to see or do not like what they see, it is that they cannot see the truth outside of a profound move of God.
John 1:10 “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.”
2 Cor. 4:3-4 “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”
You see my friend, just as there are waves of sound that we cannot hear (they are beyond the high or below the low range of our hearing) there are spectrums or types of light that we cannot see. On the one end we talk of ultra-violet light - that is light on the one end that is beyond what our eyes can see, and we also talk of infra-red - that is light on the other end beyond what we can see. In other words, it is not that those spectrums of light are absent - they are there - but we can simply not see them. If in the Cango Caves at the start of the service, when we were engulfed in thick darkness, if they had shone either ultra-violet or infra-red light - we would still have been in darkness - we could not see it.
Well that is exactly what our passage is saying - “The light shines in the darkness but the darkness does not understand it.” [John 1:5]
Now listen carefully if you will - because this is the crux of the matter - unlike our human vision and infra-red and ultra-violet light, the darkness of the unsaved is not simply that they cannot see the truth, as you look at Scripture you realize that the darkness is aggressively fighting the truth, coming against it. There is a constant conflict between light and darkness. With spiritual darkness, there is an active antagonism against the light.
1 Cor. 2:14 “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.”
Did you notice that - the natural man, or the man walking in darkness cannot (not ‘will not,’ ‘chooses to not’ or ‘prefers to not,‘ but ‘cannot’) understand the things that come from the Spirit of God - they can only be understood by the Spirit of God.
The darkness does two things to men - it blinds them to spiritual truth, and it gives them a love for darkness. Did you know that - darkness blinds you and then gives you a wrong love.
John 3:19: "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil."
1. There is a Love that Gives
2. There Is a Darkness That Kills
Please notice thirdly and lastly with me if you will . . .
3. There is a Light that Lives - John 1:4
Now let me give you a bit of an aside quickly. You will remember that we met John two weeks ago as the Apostle of Love. Well this week I discovered that John is also the Apostle of Life and the Apostle of Light.
He speaks more about life than any other writer and any other gospel, and he speaks more about light than any other writer and any other gospel.
Here is what the Bible is telling us about Jesus - ‘in Him was life and that life was the light of men.’
Now John is telling us some profound things here.
He is saying that ultimate, original, absolute reality is living - it is a living person.
We take fundamental issue with atheists - who will tell us that life came from matter. That is not the testimony of the Scriptures. Matter came from life. In Him was life - and that life was the light of man.
Jesus said, “I have come into this world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness” (John 12:46, NIV).
There is a term that has become more common the past few years - ‘Practical atheists.’ An atheist is one who is denies the existence of God. In contrast, a ‘practical atheist’ is one who does not deny the existence of God but simply lives like there was no God, lives like he has no life, lives like the light of Christ has not shone in his life. The churches, I would suggest to you this morning, are full of practical atheists.
God created life for you. Life is the truest and greatest expression of divinity because that is His greatest gift to mankind. And because God gave you life, His life, your value is inherent in who you are. It’s not based on the Ph.D. or other letters after our name or the amount of money in our bank account, or the type of car we tuck under our arms or the type of house we sleep in at night. You have value simply because of who you are. In the eyes of God, every human has value simply because he is the creation of the Almighty God.
Your value is based on your capacity for the divine presence, and your contribution to your world is the impact of the divine life or light in you.
That is what is missing in many people’s lives, it is what their soul is yearning for, what every one of us is crying out for - it is Jesus Christ, the life and light of God.
That is why Jesus profoundly said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12, NIV).
Your life, my life, all life is the unique gift of God - you cannot get it anywhere else - and He has given it to you in abundance.
The best thing you can find in this world is the unique gift of life that God has in abundance for you - His life is the light you need - but as you go to find it, you need to know that the only place it can be found is on a cross.
Will you pray with me please!
Amen!
