We've been looking at these verses
as the Lord, the Holy Spirit, has unveiled them before us. And
today we come to verse 5. But let's put this in the context. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning
with God. All things were made by him,
and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was
life, and the life was the light of men. And this is our verse
today. And the light shineth in the
darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. The light shineth in
the darkness. What a glorious description of
what all of this Bible's about. What a glorious description of
what it is for us to be brought into the light and to have God
shine. What a need that we have is for
God to shine a light again and again into the darkness. The
darkness, of course, it's the first negative element that you
read in these opening verses of John's Gospel. It's the first
negative element and it's linked to two other elements in verse
10. He says, he was in the world and the world was made by him
and the world knew him not. He came unto his own and his
own received him not. There is a glorious picture here,
isn't it, of the fact that our sovereign God was the Word in
the beginning. He had union and communion with
God. He was the creator of all things. And John very evidently, and
again and again, wants us to go, as he does in his first epistle,
he wants us to go back to Genesis 1. And so, to understand what
the darkness is, let's go back to Genesis 1. We saw in their
previous weeks that when God said in verse three of Genesis
1, let there be light, that was light, that was spiritual light. It was a light that came before
the light of the moon and the sun and the stars. And the darkness
comes very early, doesn't it? In the beginning, Genesis 1,
in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and
the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the
face of the deep. The Spirit of God moved upon
the face of the waters, and God said, Let there be light. And God saw the light, and it
was good. And God divided the light from
the darkness. He called the night a day, and
the darkness he called night, the evening and the morning of
the first day. So what is the darkness that's
being referred to here? I think very evidently there
was a fall of Satan before there was a fall of man. There was,
and there is, pictured in that fall of Satan, pictured the fall
of man, what a great description of man, isn't it? A fallen man,
without form and void. There was a darkness that came
upon this earth and came upon all humanity. Unless we understand
what that darkness is and the roots and the cause and the effects
of that darkness, we won't understand the rest of the scriptures. And we need to know again and
again that the light shines in the
darkness. The light never stops shining,
and the darkness never comprehends it. I think it's better for us
to see that darkness is not comprehending it. It can also be translated
that word, the darkness has not overcome it. And there's a very
real sense in which that's speaking of the sovereign, immutable,
unchangeable grace of God that he comes and nothing will stop
him coming. He shall, as we read earlier,
he shall not fail nor be discouraged. Our God sovereignly reigns. The darkness that's being referred
to, of course, is the darkness of the fall of man, and we do
need to go back and look at it briefly again. It is the darkness
that all of this creation and every
man that comes in it and it's a darkness that's only ever relieved
and only ever understood when light comes. And verse chapter
3 is where I believe the Holy Spirit and John wish us to go
to find out what this darkness is and why the darkness is so
deep and why the darkness can't even comprehend light when it
comes. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the
field which the Lord God had made, and he said unto the woman,
yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree in the
garden. He begins with a lie, doesn't
he? Satan came as a preacher. And it's interesting, isn't it,
that John begins with that extraordinary and glorious statement, as in
the beginning was the word. And the beginning of darkness
is a denial of the word of God. Let's read on in Genesis 3. And
the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the
trees in the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in
the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat it,
neither shall you touch it. His lie has become her lie. Creation came with a word. The darkness over all of this
creation and over all humanity comes with the denial of a word. The darkness that was found in
Satan, which we read about in Ezekiel 28 and in Isaiah, isn't
it? Isaiah describes him, How art
thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning? how art thou
cut down to the ground which did weaken the nations for thou
hast said in thine heart this is before the fall of man he
said this is what he said in his heart when it was revealed
to him who the lord jesus christ was and when it was revealed
to him that the angels would have been servants of man he
said i won't have that man to rule over me listen to what he
says For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit
also upon the mount of the congregation in the sights of the north, I
will ascend above the heights of the cloud, I will be like
the Most High. Now go back to Genesis 3 and
listen to his promises. The serpent said unto the woman,
you shall He begins with a doubting of
God's Word and now he's openly denying the very Word of God. This darkness comes from this
man, this being, Satan. Listen to what he goes on to
say. For Goth does know that in the day ye eat thereof your
eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and
evil. And when the woman saw that the
tree was good for food, and it was pleasant to the eyes, and
a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took the fruit
thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her,
and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were
opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sowed fig
leaves together. This is the darkness in which
Adam descended, and Adam representatively descended, when he descended
into that darkness, all of the rest of the human race. You come
into this world with Satan's promises, And people might object to that,
but we are saved representatively by the Lord Jesus Christ. Romans
5.12 says, Therefore, as by one man sin entered into the world,
and death by sin died, death passed upon all men, for that
all have sinned. We must remember that the corruption
begins with the denial of the word. The corruption that Paul
was concerned about with the Corinthians, that they'd be corrupted
from the simplicity that's in Christ. The gospel is simple
and singular. See, Satan appeared as a preacher. He wasn't denying God's existence,
but he was denying his character. He was denying his truth. He
was denying his faithfulness. He was denying his holiness.
He was denying his omniscience, he says. God knows that he's withholding
something from you that you can have more of if you take. He
was denying the very goodness of God. He was denying the judgment
of God. You shall not surely die. He
was denying the sovereignty of God. He was denying the rights
of God as a creator. There we were in the garden. woman, in perfect fellowship,
with perfect company, in a perfect creation, in a perfect world where there
was no death or no sin, with none to observe and none to be
drawn to, They took and they ate. Isn't it extraordinary that for
the rest of human history, we think that somehow by bringing
people under commandments of the law, we will cause them to
live righteously before God? And there they were with one
commandment. One commandment. See, when the
darkness came, They died, didn't they? They died spiritually.
The darkness that John's referring to is the darkness of spiritual
death. It's the darkness of being under the bondage of Satan that's
being captive. As Paul says in Ephesians chapter
two, he says, You hath he quickened who were
dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past you walked
according to the course of this world, according to the prince
of the power of the air, that's Satan, the spirit that now worketh. passive, it worketh in the children
of disobedience, among whom also we had our conversation, we had
our walk, we had our life in times past, in the lusts of our
flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind,
and were by nature children of wrath, even as others. See, when
the darkness came, light was hidden from this pair. They hid
in God's garden, And you played hide and seek. Where do you hide?
You hide in the darkest place you can possibly find, where
there is as little light as possible. Ahead in that darkness. You might recall what caused
them to hide. by a word, the darkness came
by the denial of a word, and when the Lord comes, this pair
hides in the darkness again, when they hear his voice. And they made a covering for
their shame, which is what the rest of human history is all
about, isn't it? Man making a covering. And when
they are brought When they are brought by the Lord God into
his very presence, they cast blame. Ultimately they cast blame
on one another and they blame Satan, but really ultimately
what they're doing is blaming God. This is all your fault.
It's all your fault if you hadn't put the woman there, if you hadn't
let the serpent be there. See, the light of the presence
of God is a light that comes when He takes people by a sovereign
hand out of that darkness and He brings them into the very
presence of Himself. And then He reveals extraordinary
things, doesn't He? He reveals the depth of their
sin. He reveals the depth of His glory. He reveals what they have become. and in Genesis 3 he sheds the
most remarkable in the midst of this darkness. The light shines
in the midst of this darkness. He made a promise to them, didn't
he? Verse 15, I'll put enmity between
thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed. It shall
bruise thy head and thou shall bruise his heel. There will be
an end to Satan's dominion over the children of God. There will
be a time when in the wounding and the defeating and the crushing
of Satan, there will be a wounding of the Saviour. And then that
glorious picture that we have in verse 21 of Genesis 3, and
the Lord God called them, didn't He? Unto Adam and his wife did
the Lord God make coats of skin, and He clothed them. He took
away their fig leaves, were provided for them. They
were there made to witness the first death, and God shed blood in his garden
for the first time, and it was representative of the blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ, and that covering was a covering for shame,
but it's the covering for shame that comes with death. And that's
exactly what Abel brought in the next chapter, didn't he?
When Cain was captive by Satan. And he did not any of the words
of God. And what did Abel bring? What
did righteous Abel bring? He brought a blood sacrifice
to God. See this darkness that John's
speaking of is a kingdom. It's the kingdom of Satan. It's
a kingdom of darkness, Colossians 1. It's a present reality. It's in this world. And the remarkable
thing is that the scriptures say that not only are you in
darkness, none save people are in darkness. They live in the
world of darkness. But the saddest thing of all
is the darkness is in them, is in them. It is external to them,
and it invites everything in this world. But it's in Ephesians
5, it says, Once you were darkness, See there is in this darkness,
as we saw last week, the light is required in the midst of the
darkness to reveal the character of God. Man is absolutely ignorant
of the character of God. He has Satan's promises and Satan's
knowledge and Satan's words echoing and living in his veins. You
shall be his gods. You shall know good and evil.
The implication being that using your free will you'll know good
and evil and you'll be able to choose the good over the evil.
You'll be able to take the very place of God and in the darkness
you have absolutely no idea of the ignorance. You're ignorant
of the character of God. They became fools in their own
wisdom. They become fools as Romans once
and they're always building and always failing. They are ignorant
in this darkness. They're ignorant of themselves.
Man is exalting himself in the most extraordinary ways. He exalts
himself and debases himself at the same time, doesn't he? Now
man's greatest achievement in his understanding of himself
is that he came from an animal. He came from a microbe and somehow
he has, by dint of billions of years and by the exercise, he's
managed to claw himself out of that swamp. And the extraordinary
thing is, in the exaltation of that which pervades this Western
culture and Eastern culture as well, pervades this whole world,
man is insulting himself in what he glories in. Because he's made
in the image of God. And yet he says that the greatest
thing about me is that I'm an animal. And that's exactly what
happens, doesn't it? Man, in this darkness and ignorance,
lives to a child of God living for the
glory of God you are eternal beings you have eternal souls ignorant the darkness means that
they can And the only reason we're completely
ignorant of it is we have absolutely no knowledge of who God is. We
have no knowledge of ourselves and we have no knowledge of that
light that shines. And when that light does shine,
we reject it again and again. We're active in rejecting it.
You read Romans 1 and see what they do. So dark is this darkness,
that when light is revealed, the light of God is rejected. Not only is the light of God
rejected, men in the darkness hate the light. John 3. They hate the light because their
deeds are evil. They are not passive in their
rejection. They're not passive in their
delight in the darkness. The darkness shines. shines in the darkness and the
darkness can't stop the light just as you do in any dark room
you turn on the tiniest light and all of a sudden you see the
most remarkable things you could never see the light reveals and
the light shows and the light penetrates and the light is so
extraordinary It dissipates out of the room. The light shines in the darkness. The depth of the darkness reveals
itself. That is the darkness, that is
this dark world into which the Light of Life came, the Light
of Life shone. He came and he shone to reveal
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. He came into
the darkness, the Light shone shone in the midst of that darkness
in the garden with those promises. The light shone in the life of
Abel. The light shone in the life of
Enoch. The light shone in the life of Noah. The light shone
in the light of Abraham. In the midst of darkness, wherever
there was, there was darkness and the light shone. The light
shone in the midst of all of the darkness of human rebellion,
whether it was the rebellion at the flood or the rebellion
at the Tower of Babel. We don't want that light, the
light who is the light of the world, the light of the glory
of God. We don't want it to be hidden in any way at all. We
want it to shine. We want Christ to shine as the truth, as the life. Without the truth, we can't know
God and we're hopelessly ignorant. Without the life, the light that
is the life, we are dead. Without the light, we just walk
in darkness and we stumble our way around this world. Christ
is the way, the truth and the life. He is the rock. Unless we build on him, we're
building on shifting sand. He is the atonement. Without
him, there is no reconciliation and forgiveness and peace with
God. He is the mediator. Without Him, we can't stand in
the presence of our great God. The light shineth in the darkness. Let's have a break and come back and look at the
darkness in John's Gospel.