Turn back to John chapter 8. John chapter 8. I am the light
of the world. There in verse 12. Our Lord, He goes back to teaching
after He was rudely interrupted by the scribes and the Pharisees
when they brought that adulterous woman, put her at his feet to
see if he would condemn her. They thought they had him in
a dilemma. They thought they had had him.
And here's what's interesting. This, to me, is really interesting. They knew. They knew how merciful
he was. They knew how merciful he was.
And they catch this woman caught in the act of adultery. And they
knew what the law said about adultery, stoning them, both
of them, caught in the act to death. And no doubt they thought,
we got him here because he's merciful. He's merciful. Let's see what he does with this
one. They tried to use his mercy,
his kindness against him, against him. You see, they saw mercy
as a weakness. They saw mercy as a weakness,
not a virtue, not a strength, but a weakness. And they tried
to use it against him. So our Lord here in verse 12, he, he
spake to them. He says, again, he turned, he
turned to them and he began to teach them again. And he said
to them, I am the light of the world. The Jewish people would call
their teachers light. The Messiah was called by them
light. And of course, God is light. And here he sits speaking to
them and says, I am the light. Not those scribes and Pharisees.
They're not the light. They're darkness. They are darkness. You know, in the first part,
of John's gospel, he tells us that Christ is the light that
lighteth every man that cometh into the world. You and I have
our existence and our moral intelligence by Jesus Christ. That's where
we get it. I owe my existence to him. I really don't owe my existence
to mom and dad. even though they were means by
which God brought me into the world. They didn't choose me. My parents didn't choose me.
I was like a pig in a poke to them. I don't know if any of
you older ones know what that is. You know, my dad had a little
store, him and mom had a little store when I was just a little
kid. And there was a thing in there called pig in a poke. It
was a toy in this wrapper, in this bag. It was a toy and you
didn't know what it was until you opened it. It was a pig and
a poke. That's what I was to mom and
dad. They didn't know. They didn't know at that time
in 1955. They didn't know if it was a boy or a girl. It was
going to be one of them. But I started saying, what? Yeah,
I'm probably the what? But listen, our Lord. Our Lord
brought us into this world. Everyone has their existence.
They owe it to Jesus Christ. All things were created by him
and for him. And then Christ being the creator
of the world is the one who gives light and life to everyone. And
he's the one who gives moral intelligence to everyone. He writes the law on everyone's
heart. You know, the law is written on everyone's heart. That's why
you and I know right and wrong. That's why we know the Gentiles,
even who did not have the law, knew it was wrong to murder.
They knew that. How did they know that? The law
of God is written on the heart. It's written on the heart. And
this, listen, this constitutes our responsibility. All human
beings, their responsibility to Jesus Christ. This constitutes
our responsibility. We have our existence from Him.
But on a higher level, on a much higher level. He's saying that
he's saying that I am God. They knew what he was saying
equal with the father. First John 1 5. This then is
the message which we have heard of him and declare unto you that
God is light. And in him is no darkness at
all. You know, the scripture says
God is spirit. God is love and here he says
he's light i'm light i'm the light of the world and it said it listen it's also
said in isaiah 42 6 and 49 6 he said to be given as a light for
the gentiles he's not only the light of the world he is the
light apart from him there is no light everything is darkness
apart from him But He is the Light of the Gentiles. He is
the One who has come into the world and given us an understanding. The Son of God, it says in 1
John 5, the Son of God has come and given us an understanding.
He has given us Light. He has illuminated us. Some of
us have been illuminated. You're children now of Light.
You're not children of darkness, you're children of light. He's
illuminated us. It's through the Lord Jesus Christ
that we know the real truth about God. It's through Him we know the
truth about God. He came into the world and He revealed the
Father. He's the one who revealed the
Father to us. We know who the Father is. We're not trying to
guess who He is. We know who He is. We know what
He's like. HOLY, JUST, GRACIOUS, AND MERCIFUL. We know this because the Lord
Jesus Christ has made it known to us. We don't know this just
in fact, we know it by experience. Light is something you experience. And our Lord has come into this
world and He's given us light. It is through Him that we know
that how we can stand before God. How we can stand before
such a holy God, such a terrible holy God, in His blood, through
His blood, in His righteousness. This is how. He illuminates us. Jesus Christ is the light through
which we see, now listen, through which we see into that unseen
world. You know, naturally, we can only
see what's in front of us. And naturally, we have understanding,
which is a form of light. We have understanding of some
things. But that world, we cannot, we cannot see into, we cannot
understand, we cannot grasp until the Lord Jesus Christ gives us
light. Until we are made light in the
Lord. We can't do it. He is the light through which
we see in the unseen world called heaven. It's a very real place. It's a very real place. It's as real as the ground we
stand on. Is that real? Paradise, when the Lord said
to that thief on the cross, today shalt thou be with me in paradise.
He was talking about a very real place. He said, I go to prepare
a place for you. In my father's house are many
mansions, dwelling places. I'm going to go and prepare a
place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I'll come again,
receive you myself where I am. There you may be also. He is
the one who gives us light, understanding of that unseen world. And then
light is communicated. Everything we know, everything
we know about God, about Christ and ourselves, we know through
the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the light. It's through Him we
see. It's through Him we have spiritual
eyes. You see, I have natural eyes. Now, if I was a blind man,
if I was completely blind, it wouldn't matter if the light
was on or not. It doesn't matter. But I have been given eyes to
see. And this light, when it's turned on, you know what I see? I don't really see light. I see
you. Light is colorless. Light is
like air. It's invisible. But it reveals
what's in front of us. You see, Christ is the light.
He's the revealer. No man knows a father save the
son, and he to whomsoever the son will reveal him. Now, if
we didn't have light, if I didn't have this light, let's say this
room was pitch dark without it, it wouldn't matter if I had 20-20
vision, would it? It wouldn't matter. The Lord has to give
us eyes to see ears to hear and light. And he's that light. He's that light. And he says
here, he says here also in the, in the latter part of this verse,
and he that followeth me, how do you follow someone you can't
see? Can you, have you ever seen him? You can't follow someone you
can't see. Well, how do we follow Him? By faith we do see Him. Faith is the evidence of things
not seen. Faith, real faith, gives substance
to what you can't see. The Lord is real to me. The Lord
is real to some of you. He's real. Why? Because God's
given you faith to see Him. He's given you faith. He that
followeth, and that also means continually, continually. He that continues to the end
shall be saved. He that followeth me shall not
walk in darkness, spiritual darkness. Now it can be as dark as can
be. It could be midnight and dark cloud and storm. But if
you can see Christ, you're not walking in darkness. It doesn't
matter if there's sun in the sky, the S-U-N is shining as
long as the S-O-N is shining. It's through Him we see, whether
it be natural light or not, we see. You won't walk in spiritual
darkness. You will not walk in spiritual
ignorance of God, of Christ, yourself, and what's going on
in this world. We don't know everything that's going on, but
we know God's purpose is being done. I know that. Whatever's
going on right now, God's purpose is being done. I see that. I see that. Oh my, Christ said, I am the
light. I'm the light. And he that follows
me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life, real
life, real life. You know, if you just have natural
life, you're going to lose it. You know, you're going to die.
You're going to die. That's one of the things I told
the people at my aunt's funeral last week. I said, we'll be here
again. We'll meet again here. This is going to happen again. But if you have spiritual life,
you're not going to die. Christ said, he that believes in me
shall never die. And I told them last week, I said, I'm not going
to die. And I know some of them there thought, you're nuts. Why
don't we call you here to preach? I'm not going to die. I try to
lay hold of that. I lay hold of that. And by God's
grace, I want to lay hold of that. I'm going to live. Someone says, well, you know,
if you hear that I died, you say, no, he didn't die. He lived.
Mike Bartram sent me a text this morning. His mother passed away.
You all don't know her, but I know her very well. She sent me $50
for my birthday every year that I can remember. And Vicki. And
I told Mike, I said, I'm sorry for you, but I'm happy for her.
She's alive and well. She's alive and well. You'll
not walk in darkness and spiritual ignorance, and you won't walk
in fear. Are you afraid of the dark? You're afraid of the dark. A lot of people are afraid of
the dark, afraid of the night. Christ said, He that believes
in me, follows me. You're not going to walk in darkness.
You don't have to be afraid. You don't have to be afraid.
Why are you so fearful? And the Pharisees knew what his
land claimed to hear. They knew he was claiming to
be God. They knew that. They knew it. And they replied,
the Pharisees replied, Thou barest record of thyself.
Thy record is not true. We got you. You see, over in
chapter five, the Lord said, if I bear a record of myself,
my record's not true. But he was talking about in their
court of law. He was talking about as a man in their court
of law, my witness wouldn't stand up. But he's speaking here now
of God as God. He's speaking as God. As the
light. You see, he's speaking as the
light. And they thought they had him. They accused him of
breaking the law that said there's gotta be two or three witnesses.
We gotcha. Well, they were just, they were
grasping at straws, weren't they? And it says, Jesus answered and
said to them, though I bear record of myself, that's true. I'm bearing record of myself
right now. But my record is true. My witness is true. For I know
where I came from. I know whence I came. I came
from the father. I came from the bosom of the father. I came
from heaven. You're of the world. He said,
I'm not of the world. I'm from above. You're from beneath. I
know where I'm from. He said, I know whence I came
and I know where I'm going. I know where I'm going after
this. But you can't tell whence I come, whether I go. You don't
know anything. You don't know where I came from. And the reason
you don't know where I came from is you don't know my father. You don't know him. So if you
don't know him, you don't know anything about me. Because you can't know one without
knowing the others. It's impossible. But our Lord, knowing that he's
the son of God, that he is God manifest in the flesh. He knew
where he came from. He knew, he knew that when he
finished his work, that he was going back to the father. He
said to his disciples, I go back to my father and your father. And I'm telling you the truth.
You better listen to me. You better give attention to me.
He said, you don't know me at all, I know that, you don't know
me. They said, we know you, you're the carpenter's son, you don't
know me. You don't know me. You don't know where I came from
and where I'm going. You judge after the flesh, I judge an old
man. You judge by outward appearance, is what you judge. You judge
by what you see. What'd they see? What'd they see? They saw a poor. They didn't
see a man dressed up in a suit like me. They saw a poor carpenter's
son, they thought. But they saw a poor man. And
they saw a root out of dry ground, spoken of in Isaiah 53. When
they looked at him, they said, there's no beauty that we should
desire in him. Light doesn't look like this. Light wouldn't
look like a root out of dry ground. A light would be beautiful, brilliant,
brilliant. What they couldn't see because
of his flesh, Because of a man standing there in front of them.
They couldn't see his glory. They could not see that the whole
fullness of the Godhead was dwelling in that one man. They couldn't
see his deity because they couldn't get past his flesh. They couldn't
see his deity because they were in the dark. They were in darkness. They couldn't see it. You know,
the day God saved you, the day God saved me. One of the first
things I remember is I could say, I see, I see it. I understand. I understand. They could not see God in Christ.
And our Lord says, I judge no man, not by appearance. You know what? When someone walks
in this room, You and I, within a second, judge that person by
the way they're dressed. Don't we? We judge them by the
way they're dressed. As soon as they open their mouth,
we judge them by the way they talk. We do, whether they have
a good education or not a good education. We judge a lot of
things about a person within seconds after meeting them. That's
all by appearance. It's all by appearance. Lord
said, I don't do that. I judge a righteous judgment.
I judge according to truth, the way it really is. That's how
I judge. And yet, if I judge, or we can
read it like this, when I judge, because He is the judge. He's
the judge. All judgment has been committed
to the Son. And yet, when I judge, my judgment's true, for I'm not
alone. I'm not alone, but I am the father
that sent me. He kept bringing the father up
because this is the one they call God their father. And he's
going to tell them later on. No, God's not your father. The
devil's your father. You're of your father, the devil.
And the works of your father, you will do. You'll do. He said, I'm not alone. I don't
my judgment's not mine by myself. My father are one in judgment. He said another place as I hear
I speak I speak The father's with me and what our Lord is
doing here. He is asserting his absolute
deity They hated that this is God listen, this is God who's
sitting there and saying I'm the light of the world. This
is astounding to me. This is God. So patiently, so
patiently putting up with those Pharisees and scribes, challenging
him, trying to trap him. And he's sitting there and he's
speaking to people like me and you. This is God speaking. This is God teaching. This is
God saying, I'm the light of the world. It's not just a man.
This is God. This is God saying, I've come
into the world, I'm the light. Apart from me, there's no light.
Apart from Jesus Christ, you and I have no light, we have
none. He said also in verse 17, 18, it is also written in your
law that the testimony of two men's truth, that's so, he gives
them that. Well, he says, I'm one that bears
witness of myself and the father bears witness of me, that's two.
He could do that because he's God. He could bear witness of
himself because of who he is. He points them to their own law
and he says to them, you're right, you're right. And your law says
that the witness of two men is true. Well, I'm one and the father's
one. He hits them with their own law. He condemns them with
their own law. And if you deny me what he's
telling them, and this is serious. This is the Lord sitting there.
And he said, if you deny me, you deny the father also. If
you don't believe in me, you don't believe God. You don't believe God. You know
how many people on this earth, how many different religions
claim to believe God, but they hate Jesus Christ. The Pharisees
did. That whole Jewish nation over
there, except for the ones that God saved out of it. They hated
him. They hated him. But they claimed
to love God. They claimed to love God. They
claimed that God's their father. He said, no, no, I'm standing
here in front of you. He didn't see me seeing the father,
the father standing here in front of you. You're looking at the
father. You're looking at the son. You're looking at the father.
If you hate me, if you will not receive what I'm saying, you
hate God, the father, and you're not going to see what he say.
Oh, that made him mad. That made him mad. When he said,
you're of your father the devil, that made him mad. You make anybody
mad when you say that to them. Nobody wants to believe that. But it's so. And they said to
him, where's your father then? All right, this father you're
speaking of, let's bring him here, produce him. Produce your
father. First of all, God's not going
to prove anything to me and you. He's not going to prove anything.
We take him at his word, but we don't. Where's your father? And the Lord answered. And he
didn't answer them directly what they asked. He didn't say, well,
he's in heaven. He didn't say, well, he's on the throne. But
he's saying here, you don't know me nor my father. So why would
I tell you where he is? You wouldn't believe me anyway.
If I tell you where he is, would you believe? Produce the father. Well, you're looking at him.
That's what he told Philip. Philip said, show us the Father
and it'll suffice us. He said, you've seen me, he'd
seen me seeing the Father, you're looking at the Father. This is
why it's so amazing to me when I read through the Gospels, I
read it, I read it with in my mind watching God, God, the Son,
God, the Father, God, the Holy Spirit. I watched the whole Trinity
at work. I watch him walk among sinners.
I watch him talk. I listen to them. I don't just
read it like words on a page. I look at them and watch how
they move through the crowd. I watch how he sits down with
the sinners and he eats with them. This is God doing this. This is God doing this. I watch how he handles those
self-righteous Pharisees and puts them in their place with
the truth. They were sarcastic. He wasn't.
He was just telling the truth. Christ said, you neither know
me nor my father. If you had known me, you'd know
my father also. This wouldn't be a problem. I
wouldn't be a problem to you if you really knew my father. This verse shows us that a person
can read the Bible as the scribes and Pharisees did and still not
know God. You can set you up a Bible reading
program and read through the Bible one time every year, and
that's not a bad deal. But you can do that and never
know God. And I promise you this, if we
do this without the light, you see, Christ is the light. And
if we just read the word of God without the light, We'll get
it wrong every time. We'll get it wrong every time. We read the word and we say,
Lord, and I say, and I pray this every time I read and especially
to preach. Give me understanding of the
portion of scripture that I'm dealing with. Give me understanding.
Enable me to communicate the gospel that's in this portion
of scripture to the people. I need light. I need light, and
He's the light. There has to be a revelation
from God of God. There has to be. There's got
to be light given in order for us to know truth. 2 Corinthians
4, 6, For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness,
hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face, in the person. A face reveals
a person in the face of Jesus Christ. Christ said, I'm the
light. If you turn from me, it's nothing
but darkness. If you leave me, it's nothing but darkness. These
words speak Jesus in the treasury as he taught in the temple. And
no man laid hands on him for his hour was not yet come. You
know, the treasury was out in the out in the forecourt. And
that's where all the people had access. That's where they would
come and pay their taxes. That's where they would come
and give their free will offerings. And this is where our Lord taught
is where he taught. You know why? Because everyone
was free to come there. He made himself accessible to
centers. Our Lord is accessible. Our Lord
is the light. He's the light. And no man's
laid hand on him because he's not yet come. And then Jesus
said unto them, and this is these first twenty one, twenty two,
some of the most sobering. Words from our Lord in all the
word of God. Then said Jesus unto them that
didn't believe, those Pharisees, those scribes, I go my way. I go my way, the way that has
been predestinated, the way been determined, the way that has
been purposed, I go my way and you'll seek me. There'll come
a day when you will seek me. There'll come a day when there'll
be such trouble that you'll seek the Messiah. You'll seek me. and shall die in your sins. You're
gonna seek me, but it's too late. And where I'm going, whether
I go, you cannot come. How sobering is that? He's telling
those men, those Pharisees, he's talking to their scribes, and
he knows them. He knows what's going on. He
knows everything. He says, you're gonna seek me one day. 70 AD,
that place was destroyed. You're gonna seek the Messiah.
You're gonna seek a savior. You're gonna seek for help, and
you're not gonna find it. Here's what's gonna happen. You're
gonna die in your unbelief. You're gonna die in your unbelief.
And where I go, back to my father, you can't come. You can't come,
not as you are. Listen, you and I can't go there
as we are. We naturally can't go there.
There's got to be a real change. There's got to be a spiritual
birth. That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. We are
naturally flesh. Flesh and blood does not inherit
the Kingdom of God. It doesn't. There's got to be
a great change made in us in order to be there, to be holy,
righteous. And many will die in their sin
because they refuse to bow to the light. He's just giving light
here. In these verses, we were just
giving light. We were just giving light. Now,
we're either going to walk in the light, or we're going to
turn and walk away from the light. One or the other. And you know
what they did with that? You say, Lord, give me light. Save me. Save me. Don't let me
walk in darkness anymore. I don't want to walk in darkness."
You know what they said? Here's what they did. They mocked him
when they said this. They said to Jews, will he kill himself?
What did he say that would insinuate that? Nothing. He didn't say
anything. Is he going to commit suicide?
You see, this is mockery. This is nothing but pure mockery.
Oh, you're going to go kill yourself? They wished he would. They wished
he would go kill himself. If they couldn't get to him,
they'd at least like for him to do it. Well, they just made mockery. That's all they did. That's all
they did. Now, I'll tell you this. When
the gospel is preached and the light shines, the light has shined
here this morning. We're either going to walk in
the light or we're going to turn and walk away from the light.
And those who walk away from that light, he said, you'll die
in your sins. and where I am, there you cannot come. There
are some people that's just not going to be there because they
refuse to bow to the light. They refuse. All right.