I heard Donny Bell say one time,
there's two things in this life that are the dearest and most
treasured, and that is hearing the gospel by the power of the
Holy Spirit and being with those people who do. And that's true
for me too. If you want to turn in your Bible
to the book of John, the gospel of John chapter one, the gospel
of John in chapter one. I want to continue, this is the
second part in our series on this gospel. And I don't think
that I would find any argument if I said that the gospel of
John is one of the most precious gifts in all of this world to
God's people. And it tells us about the Lord
Jesus Christ. It tells us about eternal life. And all of this is by the will
of God. Now today, we're going to, last
week, the title of our sermon was The Word. And we saw in that title, that
name of the Lord Jesus Christ, it says in Revelation, his name
is called the Word of God. That's the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And we just heard Brad read in 1 John chapter 5, there
are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word,
and the Holy Spirit. And so that place in 1 John 5
teaches us that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Word. He's the
Son of God, and he is the Word of God. And the other gospels
don't call Jesus by that name. in Revelation happens to also
be written by the Apostle John. He does. And this epistle in
1 John was also written by him. And the Holy Spirit of God moved
him to write things to us which are not written in the other
Gospels, and that's one of them. This title of our Lord called
the Word of God, or just the Word. Now, it's not unique to
the Gospel of John, or 1 John, or the book of Revelation, because
throughout the scriptures in the Old Testament, whenever it
says, the word of the Lord came to, it names the person, he's
talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. The word is a person,
and yet the word is God speaking. And that's incredible, isn't
it? To understand that, It just boggles our mind. We have to
continue to say it, and think about it, and say it again, and
think about it, and still, and all of that, we find ourselves
inadequate to really dive into it at all. And so this title
of the Savior is seen here in the first verse of the book,
the Gospel of John. And it also said in 1 John 5
that there are three that bear witness in the earth, the spirit,
which we know is the spirit of God, because he had just named
him in the verse previous, and the water and the blood. Now
those three are the witness in earth and the spirit, the water
and the blood are referring to the Holy Spirit and the Lord
Jesus Christ again. Because here we see in both of
these in heaven, The Word of God, the Father, the Word, and
the Spirit are one, and they bear record in heaven, from heaven,
and on earth to men, to us, to God's church. Three that bear
witness in the earth are the Spirit of God, and the Spirit
of God speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ in the water and the blood,
which both he shed on the cross. Remember the soldiers pierced
his side, according to scripture, and out of his body came water
and blood, and the apostle John bear record to that. And so we
understand by that that the water and the blood refer to our cleansing. Water refers to the work of Christ,
and the blood refers to the work of Christ, both for our cleansing. The blood washes us of our sins. The water of his blood, or the
water that poured from his side, sanctifies us. Both of those
are the work of Christ. So that we see that in this text
of scripture in 1 John chapter 5, he's talking about the Lord
Jesus Christ in his person, in his work, in his person as God,
in his person as our Savior, our mediator, and in his work
as our Savior, our mediator. Now, I say all that because it
helps us to understand the gospel of John. When it opens up, in
the beginning was the word, as we saw last week, it refers not
only to that time in history, if we could call it history,
because history hadn't begun, and it's hard to describe that,
whatever you want to call it, that point in God's mind and work, before creation
was ever started, the Word was. And so if you were to tag it
to the time in history, it would be just before or before creation
was made. The Word was. And it had to be
that He was, because in verse 3, He says, all things were made
by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.
But we also saw last week that the beginning here not only refers
to, or maybe not at all to, that point in time or eternity when
God began the work of creation, or began time, but more importantly
it refers to God's eternal will and purpose in the Lord Jesus
Christ, the Word. Everything that God determines,
every part of His will and purpose and work are in the Lord Jesus
Christ, His Son, the Word. And that's why He's called the
Word, the mind of God, the reason or reasoning of God, God's divine
thinking, the only valid way of thinking truthfully, the Word. And what is this thought process
or the thoughts of God? It's all about His Son. And not
only is He described this way in His own divine person, But
the Word was uttered by God the Father, He was spoken, God has
spoken to us in these last days in His Son. And the Word God
spoke, He spoke in Christ to His people. And so we see in
this title, the Word, not only His divine person, but God's
eternal purpose for the church. And this boggles our mind. that
the eternal person of the Lord Jesus Christ and God's eternal
purpose in him would have to do with his people. And this
would all be to the glory of God. This is the way God makes
himself known. When God speaks, he speaks the
word. And when the word of God is sent
by the Father, We see the one who is both God and who came
and was made flesh, who created all things, who was in the beginning
with God and was God. The fact that he was with God
means that he is distinct from God the Father and God the Holy
Spirit, but yet he is God, therefore it is one God. And we just read
in 1 John 5, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, one
God and three persons. Now, one of the children asked
me last week, how can you explain that? And I really tried to emphasize
in my answer, I'm not going to try to explain it, I'm just going
to restate it as God has, because I can't explain how God can be
one, one God, and yet three persons, and each of them distinct, and
yet one. I don't have to explain it, but like a child, I certainly
believe that it is true. And what's mind-boggling and
what puts us in awe is that all of the three are all for me. Now, I didn't make up that word,
that saying, but I read by a guy named, last name was Ramsbottom,
I can't remember his, his first name right now, but I was reading
this book to my children when they were younger, and it described
a boy who was mentally limited, who heard about the Trinity,
that there were three in one, and one in three, and he says
he made up a poem that went something like this. The three is one,
and the one is three, and all the three are all for me. See,
that's his takeaway from it, and that's my takeaway from it,
too, because the Word here is God's eternal Son who created
all things, and God's creation of all things by Him was for
Him, by Him, and for Him, for the church, and that boggles
my mind. And that puts us in awe, that
puts us in a mind of worshiping God. We're awestruck by what
God has done here and said. Now, we're gonna go on here in
the Gospel of John to verse four. He says, in him was life, and
the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness,
and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent
from God whose name was John. The same came for a witness to
bear witness of the light that all men through him might believe.
He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that
light. That was the true light, which
lighteth every man that cometh into the world. All right, we're
gonna stop there. The way that John writes is almost
poetic and sometimes frustrating because it seems like in the
style of his writing, he seems abstract. I remember I had a
teacher in college on control theory, and he happened to write
the book. He had a PhD, very intellectual,
very smart man. I noticed before one of the classes
that I attended that he taught. Again, he was the author of this
very complex subject called Communications and Control Theory in Electrical
Engineering. And he was reading his own book
before the class began. Now, he had taught the class
already at least once that day, and he had been teaching the
class for years. And I wondered that he would be referring to
his own notes in the book that he wrote before he gave his lesson. And then when he gave his lesson,
it was all made so simple. that the complex things seemed
so simple that you almost became complacent that you understood
it, because it seemed so clear. And yet, after you left the class,
you go, now what did he say? It seemed so clear at the time.
And when you got to the test, you go, oh my, I wish I had understood
it. That's the way I feel when I
read these words of the Gospel of John. As I said last week,
it seems as if it's as simple words as words can be stated. And yet, it's as deep, as I mentioned
in the bulletin, as the Pacific Ocean below us in a tiny bark
of a boat that we're floating on. And so I'm amazed at the
simplicity of the words, but also I'm struck by the complexity
of the thought. And yet it is a truth that God
intends for his people to know. And this is the amazing thing.
God the Father, the eternal God, has condescended to speak, and
what He has spoken is His Son, the Word. And He intends for
His people to understand what He says in Him. And he writes
it in such a way that it is precise, it is clear, and yet it can only
be understood by the grace and the spirit of God. And so here
we are. God has spoken. And to think
that God has spoken, you would expect everyone to stand still
and listen, wouldn't you? Wait, God is speaking. Be quiet,
I wanna hear. God speaks. and we're struck
in awe that God would actually speak to us. And then we want
to take everything he said and hold onto it so closely that
we don't let anything go, because this is God speaking. And what
he has said here, the word, and he has spoken it through these
words. He says, in him was life, in him was life, and the life
was the light of men. Simple enough to read. A third
grader could read it. And yet, what does it mean? Well,
life here is said to be in him, in the word. And what that is
telling us is that life is not a biological thing that you can
take apart. I remember watching an instructional
video one time from who, a PhD in biology, was trying to describe
how scientists have long been interested in understanding from
a scientific perspective the answer to this question, what
is life? What is it? And so they have taken things
apart that are real tiny and trying to figure out what are
the components of this thing that is life. And they looked
at the cell or a cell in our body and they see that it's made
up of these little parts and these components and they sell.
What is this thing, this cell, that living cell that comes and
grows and multiplies and dies? Is that life? Are the components
of it life? And they drill down into that
and they find out that there's a code underlying all of those
parts, each part of the cell individually and the cell in
particular called DNA. And that code somehow then, they
get to the bottom of it. They say, that must be life.
Because it's the code that describes how these parts are made and
put together. And yet that isn't life. That
isn't life. God says in him was life. You can't discover life looking
into a telescope or a microscope. It's not out there, it's not
in here. It's in Christ. And the life he's describing
here gives light to men. Now turn to the book of 1 Timothy. I want to read this to you because
we need to understand the situation in which these words in the book
of John come to us. In 1 Timothy chapter 6, if you
want to look there, he says, In verse 14 of 1 Timothy 6, he
says that, I'll keep this commandment, he's talking to Timothy, without
spot unrebukeable until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, Christ's
second coming. He says, which in his times,
when Christ comes, he shall show who is the blessed and only potentate,
the King of kings. and Lord of lords, who only has
immortality, immortality means eternal life, dwelling, notice
these words, dwelling in the light which no man can approach
unto. All right, so here we have God
himself being described as dwelling in light no one can approach
to, whom no man has seen nor can see, to whom be honor and
power everlasting. And now look also at 1 John 1,
1 John 1, we see these words describing God. In verse 5, he
says, in verse 5 of 1 John 1, this then is the message which
we have heard of him and declare to you that God is light. Okay, so God is light. And He dwells in a light that's
unapproachable. No man has seen Him, and no man
can see Him. He's unapproachable. And yet,
look at John's gospel. In Him was life, in Christ was
life, and the life was the light of men. Now he's not talking
here about what we might call animal life or biological life,
even though all of that life also comes from Christ. Acts 17, verse 24 and 25, he
gives life and breath to all things. Life and breath are all
given by Christ. He created all things, they were
all created by him. It even says so in the verse
preceding verse four in John 1. But he's not talking about
that kind of life. He's talking about another life,
a life that gives light to men. And not just an intellectual
light, not just a rationality, as some would say, but a light
from God. And here's the amazing thing
that we suddenly see in this, that the word The one who is
the word, the one God has spoken, who was in the beginning and
was with God and was God and created all things, that one
has life in himself and his life is the light of men. And this
light, this light that's given to men by his life, brings us
into the light we cannot approach, the light of who God is. God
himself is light, and therefore we see that in this statement
here, God is condescending to give men light from heaven in
the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. I mean, that in itself, it seems
clear enough, but how do we really understand and appreciate this?
Well, go on. He says, and the light shineth
in darkness, And the darkness comprehended it not. Now last
week, and until this week, when I explained comprehended it not,
I understood that to mean they didn't understand it. They didn't
perceive it. They couldn't see the light.
Imagine that, how astounding that is that light would come
and they couldn't see or comprehend it. And that's true. But the
word comprehended here doesn't mean to understand, though it
may include that. The word actually means they
could not overtake it. If you were to read it from the
literal translation of the Bible that J.P. Green did, that work
that he did, he actually translates the word comprehended as overtake
it, which according to the Blue Letter Bible online, that is
accurate. So if you understand it that way, it means that the
light which was a result of the life of Christ, who came into
the world, the light shines in darkness, the darkness couldn't
overtake it. And here we understand that what
God has done in sending his son could not be thwarted, could
not be impeded, could not be kept from coming. And you know,
you've all experienced this, especially at night when you
get up or in the morning, you flick on the lights and your
eyes, that initial shock of the light, it hurts a little bit
till your eyes adjust and you can't really see anything as
soon as the lights come on, unless maybe when you're young. But
as you get older, especially that sudden change between darkness
and light is very difficult. It doesn't benefit. And so when
the light comes, it becomes so obvious to us that light has
come. And so when the Lord Jesus Christ
was sent, God said that there was nothing in the darkness that
could prevent or overtake him. And this is referring to God's
irresistible grace. to accomplish his immutable,
his unfailing work and will. I have spoken it, he says in
Isaiah 46, 10 through 11, I will also do it. Nothing can keep
God's word from accomplishing his will. When he speaks, it
is done. God thinks, he speaks, it's done. And look at Genesis chapter 1.
I want you to see how these things go together. In Genesis, in chapter
1, he says this. In the beginning, God created
the heaven and the earth. Well, it doesn't say God the
Father here, but We must understand it as coming from God the Father,
because it says in many other places, such as Ephesians 3,
verse 8 and 9, that He created all things by Jesus Christ. So
it was by His will, obviously. In the beginning God, and you
could understand it as God the Father. God, or God the Father,
God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. But especially God the
Father created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was
without form and void. Okay, so no form, it was void. And darkness was upon the face
of the deep. Darkness everywhere, there was
nothing but darkness. And notice, the spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters. The Spirit of God. And God said,
this would be God the Holy Spirit, let there be light, and there
was light. And the light that he's speaking
of here wasn't the light of the sun or the moon or the stars,
because they were created on the fourth day. Therefore, the
Holy Spirit of God, moving upon the face of the waters, is commanding,
what? The light to shine out of darkness. or into the darkness. And so
we read this in 2 Corinthians chapter 4. He says the same thing. He's explaining these very words
from Genesis. And he says this, notice how
important these words are. He says in 2 Corinthians 4 verse
6, for God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness
hath shined, has shined what? Listen, in our hearts. obviously
darkness, to give the light, the light of what? The knowledge
of the glory of God, where? In the face of Jesus Christ.
So the light that God commanded to shine in the beginning, in
creation, at the very least signified Christ, who is the light. But at the very most, He's showing
us there that in the beginning, God sent the Word, and in the
Word is life, and His life is the light of men. And this is
the stoop of the unapproachable God. who dwells in light that
is unapproachable by man, we have never seen and cannot see,
and yet he came. The one who is unapproachable
in light sent the light and came to us and shined the light. That's
grace, isn't it? The word, therefore, not only
tells us the person of the Son of God, the eternal divine person
of the Son of God, but also the one who is the mediator between
God and men, who was sent by God, and his life that is in
him, he himself, is our light. And that light of God that shines
to us because of his life is given to us how? according to
2 Corinthians 4, by the command of God, by the word of the gospel
shining into our hearts. That's where it needs to shine. We, according to Ephesians 5,
8, we're sometimes darkness. It helps us to understand the
light when we understand what God means by darkness. In our
hearts there is a blinding darkness. In Genesis 1 it says it was void
and darkness in the face of the deep. So all the peoples of the
earth The Spirit of God moves upon all the peoples of the earth.
There's nothing but void and darkness. In 2 Corinthians 4,
before verse 6, where we just read, he says in verse 4, in
whom the God of this world, meaning Satan, hath blinded the minds
of them which believed not, lest the light of the glorious gospel
of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine to them. All right, here we see that all
of the world is held in darkness, and that darkness is what? It's
the deception of Satan that holds men in darkness unless or until
the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, Christ who is the
image of God, should shine to them. So here we see that we
are all in darkness, That darkness is a deception. It's a deception
that all people hold. They're all under this deception.
And it keeps us from seeing light, the truth. And that light comes
to us when the gospel is declared and the Spirit of God reveals
in that gospel the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. And that's why we read this way
in John chapter 1. Notice, the light shines in the
darkness, that would be our hearts, this world, all of the religions
of this world, what men think, the natural way we think that
God can be approached. The darkness could not impede
it, could not stop it. Notice verse 6 of John chapter
1, there was a man sent from God whose name was John. You
see this? You see how it connects? The
gospel has to be given by God. The gospel tells of Christ. Christ
is the light. That light shines because that
life is in Him. And this light that shines is
the light of the unapproachable God. And He sends the light of
His Son into our very hearts. And this is grace, pure grace. This man sent from God, his name
was John. It doesn't say Dr. John, it doesn't
say Pastor or Reverend John, or His Great Prophetness John,
or any of those titles, does it? Just John. When he was born,
his father Zechariah said his name is John. Just John. They called him John the Baptist,
but it was just John. Because the gospel comes through
men sent by God and the greatness of the man is not in the man,
it's in the message and the one who sent him, you see. The man
sent from God, his name was John. And this reveals to us too that
God is pleased It pleased God in his eternal will to reveal
the light of Christ through his written and preached word. Through his written word, through
his word preached. And that word is preached through
the gospel. First Peter chapter one, verse
24 and 25. This is the word which by the
gospel is preached to you. So when God wants to reveal his
son, how does he do it? He sends a man. And what does
the man do? He says in verse 7, the same
came for a witness to bear witness of the light. So the light is
so momentous, so phenomenally great, astoundingly great, incomprehensibly
great, And yet this is the stoop of God to come to men in their
sin and in their darkness, the darkness of their own hearts.
The darkness is so deep that it goes to the inmost part of
what we are. We are nothing but darkness until
God shines Christ through the gospel to us. And the way he
does that is he sends this man. What a blessing it is that God
sent a man. And what a humbling thing it
is to us that we would hear the gospel from a man. That's a humbling
thing, isn't it? In 1 Corinthians, this is brought
out. In 1 Corinthians chapter 1, he
says this. It's not the only place, but
he does say it here. And you've heard it too, I'm sure, many
times. Let me just read it to you, 1
Corinthians 1, the apostle Paul says in verse 17, Christ sent
me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel. Okay, this is the
way God reveals the light. Not with wisdom of words, lest
the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. For the
preaching of the cross, that's the message. is to them that
perish foolishness." Preaching Christ is foolishness to those
who perish. But unto us which are saved,
notice this is God's work. We are saved because God did
it. It is the power of God. We see
God's power in the cross. For it is written, I will destroy
the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding
of the prudent. Who is the wise? Where is the
scribe? Where is the disputer of this
world? Has not God made foolish? the wisdom of this world, for
after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not
God, it pleased God, listen, by the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe. The Jews require a sign, the
Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified to
the Jews a stumbling block, to the Greeks foolishness, but to
them which are called." Notice who made the difference. God
made the difference. He called them, both Jews and
Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. There
you have it. Faith comes by hearing, hearing
by the word of God. And how shall they hear? Unless
someone preach. And how shall they preach? Unless
they be sent. God sent a man. and how condescending
of God to speak, how condescending to speak to men in darkness from
him who is unapproachable, and to speak in his son, and then
how much more that he would stoop so low as to send a man, a puny
man. All men at their best estate
are altogether vanity, and yet God sent a man with his word,
and that's where the power was in the gospel, and he sent him
to preach. He says, he sent him, he came
for a witness. Now a witness here means a martyr.
He was willing. For the testimony that he bore,
he was willing to die, and he did die for it. And this is true
of everyone who carries this testimony in their heart. This
is it. I make no apologies for the fact
that my only hope in life is that though I am a sinner, Jesus
Christ is my all in all. You might hold me to the laws
of the county, or the state, or the federal government, or
the world. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter which dictator,
or president, or pope, or whoever is behind the word. It doesn't
matter. I'm convinced of this. Jesus
Christ is my all in all, and he is the ruler over whoever
comes against me. Who can lay anything to the charge
of God's elect? It's God who justifies. Who is
he that condemns? It's Christ that died. That's
my salvation and I have no other. We've staked our all on the Lord
Jesus Christ. So he was a martyr in the way
he witnessed because he came with this witness. He would only
speak like Micaiah did, that prophet in the Old Testament
to Ahab, King Ahab. I'm only going to say what God
told me. I'm only going to say what he
said and I'm going to say everything he said. So God spoke to John,
John spoke of Christ, that was all God had to say. He came to
bear witness of the light. Every true servant of God, sent
with God's message, speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ. To some
it is a saver of life, to life and to others a saver of death,
to death. But John came that all men through
him might believe. through the light. He came preaching
so that all would believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. He had
a real desire that in his preaching, men would actually be converted.
They would see and understand and believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ. And so do we who preach the gospel. When you tell your
friends and your family about the Lord Jesus Christ, you're
not doing it in order to boast, are you? If anything, you want
to make yourself even lower to whatever you need to in order
that they might understand. It's not in me. It's not in me. We preach not ourselves, but
Christ Jesus, the Lord, and ourselves, your servants for Jesus' sake. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 7. So this is the whole thing. And
so he says this. He came for a witness. God sent
him with the message. The message was Christ. And all
men, he desired all men to believe he was not that light, but was
sent to bear witness of that light. And this is the problem.
We're tempted in two ways. Number one, the preacher is tempted
to take credit somehow, honor somehow to himself for the word
he preaches, be it far from us. Secondly, when we hear a preacher,
we're tempted to ascribe honor to the man that belongs only
to Christ. And so he says here, he was not
that light, but he was sent to bear witness of that light. Verse
nine, that was the true light. The true light. There are many
lights, so called, but there's really only one, and that's the
true light. And how do you know if something
is not the true light? Well, you take the true light
and you shine it on it, and you find out right away, don't you?
Sometimes it might be daylight even or dim light, and I pull
out my flashlight and I shine it on things that I used to be
able to see without a light. Now, it seems a little much more
clear to me. So we find out the false by shining
the true onto it to see, is it true? Does it agree with the
true light? What is this agreement? Look
at Second Corinthians Chapter 11. He says this in verse 1,
2 Corinthians chapter 11, Paul writes to the Corinthians, he
says, would to God you could bear with me a little in my folly,
and indeed bear with me. For I'm jealous over you, with
a godly jealousy, for I have espoused you to one husband,
that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear,
lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety,
your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in
the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul was concerned that in preaching
Christ to the Corinthians, they would be beguiled. They would
be led astray to believe what was false, what Satan preached. And what did Satan preach? He
preached something except Christ. He preached Christ and something. Because the word simplicity that
is in Christ means Christ only. Christ only, all sufficient,
no one but Christ, only him. And if God's life, the life that
is in Christ, has been given to us, then how will we know
that that life has been given? Because the light will be given
to us that all I have is Christ. You see, that's the way we know
that we have the life that's in Christ, is Christ is our life,
and that's it. Life is not in me. Life is not
in you. Life is in the Lord Jesus Christ. This comes as the greatest comfort,
the greatest confidence. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is
my light and my salvation. The Lord is the strength of my
life. Whom shall I fear? So he goes on in 2 Corinthians
11, for if he that comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not
preached, or if you receive another spirit which you have not received,
or another gospel which you have not accepted, you might well
bear with him, for I suppose that I was not a wit behind the
very chief apostles, for though I be rude in speech, yet not
in knowledge, but we have been thoroughly, throughly made manifest
among you in all things. Have I committed an offense in
abasing myself that you might be exalted because I preached
to you the gospel of God freely? In other words, there were other
men who came pretending or claiming to be apostles. They didn't preach
Christ, they didn't preach the gospel of Christ, and they wanted
to get paid for it. He says, no, I didn't require
anything. I didn't ask you to exalt me,
and I didn't ask anything from you. I robbed other churches,
taking wages of them to do you service. So Paul received gifts
from other churches in order that he might minister to the
Corinthians. And when I was present with you and wanted, I was chargeable
to no man for that which was lacking to me, the brethren which
came from Macedonia supplied. And in all things I have kept
myself from being burdensome to you, and so will I keep myself. As the truth of Christ is in
me, no man shall stop me of this boasting in the regions of Achaia."
His boasting was that I didn't make the gospel in any way dependent
on you. I didn't ask you for compensation
so that I could bring it to you. Other people supported me while
I preached to you. You were recipients only. And
so I'm boasting in that. Wherefore, wherefore, because
I love you not? No, God knoweth. But what I do,
that I will do, that I may cut off the occasion from them which
desire occasion, that wherein they glory, they may be found
even as we. For such are false apostles. This is the darkness. This is
not the light. We're shining the light now.
The light is Christ in the gospel. For such are false apostles,
deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles
of Christ, and no marvel. For Satan himself is transformed
into an angel of light. Therefore, it's no great thing
if his ministers, Satan's ministers, servants of Satan sent by him,
also be transformed as ministers of righteousness. whose end shall
be according to their works. What's he saying here? These
men boast in order to gain honor from men. They do what they do
in order to be compensated. And they also are preaching righteousness,
which is not the righteousness of Christ. And they're going
to be judged based on their works because that's what they trust.
And they're teaching men to trust their works. The false lights
of the world are man's religion, promoted and sponsored by the
devil. And all of those false religions
can be distilled into that, anything but Christ. Even if it's Christ
plus, something plus him, but the gospel is Christ only, Christ
alone. In him was life and his life
is the light of men. And those who have that light
come to God by him alone, trusting him alone. Now it says in verse
nine, that was the true light which lighted every man that
cometh into the world. There's no doubt, but that Jesus
Christ as the creator of all has given life to all men, including
the ability to think, an intellectual capacity to reason and make rational
judgments and decisions. That certainly is part of the
human nature that Jesus Christ has given every person in this
world. But is that the light that he's
talking about here? The light which lighted every man that
cometh into the world? Well, the light that God gives
that lights every man that comes into the world can be said to
be the light of creation or the light of conscience, because
creation teaches us the eternal power and glory of God. God created
all things. He's therefore all powerful.
He's eternal because He created them when there was nothing,
when He was in eternity. And there's also the light of
conscience, which teaches us that we've sinned against God.
But there's another light that's needed. Another light that's
needed in order that we might live, in order that we might
have eternal life. And that life comes when it comes
to all men, to every man, it comes to everyone, God will give
it, but not all men without distinction. So that all men have a light
that makes them accountable to God. But not all men have a light
that points them to the Savior, you see. So Christ is the light. He makes men accountable, but
that light doesn't save. Only the light that shows us
Christ is the light, is the light that saves, and that's called
faith in Him. Jesus says in John 8 and verse 12, I'll read it
to you, but right after he silenced the accusers of the woman taken
in adultery in John chapter 8, showing that he did not condemn
her, He says in verse 12, Jesus said this again unto them, saying,
I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not
walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. He that followeth me. Those who
believe Christ have the light of life. What does all this mean to us?
Well, into the blinding darkness of our heart, the unapproachable
light of God has shined in the Lord Jesus Christ, pointing us
to His life. which is our life in Him, and
giving us this light, this life-giving light that is Christ and Him
crucified. It comes to us in the gospel,
God gives it, it's of His grace, and it's by His will, and therefore
what should we do? Oh Lord, give me such a light,
give me this light that's in Christ, And thank you for this
grace of faith that has caused me to look no further and trust
only the Lord Jesus Christ as all of my life and all of the
light of God. Everything else in this world
is the light of Satan. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you
for the true light. We thank you for our life, which
is eternal life in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not in us. He is our life, the Lord Jesus
Christ. And what a life, an eternal life,
a pure life that never fades, that never ends. That's a life because of righteousness,
a life given by God freely, the gift of God. And thank you, Lord,
that this life comes to us by your gift. You give life to us,
and this life You give is light in us that produces faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ. We understand Him. We're made
to know Him. And we're made to trust Him,
and what a blessing this is. Help us to ever trust in Him.
Magnify Your mercy, Lord. Make us objects of Your grace.
Glorify and bring praise to Yourself by our salvation, by the Lord
Jesus Christ alone. And may Your Spirit so illuminate
our hearts, commanding the light of the gospel concerning Christ
to shine in us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.