May 25, 2003
John 8:12-20
The Light of the World
Intro
Talk about Mission Impossible; picture this: 3 college students, in pitch blackness, walking hand-in-hand-in-hand at midnight, through a huge campground where they’d never been before, trying to link up with the rest of their group for a campout. Been there, done that! It was my best friend Don, his girlfriend, and myself; we had come from a soccer game, and were trying to find his family so we could get some sleep. I will never forget the experience. It was so dark that we could hardly distinguish the dirt road from the surrounding woods. We had absolutely no idea where his family was, and there was not a light on anywhere; all the folks with any sense were already in bed for the evening. And here we were, walking along, trying to find our way, having forgotten the flashlight, not wanting to awaken strangers, tired, and ready to get some sleep. Now understand, Don and I, best friends that we are, have different personalities when it comes to situations like this. Don is getting more and more frustrated by the minute, whereas the further I walk, the funnier the situation becomes! Poor Mary Beth, in the middle, is stuck; Don’s angry, I’m cracking jokes, calling out our friends’ names in a loud whisper (“Al! Martha! Lois!”), and she’s trying not to laugh for fear of making Don more angry!
In pitch darkness, in the middle of nowhere, at midnight, with no flashlight and no clue as to how we are going to find our party. Don remembered a characteristic about the grille of one of the cars driven by someone else in our group, and eventually, miraculously, we get connected by feeling the grille of the car!
My silly jokes aside, darkness can be a distressing, fear-inducing experience, and with good reason: we can’t see what dangers lurk; we can’t determine our path; our minds play tricks on us. Darkness is no condition in which to live. Today we continue in a series begun last week asking the question, “who does Jesus say that He is?” Our focus today: Jesus is the Light of the world!
Message
“Blind guides of the blind”; these were Jesus’ words describing the Pharisees, the religious leaders of His age. These who ought to have been shining the light of the love of God were themselves trapped in a prison of darkness, and had no idea of what it meant to lead others trapped in the same darkness. We see evidence of this in the account prior to our focus for this morning; they eagerly bring an adulterous woman to Jesus, intent on stoning her and putting Jesus on the spot. There is no compassion in their hearts for this woman; there is no respect for Jesus. Instead they use her as a pawn in their game to try to trap Him. To them, the way to please God was to engage in a ritualistic religion, to follow religious rules, to conform to an organized system of religiosity, to follow a pseudo-spiritual checklist. Jesus, of course, won’t play along, demonstrating instead true compassion on this wayward woman, and in the process, putting them and their self-righteousness on the spot. Jesus exposed the darkness in their hearts. Let me remind you, before we head into our passage this morning, that many a “religious” person has a dark heart this morning!
The setting is the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, a yearly festival set aside as a time of thanksgiving at the end of the harvest season. People lived in tents for a week; it was like a big campout, if you will (to continue our theme!) as part of this observance, for this big party also served as a reminder to the people of their forty years of wandering in the wilderness, heir forty-year camping trip, if you will.
An important feature of this observance was the lighting of four great candelabra in the women’s court of the Temple. This light would shine throughout Jerusalem, reminding the people who were engaged in this campout of the great pillar of fire that God had sent to lead them by night during the exodus; it was symbolic of God’s continuing presence with them. Now, picture this great celebration and the beautiful, radiant candelabra as the background as Jesus speaks the words we read today (stand with me if you would). This address is particularly Jewish; the Jewish religious leaders would clearly understand Jesus’ words in a way that we would not today, and that was this: to their understanding, Jesus was clearly announcing that He was the Messiah! READ/PRAY
“The way of the wicked is as darkness; they know not at what they stumble.” These are the words of Solomon in Proverbs 4, and they describe
I. Man’s natural condition – “walk in darkness”
Ephesians 4 speaks of those who are ignorant, hard in their hearts, callous, having given themselves over to the practice of every kind of impurity, and it says that such people who do these things are “darkened in their understanding.” This is the natural state of man without the Light of Christ; it is implicit in Jesus’ words.
A. There is no “light within”.
This is certainly a popular teaching today, the idea that we each have an “inner light” which we need to follow. I went online and found many interesting offerings; one was a resource called Balancing the Light Within by Martin F. Luthke. Another said, “The Buddha did not teach that there is or is not a God/god(s). While some Buddhists do believe in God/god(s), others do not. The idea of a creator/supreme being, though, is not as important in Buddhism as looking within for answers. If there is a creator God, that being would be as integral to unity as you or me.” Some cat named “Swami Rama” says, “Don’t be disappointed with failures. When you start to make sincere efforts and start to practice, you will find light on the path. The light itself will guide you. The light of consciousness is within you.” And so on; you get the picture. But there is no light within; the consistent witness of Scripture is that our condition at the core is opposed to God, that any goodness which we might claim in our defense is only in a weak sense and only relative to other fallen beings, not to God. There is no light within. Further,
B. There is no light without.
There was plenty of religion in the world when Jesus came—just as there are plenty of varieties of that now. There are even some religions that would call themselves “Christian”. We can turn following Jesus into a religion if we are not careful. One of my ongoing discussions online with my atheist friends involves me explaining the fact that I don’t claim to be, nor have any interest in being, religious. That may throw some of you off who are only recent attenders, but allow me to explain: the Bible never once uses the term “religion” in the sense of the means whereby a person is brought close to God. On rare occasion when that word is used, it is spoken of as the outworking of our faith commitment to Christ, but in common parlance, religion would be seen by people as the means whereby one comes close to God. No, religion doesn’t cut it; I am not interested in performing certain religious duties or giving myself to certain religious rituals or observances as though they would make any difference. Religion is what I attempt to do in order to reach God; Christian faith is about God reaching down to me.
Then there are so-called self-help methodologies, and the whole arena of self-help is an industry which is certainly enriching a few as they offer placebos which fail to touch us in ways that truly bring light to our lives. The Dr. Phils and the Wayne Dyers and the Deepak Chopras and the Norman Vincent Peales and the Robert Schullers may hit upon nuggets of wisdom here and there, but the Bible says “our help comes from the Lord”. Self-help is a misnomer, because the problem is that I can’t help myself!
Any “light” out there that is not in line with Jesus Christ is no light at all.
II. Jesus’ identity – “Light of the world”
But Jesus says, “I am the Light of the World”. He doesn’t say, “I can see the light” or “I know the way to the light”; He says, “I am the Light of the world.” Christian faith is not wrapped up in propositions and principles but rather in a person, and that person is Jesus; take Him out of the equation, and we have nothing. Jesus shines and brings light to the world—which might not seem unusual to us, but remember, He was saying these words to a fiercely nationalistic audience who prided themselves as being “God’s chosen people”. Simeon had foreseen these, when he blessed the young baby Jesus brought to the Temple by His parents for dedication; he spoke of Jesus as the “light to lighten the Gentiles”, those beyond identification with national Israel. This, however, didn’t sit too well with the Pharisees and religious leaders; notice
A. The Pharisees’ Judgment
“You are testifying about yourself, but your testimony is not true.” The Pharisees objected on the grounds of a perfectly good Jewish legal principle, which stated, “A person is not accredited unto himself.” In other words, they were saying, “Your word alone is insufficient”. They sat in judgment on Jesus and found Him wanting, in their eyes. But they were using the wrong yardstick!
B. The Pharisees’ Yardstick
Verse 15, Jesus says, “you are judging according to the flesh”. They lacked the necessary knowledge to judge Jesus; they used earthly standards, judging according to external appearances; they had a judgmental predisposition to begin with! Judged by appearances, without real knowledge, He was just a fellow countryman, a man born in a lowly stable at that, from Nazareth—and we remember the words of Nathanael, who asked, “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” At the same time, Jesus said that, though He had every prerogative to judge—and though, as God, His judgment would be completely accurate—He instead was intent not on judgment but on mercy. He had just demonstrated that very thing: the woman caught in the act of adultery, deserving of stoning according to the Law—and yet in His compassion and concern for her, extended forgiveness, calling her to a changed lifestyle out of gratitude for His grace. Ultimately, we see
C. The Pharisees’ Failure
They failed in that they knew neither God the Father nor Christ the Son. The testimony of two in Jewish law was considered totally reliable, so much so that the sentence of capital punishment could be carried out on the basis of two corroborating eyewitnesses. Listen to Jesus’ words in John 5:31-38 (read). The voice of God had thundered out at the event of Jesus’ baptism, affirming “this is my Son, in Whom I am well-pleased”. Further, the words of the Old Testament Scripture pointed to Jesus, the One Who alone fulfills the prophetic promises. And the Father testifies of Jesus by means of the miraculous power with which Jesus worked. One of their own, a man named Nicodemus, came to Jesus by night and confessed to Him what all of the Pharisees knew but would not admit. He said, “Teacher, we know that You have come from God as a teacher; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him.” They knew deep down that they could not explain away the truth—but the reality was that they rejected Jesus because of the condition of their hearts, rather than a lack of proof!
III. Man’s response – “follow Me”
We revert back now to verse twelve for our next point, which is simple: if man is by nature a creature who walks in darkness, and if Jesus is the Light of the world, then the most natural thing that we can do is to follow Him. What does it mean to follow Christ? The implication of the word “follow” gets us beyond a mere intellectual undertaking. I fear that we have reduced the essence of Christian commitment, all too often, to an affair of the head, of believing the right stuff. It is certainly true, as we spoke of last week, that our response of following begins with a faith decision to put our trust in Christ, and includes propositional truth. But it dare not end there! Decisions are made with the mind, but disciples are made in the crucible of daily living, and Jesus calls us as His people to be and to make disciples.
So then, with that in mind, we return to the question: what does it mean to follow Christ? Well, there are two words which are inextricably linked together, no matter how we might want to try to separate them: trust and obey. Yes, trust! But sincere trust leads to obedience; we follow Christ, we walk in His light, when we make it our business to keep Jesus’ commandments out of gratitude to Him. Here’s the thing about following: if I am truly following, then the direction, the path, is not up to me! If I am following, I am not the leader! Remember the context: the Feast of Tabernacles, commemorating the leading of the children of Israel through the wilderness by the pillar of light. They followed, and reached Canaan in God’s timing. Jesus unmistakably points to Himself as that Light Who must be followed now; as He points the way through His Word, I follow. And so my question: when it really just comes right down to it, am I following Jesus more in my daily decisions, or am I following the wisdom of this world?
Do I take up a cross daily, that means of crucifixion to my own desires, or do I live for Number One?
Do I love my neighbor as myself, or do I see others as people to manipulate to my own advantage?
Do I consider others as better than myself?
Do I speak the truth in love, or do I use the truth as a sledgehammer?
Do I give of all I am and all I have, or do I hoard for myself?
Do I react with patience to adversity, with gentleness to an unkind word, with grace to the graceless, with goodness to a harsh and crude world?
These things constitute following Jesus, far more than the mere fact of our attendance at church or CELL Group. Light is to be followed!
IV. The result – “have the Light of life”
Here is Jesus’ summation: follow the Light, and your life will be full of Light—and might I add, the contrast to both darkness and to the outward light of that pillar of fire, the Holy Spirit will be that indwelling presence of Light. Not some New Age “inner light” idea, but through regeneration, a light that never existed before, the Light of Christ. Let’s notice, in closing, several truths about light:
A. Light conquers darkness
Darkness may be more pervasive, but light is more powerful. We turn on the lights; we don’t “turn on the darks” if the room is too bright! A little light can lighten a large area. According to John 1, the darkness does not overcome the light. Satan is spoken of in Scripture as the Prince of Darkness, but the Light of the World conquers that darkness! And there is no darkness in your life that the Light cannot overcome!
B. Light distinguishes truth from error
The Psalmist wrote, “the entrance of Your word gives light”. When the light is dim, we have difficulty exercising accurate judgment. I still remember one of the scariest dining experiences in my life. Understand, I don’t do Oriental, okay? I’m sorry, but some of the things that they do to chicken, well, it just ain’t right in my book, okay? At any rate, I still remember going into the Fiji Island, a Polynesian restaurant in my hometown of Roanoke, and eating a meal in the dimmest light I have ever eaten by. Scary! I had no idea what I was eating (I do think that it was by design, of course!). If I had had more light, I’d have been able to discern better what in the world it might have been had been set before me!
We use light to evaluate things; similarly, we evaluate things in our lives in the light of the Word of God. The more we take the Word of God into our lives, the better we are able to see this world and all that is in it as it really is.
C. Light gives direction
I don’t want to live this life, as it were, by the seat of my pants, relying on my own so-called wisdom or “reason”. This past week, in my online discussion with my atheist friends, I tried to get at this very thing: when you say you try to live by the light of “reason”, exactly what are you driving at? Because honestly, atheism strikes me as quite unreasonable! The children of Israel were led by the light of the pillar of fire; Jesus was saying here, “You can trust me to give you direction”.
D. Light is meant to be reflected
In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, He says to His followers, “You are the light of the world.” What, was He confused? No…rather, He is handing off the responsibility to be the light in a world that is dark. To be sure, ours is a reflected light—we shine only as we allow Him to shine through us—but if there is light in this world, it is not within people naturally, nor does it shine as a result of man’s philosophies, but it comes as a result of Jesus living His life through us.
Opportunities to shine are all around us. Already, many of you are piquing the interest of your friends and neighbors as we prepare to talk about the “7 Wonders”. We are called to be the light; as we continue to provide you with resources to shine the Light of Jesus in this way, be faithful to do so!
There’s been a lot of redefining when it comes to this issue: who is Jesus? His answer to us today: “I am the Light of the world!”
