Several years ago (1995), a middle-aged man robbed two Pittsburgh banks in broad daylight. He didn’t wear a mask or any sort of disguise. And he smiled at surveillance cameras before walking out of each bank.
Later that night, police arrested a surprised McArthur Wheeler. When they showed him the surveillance tapes, Wheeler stared in disbelief. “But I wore the juice,” he mumbled.
Apparently, Wheeler thought that rubbing lemon juice on his skin would render him invisible to video cameras. After all, lemon juice is used as invisible ink so, as long as he didn’t come near a heat source, he should have been completely invisible.
Police concluded that Wheeler was not crazy or on drugs—just incredibly mistaken (Kate Fehlhaber, “What Know-It-Alls Don’t Know, or the Illusion of Competence,” Aeon, 5/17/17; www.PreachingToday.com).
Some say, “Ignorance is bliss,” but ignorance can get you into a lot of trouble, especially ignorance about spiritual things.
So how do you move from ignorance to insight? How do you move from darkness to light? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to John 12, John 12, where Jesus shows us how.
John 12:27 Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour (ESV).
The prospect of the cross troubled Jesus, literally, it stirred Him up. It caused Him acute emotional distress. After all, the cross was cruel punishment for someone who knew no sin (2 Corinthians 5:21). But also, as Jesus bore our sins on the cross, His relationship with the Father would be broken (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34) for the first time in all eternity. God would be punishing Jesus for our sins, not His own.
Most certainly, the prospect of the cross troubled Jesus, but the profit far outweighed the pain.
When French impressionist painter Auguste Renoir was confined to his home during the last decade of his life, Henri Matisse was nearly 28 years younger than him. The two great artists were dear friends and frequent companions. Matisse visited him daily. Renoir, almost paralyzed by arthritis, continued to paint in spite of his infirmities. He had to hold his brush between his thumb and index finger. As he painted, students often heard him crying out in pain.
One day as Matisse watched the elder painter work in his studio, fighting torturous pain with each brush stroke, he blurted out, “Auguste, why do you continue to paint when you are in such agony?”
Renoir said, “The pain passes but the beauty remains” (Martha Teichner, “Late Renoir: A master ages, and shuns reality,” CBS News, 8-8-10; www.PreachingToday.com).
That’s why Jesus went to the cross. He knew there would be extreme physical, emotional, and spiritual pain, but He also knew the beauty that would follow and remain forever.
First, the cross would lift up the Father and put down the devil. His crucifixion would glorify God and cast Satan out. In verse 28, Jesus prays…
John 12:28-31 “Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out (ESV).
On the cross, Colossians 2 says, “[Jesus] disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame” (Colossians 2:15). Hebrews 2 says that Jesus became like us so that “through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). The cross put Satan down and elevated God, the Father.
Harold Miller from Corning, New York, says, “Suppose you are alone in your house with your preschool children, and an intruder enters. If you doubt your power over the intruder, your house becomes a place of terror. But if you have undisputed control, you don't fear someone coming into your house.
“The universe is God's house, and an Intruder has entered and is even now desecrating the house. Many times, when we see him walking around, we are on the brink of terror. We need not fear, however, since he and our Father met head-on in combat [when Jesus died on the cross. There,] God emerged the undisputed Victor, [which He made clear by raising Jesus from the dead]! We are [now] safe from the Intruder, [because our] most fearsome enemy… has been overpowered by the One who loves us (adapted from Harold N. Miller, Corning, New York, Leadership, Vol. 11, no. 1; www.PreachingToday.com).
No matter what’s going on in the world around you, no matter what’s going on in your own life, please remember that God overcame Satan on the cross, and so set aside your fear. Jesus faced the pain of the cross, because He knew the cross would lift up the Father and put down the devil.
Second, the cross would lift up the Son and draw people to Him. The crucifixion would elevate Jesus, motivating people to follow Him. Jesus said in verse 32…
John 12:32-33 “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die (ESV).
Jesus is talking about being lifted up on a cross, which confuses the crowd.
John 12:34 So the crowd answered him, “We have heard from the Law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” (ESV)
They thought Messiah would live and reign forever when He came (Isaiah 9:6; Ezekiel 37:25). How then can He die? The crowd is confused. They don’t know what to think. Some like Jesus, but others are repulsed by the idea of Messiah’s death.
Kent Edwards said, “Jesus is the great polarizer. It's as if all of humanity were iron filings laid out on a sheet of paper, and Jesus is the magnet. Every single filing lines up either with the North Pole or the South Pole. Every person is either attracted to or repelled by the person of Jesus Christ, because he's a magnet. The power and influence of his very being cannot be ignored (Kent Edwards, from his sermon “The Great Polarizer,” www.Preaching Today.com).
Jesus either repulses you or attracts you. And some, though initially repulsed, find themselves eventually attracted to him.
Gregory and Heidi Whitaker, missionaries to Cambodia, talk about the spiritual journey of a man named Yang:
Yang’s son, Mabt, belongs to the Bunong people, a tribal gro)up in Cambodia. Mabt met the Lord when he moved to a city to continue his education and stayed with Christian dorm parents. For years, he was the only believer in his family.
During one of his visits to his home village, Mabt prayed in his home, welcoming the Holy Spirit and breaking the curses of the mountain gods. He then began playing the guitar and worshipping Jesus. As he sang, the high shelf holding the family idol crashed to the floor, and the idol shattered. His father, Yang, rushed in, saying, “My son, what have you done? Now I will not believe in anything. Not in the mountain gods, and not in your God.”
Yang held to that statement for years, before his heart softened toward the truth and he slowly turned to the Lord. During that time, his vision deteriorated. Yang had lost an eye to trauma decades earlier, and now his remaining eye was becoming cloudy. Mabt approached the Whitaker’s to ask for advice, and they referred Yang to Mercy Medical Center for evaluation. He made the daylong trip by bus from the province and underwent successful cataract surgery.
After Yang returned home with restored vision, he was able to read the beautiful words of the Gospel in his own language for the first time. Yang has become a follower of Christ, and freely shares his story with other villagers. “I received my sight back, and then I could read God’s words for myself, and now I believe Jesus” (From the newsletter of Missionaries Gregory and Heidi Whitaker, SAMS.org, accessed 4/10/21; www.PreachingToday.com).
There’s just something about the love of Christ, demonstrated on the cross, that draws people in. So keep lifting Jesus up before your family and friends, even the most resistant ones. Keep praying for them. Who knows? Perhaps sooner than later, God’s Spirit will draw them to Christ.
Jesus faced the pain of the cross, because He knew 1st, the cross would lift up the Father and put down the devil. 2nd, the cross would lift up the Son and draw people to Him.
And third, the cross would lift up believers and make them sons of light. His crucifixion would bring His followers out of darkness into the light.
John 12:35-36a So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.”
Believe and you will see, Jesus says. More than that, Put your trust in Christ and you will shine like Him. For to be a son of light means you demonstrate the traits of light, just like a son demonstrates the traits of his own father.
Pastor Todd Hunter, in his book Giving Church Another Chance, talks about the days when he was ministering at a church in Anaheim, California. During one of their services, there was a blackout when an automobile accident knocked out the power line to their building. For some reason, the emergency lights failed, as well, with nearly 3,000 people in the room and close to a 1,000 children in the area behind the sanctuary.
Pastor Todd was sitting in the front row of the church. He was only a dozen steps from the hallway leading to the children; but the darkness was so overwhelming and disorienting, he found it very difficult as he groped his way there.
When Pastor Todd finally reached the door that led to a long hallway, he saw one of the mothers, who had beat him to the door. She had a small flashlight on her key chain and was making her way to her children. Her small light didn't illumine the whole hallway, but it reoriented the whole scary moment. Soon others found emergency flashlights in the classrooms, and still others shined their car headlights through the classroom windows, and they were able to get all the kids out to safety.
After about five or ten minutes, Pastor Todd made his way back to the sanctuary. He said it looked like a 1960s rock concert. All the baby boomers had gotten out their Bic lighters and were waving them around as if "Hey Jude" was being performed by the Beatles. Pastor Todd says, “As funny as that was, what I still remember twenty years later is the enormous power of that mom's flashlight to bring hope and orientation to a seriously unnerving moment.” (Todd D. Hunter, Giving Church Another Chance, IVP, 2010, p. 78; www.PreachingToday.com)
In a dark world, you too can bring hope and orientation to many living in fear. All you have to do is put your trust in Christ and let Him shine through you; let Him make you a son (or daughter) of light.
Jesus faced the pain of the cross, because He knew 1st, the cross would lift up the Father and put down the devil. 2nd, the cross would lift up the Son and draw people to Him. And 3rd, the cross would lift up believers and make them sons of light. So, if you want to move from darkness to light, if you want to move from ignorance to insight, then…
WALK IN THE LIGHT OF THE CROSS.
Live from the perspective of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Depend on His saving work every day.
Larry Christenson describes such a life. He says:
Think of yourself as living in an apartment house. You live there under a landlord who has made your life miserable. He charges you exorbitant rent. When you can’t pay, he loans you money at a fearful rate of interest to get you even further into his debt. He barges into your apartment at all hours of the day and night, wrecks and dirties the place up, then charges you extra for not maintaining the premises. Your life is miserable.
Then comes Someone who says, “I’ve taken over this apartment house. I’ve purchased it. You can live here as long as you like, free. The rent is paid up. I am going to be living here with you, in the manager’s apartment.” What a joy! You are saved! You are delivered out of the clutches of the old landlord!
But what happens? You hardly have time to rejoice in your new-found freedom, when a knock comes at the door. And there he is—the old landlord! Mean, glowering, and demanding as ever. He has come for the rent, he says. What do you do? Do you pay him? Of course you don’t! Do you go out and pop him on the nose? No—he’s bigger than you are! You confidently tell him, “You’ll have to take that up with the new Landlord.” He may bellow, threaten, wheedle, and cajole. You just quietly tell him, “Take it up with the new Landlord.” If he comes back a dozen times, with all sorts of threats and arguments, waving legal-looking documents in your face, you simply tell him yet once again, “Take it up with the new Landlord.” ln the end, he has to. He knows it, too. He just hopes that he can bluff and threaten and deceive you into doubting that the new Landlord will really take care of things (Larry Christenson, The Renewed Mind, Bethany House Publishers, 2001, pp. 51-52; www.PreachingToday.com).
Jesus paid your debt on the cross and offers you eternal life rent free. All you have to do is let Him live with you in the manager’s apartment. Trust Jesus with your life. Then when the old landlord shows up, tell him to take it up with the new Landlord. Tell Satan and His minions to deal with Christ.
If you want to move from darkness to light, walk in the light of the cross. Then…
WALK IN THE LIGHT OF CHRIST.
Live in dependence upon Christ, seeking to please Him more than people.
John 12:36b-40 When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them. Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them” (ESV).
They COULD not believe, because they WOULD not believe. Isaiah spoke to a rebellious nation that chose to worship idols instead of the living God. So God told Isaiah in Isaiah 6 to make their hearts dull, their ears heavy, and their eyes blind, so they would not turn to Christ and be healed (Is. 6:10).
John 12:41 Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him (ESV).
I.e., he spoke of Christ, which is clear in the context here. Earlier in Isaiah 6, Isaiah says he saw “the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; [with] the train of his robe filling the temple, [surrounded by] seraphim, [who] called to [one] another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:1-3). This Lord is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ according to John 12:41.
But because the people WOULD not believe it, they COULD not believe it. They became blind to their own Messiah even though He stood right before them.
In The Magician's Nephew, a novel from C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series, Narnia is created when Aslan—the lion who represents Jesus—sings it into being. The creation song reveals Aslan's majesty and glory. It is a grand “call to worship!” But there is one, Uncle Andrew, who refuses to hear it, and the consequences are staggering.
When the great moment came and the beast spoke, he missed the whole point for a rather interesting reason. When the lion had first begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, he had realized that the noise was a song. And he disliked the song very much. It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel.
Then, when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a lion ("only a lion," as he said to himself) he tried his hardest to make himself believe that it wasn't singing and never had been singing—only roaring as any lion might in a zoo in our own world.
“Of course, it can't really have been singing,” he thought, “I must have imagined it. I've been letting my nerves get out of order. Who ever heard of a lion singing?” And the longer and more beautifully the lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring.
Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed. Uncle Andrew did. He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan's song. Soon he couldn't have heard anything else even if he had wanted to. And when at last the lion spoke and said, “Narnia awake,” he didn't hear any words: he heard only a snarl. And when the beasts spoke in answer, he heard only barkings, growlings, bayings, and howlings (C. S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew, Collier Books, 1970, pp.125-126; www.PreachingToday.com).
He COULD not believe, because he WOULD not believe. Please, don’t let that happen to you. Instead, choose to believe in Christ until you see Him for who He really is. Trust Christ with your life.
Then tell others about what He is doing for you. Confess Him before your neighbors and friends. Even though some refused to believe…
John 12:42-43 Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God (ESV).
They sought the praise of their peers more than the praise of God. They feared people more than God, so they kept quiet about their faith in Christ. Let me tell you. That’s no way to live!
Three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Herbert Bayard Swope, once said, “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody” (Herbert Bayard Swope in Leadership, Vol. 1, no. 3; www. PreachingToday.com).
Please, stop trying to please people, and seek only to please the Lord. It makes your life a whole lot simpler and gives it real meaning.
Henry Kissinger put it this way: [Unlike Winston Churchill], the political leaders with whom we are familiar generally aspire to be superstars rather than heroes. The distinction is crucial.
Superstars strive for [approval]; heroes walk alone. Superstars crave consensus; heroes define themselves by the judgment of a future they see as their task to bring about. Superstars seek success in a technique for eliciting support; heroes pursue success as the outgrowth of inner values (Henry Kissinger in the New York Times Book Review, from his review of Churchill, by Norman Rose, July 16, 1995; www.PreachingToday.com).
My dear friends, strive to be a hero, not a superstar. Strive to please only Christ, and so find true success.
If you want to move from darkness into light, Walk in the light of the cross. Walk in the light of Christ. And finally…
WALK IN THE LIGHT OF HIS COMMANDS.
Live your life according to His Word. In dependence upon Christ do what He tells you to do.
John 12:44-50 And Jesus cried out and said, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me” (ESV).
The word of Christ leads to eternal life. Thus, to reject his word leads to judgment. Please, put your faith in His word, and demonstrate that faith by obeying His Word.
Author Dane Ortlund describes a compassionate doctor, who has traveled deep into the jungle to provide medical care to a primitive tribe afflicted with a contagious disease. He has had his medical equipment flown in. He has correctly diagnosed the problem, and the antibiotics are prepared and available. He is independently wealthy and has no need of any kind of financial compensation. But as he seeks to provide care, those who are afflicted refuse the care. They want to take care of themselves. They want to heal on their own terms. Finally, a few brave young men step forward to receive the care being freely provided.
What does the doctor feel? Joy. His joy increases to the degree that the sick come to him for help and healing. It’s the whole reason he came.
So, with us, and so with Christ. He does not get flustered and frustrated when we come to him for fresh forgiveness, for renewed pardon, with distress and need and emptiness. That’s the whole point. He came to heal (Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers, Crossway, 2020, p. 36; www.PreachingToday.com).
Please, stop trying to take care of yourself and heal on your own terms. Instead, come to Christ and heal on His terms. Step forward to receive the care He freely provides, taking the medicine He prescribes, trusting Him enough to do what He tells you to do.
If you want to move from darkness into light, if you want to move from ignorance into insight, just walk in the light of the cross, walk in the light of Christ, and walk in the light of His commands.
Somebody once asked Bible scholar N.T. (Tom) Wright what he would tell his children on his deathbed? He replied, “Look at Jesus.” Then Tom Wright explained why:
The [Person] who walks out of [the pages of the Gospels] to meet us is just central and irreplaceable. He is always a surprise. We never have Jesus in our pockets. He is always coming at us from different angles… If you want to know who God is, look at Jesus. If you want to know what it means to be human, look at Jesus. If you want to know what love is, look at Jesus. And go on looking until you're not just a spectator, but part of the drama that has him as the central character (Marlin Whatling, The Marriage of Heaven and Earth, CreateSpace, 2016, page 129; www.PreachingToday.com).
My dear friends, if you want to move from darkness to light, look at Jesus, and keep on looking until you are living the life He called you to live.
