This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at gracetruth.org and anchoringfaith.org. A people
for His glory, by His grace. I know as a child I was scared
of not really anything but just of darkness. You know? I've known some strange children
who loved it pitch black when they sleep. They're strange children. But most children want light.
They want to be able to see what they don't know is not there
that they don't know but they're scared of. They don't know what
they're scared of, they're just fearful. And so, if you could
just turn on the light. Can you just leave the light
on, Dad? Can you plug in a nightlight? Remember back in the day, you
used to have the nightlights and they were 7,000 degrees? You
flip a little switch on it and during the night, the cover that
was there would melt because the light bulb was so hot. And
then they went to the less hot light bulbs and the ones that
were sort of came on by themselves. And so as you walk through your
house during the day, it's just flicker, flicker, flicker because
of the shadows. And then we started hearing about nightlights that
was causing fires and nightlights were bad for your sleep rhythms
and all this kind of stuff. But it didn't matter to children.
You can tell a child, no, we turn on the lights, it's gonna
burn the house down. I don't care, I'm scared of what? I don't
know, I'm just scared, turn on the light. And I know that through
the years, I have said this to my children at 3 a.m. who want
lights on. I said, well, you know, the light's
not gonna keep whatever it is you're scared of from bothering
you. Then they'll just know where you are and be able to see you.
It doesn't matter, does it? Give me the light, I wanna be
able to see. I don't wanna feel like I'm going nowhere, that
I can't function in the sense of having my senses. When we
can't see, we don't feel right. The horror of what it must be
like to have sight and then not have sight physically. I know
some people who have been born blind and they have an incredible
insight, incredible imagination. They don't even know what things
do look like. They can't imagine the color
blue. It's impossible. I can't imagine what a sunset
must look like, or when the cloud coverage of a storm system is
through, just like yesterday, and we could see the weirdest
clouds, the beauty of it all. A blind person who's never seen
that can't imagine those things. What it must be like for that
person one day, those who are in Christ who are blind, to be
given their sight. What it must have been like for blind Bartimaeus
to be able to see for the first time. Friends, it should be even more
astonishing for us as believers to be able to see Christ, to
be able to see the truth of the gospel. I remember many, many times of
driving cross-country, and when you get out into Texas, when
you make the mistake of taking the lower southern route and
you go across the width of Texas, it's like when you get about
halfway through Texas, it flips over and keeps on going, and
you go, wait a minute, didn't we just come through here? And
there are spots there and in Arizona and in Nevada and places
of California. It takes you two days to get
out of California. It doesn't matter where you live.
You cannot leave the state. It takes you two days to get
out of it. Just to drive to get to a place where you can connect
to another place. And I'll never forget having
those long, I would do 36 hour stints when I drove. Because
I could leave on Sunday right after service and we'd be here
by Tuesday morning. And if we really had to stop,
spend the night, wait a minute. So I'd drive for 36 hours, and then
we'd stop, spend the night, and we'd come on in the next day.
My families are going, would you please stop? Well, there
have been several times throughout those trips where you see the
sign, no stops for 280 miles. So when you see the little single
gas pump that's $75 an ounce, you stop. And you make sure you've
got enough. 300 miles for some vehicles is
a tank. So you don't miss that. But I'll never forget the few
times where I was just really labored and worn out and wondering
if I was going to make it to the next stop. And you're going
and you're going and you're driving and you're driving and you see
on your map and you see in your GPS, you know by the clock there's
something coming, but it's 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning and
you're the only car on the road. This is how desolate these cross-country
drives could be. And you're not sure if maybe
you've made a wrong turn because there's nothing to see, there's
no light anywhere. If you turn off your lights, you see stars
that you never thought existed. And then all of a sudden, just
out of nowhere, there's this glow on the horizon. And you
go, something's either on fire or that's a little town. And
it didn't matter if it was Claxton or Los Angeles. It didn't matter
how big or small the town was. If there was a light there, it
shone in the horizon. It is visible from a long distance. And so it gave you something
to look at. It gave you something to see other than just the shadow
of the Joshua trees. It gave you a target. And your
eye never left the horizon. You didn't even look at the road.
You looked there. And as you got closer, it was
brighter. And as you got closer, it was brighter. Then you began
to see signs. You began to see other things. And all of a sudden,
you just, at the moment where it was visible, you crossed that
threshold. And you could see that there
was civilization. And you're like, whoo! We're not going to
die. We'll do it again next week. Now this is just the feeling
and the poetry behind traveling in a car. How much more magnificent
should the poetry of our heart be to be able to see the glory
of God in the face of Christ? The problem is many people, listen
to me beloved, many people who claim to be in Christ today are
blind. They're blind. But you are not
blind, beloved. Not because of who you are or
what you've done. or how well you've lived or that
you've come to your senses. No, you have been saved by the
mercy and the kindness and the love of God through Christ Jesus
and His obedience and His death and His burial and His resurrection.
You have an eternal hope. Light is a common theme throughout
this text. Jesus says here in verse 12,
and it's the only verse I'm going to teach today, Again Jesus spoke
to them saying, He says, I am the light of the world. Whoever
follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. See, there's a lot of things
that that particular text stirs up in evangelical societies,
like our own. And I say evangelical societies
because, let's just be honest, unbelievers who profess to not
believe and people who hate the Gospel, people who hate the Bible,
people who hate, quote, organized religions, people who, you know,
you know what I'm talking about when I say an unbeliever, an
obvious unbeliever, right? The way they live, the way they
talk, the way they act. But we're real quick on the other
side of that to see someone who lives a pretty good life, and
we say, they're a Christian. Well, that's who Jesus is talking
to. Not just people who live a pretty good life, but people
who live a pretty perfect life. Now, I want you to fight the
temptation to ever. You hear me say this often. I use this
phrase. I've gone back through and listened
to some of my teaching in John. I use this phrase just about every
week. I don't want us to fall prey
of saying, yeah, but. Oh yeah, the gospel is all of
God. Yeah, but. Salvation is by faith alone,
through Christ alone, by grace alone. Yeah, but. Or however. If. You know what, the word if
starts. The word if starts a conditional
statement. If this, then that. If this is
true, then that is the outcome. When we provide a conditional
statement and we conflate it with the gospel, that means we
try to make a condition equal to the gospel, we have created
a false gospel. I want you to hear me, church.
We are all guilty of it. The difference is, are we just
being maturing in our language? Are we being honed in our understanding
and the precision of what the gospel is? Or do we truly put
stock in the condition? Even if the condition might be
true as an outcome, it is not true as a condition of justification.
For example, when I teach from John, when I teach from Romans,
for those of you who have been coming on midweek, I get a lot
of people say, yeah, but what about this? What about the person
who says that they're in Christ and they hope in Christ and then
they continue in habitual sin? What about them? What about the
brother who continues in habitual sin? We correct that through
church discipline. What about the sister who falls
prey to sin in their flesh? Then we encourage them, and we
correct that, and we strive to help each other, knowing what?
That we are just a breath away from falling in temptation to
the same type of sin. But what many people of our day
want to do is they say, well, if you're truly saved, then this
will never take place in your life. Where is that? Or, I know that
I am a Christian because I live a good life. To which Jesus would
respond, where is the goodness? No one is good but God, Jesus
says to the rich young ruler. But see, we misunderstand the
idea of righteousness. We misunderstand the word holy.
The word holy means to be set apart. In the temple worship,
there were all sorts of things. We talked about the living water.
The pitchers of water from the pool of Siloam brought in to
pour into the offering area. The troughs that went down into
the altar and the searing and the senses and everything that
was experienced in this worship. That water and those pitchers
and that altar had been sanctified, had been set apart. They were
holy because they were specifically used for the purpose of worshiping
God. In the same way, I could take a pair of shoes and I could
sanctify them for the use of what? A chicken farm. So if I
go out into the coop, I don't go back into the house. Because
these shoes are holy for the chicken work, you see. They're
set apart. The same thing is true for us, beloved, who are
saved by the mercy and the grace of God. We are holy. We are set
apart for God. And we are set apart because
we have been given to Christ and united with Him in His death
and in His resurrection. We are Christ because God the
Father has given us to Him. Just like marriage is supposed
to show the picture of Jesus Christ and the church as the
bride is given to the groom in the same way the church is given
to their Savior. We're sanctified for Him. But
we have misunderstood then the pastoral teachings in the epistles
of the New Testament to only the elect, to only the saints,
to only the holy, to only the sanctified, and we've confused
it in our culture as conditions for which we can judge ourselves
truly saved, or worse, truly right with God. which to me are
one and the same. And we've seen over the last
few months that the scripture in John's gospel, we've seen
Jesus teach the Pharisees. We see in Matthew 7, Jesus is
talking to the Jews whose fruit, quote, quote, of their life is
impeccable. Jesus even says, unless your
good works, are greater than that of the Pharisees, you are
damned. You are condemned. The wrath
of God is on you." And everybody in the culture went, oh! Because
you're talking about being set apart. The Jews, everything they
did was set apart. Every belt they tied around their
waist was set apart for the use of God. Every phylactery was
set apart. Everything they did, the way
they walked, the way they held their hands, the way they turned
their heads, the way they carried the instruments of worship, the
way they bathed themselves and washed their hands and washed
their face and covered themselves, the way they prayed, the way
they put the towel around themselves to pray, the way they knelt,
the way they stood, the way they backed out of rooms. where they
put their eyes, how they folded their clothes, how they drew
the line between their neighbor's house so they didn't violate
the Sabbath, so they could walk next door to say, hey, was set apart. And Jesus tells
them that their righteousness is fulfilled. And He continues in that. Another part of the worship of
the Feast of Tabernacles was not just the water being poured
as a way of God's provision, but torches and lights that were
every night lit, symbolic of what? The light of the presence
of God by night for the Israelites. that they could see, and as long
as they followed the light, as long as they followed the Scripture,
Exodus 13 says that they followed this pillar of fire by night
and the pillar of smoke by day, and as long as they followed
after this, they would never be off course. And this light, according to
the Mishnah and according to Jewish tradition and the historical
writings of Israel, we see that at night during the Feast of
Booths that the temple area would have a glow much like a city
would today. Now we don't think it odd to
see lights on the horizon, but friends, there was no electricity.
When the sun goes down, the town goes to sleep. You would never
see lights traveling at night in antiquity. But during this
seven-day period, Jerusalem was lit up. And villagers from afar
could see the light of Jerusalem and they go, wow, that really
is the city of God. It's a light on a hill because
Jerusalem is a mountain. It's up a mountain. And they
would look up and see the light of Jerusalem during this time
and they would be in awe of this. And this to me, just as the time
and the occasion for Jesus to stand and say, all who are thirsty
come to me and drink and you shall never thirst again, you
shall live. During the time of the pouring of that water, I
believe this was in that same moment where they were lighting
up the night with the torches And everybody was thinking, oh
how awesome it is to see that our temple is going to be lit
and the worshipers can see all night long as they wake up and
see even in the early days before the sun and they will see that
God is with us and the presence of God is with us in our temple
and in our worship we are right with God and in our lives we
are right with God. We are a light. We are a city
on a hill that shines and goes forth, and the world should see
that we are indeed the beloved of God. And Jesus says to them,
I am the light of the world, not you. And He does something in such
a way there, Like he tells Nicodemus who is confounded and confused
by everything Jesus says because he is not born again. He cannot
discern spiritual things because he is born of the flesh and had
not been born again by the Spirit. We see Jesus saying, I am the
light of the world. without having to reteach that,
this is what John means when he says this is what Jesus is
saying to his Jewish audience. I am the light of all nations.
All nations, just put it like that, all nations. Jesus says that God loved the
world in this way. He loves all nations, all people
groups. I'm the light of the world. This is not the first time we've
heard something about the light. This is the second I Am statement.
Jesus says first, there are seven of them. Jesus says first, He
is the bread of the life. Now He says, I am the light of
the world. In John chapter 1 verse 4, we
see, in Him was life, and that life was the light of men. It
was the light of men. In verse 9 of the same chapter,
in the prologue of John, it says, the true light, which gives light
to everyone, was coming into the world. And in verse 10 it
says, He was in the world, and the world was made through Him,
yet the world did not know Him. Now it's interesting, because if we were here today,
you know, sometimes on really sunny days, Because that foyer
is back there and all that glass is back there, if there's someone
that drives by while I'm teaching, I'm blinded. If the light just
happens to hit me. And before this podium, remember
the real shiny one? Some of you would be like, well
I know I don't have a tan, but I'm not that pale. Light blinds us. Light changes
the focus of our eyes. Light changes our attention.
If a large light just began to blink over here or a small light
began to blink, what would happen? Most of the children in the room
would be like, what's that light blinking? It would just disappear. I would
disappear and there'd be a light blinking somewhere. There's a
light blinking over there. I prefer a lot of darkness when I sleep.
But there is a charger on the side of my bed that when I first
bought it, it has a very tiny pin point size blue light. And I will tell you that for
four or five days, I never could figure out why I felt like I
had light in my face. and I'd open my eyes and I couldn't
see what was, but I just would go to sleep and I'd wake up,
and what it was is when I turned toward my bedside table, just
the tiny little light emitting from that charger was waking
me up. Piece of tape, problem solved.
So even when light is not blinding, it's unavoidable. There are light
rays in this world that we cannot see, that are dangerous to us.
UV rays. Friends, sometimes people think
that the light of the world is one of these things where Jesus
came to the world in such radiance and shining that nobody could
avoid seeing Him. But the Scripture says that nobody
could see Him. Now think about that for a second. a blinding
light, the light of the world, the greatest of all greats, the
most glorious thing to ever take place in the history of humanity,
that God became a man and dwelt among us, verse 14 of chapter
1. The Word of God is tabernacled with us and now He's there at
the feast of tabernacles with the people that God chose to
bring forth the Scripture and the revelation of His coming. And people say Jesus was a blinding
light and no one could avoid Him. But
Jesus says no one could see Him except He be born of God. No
one could see Christ except He was born of God. Nicodemus says,
we, knowing the Pharisees, we know that you are from God. We
know that you are from God. We see what you do. We hear what
you teach. You are teaching truth. You are doing miracles. We know
that God has sent you. We confess that to you, O Rabbi,
Master, Lord, Teacher. You are the one sent from God. Jesus' only response is, It is
true, it is true. Amen, Amen. No one. He actually says, you
cannot see the kingdom of heaven. Nicodemus. I shine before you,
you see my works. I shine before you, you hear
my words. I shine before you, you obviously know in your cognitive
ability the history of the Scripture and you can recognize that I
am from God. But you cannot truly see me unless
you're born from God. Now I want to take a small moment,
just a few minutes, and I want to talk about that specific thing
because I have been accused moreover, some of you have as well because
you've shared it with me, of preaching the not gospel when
we talk about the work of God in salvation sovereignly. We
just need to preach about Jesus, just tell people to believe the
gospel, How am I supposed to tell people
to believe in a gospel, Paul says, that they don't know the
details of? Believe the good news! Have you
heard it? I came here today for some good news. You want to hear
it? Great! Wasn't that awesome? Good news! It's good news! See
how silly that sounds? But because we use the transliteration
expression Godspeak, Godspell, Gospel, We all just assume everybody
understands what it is. And if we're honest, most of
the people in our culture don't understand the Gospel at all.
I had a man tell me Monday, he's sharing about the Lord, and I
say to him, so are you trusting in the finished work of Jesus?
Are you trusting in the death of Christ for your sins? In the
resurrection of Christ for your life? Are you trusting in the
work of God for salvation through Jesus Christ? He says, I accept
Jesus in my heart. What are you talking about? So what I'm talking about, my
friend, is that you don't know the gospel. Well, I was told
I just say a prayer and accept Jesus in my heart, and I accepted
Him in my heart. I said, brother, that don't save
you. He's confused. Some people say,
but that's just not loving. Yes, it is. If I call something
that I fixed food and you eat it and it's poison, you die. I could call it food. I could
mix it in with certain types of food. If it's wrong, it's
wrong. If it's false, it's false. If it's fake, it's fake. If it's
not the Gospel of Jesus Christ explicitly, it is not the Gospel
at all. You see. And I know full well
that some of us in our fellowship may struggle with the confidence
of our salvation through the teaching of John's Gospel. And
I've been warning us about that continually. And I'll give you
several pieces of advice that are repetitious. Read the Word
of God in prayer every moment you have opportunity. Not every
day, several times a day. Don't ever say in your mind,
yeah, but what about? When you're reading about the
Gospel of Grace. Never bring a condition into your life for
your confidence. And thirdly, I will just tell
you, trust in the perfect and finished work of Christ. Period. Quit worrying about, you hear
what I'm saying? Quit worrying about all the trims
and garnishes of your faith. Let the word of God, because
if you're doing number one and you're doing number three, the
word of God will teach us. We will learn the instructions
given to us by Scripture without it giving us fear that we're
not good enough for salvation. Because we're not good enough
for salvation. We're not good enough in our
best of days to be before the Lord. Yes, we are saints. Yes, we are forgiven. Yes, we
are holy. Yes, we are righteous. But that
work is not ours. And it is not describing our
lives individually or collectively in our flesh. It's describing
our lives as the elect of God and the righteousness that is
Jesus' righteousness, His obedience, His perfection, His holiness,
His sanctification, and everything that He is credited to us. How do we see such a blinding
light? By the mercy of God through the hearing of the Word. And
it is all the work of God the Holy Spirit. It's not an academic thing, y'all.
It is the gospel that was preached in the New Testament. So we can't
just say, believe the gospel, because you know what that really
does on the street? Without the gospel, it causes
people to go, how do I do that? How do I believe the gospel?
And some well-meaning individuals say, just ask Jesus in your heart.
Just pray a prayer like this, you know, I know I'm a sinner
and I can't save myself. Thank you, Lord, for coming into my life and giving
me salvation. Amen. That doesn't work. Because your hope is in
that prayer. Your hope is in some aspect of
humanism that's not biblical at all. It's nowhere to be found
in Scripture. It's not even historically. It's only contemporary. It comes to a place where most people
just, you know, I believe in Jesus. What? That He died for
my sins. Okay? Scripture says the demons
believe in Trimble. What is the Gospel? It is everything
that has to do with what Christ did to purchase His people. And
we forget that the Bible itself, that God Himself through Scripture
teaches us that He saves through the hearing of Scripture by the
Spirit. We don't save through our apologetics.
We don't save through our argumentation. We don't save through getting
the Gospel really cool and relevant and cultural. Matter of fact, Paul says it's
the dumbest thing that wise men could ever contemplate, the Gospel.
For the Greeks, it's foolishness. Paul says for the Jews it's an
offense. Why? Because their lives were
so set apart for God that they're offended that there has to be
somebody else that takes them to God. Christ. They're offended
that their religion and their perfection and their obedience
has no bearing in the eyes of God. They're offended. That's
what it means that Christ is a rock of offense for the Jews.
You know what a rock of offense? You ever tripped and fallen while
you were walking? You ever tripped over nothing?
Imagine tripping over this big rock. You should always think,
how can people fall over something so large until you run over something
or run into something so large, like a pole or a wall? They can
be distracted. Friends, Christ is a distraction.
But He's only a distraction unto salvation when the light of Christ
is shown in our hearts by the Spirit of God through the Scripture
that teaches us the fullness of the work of Christ, and that
is the good news. And many people hear this type
of teaching and they say, yeah, but... Please don't say, yeah,
but... If I want to talk to you about
mechanicking, we can talk about mechanicking. I don't need to
say, yeah, but there's a cake in the oven. And we can talk about baking.
When we talk about those instructions to the church, we talk about
the instructions to the church as the church. When we talk about
the gospel that saves, we talk about the gospel that saves alone.
We don't mix the two as though they're one and the same, because
they're not. Jesus preaches the Gospel in contrast to man's ability
to do anything about it. Moving right along. I'm the light of the world. Light is vital in the imagery
of the Scripture. John writes in his Apocalypse,
chapter 21, in the city that We are at the end of days. It says it needs no sun, it needs
no stars, it needs no moon, because Christ is its light. Now Jesus says He's the light
of the world. The question on everybody's mind is, so what?
What's that mean? What am I supposed to do with
it? Well, listen to the word of the Lord out of Exodus. I
alluded to it a minute ago in verse 21 and 22. of chapter 13
of Exodus. And the Lord went before them
by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way and by
night a pillar of fire to give them light that they might travel
by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and
the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people. But Jesus says, I am the light
of the world And then he begins to tell them something that really
aggravates them. Whoever follows me will not walk
in darkness, but will have the light of life. Do you know how
offensive that was? I'm the living water. I'll rebuild
the temple. I'm the light of the world. See, to say I was the light of
the world, just in itself, the Jews could have said, well, Jesus
is a Jew, we're the light of the world. No, not the light
of the world, we're the light of God to ourselves, to Israel,
not to the nations. The nations hate God, leave them
in darkness. That was their mindset, even
of their own people. Anyone who does not know the
law is accursed. They said, remember last week? If He'd just said,
I'm the light of the world, they could have just... How many people
can do? We can interpret it how we want,
so that it would fit in the context of how we think. Praise the Lord. Yep, everybody says that, but
what Lord are they speaking of? Jesus. What Jesus are you talking
about? The one in the Bible, specifically,
what do you mean? The Jesus of John 6? The Jesus
of John 3? or just the Jesus of one part of John 3, 16, that
loves me so much that He gave His life for me, and that if
I just happen to just receive the light that He's shining in
my face, that I'll be saved. Nope, not that Jesus. That Jesus
is not the gospel I'm talking about. That's not good news at
all. It's not good news for me to be told if I climb Mount Everest,
I can have a billion dollars, because I can't do that. And
I don't want to be one of the corpses that's scattered along
the way, not doing it. The thing is, is that I have
a greater chance of climbing Mount Everest to get a billion
dollars that's not up there than I do of coming to the salvation
that God has given me in Christ by myself, or of myself, or a
part of myself. Me. Whoever follows Me. Me. Jesus is the source of this. Jesus is the light. He doesn't
need to have someone else shine upon Him. He didn't need John
the Baptist to say, look, there's Jesus. John the Baptist died
so that he would get out of the way. Jesus speaks for Himself. Jesus shines for Himself. Jesus
is not the object of spotlight. Jesus is the light. And as we'll
see next week, the Jews actually argue, you're testifying on your
own behalf. This is not okay. You don't have
the authority to do that. And Jesus says, yes I do. I'm the light. You don't need
someone to tell you that there's a light up there. Just look at
it. It's shining right now. We can
see it. Look at the lights. We don't
need a sign up there that says this is the light. We don't need
a spotlight on the light so you can see the light that's coming
from the light. Because the light is light. Jesus is the light. He doesn't need another testimony
about Him. He doesn't need a condition.
He doesn't need a testimony of what He means. He is the light.
He doesn't need anybody to explain Him, to help explain Him. He
is the light. And we, the church, follow Him. And a lot of times then we conflate
this. Oh, see, this is evangelistic.
And Jesus is saying, obey. No, He's not. He said, follow
Him. Just like they follow the light in the wilderness. This
is the point. Deuteronomy. They followed the
light so that they could know where they were going. They didn't turn into a pillar
of fire like God and swirl around like a bunch of tornadoes. Look,
we're following God. We're tornadoes too. No. They never took their eyes. They
never diverted their path. And that was temporal. We follow
Christ by seeing Him and believing in Him. What must we do to be
doing the work of God? What is it that God requires
of us, they asked Jesus in John 6? This is what God requires
of you, that you believe in the One whom He has sent. I am the
bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to all nations.
All nations. Here goes this guy again. He's such a liberal. make Judaism international. It's all about loving everybody.
They couldn't stand that. It's faith alone that's how we
follow. We follow Christ, period, by faith alone. There is no yeah
but here. There is no however. There is
no however to the ministry of God's grace. That is the problem
with the Pharisees here and those who are bound by these legalistic
and self-righteous tendencies of today. The Bible says that
we must believe on the Son. Jesus is saying, you must believe
on Me. I am the light. I am the one
who comes and exposes God to you. I am the one who exposes
the path to righteousness. I am the one who exposes and
shines the light to salvation. I am the one who shows you the
way of eternal life. I am the one who establishes
and manifests and makes known the fullness of the revelation
of God for the redemption of His people, I am the light of the world." See, John tells us in his first
epistle, that which was from the beginning, that which we
have heard and seen and touched with our hands concerning the Word
of Life. And it says, and this is the
message of the word of life that was manifested that we now proclaim
to you. He says, this is the message
we have heard from Him, that in Him there is no darkness,
that He is light. And see, it's very easy. And
I talk about this a lot too. I want you to get it. I want
you to grasp it. I want you to, when you think
of light and darkness and sin and righteousness, I want you
to think first from this level, not from the bottom of the pit
of debauchery. When you think of sin and darkness, I want you
to go to John 3 in your mind. I want you to go to John 3. And
I want you to recognize that the life that Nicodemus lived,
he got up every day He got up every day and He ate
according to the law of God. He got up every day and He bathed.
He worshipped. He served. He studied for years. He served in the temple. He prayed
for the people. He walked in a manner that was
required of Him. He did all these things. He sang
psalms to God. He burnt offerings. He burnt
incense. He offered service in the temple
for the sake of the atonement of the people. He taught the
Jews and He taught the nations and He taught the others from
afar. Every day, in and out, they would
offer these things. Nicodemus did this every day.
And Jesus said that his life was the epitome of darkness. You know who hates this message?
People who trust in their own righteousness. People who would shake their
fist in the face of grace and say, yeah, but I work hard for
the Lord. No, you don't. No, I don't. Because when I measure what God
requires of me and the amount of time I work, it's petty. If I stay on my face and pray
23 hours a day, it's not enough. So the only hope I have of being
set apart for God is that I've been given to Christ who is perfect.
And His righteousness has been credited to me. The perfection of Christ, the
perfection of Christ's obedience, the greatness of His holiness,
we follow Him as He has walked in the path of righteousness
before God the Father. We follow Him by believing and
trusting in His righteousness. His righteousness. His perfection,
you see. That is part and the meat and
the potatoes of the gospel of substitutionary atonement. Christ
replaced us under the wrath of God and Christ, what? Gave us
and replaced our evil with His righteousness. He took our guilt
and then gave us His perfection. Neither belonging to the recipient. It's called grace. By faith we follow Christ. Jesus here reveals the measure
of the good news that life was in Him and that life is the light
of men. The Jews cannot stomach this
proposition. They could not stomach the idea that Jesus was the only
and actual, relevatory expression of God. And He's already said
it several times over, that which the Father was doing, I do. That
which the Father is saying, now I say. That where the Father
is going, now I go. Basically, what the Father is
doing, I'm doing. We're all God. We are God. We are one God. He says that I and the Father
are one God. We are one. The Jews can't handle
this. Jesus is showing us where to
go. Jesus is telling us what to believe. Jesus, this man,
is telling us how we ought to walk. That where we've been looking,
the light that we have been given long before this man was ever
born in the world, who does he think he is to tell us he is
the light when we are the ones who taught him as a child? You
see, it happens. No, no, no, no. This man will not ever be the
light. We follow God. We shine the light
of God to the people as we see fit. We, the Pharisees speaking,
we do these things. Look at our lives, they cried.
We follow God. Who are you to say otherwise?
Jesus. Jesus says otherwise. Jesus,
God, the Son, the Son of God, the Son of Man, He says otherwise
because they do not follow God or they would believe on Christ.
You see the difference? Jesus walks as the light that
shows that the only way to the Father is He. Not doing what
He does, but trusting in what He has done. Let me say that
again. Jesus walks as the light that
shows us the only way to the Father is He. He is the only
way to the Father. Getting to the Father is not
doing what Jesus does. Getting to the Father is trusting
in what Jesus has done. Believing the good news that
Christ has made us write. Now, I don't know about you,
beloved, but when we see the depth of the love of God and
the gospel, the good news of grace, and the work that God
has done, the finished atonement, the redemption, the propitiation
of Christ, are you not driven to worship? Especially when we
see ourselves for who we really are. And that if it weren't for
the Lord saving us, we would be even more evil. How that ever works? Does it not drive us to a place
where we want to strive for the sake of adoration, to follow
after Christ in our lives, to love each other, to study the
Word, to put away filth and to clean up our mouths, as James
says, know who can tame the tongue? Does it not drive us to a place
where we really want to try to live up to the calling that we've
been called to? It should. But we don't look to those things
as if they matter in the scope of our place before the Lord.
Because when we conflate these, when we mix these up, we have
a cocktail of lies. And we remember, we went through
the book of Ephesians, and we went through the book of Philippians,
and we went through Titus. We went through 1st and 2nd Thessalonians.
So there are things in there that cause us to check ourselves
as the elect, as the righteousness of God. We check ourselves and
we go, wow, we want to relate to one another It gives glory
to Christ, and whatever we say and whatever we do, whatever
we eat or we drink, we want to do it for the sake of the glory
of God. But it is not so that God would
be pleased with us in the matter of our salvation, but it's that
God is honored in us as He causes us to walk in a manner worthy
until He decides through discipline to prune us in such a way to
show us that even when we are walking, it is only temporal. God does permit us divinely to
fall into temptation sometimes to prove to us that nothing we
do in this life can count toward our righteousness. The consequences do come. But
these Jews didn't want to hear that. They wanted to trust fully
in who they were. Jesus is the light. Whoever follows
Me, they could not follow Him. But what is it that He says about
those who follow Him, who believe in Him, who trust by faith in
His work, in His person, in His promises? They will not walk
in darkness, but they will have the light of life. I said at the beginning that
many claim to walk in the light of Christ, but they do not. Some
appear to have some sense of light to them, and they may have
what I call a spiritual element. Whatever that looks like for
you, it's very subjective. Spiritual element to me are those
who walk around with a little bit of a happiness in their step
or even melancholy, but they're always sort of giving credit
to God for everything. That's good, nothing wrong with
that, but then when you press them about Christ, it's not about
Jesus, it's about God, it's not about Christ, it's about this
being up there, this divine entity, but not the Christ, not Jesus
Himself. Their hope is in some work of
a mysterious God that they say is from Scripture, but they don't
have Christ as the pulse of their life. You know what I'm talking
about? And I pick up on it very quickly now. They have a spiritual element,
but they don't have a testimony of Christ. Some of them even say, well,
God saved me from alcoholism. Great! AA has saved people from
alcoholism. God saved me from pornography.
God saved me from adultery. God saved me from this. God saved
me from that. How about, where is Christ? Christ saved me from my self-righteousness. Christ saved me from my nationalistic
pride. Christ saved me from my ministerial
covetousness. Christ saved me from unbelief.
Christ saved me from rolling my eyes. Christ saved me from
the wrath that is to come from God the Father who would just
as well be justified in smiting me for all of eternity because
I don't like the taste of the peas that my mother made. and be right in His judgment.
If they don't have faith in the
truth of the gospel of grace, they have not been born again.
Because faith is the product of a new birth. And a new birth will not take
place if the gospel has not been taught. Telling someone to believe
in Jesus just in that phrase cannot save them. You must tell
them what Christ has done. Then you can say for 50 years,
believe in that Christ. Ignorance of Jesus is ignorance
of life, is no light, is darkness. We who are born of God, because
we've heard the Word of Christ, we see the work of Christ in
Scripture. The Holy Spirit, as He wishes,
brings His children to eternal life. He brings them to regeneration. And the outcome of His work in
them is the gift of faith, whereby though we may struggle, In our
belief, we never cast it aside. We hold fast to the work of God
through Christ. Those who do not believe in the
gospel of grace, those like the man I talked about Monday, who
just say, well, I asked Him into my heart. This man stands in
the judgment of God this very moment. And when I shared with him the
gospel, he was confused. Many people say, yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah, I trust in that. Yeah, that too. You ever
get that? Begin to pray that God would
cause you, when you have spiritual, elemental conversations with
people, that God would cause you to ask just a probing question.
Just ask a question. What do you mean by God is good? How is God ultimately good? How
is God's goodness revealed to us? You know what you get? This will make you sick. You
will be sick to your stomach. You will get a laundry list of
all of the great material blessings of these people's lives. You'll
get a laundry list of all the prosperity. You'll get a laundry
list of how God did this, and God did that, and God did this.
And back when I was a child, I saw an angel fly over on a
bicycle, and I was late for school, and the bicycle fell out of nowhere.
And I wasn't tardy. I got perfect attendance and
that's what God's doing. I'm serious. I mean, that's just
how... You'll see the testimony of overcoming,
the testimony of being empowered, the testimony of standing up
for myself, everything but the finished work of Christ, where
I deserve the wrath and the judgment of God, for I'm wicked before
Him, and God the Son took my wickedness upon Himself, my guilt
rather, the guilt of my wickedness upon Himself, and God the Father
crushed Him in my place. so that I might live forever
and God be justified and declare me innocent of all my guilt.
That's the gospel of grace. And it is a work of God whereby
only He can save someone. Only God the Father can move
in the Spirit through the Word of God to cause someone to believe. Nothing we say can make someone
become a Christian. It is all the work of God. And
it ought to make us sick, but we don't give up. We don't give
up. Many will come to the stories.
Many will come to try to feel out they're compelled to inquire
about the true love of Christ, but ultimately, church, nobody
comes unless God drags them. Nobody comes to look. Many people
think that they are coming to find the light, but no one seeks
Christ, no one seeks after God. No person has ever been compelled
to see who Christ really is, because they see the shining
of His glory. Because the only ones who can see that are those
who are born of God. Many will come to the stories
of Christ. Many will be compelled to seek out the power of Christ.
Many will come to the glory of Christ, in some sense from a
man-centered fantasy, and they'll consider that they may escape
wrath, or they may become pious, and thus be acceptable to God.
But this is a foolish assumption. and they still walk in darkness
and are blinded to the truth. A man cannot escape this blindness
unless he has been given by the Father to the Son. This means
that there is no light in us if we do not see that God has
granted us repentance, and granted us faith, and granted us this
wonderful salvation conditioned only through Jesus Christ the
Son, and that we are made alive by the Spirit of God alone. We
are illuminated by the teaching of the Word of God, of this Good
News, and this is how God works to bring His children to life. This is how God brings the light
of life to us. We walk then, not blindly, fully
able to see, clearly able to see what is before us, Jesus
Christ who is the light of the world. We can see, and thus we
know. And because of this, we believe
in Christ and the work of atonement that He accomplished, He finished. And we put no place at the table,
as Paul would say, make no provision for the flesh. We make no provision
at the table of grace for something that we can bring to God in our
doing and going forth. We have no room for mere, what
I like to call, carnal garnishments. There's nothing that we can add
to to make ourselves more like Christ. We do not do that. Christ
has declared us His own, and He has been given us by the Father. So therefore, we are fully and
forever righteous before God the Father, to be no more righteous
except for the day that we're glorified, and this corrupted
flesh will be made new, having never sinned. We do not put carnal garnishments
on the plate of sovereignty and righteousness. Because righteousness
is our new name. We are the righteousness of God.
Because of the work of Christ. Because we've been united by
the blood of Christ. And we have, the last thing he says there,
the light of life. What does that mean? We're no
longer blind, we're no longer dead, but we are alive. We are
able to see, we are able to fully believe. We have the promise
of life who is Jesus Christ, as I've repeated myself a thousand
times today, who died to pay for us, to redeem us. And He
rose again to prove to us that He is life and He is the life
giver. Beloved, darkness, as much as we want to fret, the
light, verse 5 of chapter 1. Well, let's just read that. In
the beginning it was with God. All things are made through Him.
Verse 3. Without Him was not anything
made that was made. In Him was life, and the life
was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it. So here's a bit of encouragement. Many will fall away from the
truth that they say they hold to. It's not our fault. God has not
failed. Many will profess a different
or a conditioned hope, but they are blind. Darkness will not
overcome. Even when people look the part
and have zeal, even when they have a love for humanity, and
think they may have found Jesus, but they do not have the truth
of Christ, the darkness has not overcome. Many sheep will be
fearful because we want to see the Lord work and save those
around us, but they will not come to faith. The darkness has
not overcome. The darkness will not overcome. Jesus says that all men love
the darkness because their works are evil. Some love the darkness
because in that darkness they are able to live in their own
internal self-righteousness. Like the Jews, they were at ease. Listen to this. The Jews were
at ease with God in their spirit. Not at peace. At ease. You know what it's like to be
at ease? Maybe not. There have been moments in my
life where I was at ease. I'm always at peace. The Jews were not at peace with
God, but they were at ease. They had no concern that they
were ever an object of wrath. They had no concern that they
needed anything else. They had no concern, though their hatred
and animosity of the truth was abhorrent. They just could not
stand Christ. They were not at peace. And that
ease was toppled over when Christ came proclaiming Himself as light
and bread and truth and the way to God the Father. And it ruined
everything they knew about their own self-glory. But when the light of life, even
in the hardest of religious people, when the light of life, Jesus
Christ the righteous comes barging in, It destroys all the shadows
of doubt. It destroys all unbelief. It destroys all religiosity.
It destroys everything. It wakes us up and we see, we
behold, we believe. We're no longer able to cling
to the shadows of hopeless futures or the devilish lusts of our
flesh. But we see all the shadows are
cast aside, invisible to our hearts. as the Spirit brings
us to life and we live because Christ is the light of life. Do you live in the light of this
good news? Or are you clinging to the shadows,
holding fast to something that cannot give you life? Let go
of everything that stands in your way. Let go of every article
of your self-righteousness. That's what repentance means.
Your mind's got to be changed about the way you think you come
to God. Every time the word repentance
is used in the New Testament, that is its context. And you've
got to trust fully in the finished work of the light who is Jesus
Christ. Let's pray. Praise be to You, Father, for
the light You give is inevitable. It is invincible. And it shines
as You see fit into the hearts of those for whom Christ died.
And we rest And when we feel our flesh rising to work, we
work by faith to rest. We hope we live in the finished work of Jesus.
I thank you, Father, for this day, for the good news in the
midst of so much darkness. There's never, ever anything
that can overcome Your power in the life of Your people. We
will be unified, we will be together, even if we grapple in the meantime. Father, You will bring us together
in the end. Lord, I thank You for saving
us. I thank You for Your mercy. In Jesus' name we pray. Thank
you for listening. We hope that this message has
encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to these messages and
other teaching resources and podcasts at anchoringfaith.org. More information about the church
can be found at gracetruth.org.