Lights In The World

Q: What does the Bible say about being lights in the world?

The Bible teaches that believers are called to be lights in a dark world, reflecting the light of Christ. In Philippians 2:14-18, the Apostle Paul encourages believers to do all things without murmurings, emphasizing that they are to shine as lights in a perverse nation. This reflects Jesus' declaration that He is the light of the world (John 8:12) and that His followers also represent light (Matthew 5:14). Just as Christ illuminated the path to salvation, believers are to hold forth the word of life, demonstrating their faith in action amidst a dark and crooked generation.

Q: How do we know that Christ is the light of the world?

Scripture affirms that Christ is the light of the world, providing guidance and salvation to all who believe in Him. Christ's claim to be the light of the world is rooted in His mission to bring salvation and healing to humanity (John 12:46). The Apostle Paul reiterates this by stating in Ephesians 5:8 that believers were once in darkness but are now light in the Lord. This transformation confirms the truth of Christ's nature as the illuminating light that dispels darkness, underscoring that faith in Him leads to liberation from spiritual darkness.

Q: Why is shining as lights in the world important for Christians?

Shining as lights demonstrates our faith and reflects the glory of Christ to a world in need of hope. For Christians, being lights in the world is vital as it showcases the transformative power of the Gospel. Paul emphasizes that believers, as children of light, must live in a manner that reflects Christ's righteousness and love. In a world characterized by sin and darkness, the light that believers emit serves as a testament to the goodness and truth of God. This witness can lead others to Christ, enabling them to escape the darkness and experience the Gospel's healing power (Philippians 2:15-16). Our witness has eternal implications, urging us to hold forth the word of life in action and testimony.

Q: What does it mean to work out our salvation in fear and trembling?

Working out our salvation refers to living out the faith given to us by God, recognizing His authority and grace. Working out our salvation, as mentioned in Philippians 2:12, calls believers to actively live out the new life received from God. This is not about earning salvation but rather expressing gratitude and obedience from an inward change made by the Holy Spirit. Fear and trembling signify a deep reverence for God and acknowledgement of our dependence on Him for spiritual growth and transformation. The assurance lies in knowing that it is God who works in us to will and to act according to His purpose (Philippians 2:13), emphasizing His power at work in our lives.

Philippians chapter 2 and verse 14. Philippians chapter 2 and verse 14. This is the word of the Lord. Do all things without murmurings and disputings. that ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life, that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain. Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all. For the same cause also do ye joy and rejoice with me. Amen, may the Lord bless to us this reading from his word.

Our illustrious saviour, identified himself as the light of the world. It was one of his famous I am sayings. He said, I am the light of the world. It was a statement he made in Jerusalem just before he was crucified. And he made it in the temple. He said, I am the light of the world.

He also told his disciples, ye are the light of the world. speaking perhaps about the way in which they would carry that light, the gospel light, to the ends of the earth as the preaching of the gospel went forth from Jerusalem, Judea, unto the ends of the earth. And here, in our passage today, by the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul tells us all who trust in Christ for salvation We are lights in the world. Christ is the light of the world, the apostles of the light of the world, and we as believers are lights in the world. Believers shine as lights in a dark world, just as our saviour and his apostles shone in their respective days to illuminate the way of life and lead men and women out of darkness.

Recently, I was speaking to an elderly lady just like many of us are. And in our conversation, we were reflecting, we were thinking a little bit about how little it seems that we are able to do for the Lord. And we settled on prayer. And we said at least we're able to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ. At least we're able to pray for our families and our friends and the work of the gospel. We can't do much, but at least we're able to pray.

Well, here's something else that we can do as well. We can shine. We do shine. I'm applying what the Apostle Paul says of the Philippians to us all, and I believe that I am entirely at liberty to do so, because what was true for the Philippians is true for all the Lord's people. We shine. You know, it is not easy to hide a light in a dark place, and we are lights in the world. Paul tells us that.

Malachi tells us that our Saviour is the Son of Righteousness risen with healing in His wings. That healing is the gospel. That healing is salvation. That healing is the transformation that Christ has made as the great physician in the hearts and souls and lives of His people. Christ is the Son of Righteousness. And if Christ is the Son of Righteousness, as He certainly is, then we are the bodies that orbit the Son and reflect His glory.

The light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, has shone unto us, a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people. Why has it shone unto us? That we should show forth the praises of him who hath called us out of darkness into his marvellous light. Our Lord Jesus Christ says in John chapter 12 verse 46, I am come a light into the world, listen, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness. That's us. If we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that's us. Christ came into this world as a light that whosoever believeth on him should not abide in darkness. If we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, we do not abide in darkness, or else the Lord Jesus has failed in his purpose, which is impossible.

Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. Believers hate darkness. We love the light. When we fall into darkness, we want to get out of it as quickly as we can. Paul tells the church at Ephesus in chapter five, verse eight, for ye were sometimes darkness, But now are ye light in the Lord. Walk, says Paul, as children of light.

He's telling the Ephesian believers, just as we're going on to think about what he has to say to the Philippians, he's telling the believers in the church at Ephesus, he is telling them to live what you are. Here is the measure of our conduct. Here is the believer's rule of life. The apostle tells us again, he wrote the same thing to all the churches.

He tells us in Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 5, ye are all the children of light and the children of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness because Says Isaiah in chapter 9 verse 2, the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour is the great light, the light of the world.

He has shone in the darkness. He has come into this world. He has brought light into this world. He has caused us to have that light in us. It is true the darkness comprehended it not, but we have been given eyes to see because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. Or as Paul says here to the Philippians in chapter one, verse 29, it is given unto you to believe in him.

Do you remember when Moses went up into the mountain to be with the Lord? His face shone. He had to put a veil over his face. It shone so much when he came back down out of the mountain. Moses' face shone with brightness when he had been in the company of Christ.

And we too shine when we meet with him and when we trust him. We shine in our attitudes, we shine in our conduct, we shine in the words that we speak. We're His people, we're a drawn apart people, we're a remnant people, we're a separated people, we're a sanctified people.

And it isn't a matter of us switching our light on and off by what we do and what we don't do. Paul is emphatic here. We shine because of what we are, not because of what we do. We live in a dark world, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation. And what identifies us is that we are Christ's. In this crooked and perverse nation, in this dark world, we shine as lights in the world.

Many preachers burden their congregations down with how they ought to act and what they need to do, what we should and shouldn't be doing. how you need to be living and how you're not living as you should. If we listen to such preachers, we'll go through life under a big black cloud.

Let me tell you, these preachers that tell us that, they're not living after the pattern that they set for others. They're hypocrites. They don't measure up to their neonomian yardstick. Listen to them and you will never know the joy of the Lord that Paul speaks of in this passage. Yes, we might well be worms, but we're glowworms and we ought not to forget it. Paul has been speaking about working out our salvation.

And we saw last week that this has nothing to do with works righteousness or earning God's favour or gaining His pleasure by the things that we do, the things that we say. All our righteousness is derived righteousness, derived from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord our righteousness.

He, Christ, is our righteousness, all of it, all of it. We can't have righteousness outside of Christ. We have nothing to offer God outside of Christ. We have the righteousness of God in Christ. All our sanctification is from Christ. All our holiness is from Christ. Not from our works, not from our deeds, not diminished by the things that we do and say, not enhanced by the things that we do and say. Christ is made unto us righteousness and sanctification.

And the only man God is pleased with is His own Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. God told us that. God the Father. tells us that, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. God's pleasure, God's satisfaction with those who have been reconciled to him and adopted into his family is down to our union with Christ. It is owing entirely to Christ. It is in Christ. that we are well pleasing to the Father because Christ is holy and because Christ is our surety and our representative.

The Lord's people work out their own salvation in fear and trembling when they live out the new life that God has placed in them by his grace. When they live by faith, when they live believing and acknowledging that this life that we now live is His free gift to us. We live by faith. We shine as lights in the world because we are trophies of grace. We honour and serve the Lord God by being in Christ in this fallen world. Such believers understand that they have been crucified with Christ, that they have died with Him, that they are raised to newness of life with Him. And such believers in Christ say with the Apostle Paul, that the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

It's Galatians chapter two, verse two. Consequently, therefore, we serve not out of imposed duty, but from inward desire. Not because we are bound under legal obligation, but rather through loving obedience. The inward attitude of the Lord's people is what has been transformed. Not this flesh. This flesh has not been transformed. This is the same old flesh. This is the same old flesh that must go to the grave.

But internally, the soul, the spirit, the new man has been created and transformed. and it is an inward attitude that now shines forth. Conversion is real. It makes a difference. The Holy Spirit has done something real in every believer. Our Lord Jesus Christ makes all things new and believers shine like new pennies.

Being a new creature doesn't mean that we're sinless, doesn't mean that we're immune to temptation, not at all. No child of God believes that. We know better. We know better on the authority of God's word and we know better by bitter experience. 1 John chapter 1 verse 8 says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. As long as we are in this flesh, we shall suffer due to the sins of the flesh.

David, the Psalmist David, he wrote in Psalm 32 verse two, blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. Blessed, happy is the man that the Lord imputes righteousness to. Happy is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile, who has been transformed, who has been converted, who has been changed. And yet the very same man could also write, that was Psalm 32, could also write In shame and brokenness of heart, in Psalm 51 verse 9, hide thy face from my sins and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. How can David write these two things? How can he at once write, blessed is the man unto whom the Lord impurities not iniquity and in whose spirit there is no guile, and then just a few Psalms later be talking about hiding God hiding his face from the psalmist's iniquities. Well, I trust we appreciate that these statements are not contrary. The Lord's reply to the blessed man, the Lord's reply to the happy man to whom he imputes righteousness, the righteousness of Christ, is this.

I have hidden your sins from my face. I have blotted out your iniquities in the blood of my Lamb. Your heart is clean before me. and your conscience will be too. For I have given you a right spirit, and I have made you righteous in Christ." That's the gospel. And David knew that gospel.

Yes, he felt sin in his own life. Yes, he felt the weight of conviction. And yes, he rightly was brokenhearted because his sin was an offence. It was an offence to himself, it was an offence to the Lord's people, it was an offence to the world and it was an offence to God. But God confirmed that he had put it away.

In the blood of Jesus Christ, God saw his sins no more. Being a new creature means the Holy Spirit dwells in us and with us. He convinces us of sin and he makes us feel the need of constant applications of Christ's cleansing blood. Every day we need to have fresh appeals for the blood of Christ to cleanse us and free our conscience from guilt. Believers are not lawless. The law is written in our hearts. It is written on our hearts. And that work of inward grace produces an outward transformation that affects our values and influences the way that we live. Sin we shall. But if we are the Lord's, it will be a grievous experience to us, soon regretted and repented of.

And like David, the Lord does not leave his people in their sin, but convicts and converts them again and again by his Spirit. within us and by fresh applications of His grace. The new birth motivates and enables God's people to serve from the inside out with a renewed soul and a right spirit. Indeed, it is clear from the teachings of the Saviour himself in his Sermon on the Mount that mere outward conformity to God's will, if it be without inward change, is not sufficient and is unacceptable to God. A man, for whatever reason, might well resist committing adultery and therefore fulfil the Lord's commandment. But if he looks on a woman to lust after her, he has committed adultery with her already in his heart. Because sin is primarily a problem of the heart, so that God's work within us has to transform what we are before it affects what we do. Certainly God's word reveals God's will to us, but it is not simply what we do in obedience to that will, but how we do it, and why we do it, and how we feel about doing it when we do it.

These are the things that the Lord sees. Obedience isn't acceptable to the Lord when it is performed grudgingly. As we work out our salvation, we look to the Lord in faith. We look trusting Him, believing in Him and following as He leads and as He enables.

God's will is not to be disputed or debated, it is to be embraced. His providences, His dealings with us, the circumstances of our lives, His ways in our lives, they're not to be murmured against. We must in the quietness of our own hearts and in the serenity of our minds when we think about these things, we must take it for granted. that the Lord knows best, that he is all wise in his dealings with us in this world. We may not be able to explain it, we may not be able to understand it, but we are prepared to commit it into his care and keeping.

It isn't easy because the flesh, remember the flesh, invariably reacts against God's will. Nevertheless, a believer's service is born out of gratitude and indebtedness, and murmuring against the Lord's providence is inconsistent with grateful service. Contending against Christ's dealings with us and disputing with His all-wise counsel is unbecoming a child of the Most High God. Our master has no pleasure in works performed outwardly, but that are resisted inwardly.

And that is true for our dealings with one another. It is true for our dealings with our glorious head, and it is true for our attitude towards his body, the church. Our dealings with our brethren should not be marked by contentiousness, by fighting, by backbiting. Don't fight against God and don't fight against his children. Be careful about murmuring and disputing with each other.

Love and patience and tolerance ought to characterise our general attitude with the Lord's people and sympathy and kindness ought to mark our approach to those around about us in the world. In such ways, we imitate the meekness and humility of our Saviour. Letting the mind of Christ be in us is a wide-ranging and a far-reaching principle. Paul calls the Philippian believers to live blamelessly and harmlessly amongst men. And again, this is because it is what becomes the gospel that we profess and the saviour that we follow.

We're God's representatives in this wicked world. We are lights in this dark world. We dwell amidst a crooked and perverse generation. But that's not us. we're Christ's ambassadors. He is the light of the world and we reflect his goodness and beauty as we hold forth the word of life, as we preach the gospel, as we confess our saviour, as we live, endeavouring to exhibit his ways in our own lives. And this is what it means to hold forth the Word of Life. We're holding forth Christ. We're maintaining our profession. We are continuing in our testimony. We are continuing to have faith in Him.

It isn't about the works we do. It isn't about the accomplishments we make. It is about retaining faith in Him despite everything that this world throws at us. We hold forth His beauty, His loveliness, His glory as we live by His example, confessing His salvation, promoting His gospel.

Our witness in this world may well be as close to seeing Christ as some people ever come. But our witness in this world is trusting in the sufficiency of the Lord Jesus Christ. We've already mentioned that the Apostle Paul was in prison in Rome. He didn't know if his present captivity would end in his execution or his release. And yet, whether he lived or died, he believed that his joy would be greater on the day of Christ's return because of the witness and testimony of the Philippian church. Their dedicated service to the Lord Jesus, their shining witness to the world was evidence to Paul that their profession was genuine, that their conviction and their conversion was a work of effectual grace.

And that confidence that the Apostle Paul had, it was not misplaced. He was sure the Lord's people would live according to their calling. He believed that the Lord's commands were his enablings. If the Lord commands of his people, he enables us to fulfil. And he believed that the Philippians were the Lord's own workmanship. that he was working in us to do his good pleasure.

And he rejoiced that his work, the apostle's own work in the lives of the Philippians, in his preaching of the gospel and in his lifting up Christ, had not been nor would be in vain amongst them. And here the apostle Paul returns to This recurring theme of joy in this beautiful little epistle of Philippians. His joy and the joy of the church at Philippi doesn't rely on the things of this world. It didn't depend on whether Paul lived or died, whether he was released or whether he was retained in prison. and our joy in this world as believers relies upon possessing the faith of Jesus Christ.

I know that many of this little congregation are in pain right now. I know that many of this little congregation are hard pressed right now. There are difficulties, there are challenges, there are problems. But our joy is not in the taking away of all of those hardships.

Our joy is in the Lord and what He has done for us. And in the midst of our hardships, we can rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say, rejoice. Our joy in this world relies on professing faith in Jesus Christ. Whether the Apostle lived a while longer or died, as a labourer in the work of the Gospel, he would rejoice in the faith and testimony of Christ and the faith and testimony of the church at Philippi and they would rejoice in knowing Christ by Paul's labours amongst them and you will rejoice and I will rejoice as his people in what he has done for us. Whether we are able to serve, whether we are able to accomplish, whether the works that we perform and the deeds that we do are righteous or troubled or sinful, we rejoice in the Lord.

Paul would not have them sorrow for him in death if indeed they should hear that he had been poured out as a sacrifice in the cause of the gospel. Rather, his death would be Paul's delight and glory. Paul gloried in serving Christ and delighted in serving the Church of Christ. And he would count it all joy to be sacrificed in such a cause and the Lord's people should rejoice with him.

That's what he says to them. He had run his race and gained his crown, especially it was amongst these Philippian believers, but in the lives of all who trusted the Lord through his ministry. for which he rejoiced with thanks. And these are the principles upon which every believer finds joy in the Lord. Whether we live or whether we die, we joy in the Lord. And may the testimony of the apostle be an example to us and may the example of Christ be that which we endeavour to work out in our own lives as we shine before the men and women of this world for his sake and his cause. Amen.

Lights In The World

What does the Bible say about being lights in the world?

How do we know that Christ is the light of the world?

Why is shining as lights in the world important for Christians?

What does it mean to work out our salvation in fear and trembling?

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Lights In The World

What does the Bible say about being lights in the world?

How do we know that Christ is the light of the world?

Why is shining as lights in the world important for Christians?

What does it mean to work out our salvation in fear and trembling?

Sermon Transcript

About Peter L. Meney

Comments

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