you can return in your Bibles
to John Chapter 8. John Chapter 8. Maybe if we turn down the volume
a little bit, may turn down the volume on the speakers a little
like here at ringing. So we thank you. There you go.
That works. I actually squeezed this thing
on my ears a little different, moved it around so that during
Bible class I didn't have a problem with it moving around on me.
Hopefully it'll stick in place during this part of our worship
as well. I had another message in mind
for this morning, but yesterday I received a message from a man
in Malawi, Africa, with whom I have been communicating. Wanda, he's the one that you
pointed toward me. And he wanted to know what John
8, 12 means. And the reason I'm not reading
it is because I'm in 2 Corinthians, and that's not going That's not what John 8, 12 says.
Okay, John 8, 12. When Jesus spoke again to the
people, he said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows
me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Now, we who have been raised
reading the scriptures and learning them, even if we didn't understand
them completely, yet we would read that scripture and think,
well, that's simple. But if you had or were not that
familiar with the scriptures, maybe didn't even own a Bible, and you heard those words, You
heard that Jesus of Nazareth said, I am the light of the world. He who follows me will never
walk in darkness. You might wonder, what does he
mean by that? It's a real bold statement. I am the light of the world.
He's putting himself in a pretty important position. Naturally
speaking, what's the light of the world? Well, it's the sun. And by more modern understanding
of astronomy, we realize that even at night, when there's little
light, it's still the light of the sun reflecting off the moon. The moon makes no light. So whatever light is present
in this world is the Son. Now for someone to think that he has some kind of
special understanding of things by which he is able to enlighten
the people of this world, for some son of Adam to think
that, would be like comparing the light of a match to the sun
itself. I'm a gospel preacher, have been
for over half my life. I know some truth. I tell what
truth I know. I am not the light. If you see,
it's not because of me. I have not enlightened anyone
because I'm not light. John the Baptist said the same
thing. I am not that light. I came to bear witness of the
light. Now, our Lord, he's at the Feast
of Tabernacles. I think in the King James, at
least in the Old Testament, they call it the Feast of Booths.
But he was being decried by the religious leaders of the day.
They were saying that he was nothing and nobody. And even
in what we read, they said, you testify of yourself. You're the
only one. Your testimony is not valid. The law says in the mouth
of two or three witnesses, every fact shall be established. And
they were looking for excuses not to believe him. And one reason they didn't want
to believe him is they fancied themselves to be the lights of
this world. We are the ones who know and
understand. If you want to learn the truth,
come to us. And our Lord says, I, singular,
just me, am the light of the world. That means that you have not seen the light
unless you have seen Him as He is. Now think of that. That's a pretty
big, pretty bold statement for a man to make. Light is often
used as a metaphor for truth. So he's saying, I am the truth,
and that should not surprise us that he would say such a thing.
He says the same thing in John chapter 14 when he says, I am
the way, the truth, and the life. He says, I am these things. I
don't just bring these things, I am these things. So much so
that apart from me, you cannot know the way, you cannot know
the truth, you cannot have life. People say, well don't you believe
that other religions are suitable ways to God? Not according to
our Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot claim to believe Christ
and then also say, but you know, some of those Eastern countries,
they didn't hear of him, but they were saying some of the,
you know, kind of some of the same things, you know. People
have even gone so far as to say that the Lord Jesus was merely,
he must have heard Buddha somewhere along the way, and because his
principles are Buddhist principles. One thing that proves is they
have never seen the light. He is not light to them. The
light shines all around them. He says, I'm the light of the
world. It's not like the light didn't get to them or didn't
shine on them and everything. They didn't see the light because
they were blind. You know, you take a blind man and, you know,
in the middle of the summer at noontime, He's just covered in light. He
still can't see anything, can he? I am the light of the world. Until then, until this time period,
the appearance of our God in human flesh, the truth of God,
was rather narrowly known. Not many people knew it. As near
as we can tell, in Noah's day, he was the only one who knew
it. Maybe his most recent ancestors
knew something about it. His father named him Noah, saying
in his day we shall have rest. So maybe, you know, there were
a few others, but it seems by the description in Genesis chapter
six that the whole world was wholly given over to the worship
of false gods, to violence of all sorts. I know it looks right now like
our world is a tough place, and it sure enough got its problems
a lot worse than Noah's day. Imagine if you lived in our day
and you were the only one who knew God and believed God. And for 120 years you declared
the message of God, and there was not one single convert. And then the Jews, who felt very
proud of themselves over the fact that God had spoken to them,
not realizing what a blessed privilege had been given them
in having the oracles of God, as Paul describes them. But from
the time God spoke to Abraham until our Lord Jesus Christ came
into the world and revealed the Father, Until then, nearly everyone
who knew the truth of God was a descendant of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob and lived in a very small patch of real estate over
there on the coast of the Mediterranean. That's all. In fact, if you want
to think about it, I know that there are supposedly two billion
people who claim to be Christians There's not two billion Christians
in this world. And I don't say that as though I, you know, am
standing as judge over men. The Bible declares what the truth
is. And most of the churches, most,
their declared doctrines are contrary to what the scriptures
say, to what Christ said. So if some group that calls themselves
Christian teaches contrary to the truth taught by Christ, they
aren't Christians, no matter what they say they are. You and I, we live in a community
full of professed Christians. Now, I don't know how many of
them really do. believe the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I mean, let's be frank, this applies to us as well. If you
say you believe Christ, I'm gonna take your word for it. However, I don't know anyone's
heart. I can only know what they tell
me, and I don't have the ability to know whether they're lying
to me or not. But I do know that in the several
denominations that are represented in our area, there are doctrines being taught
that are absolutely contrary to the gospel. It's not like
simply there's dross within the gold. They are actually telling things,
saying things so inconsistent with what our Lord said that
there is no way that they can be holding to the truth of God
and then holding to the other things they claim to be believing. So really the judgment, I'm not
the one making the judgment here, I'm just applying what the scriptures
say. You and I, and let us be thankful
for this. Oh, how grateful we should be
that we are among those to whom God has been pleased in his sovereign
grace to give the light of truth and
the life necessary to see that light and understand it. Because
we, by nature, are absolutely no different than those who are
yet in blindness, in darkness. We aren't. I say that a lot, and I guess
I say that a lot because the Lord has to teach me that a lot. It is in my natural self to think
that my for lack of a better way to put it, superior understanding
of the gospel as compared to some other forms of Christianity,
that somehow that's owing to me. It's not. If I see and understand the gospel
better than another, there is no one who deserves any credit
for that whatsoever other than the Lord Jesus Christ, who is
the light. If we know the truth, that should
humble us. In fact, if we know the truth,
it will humble us. Because the truth is very humbling
for one point. But we also realize we did not
discover the truth. We did not go after the truth. The truth came after us. The Lord did not just bring the
light. He says, I am the light. He's the light of the world.
No one in the world sees things as they ought to see them till
they see them in the light of Christ. They do not understand
God apart from the light of Christ. They may know some things about
God. They may hold forth some very important truths about God,
but they don't know Him. until they see Him in the light
of Christ. There is no other way to the
Father, there is no other way to understand God, no other way
to pursue God, other than through Christ, who is the light. You know, Paul said, I determined
to know nothing among you other than Christ and Him crucified. Now, he did not make that resolution
because he didn't know anything else. You know, he was not one
of those guys of whom we said, well, he was just a poor, simple,
common man preacher. He was a highly educated man.
Educated both in the pharisaical form of the Jewish religion,
so he knew the Old Testament scriptures as well as anybody
on earth did in that day. And he had been raised in a Gentile
city. Consequently, he was familiar
with the Gentile ways of thinking and the philosophies of primarily
Greek philosophies and things like that, and the mythologies
that they had concerning their God, he could have held people
spellbound by just talking about the things
he knew. He says, when I came among you,
and that was, of course, Corinth, a prominent, prosperous Greek
city. I'm sure they were pretty proud
of themselves. I'm sure it was one of those places where the
traveling philosophers of the day would go as, you know, a
notable, well, it was a place where you could make good money
spouting off philosophies and talking like you knew something. And he said to them, I determined
that I would not know anything among you other than Christ and
Him crucified." A very simple message, and yet not only was it simple
and therefore was not the kind that would make a man be proud
that he knew it, because it doesn't take a great deal of intellect
to know the message of Christ and Him crucified. Not only this, it was utter foolishness. That message was utter foolishness
to the Greek way of seeing things. Now when I say Greek, I realize
the empire that day was Roman, but the Romans essentially engaged
in what these days is called cultural appropriation. They
tried to be as much like the Greeks as they could. In fact,
all of their gods are merely the Greek gods with Latin names
slapped on them. Zeus, that's Greek. Jupiter, that's Rome. Venus,
that's Greek. Aphrodite, that's Greek. Venus,
that's Rome. Same gods, different names. And
so it was Greek philosophy, the Greek way of thinking, that ruled
the world in that day. And Paul said, I didn't come
to teach you anything like that. I didn't even come here to dispute
with you about Greek philosophy. But Greek philosophy thought
it was utterly ridiculous. to speak about the resurrection
of the dead. For to them, to have a physical
form, to actually rise from the dead, would be a disadvantage. They actually believed, this
is what Plato taught and many of his philosophical descendants,
that we were purely spiritual beings until we were born. But
the shock of birth made us forget what we were. And when we die,
we go back to being purely spiritual beings, which is the much preferred
state of affairs. So to them, to have a hope in
the resurrection of the dead is to deny the most fundamental
good. And then the Jews. You're telling
me a man crucified has power to save? He can't save himself,
how's he gonna save anybody else? That's exactly what they said
at the cross. He saved others, himself he cannot
save. Well of course not, because if
he saves himself, nobody else will be saved. They proved what
fools they were as they tried to show Christ to be a fool. They didn't understand God's
way of saving sinners. They were in darkness. They were
in the darkness of their own natural spiritual blindness. And though He was the light,
they couldn't see it. Now this was all said in response
to the unbelief of the Jewish leaders. These were the so-called
experts of the Old Testament, and they, again, they believed
that being the experts, they understood all things. But our
Lord had said to them in John chapter 5, He said, you search the Scriptures, for
You think you have eternal life. These are the scriptures that
testify of me, but you will not come to me that you might have
life. Now all their technical understanding
of the words of the Old Testament did not give them an understanding
of the Old Testament. scriptures that they had available
to them. They read them, and from what
I understand, the Pharisees were able to commit tremendous amounts
of it, of the scriptures, to memory. You could say to them,
well what did Moses say here? And they could quote it to you. There was a fellow, a traveling
so-called evangelist that came to our church twice, a supposed
expert on prophetic things, and they also called him the walking
Bible because he claimed to have memorized the entire Bible. Well,
he may have been a walking Bible, but I think it's safe for me
to say he didn't have a clue about what it meant. He had no light, and he wasn't
a light. But our Lord says this, he that
follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Now, our translation says, never
walk in darkness. And that's true. And it may be
even an accurate way to translate the way the Greek language expresses
it. But you know, in English, we
have a rule against using double negatives. If you say, I don't
know nothing, in English, that means you know something. Of
course, where I come from, that means you really don't know anything.
Because we hillbillies like double negatives and triple negatives. No, I ain't never going there
no how. And that's the way the Greeks
did it. If they wanted to really convince you of the negativity
of something, they just piled up the various ways they could
express a negative. And so essentially it's saying,
he that follows me will not not walk in darkness. It's like what John said, I believe
it was John, in his epistle. I will never leave you nor forsake
you. Now the English translation,
because it just doesn't have a way to express this, is unable
to let you know that John used three negatives. You talk about
being emphatic. You know, I will not know where's know
how. Well, that's kind of the meaning of what was being said
there. That they will not, not walk
in darkness. So never walk in darkness probably
gets us the meaning, the sense. Our Lord has spoken emphatically
that he is the light, and so he speaks emphatically that those
who follow him will not walk in darkness. That's what I like
about the Bible. The matters of this world, we
live in the gray. We have to. I mean, you know, In the matters
of this world, things are not black and white. But when it comes to the things
of God, it is black and white. There is right and there is wrong. And you cannot mix error with
truth and come up with truth. You just come up with modified
error. It's kind of like, you know,
you go to your faucet and all the chemicals they put in it,
notwithstanding, you get, shall we call it, pure water. And you
gladly drink it. You go to your septic tank, dip
the cup in there, and you come up with something you don't even
want to hold in your hands, much less drink. But imagine this. gets an eyedropper. One drop of sewage in that pure
water. Will you drink it? Error utterly ruins truth. The one who follows Christ will
have the light of life will not walk in darkness. The one who follows Christ has
gone from blindness to being able to see and never having
to experience again the darkness that the Lord is talking about. Now, darkness is used as a metaphor
for several things, you know, in society. We might say, oh,
I went through some dark times. Well, this is not saying that
you won't go through dark times, horrible trials, difficulties. This does not mean that we'll
never have to endure especially dark times in this world. We're
seeing some of that right now in our own nation. These are
what we might call dark times, if we just look at the world
with natural eyes. Our Lord is not saying that we
who follow Him will not have to spend our lives in what we
would consider dark times. What he's talking about here
is spiritual light as opposed to spiritual darkness. Those who follow him are always
in the light. Always. Because in our present
state, We are not only renewed, reborn spirit, we are also the
old flesh. There are many times that our
flesh may cloud our vision, may trouble us about matters of spiritual
truth, but never in our spirits are we in confusion or doubt
about what the truth is. Christ is the light in as much
as he is the very essence of truth. And so we learn all things spiritual
through the light that he gives. Through his light, I know God. And without his light, I don't
know God. Philip said, Show us the Father
and that will be enough for us." And the Lord said, Philip, have
you been with me so long and you still don't realize He who
has seen me has seen the Father? You cannot know the Father apart
from the light of Christ. There was a religious family
across the street from my parents. And they were nice people, decent
folk. It was a young couple. And my
parents kind of liked them. And they were just two or three
years older than me, the couple was. And so their kids were youngsters. And I'm sure their kids served
the place of surrogate grandchildren. since none of their grandchildren
lived real nearby. But I was talking with them at
one point, and I had made the point to them that Christ is
the only way. And one of them, I think it was
the wife, said, oh, but what about the Jews? They love the
Father so much, they just don't know Christ. They don't even know who the
Father is if they don't follow Christ. They don't see the Father if
they do not see Him in the light of Christ. Do you want to know
God? Do you want to know the nature
of God so far as His characteristics and how He relates to His creation? There's only one way to find
out, and that's to know Christ, to follow Him. Then you learn
about God. How about favor with God? The
Jews who thought they were in the light, who thought they had
the light, they would read the Old Testament. They said, ah,
to get favor with God, keep the law. Which shows they were blind.
They had no understanding that the law was not given to them
as a way to obtain life. Though had they been able to
kept it, they would have obtained it. But it was never given to
them as though there was the slightest possibility they would
keep it. By the law is the knowledge of sin, not the knowledge of
righteousness. That's why Paul says the law
was not made for righteous men. It was made for, and he gives
a list of some of the most despicable people you could think of. If people, let's just put this
on a natural level, if people were not naturally criminals,
we would not need the law. We wouldn't need government. We wouldn't need lawmakers. We
would not need law enforcers, would we? Why are they there?
Because if they weren't there, there'd be utter chaos and mayhem. So it is with the law of God.
It was not given to impart life. It was given to restrain sin. They didn't understand the law.
They didn't understand God. They didn't understand themselves.
Why? Because they were not walking
in the light of Christ. By Christ, I understand spiritual
things. I understand that those sacrifices
of the Old Testament were not works of righteousness whereby
the Jews were able to obtain favor with God. Rather, they
are illustrations and pictures of Christ, the Lamb of God, that
actually takes away sin. I realize that high priest was
not some specially righteous man among the Jews, exalted and
somewhat higher than everybody else. He was nothing but a well-dressed
sinner. In fact, you couldn't, you know,
when the high priest had his robe on, the only thing you could
see was his face. He was absolutely robed in symbols
of Christ. That's what he's about. Only in the light of Christ can
I understand what pleases God. Because he's the only one who
ever did please God. And if God is pleased with us,
it's only because he sees us in him. When Bonnie and I were still
attending 13th Street in Ashland, a young woman, who up to that
point I didn't even know who she was. Much less did I know
she could sing. But she was the daughter of the
organist and the song leader. Name was Sonia, wasn't it, I
think? Yeah, and she got up and sang a song. And the chorus says this, but when he sees me,
and the he is God, when he sees me, he sees the blood of the
lamb. He sees me as worthy and not
as I am. He sees me in garments made white
as the snow. For the Lamb of God is worthy,
and he washed me, this I know." You can't understand that in
any other light than the light of the Lamb of God, the Lord
Jesus Christ, who is the light of the world. And you know what? He is the light of the world
in this sense, that those who follow Him understand the world. Now part of me looks at what's
going on in our world, and I shake my head. How can this happen? How can people be so stupid? And I'm sorry, some of this is
just plain stupidity. I can't imagine that people who
had enough intellect and ambition and discipline to get themselves
a PhD can say the things that they say. And we could. How could a society that's been
blessed so much express such rebellion against
the God who blessed them? You and I know how. In the flesh, it may surprise
us, but then we say, ah, they're just me without Christ. That's all they are. What you and I are surprised
at, if we are to be surprised, we should be surprised. It's
not worse than it is. And we should be surprised. that
we are not acting just as stupid and wicked as they are. In that light we understand the
world and we understand ourselves. Why am I in this pulpit preaching
this message instead of another pulpit preaching
a different message? That's it. Why do I believe that salvation
is utterly and completely from beginning to end a work of God
which he performed for a chosen people whom he loved because
he wanted to, not because of anything he saw in them? How
come I believe that? It's the only reason. I could look
at the means God used, the teachers that I've had, but a lot of other people had
the same teachers I did, and they don't believe this, and
they don't preach this. Why did I? Nothing, absolutely nothing is
rightly understood apart from the light of Christ. He is the
light, and you know, I know we look to Christ, we look at Christ
the best we can, but in a very real sense, it's not so much
that we're looking at Christ as we are seeing and understanding
all things. by the light that he shines on
the world. I am the light of the world.
There is no other light. All else is darkness. I talked about this being dark
times. If there was a sudden moral revival of our nation, such that there weren't pride
parades over things that people ought to be ashamed of, And there
were no babies being aborted. And just think of any of the
things you think are wrong with our country. If tomorrow we woke
up and all of that was gone, this nation would still be in
darkness. The people would be as lost as
they were before. For it is only through the knowledge
of Christ and the light of Christ that anything is understood.
One brief point. He said they have the light of
life. He did not mean by this they walk in the light that gives
life. He says they walk in the light
that comes from being alive. in John chapter one, in describing
the word of God, who is the eternal God himself, he came into this
world, and it said, he was the life, and this life was the light
of man. Light Gospel light, if we call
it that, Christ light, is simply the spiritual life that He creates
in the hearts of all His people. And therefore, that causes us
to follow Him, and we always walk in that light. Well, may
God honor His word.