I love the way the Lord saves
sinners like us. As you go through John's Gospel,
as you go through the Gospel accounts, the Lord is always
saving those that people didn't expect to be saved, and certainly
the Jewish religious leaders didn't expect to be saved. So
here in John 8, verse 12, the Lord is caused hatred of the
Jews and their scheming ways to condemn him and to kill him,
to draw this lady to himself. And then to draw these words,
these glorious words that we're looking at in John 8, verse 12,
draw these words from the lips of the Saviour that we might
now At the end of 2022, read these words again and I trust
find the light of life in those words. Our God reigns and rules,
but most particularly He reveals His glory in the way He saves
sinners like this particular woman. And that's where our verse
begins, doesn't it? It says in verse 12, Then, then
spake Jesus unto them. This was the church service.
The Lord Jesus had come to the temple early in the morning and
as the sun was rising over that scene he was most likely in the
court of women and the court of women had a giant candelabra
in it and they had just finished celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles
and the Feast of Tabernacles is a celebration of God's provision
for his people all the way from their redemption out of out of
Egypt until they're being brought into the Promised Land, and for
40 years they were fed miraculously by God, with manna from heaven,
with angels' food. And they were, their path was
lit. by a light, a pillar of cloud
by day and a pillar of light by night and they didn't move
unless the light moved and so they'd followed. So it is very
instructive that our Lord would use these particular words to
these particularly dark and particularly evil people and use them in the
presence of this lady who that previous night had been caught
in the very act of adultery. and brought in her guilt and
brought in her depravity to the very feet of the Lord. And that's
what he does to all of his people, doesn't he? The circumstances
of life, as difficult as they might be for all of the children
of God, the circumstances of life are ordained by God to bring
you to the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ, to bring you to a place
Where he can say, neither do I condemn thee, go, and sin no
more. So then now the church service
begins again, and you can imagine the scene. One group of Pharisees
had left, shame-faced, because they were convicted in their
conscience, and their conviction in their conscience caused them
to go away from the Lord Jesus and not stay there. But there
is this woman, I imagine, and there is this crowd of people
that are gathered to hear the Lord Jesus Christ, and there
were still Pharisees there. A great picture, isn't it? Wherever
you go and wherever you walk and however you walk through
this world, there are always going to be the Pharisees there.
There are always going to be the enemies there. We have enough
inside of ourselves. The ones external to us are not
the problem as much as the ones inside. So as the physical sun
rose, Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, spoke of
the sun of righteousness, Malachi 4, to the sun of righteousness
arising with healing in his wings. And then it says, you shall go
forth and grow up as calves of the stall, and they shall tread
down the wicked, for they shall be as ashes under the soles of
your feet in the day that I shall do this. So the Lord Jesus spoke
again, and he spoke both to the Pharisees and the leader of the
Jews. And again, he spoke to this gathered assembly, this
gathered assembly. And he says these remarkable
words. He begins this sentence by a
declaration of his deity. He says, I am. And everyone knew
exactly what he was saying. He says, I am God almighty. That is the phrase, that's the
word, that's the description that God gave him himself. You
know the story well, Moses at the burning bush. And Moses asked
the Lord, whom shall I say? Whom shall I say has sent me? What shall I say to them? And
God said unto Moses, I am that I am. And he said, thou shalt
say unto the children of Israel, I am. has sent me unto you. I am the God who met Moses at
the burning bush. And throughout the rest of the
gospel accounts, the Lord Jesus Christ will be accused again
and again of declaring himself to be God. You're just a man.
You look so ordinary as a man that we can dismiss you out of
hand. But you are God. I am. I wanted to look at this this sentence of our Lord in
light of the five declarations. He has a particular word. He says, I am the light of the
world. The one following me shall not
walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life. The, he declares again and again
that he is, he says, I am the bread of life in John chapter
six. I am the light of the world here. John chapter 10, he says,
I am the door. I am the good shepherd at the
tomb of Lazarus. He says, I am the resurrection
of life. He says in the last supper, I
am the way, the truth and the life. I am the vine 50 times. In John's Gospel, he declares
in one way or another, I am. I am God. I am God. Life and light go hand
in hand. Without life, without light,
there is no light. But the light that's being spoken
of here is the supernatural light, isn't it? It's not normal light.
The very first words of God recorded for us in Genesis chapter 1 are,
God said, let there be light and there will be light. And light was. Now we're not
talking about physical light because the sun and the moon
and the stars weren't created until the fourth day. So this
is talking, this is talking about a spiritual light, a spiritual
light that comes from the Lord Jesus Christ and shines in this
world and shines most particularly in the hearts of God's people.
You turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter four, the apostle Paul
takes up the very same words from Genesis chapter one to speak
of this light, this particular light. He speaks of his ministry and
he speaks of the fact in verse 2 that he is not acting in any
way in dishonesty or any craftiness and he's not handling the Word
of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves
to every man's conscience in the sight of God. Everything we do, and particularly
where we proclaim the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, it's
in the sight of God. But if our gospel be hid, it
is hid to them that are lost, in whom the God of this world
has blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light
of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should
shine unto them. 4. Because we preach not ourselves,
but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus'
sake. 5. For or because God, who commanded
the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. If you go back with me into that
verse, you can leave out the description of God commanding
the light and just read it with me this way. For God has shined
in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That's salvation, brothers and
sisters. That is salvation. So Paul speaks
of this light and this understanding. He says in Ephesians 1.17, he
says that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the
knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding, that you may know what is the
hope of his calling and what the riches of the glory of his
inheritance in the saints." So the light is not a natural light. The light is the light of who
God is. The light is the light that reveals
who the Lord Jesus Christ is. And such light must shine, and
such light has always shone, and the people of God have always
seen in light of that. At the end of John chapter eight,
if you're back there, it speaks of Abraham in verse 56. Your father Abraham rejoiced
to see my day. Abraham rejoiced in the day of
the Lord Jesus Christ, and he saw it. He saw it. And the result of seeing it?
He was glad. He was glad. If that light shines,
that light shines through the preaching of the gospel, it'll
shine a light on the Lord Jesus Christ. It'll shine a light on
who you are. It'll shine a light on how he
saves his people. It will be a blessed day and
you will be glad. The natural man says, seeing
is believing. God inverts all of the things
of the natural man, and he says, believing is seeing. Believing
is seeing. He said that at the tomb at Martha
and Mary, didn't he? If you believe, you shall see
the glory of God, and you'll see the Lord Jesus Christ in
his glory. So he is the light. He is the
light. There is no other light. He is the Light. He is the Light
of who God is. He is the Light of how God can
save sinners. He is the Light of who we are.
He is the Light of this world. His Light shines a Light on this
world. In His Light we see, and without
His Light all we have He is the light of the world. He's not
the light just for the Jews. He's the light for all of God's
people throughout all of the world. He's the light for the
Gentiles. That was the great promise of the Old Testament,
that He would be a covenant for the people. He would be a light
for the Gentiles. A light that leads, a light that
divides, a light that separates His people from the world, a
light that protects His people. Turn with me back to Exodus because
these people were celebrating what had happened at Exodus and
they were celebrating the events after it and the last plague
is a shocking plague. The last plague on the nation
of Israel before the killing of all the firstborn of all the
creatures in Egypt was the plague of darkness. Moses, verse 22
of Exodus 10, Moses stretched forth his hand towards heaven,
and there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three
days. And they saw not one another,
they couldn't see one another, neither rose any from his place
for three days. But all of the children had light
in their dwellings, and none of that light, none of that light
ever reached the Egyptians. And that light became this pillar
of cloud, this pillar of cloud and this pillar of fire. And there they were, like all
of God's children in so much of their wanderings in this world.
We are at the Red Sea, and there seemingly is no way forward.
And there seemingly is an enemy which is pursuing and destroying,
about to destroy you from behind. And then the Lord comes. He comes, as a cloud and a pillar of light. In verse
19 of Exodus chapter 14, And the angel of the Lord, which
went before the camp of Israel, removed and went from behind
them. And the pillar of cloud went from before their face and
stood behind them. And it came between the camp
of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel. It was a cloud and
darkness to them. But it gave light by night to
these, so that no one came near the other all the night long."
The light of God both shines and illuminates, but also for
those who reject this light and those who have made themselves
the enemies of God, it is a light that divides and separates. This
was the light of the wilderness wanderings. It was with them
for the next 40 years. It's the light, not just of the
Jews, but it's the light of the world. It is the light. There's
only one light. It's an exclusive light. It's
a particular light. It is the light of God. It's the light. I am, says God. I am the light of the world. The one following me, the one
following me, We'll come back and look at this
in a little bit more detail later on, but the one following is
a synonym for the one believing. It's the one eating and drinking
the Lord Jesus Christ. It's the one from out of whose
belly shall flow rivers of living water. The one following me shall
not, what a glorious promise, shall not walk in the darkness. There is, in this fallen world,
so much darkness, isn't there? There is so much that brings
darkness. There is the darkness of this
morally degenerate society. There is the darkness of this
spiritually ignorant society that we live in. And then there
is the darkness, the personal darkness, that all of us as children
of Adam feel in this world so often, don't we? Every time you
look within, you're looking into darkness. People look within
themselves for some hope of their salvation, but looking within
is always looking to an empty box, and it's a sad box, and
people get caught up so often looking to something in themselves
rather than looking away from themselves and looking to the
Lord Jesus Christ. But we do, like David did, as
we read in Psalm 27 and many other places, we do wet our pillows
with tears at night and we do all go through times of emotional
anguish and mental torture and the chaos of living as sinners
in a fallen and sinful world. Where does this darkness come
from? We speak often of the fall of man and man in the garden. Man in the garden when he had
defied God and taken Satan's poison into himself and taken
Satan's promises into himself. It began, didn't it? The darkness
began with those words of Satan to the woman. Did God really
say, Did God really say? Hath God said? And what was the end result of
it? We don't have time to go through
all of the problems. Satan caused Adam and Eve to
doubt the judgment of God, to doubt the goodness of God, to
doubt the word of God and to turn to their own ways. They hid themselves. Adam and Eve, his wife, hid themselves
from the presence of the Lord amongst the trees of the garden.
And that's exactly ourselves from the presence of
God and I bet you when they played hide-and-seek in the garden they
found the darkest place they could possibly find under the
leafiest bushes so that they couldn't be seen by God. What
a ridiculous thing to be doing from God who created everything,
who sees everything and saw not only what they were doing but
saw the motivations of their hearts as they did it. But such
is this world that we live in and we cannot understand this
world with any clarity without understanding what God says has
happened in this world. He says about us, Like this woman
who was brought to the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, he
says, in you he has quickened, Ephesians 2 verse 1, you made
alive who were dead in trespasses and sins. Where in time past
you walked according to the course of this world, this is what darkness
is, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit
that now works in the children of disobedience, and if you think
you're better than them, read on, among whom also we all had
our conversation, all had our walk in this world. In times
past, in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the
flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children It's only the mercy of God that
can rescue people from that state. Listen to how Paul describes his people and describes
the world they live in. He says in verse 17 of Ephesians
4, This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you
henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk. Listen to what
his description of them is. This is all people outside of
the Lord Jesus Christ, in the vanity of their minds, the emptiness
of their minds. And we think they're brilliant,
don't we? We love to hear their eloquence and we love to read
of the wonders of what they are just diagnosing about us and
the condition of this world. And God says it's vanity. It's
vanity. Without the light of the Lord
Jesus Christ, without the light of who He is, without the light
of Him describing us, It's the vanity of their mind. Having the understanding darkened. Darkened. Their understanding
is darkened. I don't care how brilliant they
are, their understanding is darkened. Being alienated from the life ignorance that is in them, because
of the blindness of their heart, who being past feeling, have
given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness That's the darkness, brothers
and sisters. That's the darkness which came from the fall. The darkness that the Lord Jesus
Christ is particularly talking about, and in the context of
this passage of scripture, is a shocking darkness, isn't it?
As you go through John's gospel, you and the other gospel accounts,
you become more and more aware that the more the Lord Jesus
Christ reveals himself, The more he claims to be God, the more
he proves that he is the Messiah, the anointed one that they are
all looking for, the more he establishes his deity, the more
he establishes the way God saves sinners, the more enmity there
is against him. These people were in the process
of working out ways to put the Lord Jesus Christ to death. They
were, they were in the words of Ephesians chapter 1, they
were living in the vanity of their minds. John continually
brings pictures of light and dark to us, doesn't he? Nicodemus
came to the light of the world, out of the darkness. Judas left
the light. And John just makes a simple
statement, and it was dark. It was dark. To come into the light of the
world is to be drawn by him, to him for who he is. Men in religion, like Nicodemus,
are as blind as bats until God gives them life, and God has
to give them light. They might be learned in religion,
But if they have no light of who the Lord Jesus Christ is,
it doesn't matter how much religion they have, it doesn't matter
how much Bible knowledge they have, it doesn't matter how much
tradition they have, it doesn't matter how many people follow
them. Without the reality of who the Lord Jesus Christ is,
religion is dark and religion is damning. And this is exactly
what we see in these gospel accounts, isn't it? The Lord Jesus Christ,
the more he revealed in himself, the darker they got. It's remarkable,
isn't it? He goes to the dark tomb of Lazarus
and he says, come out. Come out. And what's the response
of these very same people that we're reading about here in John
chapter eight? Well, let's kill the Lord Jesus Christ. And then
they say, well, let's kill Lazarus again. As if four days rotting
in a tomb isn't enough death for Lazarus, let's kill him again. We think that human beings that they're rational creatures.
But without the light of the world, without the light of who
God is, we're intensely irrational creatures, and the more religion
that people have, the darker it is. He is the light of the
world. This light shines in the darkness. And then John speaks of this
light in so many wonderful ways, doesn't he? It says in John 1,
verse 4, John came as a witness to this light. And these same
Pharisees went up there and they looked at John. There's nothing
special about him. And John says, Behold the Lamb
of God. And they say, there's nothing
special about him either. And they went back to the Jerusalem. And the Lord Jesus Christ in
John chapter two took his people in the opposite direction and
took them to a wedding and revealed his glory and his people put
their trust in him. He says to his people, come to
me. He is the light of the world. There's no light in human reason,
no matter how brilliant they seem to be to other men. There's
no light in our reasoning. In all your ways acknowledge
him. begin, and he shall direct your path. There's no light in
man's religion. There is just the light of who
God is to illuminate all of these things. The light of the Lord
Jesus Christ is as necessary for spiritual life as the light
of sun for our physical lives here. And he says, he that followeth
me, he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness. He that
followeth me. Therefore, on their mad rush to hell. As
I said earlier, following is a pseudonym for believing. It's
he, whosoever comes, whosoever believes, whosoever looks to,
whosoever calls upon it. The woman at the well, she said,
if you knew the gift of God and who I am, you'd ask. It's those who ask, isn't it?
It's one's sinners, guilty, condemned, legally
worthy of death, but drawn to hear those words of grace. Neither do I condemn thee. Go
and sin no more. See the Lord doesn't ask us to
look within. He says just follow, just follow. It all involves Him. The me who
commands, he says, come unto me, all you that labour and weary
and heavy laden, you'll find rest. You come unto me who claims
to be God Almighty, he says, I am the one, the me who declares
the guilty free of condemnation, the one who speaks through his
servants and his ambassadors, the one who sovereignly draws
sinners to himself. love how powerful light is no
matter how dark things are all you need is light and these days
we've got it at our fingertips haven't we? And if this room
was dark, you can see all sorts of things, can't you? I had a
terrible accident a few years ago after I'd had one shoulder
fixed. I was walking down to lock the
chickens, the chooks up at night, and there was a wheelbarrow.
And I did the most amazing cartwheel over this wheelbarrow. And as
I fell, the wheelbarrow sort of followed me, and I kept sort
of falling. And I wrecked my other shoulder. It took me months
to get over it. And all I needed, all I needed,
was one of them. And the wonderful thing is how
effortlessly the light overcomes the darkness. And so it is with
our God, isn't it? How does he overcome the darkness?
By shining the light of who he is in his gospel, in his word. And he says to the ones following
him, he says in John chapter one, he says, come unto me. He takes his people to the wedding
feast him is in the words of John chapter
3 is to to see who God is, to enter,
to see and to enter the kingdom of God. Nicodemus, you have to
be born again. All of your religion has taught
you absolutely nothing, Nicodemus. You are as ignorant as you could
possibly be and you are a brilliant man. You are the teacher of Israel
and you need to have light from heaven to be born again. It is,
the one following, is to have those living waters that flow,
as he promised the Samaritan woman. It is to rise up and walk
as the paralytic man in John chapter 5, which caused all this
hatred of the Jews because the Lord did it on the Sabbath day. It is, to follow him is, in the
words of John chapter 6, is to eat, drink his blood. To follow him
is to live upon him, to live upon what he did in his flesh
to work out a perfect righteousness for all of his people. To live
upon what he did in his shed blood where he bore all of the
sins of all of his people in his body on the tree and they
are gone. To eat and to drink is to have
that internally in you. It is, in the words of John 7,
to be made thirsty and to drink, if any man thirst. Let him come
unto me and drink, and he that believeth on me. As the Scriptures
have said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water from
the light of God. It is to see and to believe. It's to come out of the darkness
into the light. It is to hear Him pray for you and I right
now in His high priestly prayer and to find our comfort and our
joy in who He is and what He's done. It's to follow Him in the
truth of who He is. It's to find everything about
the Lord Jesus Christ appealing. No matter what He says, no matter
how offensive it is to man, every characteristic of Him is glorious. Don't you find Him beautiful?
What on earth would you want to change about the Lord Jesus
Christ? We love Him in His deity. We
love Him in His sovereignty. We love Him in His promise. And he speaks to us. Pilate questioning
him, are you a king? And he says to this end, this
is the reason I was born. And for this reason, I came into
the world that I should bear witness unto the truth. And then
he makes this remarkable promise. Everyone that is of the truth,
everyone whose origin is of the truth, is to hear him say, to follow
him is to hear him say on the cross of Calvary, it is finished. It is finished. Everything that
God requires of you for all of your salvation is finished. It's paid in full. All of the
debt you owe God, you owe God holiness. You owe God to be in
his presence a perfectly sinless life. It's all been paid in full. It's all in the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's following me. Shall not walk in the darkness. Shall not walk in that darkness.
And finally, he speaks of a possession, doesn't he? You shall not walk
in the darkness of all of that religion, but you shall have
the light of life. You shall have the light of life. How do you get it? How do you
get the light of life? It's a gift. It has to come as a gift. If
you knew the gift of God, if you knew the gift of God and
who it is that's speaking to you, you would ask. So God's
people ask. They ask and they keep on asking. That's why I love that verse
in Psalm 27 that we read earlier. The Lord says, seek my face. He's saying, come unto me, all
you that weary and heavy laden. You said, this is what David
says to God, you said, seek my face. And my heart said unto
thee, thy face, Lord, will I seek. It comes as an absolute necessity
That great crowd that walked away from the Lord Jesus Christ
in John chapter 6 and he says, there's the door to the apostles,
you can go. You can go as well. 5,000 people can leave me and
I lose absolutely nothing of my glory and nothing of my deity.
You can go as well. And what did Peter say? no one else to go to. You alone have the words of eternal
life. But I do love what he says. They
shall not walk in darkness, but have it That life springs up internally
out of the very hearts of God's regenerate people. It is a glorious
description of the new creation. They have it. They have it as
their position. They have it as part of their
very being. I love how he prayed. He says in John 17, 20, neither
I pray I for these alone. He's not just praying for his
apostles, but for them also which shall believe on me through their
word, that they all may be one. As thou, Father, art in me, and
I in thee, that they also may be one in us. that the world
may believe that thou hast sent me, and the glory which thou
gavest me I have given them, that they may be one. even as
we are one. Listen to what he prays to his
Father, I in them. What's the hope of glory for
Christians, brothers and sisters? The hope of glory is not about
me doing anything. The hope of glory, according
to Colossians 1.27, is Christ in you. You shall have I in them, says the Lord Jesus
Christ in his prayer, and that they may be perfect in one, that
the world may know that thou hast sent me and has loved them
as thou hast loved me. How do I know I've had this gift? How do I know? How does it come?
It comes by asking. It comes by revelation. How do I know? Because I'm coming
right now. If you've come, you keep on coming. I'm coming to Him right now.
I'm coming to Him for all of my righteousness. I'm coming
to Him for all of my sin debt to be cancelled. to him. That light that shone
around Paul on the Damascus Road was brighter than the noonday
sun and it was the picture of the Lord Jesus Christ and this
light that shines in the darkness, the darkness of Paul's religion
of the Jews. declared in this book. In his
light I see life. His light is life to me. His word is life to me. The light of who he is is life
to me. And I've come as this woman sinner with a sentence of death
over me and absolutely no excuse for my sin. I can't blame my
heritage, I can't blame my circumstances, I can't blame my peers. My sin
is all my fault. I'm a sinner. The Lord Jesus
Christ came into the world to save sinners. He came to save
sinners. How do I know I have this gift? I love what Jacob did when he
was fearful of his life. He wrestled with the Lord Jesus
Christ all that night long. He said, I'm not gonna let you
go unless you bless me. You better bless me before I
let you go. It is, to go back to John chapter
eight, it is to call him Lord. In the midst of a world that
wanted him dead, a religious world that wanted him dead, a
religious world that said he's a deceiver, a religious world
that said he's demon-possessed, this woman said, Lord, Lord,
is to have him as Lord. She could have fled, but she
stayed. You shall have the light of life. It's the promise of our great
and glorious God. You shall have the light of life.
Let's just turn, as we finish, let's turn to 2 Timothy 1 and
we'll see what this light of life is in the promise of our
great God. He says to those who follow,
be not, verse eight, be not therefore ashamed of the testimony of our
Lord, the witness of our Lord. Nor of me, his prisoner, but
be thou a partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the
power of God. If God's power is at work in
you, you will suffer afflictions for the sake of the gospel. But
listen to the power of God, who has saved us, and called us,
what happens first? Saving happens first, and calling,
and you'll see why as the verses unfold, not according to our
works, not according to anything I have done. This woman had done
nothing, but according to his own purpose and grace, which
was given us, it comes as a gift, before the world began." And
what happens when the light shines? "...but is now made manifest
by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished
death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through
the gospel." whereunto I am appointed a preacher,
and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles, for which cause
also I suffer these things." He was about to be executed by
the Romans. Nevertheless, I am not ashamed,
listen to what it is, to follow and to come, for I know whom
I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that
which I've committed unto him against that day. They shall not walk in darkness,
but shall have the light of life because the light of the world
has come. Heavenly Father, please bless
your words and create life and light and faith as you alone
can do and cause us to rest in your dear and precious Son, our
Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.