I Am The Light Of The World | John 8:1-12 | July 5th 2026

We trace Jesus’ claim “I am the light of the world” through John 9 and John 8, watching him give sight to the blind and mercy to the exposed. We walk away seeing that God’s light reveals beauty, exposes hidden sin, and shows a Savior who exposes the truth without throwing the stone. 

• fireworks as a picture of light that illuminates everything nearby 
• why “light” is a massive Bible theme from Genesis to Revelation 
• John 9 and the blind man as a physical sign of spiritual blindness 
• John 8 and the woman caught in adultery as shame dragged into public 
• our fear of being fully known and not loved 
• Jesus stooping to the dirt and refusing condemnation 
• the gospel logic of the only sinless judge extending mercy 
• three outcomes for hidden sin: confession, exposure, or darkness 
• bringing sin into the light with wise community
• the cross as the Light lifted up for all to see

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Transcript

Scripture Reading John 8:1-12

Callie Wiziek 0:46

Good morning, everybody. Please turn in your Bibles to John chapter eight, which is on page eight hundred and ninety-four in the Pew Bibles um uh it's centered in front of you, and follow along as I read God's word. John eight, verse one. They went to his own house, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Earlier in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst, they said to him, Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. So what do you say? This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, Let him who is without sin, a monkey, be the first to throw a stone at her. And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with a woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? She said, No one, Lord, and Jesus said, Neither do I condemn you. Go and from now on sin no more. Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of the life. This is the word of the Lord.

Thomas Grocki 2:42

But um happy 4th of July last night. Um it was super fun. We have three small kids, and so we didn't do anything. We I didn't expect a laugh on that one, but it's true. We were content to just do sparklers in the carport, and our neighbor, he's like a military guy, went to one of the surplus stores and he bought a bunch of fireworks, some like medium-sized ones, and we were able to shoot them off kind of in the street, and it it was like

Fireworks And What Light Reveals

Thomas Grocki 3:11

a war zone in Columbus last night. I'll leave it at that. Um, I'll leave it at that. And so um, happy 5th of July. It is really good um timing pairing with the scriptures and kind of where we are in the IM series. We're only on week two, but I am the light of the world. How perfect is this for kind of the activities that we did last night, kind of as a country, and it was socially acceptable for all of us to be able to shoot off fireworks last night. Um, kind of one bit of little housekeeping uh before we get started. I'm a nerd, I think many of you guys know this. For me, honestly, it was pretty hard to sit down at my desk as Jesus says, I am the light of the world, and to take pen to paper and start thinking, okay, how do I write a sermon on this? Because honestly, the concept of light is so big and so comprehensive in Scripture that stuff was going to get left out. That that the first words God says in the Bible, let there be light. At the end in Revelation, it says that there will be no moon, no sun, no stars, because Jesus Christ Himself will be their light. And I'm hard pressed to think of any book in the Bible that doesn't mention light. So I knew that things were gonna get left out. I was gonna be kind of disappointed with what I couldn't share with you guys due to time. And yet, one of the best kept secrets at the church, Will and I have been doing this for almost a year now. Um he's mentioned it, I think, two or three times. Scott mentioned it last week. Um, we have this podcast. I'm gonna highlight this real quick. It's called What Got Cut. It is on any and all of your um kind of podcast feeds, whether you're on Spotify, um uh Apple podcasts, Overcast, if you do that. Brandon Jones always texts me about that. Um it this is a simple podcast that Will and I have been doing uh for about a year. I think we've got about 40 episodes out where we talk about what got cut from our sermons. And so when we don't have time to say something, when we just forget to say something, it was in our notes, if we think about something on a Monday that we're like, oh man, that should have been in the sermon on Sunday, we have an outlet for it, and it's this podcast. We shoot for about 15 minutes, so it's not like an hour-long academic thing. We we honestly have you guys in mind driving to work, um, walking around the neighborhood type stuff. And so we try to keep it kind of light, like this is what this is for. And and I thought this was funny. Me and Scott last week recorded in Chick-fil-A. Um, usually Will and I do it in my office on Tuesday mornings, and um Scott was like, You want to meet at Chick-fil-A? I said, sure, this stuff's mobile, I can bring it there. And all the like the employees thought we had like four heads. They were like, What are these entrepreneurs doing? And we were like, no, no, no. We're sharing the word with all 20 listeners that we've got so far. And so um just know those usually go out Mondays or Tuesdays, and and we'll have an episode this week for kind of everything that got cut. So I am the light of the world. One more quick parenthetical. If you guys have your Bibles, and I would encourage you to have those open um to John chapter 8, um, because we're basically gonna live there. We're we're we'll take a couple of other um texts, but we're gonna stay in John 8 and John 9. So if you have your Bibles there, you might see some brackets on uh verses 1 through 11, and it might say something like, earliest manuscripts do not include kind of this story, the woman caught in adultery. And just to kind of maybe put your minds at ease, um, we kind of as a body of faith do believe that this text is inspired, it is the word of God, it's recorded by John about Jesus. Um, but kind of the question was where do we put this story? Um that was kind of the question, that's why that parenthetical is there is what where do we land the woman caught in adultery in the story of John? Should it go in John 2? Should it go in John 4? Woman at the well, should it go later? Um, and what the people who kind of um compiled at least the ESV Bible landed on was right here, smack dab at the beginning of John chapter 8. And I think, just based on kind of how this lays out, they did a really good job because we're going to look at kind of that last statement that Jesus makes in verse 12. I am the light of the world. And so, with that, we'll get in. This is um, I know you can't see this, this is kind of the point. This is a still, it's an image of kind of a uh the San Francisco Bay. Um, I I don't like watching fireworks. I think they're boring personally. I like shooting them. Um, I like having a lighter and being able to do it and running away and seeing if you can get away on time. I've got all 10 fingers, so I have. But watching fireworks just isn't for me. I always think it's corny, it lasts too long, it's 20, 30 minutes. I'm like, uh, um, could have done this once. And I think if you've seen them once, you've seen them all. And even funnier than that, I think, is when people record fireworks. Because, you know, when are you ever gonna watch that again? You're not. When you need storage on your phone, you're gonna find four videos that are 12 seconds long and they look like that, and you're like, I'm gonna delete these because I don't need them. There's one fireworks display that I watch every year, and it was in 2012, San Francisco. There was kind of a mishap. Some of you guys may know this story, it's one of my favorite. I literally watch every year, it's 30 seconds long. I'm gonna show you that they had this fireworks display that was supposed to last, I think, 20 minutes, whole thing, and then a big finale, all that kind of stuff. But because of a glitch and a computer, they had it all rigged up, it accidentally all went off at once at the same time. This is true. No one got the beginning of the firework display, but I'll show you a video of kind of the middle of it. It goes like this. There's no sound, so you don't need sound. Oh, is the video not playing? It should be. So I tested this. It's okay. There's a picture of it. I've got another picture of it in my notes. This is what it looked like, kind of at its peak. Um, it all went off at the same time. You can imagine what it was. It's about a five-second video, um, but it goes from kind of this array of light, kind of lighting up the night sky, to pitch black after it's over. And you can hear the people saying, What was that? Because they're either overly concerned and like we should, like in the video, you can see kind of people like standing up and leaving, or you can hear people in the video saying, That was awesome! Best fireworks display ever. When fireworks go off, especially in this nature, that's why I grabbed this still, I'm thankful I did. Fireworks produce light, and light it illuminates, it brightens up the night sky and everything else. When fireworks are going off, you're not just seeing the sky, but you're also able to see people around you. You're also able to see the grass, the yard, the blankets, and everything around it because light, it just radiates, it just goes forth and it just it lights up whatever is in its path. It doesn't choose a direction and go that way, it lights up everything in its direction. And so, our main idea this morning is that light reveals what is hidden in darkness, and that's exactly what Jesus does when he calls himself the light of the world. So we're gonna take John chapter 9 first, and then go back a page to John chapter 8. But I do want to remind us of kind of the hinge verse. This is kind of the middle verse that we're gonna be examining two different stories with, and that is again, Jesus spoke to them saying, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. And so as we look at two different people in two different circumstances, two different scenarios, keep in mind this kind of middle verse being the hinge point that we're gonna look through both of them at. So John chapter 9 and then John chapter 1. John 9 1. As Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. This guy didn't become blind, he didn't have an accident, he didn't um get a fever back in that day that that led to blindness, he was born in utter darkness. He was born in it, molded by it. He stayed there his whole life. He didn't know what light was, so to speak. He had never seen a tree, he doesn't know what beauty is, he doesn't know what colors are, and maybe even more importantly, maybe back in that day and age, he didn't know what danger was. That as a blind person, you are left kind of just walking around, not

A Blind Man Learns To See

Thomas Grocki 12:21

knowing where cliffs are, edges are, dangerous things, fires are, sure you can feel them, but usually up until it's too late. Blindness was a scary thing. He was in utter darkness, kind of his whole life. And we get this story about Jesus kind of coming to him and having this dialogue with him. We really don't have time to unpack it, but in verse 5, Jesus says to the man, as long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. And so what does Jesus do? Normally, when he meets someone who has some sort of deficiency, some sort of handicap. In the Gospels, he heals them, usually, and that's exactly what he does. It says, Having said these things, he spit on the ground, please, please, please kind of remember this, and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud. This is a weird miracle in a sense, because usually the way Jesus heals someone is he just says, Be healed. Or he says, Go wash in the pool of Silome. He does that later. But in this one, he kind of makes mud and doesn't just speak it. He actually does sort of a physical type of action. Um so it's kind of weird. There's only one other type of story like this that makes me think of, and it's Jesus healing another type of blind guy. Is his is his kind of deity power just not strong enough to say the word and blind people see? I don't think that's the case. Keith, just remember this, tuck it away that he spits on the ground, makes mud, and he says, Go wash in the pool of Siloam, which means sent. So we washed and he came back seeing. Kind of the first point for us is that true light reveals the beauty that is hidden. What did Jesus do for this man? He revealed everything to him. He was in darkness, he was in blindness, he couldn't see anything. And Jesus reveals it. Keep in mind that nothing changed in this man's environment. Nothing changed except now he has the ability to see. He he has eyes to see what's around him. He can now see his parents. We see they get questioned by the Pharisees later. We see that he can see uh sunsets and beautiful animals and things like that. He can see everything, nothing changed, but Jesus, the light of the world, has shown light inside of him, giving him eyes to see everything. And this story of blindness to sight is a physical story that demonstrates a spiritual reality. Like most of the Bible, they are literal, actual stories, but they have this deeper meaning to all of them. I think one of the points is that all of us are spiritually blind, that we all go through life not knowing which way is good, which way is bad, because we go through life naturally, wondering by default, what's best for me? What do I want? What makes me most comfortable? What will bring me the most honor and accolades and dignity? And we can't see everyone else around us. We can't see all of the things that God has made. We're all spiritually kind of going towards destruction. Tim Keller once put it this way that you can imagine the world, everyone in it with blindfolds on. And we're all kind of, some of us are running and some of us are going slowly, but we're all blindfolded, headed towards death and destruction and hell and separation from God. And we're all moving in this direction, and you can do your best to say, hey, course correct, come back this way. And all of us have in our mind what's at the end. We may say, No, I'm not headed towards hell, I'm headed towards the beach. I can feel it getting warmer. And that's that's what Keller says. And he says, No, when God takes the blindfold off and gives us sight, we're able to make wise, God-honoring decisions. We make good, wise decisions in the light. And that's what God, through Jesus Christ, does for this man. He gives him the gift of sight, and he loves it, and he goes out and he celebrates. And if it weren't for the Pharisees, like this would be a great story. But we're gonna turn back to John chapter 8 now. So we see a man who was physically blind getting sight. We see God revealing beauty and everything to this man. And we're gonna read and we're gonna unpack kind of the section that Callie read. Some of you guys may have been scratching your heads. Why are we reading this on the light of the world type Sunday? This is what John records. Early in the morning, he came again to the temple, and the people came to him, and he sat down and he taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, placing her in his midst. In the midst of all of the people, like Bible study just got super crazy now. Like, imagine, put yourself in the shoes of anyone that you

Shame Dragged Into Public View

Thomas Grocki 17:41

want to, but imagine that you're sitting at the feet of Jesus, hearing a sermon, hearing him teach, probably about the kingdom, about repentance, about what faith looks like. You're hearing him unpack the greatest teacher of all time. He's sitting in the temple courtyards, and all of a sudden the doors burst open, and you see these, I'm I'm imagining like grumpy-faced Pharisees, maybe a little smug, carrying a woman who, let's be honest, is probably half dressed at best. And they w march her in, they walk her in, and they put her down right in the middle. And what they're doing is they're trying to test Jesus. They said to him, verse 4 teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Not to get too graphic on this, they didn't hear about this. This wasn't gossip that they investigated and found true and said, Alright, let's take you to take you to Jesus. She was caught in the act of adultery, and the Pharisees bust in the door and they drag her out. She probably doesn't even know where she's going. And they they they take her with them. Verse 5. Now, in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. So what do you say? They said this to test him that they might have some charge to bring against him. Kind of one of the sad things about this is the woman isn't even the target of their anger. Like they're not even like legitimately holy, uh indignant about her and the act and what was going on. She's just a pawn trying to get Jesus. She's just caught in the crossfire of this kind of holy war between the religious elite and Jesus, who is doing the right thing all of the time, every time, who is gracious and truthful and loving and kind. And she's just caught in the crossfire of these things. Kind of the second thing that we see is that true light reveals the ugly that is hidden. And kind of for the purposes of our time this morning, we're gonna just focus on the ugliness inside of us. Inside of us. I know that there's brokenness and ugliness, and that is probably for another sermon, but for today, the true light reveals the ugly that is hidden deep in the caverns of our heart. And what a surprising grace and mercy it is when it is revealed. This woman is about to have an encounter with Jesus that she never would have if she wasn't discovered. We don't know if this was the first time that she had adultery. We don't know if this is the 300th time, but what we do know is that this time she was caught and dragged to Jesus, and I think by the end of the story, she would say it was worth it. It was a good thing that happened as she reflects back kind of on this story. And so when I say the ugliness within all of us, I want to make kind of a note this is all of us before Christ. All of us by default, by nature, before we're Christians, and even a lot of us after we become Christians. And so this is what we're gonna talk about is the starting line for everyone, and it is kind of the race that some of us run that I want to help us kind of get away from. Sometimes, by default, we can think of God's light as a magnifying glass, and we are just ants, and he's just looking for a way to cast his light on us and to burn us, or if you want to think of it this way, the eye of Sauron. Um, it's super creepy. If you've seen the movies, um, the eye is just looking for the one ring, and what it all this thing does is it has this big spotlight, and it just goes from place to place looking for something or someone to burn because it's in search of kind of the one thing that it wants. And I think sometimes we by nature can think of God's light like this: like, I know that I have darkness in me, I know that I have sin, I know that I have things that I should be ashamed of, and the last thing that I want is the light of God to shine upon me. I don't want that. I would rather hide in darkness. Think about the very first thing Adam and Eve did when their eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked, they hid themselves. First with the fig leaves, and second among the trees, they hid themselves from the presence of God because they did not want a light on them to expose who and what they really are. Isaiah nine could be a scary verse if left alone. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them a light has shown. I'm sure. Of you either have middle schoolers at home or were a middle schooler at one point, you know that one of the worst things you can do to a sleeping middle schooler, or really anyone, is turn the light on. It's not comfortable. It hurts your eyes. If something happens in the middle of the night for us with our kids, we do our best to keep the lights off and to solve the issue. If someone lost a pacifier, if someone lost a thing, like we do our best to not flick on the lights, all right, there it is. Like at night, when our eyes get used to it, we want to kind of crawl on the ground and do this searching type thing so that we don't have to assault our eyes. This verse, if left alone, could be a very scary thing. In high school, um, my sport of choice, if you would, um, was wrestling, believe it or not. Um, no need to laugh. I lived in Denver at the time, and up there, wrestling is what college football is, or uh any football is to us. High school football, college football, like it is their bread and butter up there. And so I don't know why eighth grade me was like, I'm gonna go for wrestling. I guess they didn't have a chess team, but I was like, I'm gonna do wrestling, and I was puny. I tell the middle schools all the time, I broke a hundred pounds when I was a junior in high school. Like I was skin and bones, basically. I look back at pictures and I'm like, golly, I needed a sandwich at least. Um and my coach was one of like the best in the nation. His name is Coach Buck, and he was all state champion like four years in a row when he was in high school. He was an Olympian. He wrestled for Team USA, like he was legit. And in the kind of practice room, it was room, I don't know, maybe the size of a gym, we'd get out the wrestling mats and we all would have partners. And we would do the drills, we do the practices, the shooting and the sprawls, and he would walk around and watch each pair go. And he'd say, he'd give little critiques. Oh, keep your laces down. Hey, when you've got a guy in a cradle, drive your forehead into his temple, make him quit, type stuff. Like he would just walk around and give little tips. Me in tenth grade, the last thing I wanted was for my coach to see me practice. I don't know what it was. It probably insecurity if you want to psychoanalyze that, but I did not want him to ever see me practice because I just I didn't want the critique. I didn't want the feedback. I didn't want him to kind of uh in this sense look at me with a disappointment, with ire in his voice, because he he could yell. And I, whenever he would walk by, I would let my partner go, even if it wasn't his turn. I'd say, hey, you just do it again, that was pretty good. I did not want the light of my coach on me, and because of that, I never became a better wrestler. Never. I was from day one to three years later, I was the same wrestler because he never had his light exposing the ugly in me, exposing my bad technique, exposing kind of weaknesses or areas of strength that I wasn't leveraging. I would rather stay in darkness, in his darkness. I would watch him more than he watched me, frankly. What this woman wanted to keep in darkness has been thrust into the light. The deepest, darkest, probably most shameful, most guilt-ridden moment of her life, I'm willing to bet, is now in full display for both the crowd to see and for us two thousand years later to read about on a Sunday morning. It's been thrust into the light. And I think for all of us, we should be asking if Jesus' light reveals beauty and exposes ugliness, then what happens when his light reaches me? Because we may not be in full-blown adultery, but we know that we have things in our hearts. We know that there's areas of our lives that we would not want on full display that we don't want other people to know about. So what happens when his light reaches us? There's a quote I really love, we'll finish it later. To be fully known and not loved is our greatest fear. To say to someone, This is who I am, these are kind of the deep dark things about me, and for them to say, ooh, it is one of our greatest fears. That's why we hide, that's why we cover, that's why we do the things that we do so that no one sees. And so we ask ourselves, what does Jesus do? Kind of the last point for us this morning is the true light reveals the character of God. It reveals who he is and what his actions are and what he does with this. We'll call it grotesque sin on display. What does Jesus do? Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. I think there's a lot of just um interplays on the themes of why this story again was put right here, right before I am the light, right before Jesus heals the blind man. But one other um thing that I find super interesting, I told you to hold on to something earlier in the sermon. In both of these stories, the physical posture of Jesus is stooping and reaching for the dirt. In John 9, when he heals the blind man, he makes mud with his spit and he anoints

Mercy From The Only Sinless Judge

Thomas Grocki 28:26

the man's eyes. And what I imagine him not doing was standing at full attention, kind of spitting on the ground and telling Peter, hey, mix that up, bring it up to me, or mixing it with his foot and kind of pulling it up there. I imagine what Jesus did when he heals the blind man is he kind of kneels down, spits on the ground and makes mud with his hand, picks it up, puts it on the guy's eyes. And what I imagine in John chapter 8, when this woman is caught in adultery, it says that he bends down and writes in the ground with his finger. There's a lot of reasons that people can think of why Jesus did that, but I think just thematically, one of the really neat things about these two stories is that when Jesus has the opportunity to shrink back and say, Oh, there's darkness here, there's um a deformity here, there's something that isn't right, he doesn't shrink back, but what Jesus does in both of these stories, and really nowhere else, is that he bends down, he stoops, he uses his hands and he molds things in the dirt, in the mud. John, if you didn't know, is kind of a retelling of the story of Genesis. Genesis starts with in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and John starts with in the beginning was the word, and the word was God, and that God was the light and the life. John goes at length to kind of retell the story of Genesis in subtle ways, and I think this is one of them that the creator, God, who formed man out of the dirt, is doing it again. And instead of just forming from nothing, he's actually fixing, he's actually healing, he's recreating, is one of the big themes in Genesis. And they continued to ask him, and he stood up, and he said to them, Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her. And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Now notice Jesus, in a kind of a lawyer-esque way, doesn't say, No, you can't throw stones at her. He kind of gives them kind of the out. He says, Hey, let him who's without sin, let him start. And then the rest of you guys with sin can kind of pile on. And so here's kind of a question for us Was there anyone among them without sin? Yes, no, maybe so. I'd say, yes, there was one person, one singular man who's ever existed that had no sin whatsoever. Jesus, I think, is referring to himself. He looks at the crowd, he's he knows all of their hearts, he knows all of the things that they would die if people found out about them. He looks at the crowd holding their rocks, and he says, Whoever is pure, whoever is clean, whoever has no sin in their heart, let him be the one who throws the first stone. And I don't think it connects for them, maybe it does, but for us as readers, 2,000 years later, we can connect the dots that he is referring to himself. And what Jesus does not do is pick up a stone and throw it at her. What Jesus does instead is extend grace, he extends mercy, he extends kindness to her, he does not condemn her. Folks, this is the gospel that the one who has the right to stone this woman does not take it, but instead takes her sins and our sins upon himself. He says, Let me carry this for you, woman. Is there no one here to condemn you? She says, No. He says, Neither do I, go and sin no more. Like this encounter with Jesus is really profound, especially in the light of who he is. Jesus stood up and said to her, Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? She said, No one. Jesus said, Neither do I, go and sin no more. This is kind of the full quote from Tim Keller. To be fully known and not loved is our greatest fear. To be loved but not fully known, it's comforting but superficial. But to be fully known and truly loved is what we need more than anything. If you have someone in your life, a spouse perhaps, a parent perhaps, that loves you based on what they know about you, and not everything, Keller says it's comforting, but it's superficial. It's not going to go anywhere. It's not meaty, it's not deep, it's not strong enough to really hold through the storms of life, as Larry said. What we need is to be fully exposed, fully revealed for all that we are, dirt and and and darkness, all on the table, and for the other person to look at us and say, I love you anyway. This is from his book on marriage, meaning of marriage, if people want to check that out. To kind of finish the other quote, Isaiah 9 2, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them a light has shown. And notice what happens. This is not the middle school boy being woken up. He says in verse 3, You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy. They rejoice before you, and with joy at the harvest, they are glad when they divide the spoil. When this light comes, it does not burn, but it gives them life, and it gives them joy and something to be excited about. I've got to go very fast now. I'm almost out of time. When it comes to hidden sin, there are three outcomes. And this is kind of the way it goes for any and all sin, whatever you can think of, sexual sin, stealing, uh, jealousy, gossip, malice in your heart, whatever it is, there's kind of three outcomes. One, you you bring it to the light. You expose it, you reveal it to someone. And I want to say pastorally, kind of as a youth pastor, do this in wisdom. Have a couple of people, your same gender, that you meet with regularly, maybe every other week, maybe once a month, that you just talk about your sins, you reveal it to them. You say, hey, I'm gonna get ahead of this. This is what I've been thinking about doing, this is all this stuff. Bring it to the light. This is the healthiest way. This is the model that we have in the New

Three Paths For Hidden Sin

Thomas Grocki 34:36

Testament. Confess your sins to one another that you may find healing. Not that confessing your sins to each other takes away your sins, but it makes it real. Makes it real. I remember in college telling someone, I can confess to God all day, because deep down I knew that he already knew what I was doing, what I was thinking. But it was a whole other ball game to sit across from the table of a guy and to tell him what I've been thinking, what I've been doing. It made it real. Bring your sin to the light. Or kind of the second option, God brings it to the light. Again, this woman did not confess. She didn't bring it up. She wasn't guilt-ridden, said, Hey, I need to talk to Jesus. She was dragged. And we see that it was good for her. Kind of, there's like a fork in the road when it comes to this one. God brings it to the light, and it can be very gracious to you. It can be a broken bone that leads to more healing. It could be the surgery that gets the cancer out. It's going to be humiliating, it's going to be discouraging, it's going to be embarrassing, but it is going to be worth it even if God brings it to the light. If you use it well and utilize it well. The other side of the fork is God brings it to the light and you get hardened. And you say, you know, bump that and quitting everything. I'm taking my ball and going home. You know, I got caught doing this thing at this job or with this person. And instead of owning it, instead of repenting, you just say, you know what, I'm done. I'm leaving town. I'm going to do something else. I'm going to go somewhere else. And the interesting thing about this middle category is we probably know people in both. We probably all can think of people who were exposed, not under their own circumstances, and it was a good thing for them. And they utilize it and leverage it in their testimony. And we probably know people that were exposed and it did not go well, and you haven't heard from them in a very long time because they moved type stuff. The middle one could be a grace or could harden you, depending on how you utilize and leverage it. The third one, it stays in darkness. This is the scariest one. This is the hardest one. And yet, when we're in darkness, it's the one we want the most by default. We want it to stay dark, we want to stay hidden. You think I can handle this? It's it's a little lion cub, this sin. I can strangle it whenever I want. And yet, when you go to strangle it, it's a full-grown lion and you can't. And it devours you. And so, kind of those are the three outcomes when it comes to sin. JC Rile has one of my favorite quotes. He says, Habits are like trees. Habits like trees are strengthened by age. A child can bend an oak when it is still a young sapling. But a hundred men cannot root it up when it is a full grown tree. Habits of good or habits of evil are growing stronger in your heart each day. Every day you are getting nearer to God or farther away from God. If I can put it simply for us, bring thoughts to the light before they become actions. Bring small compromises to the light before they are catastrophic. When they're seedlings, they are fairly able to manage. And so that's why now is the time to get ahead of it. Repentance often becomes more painful over time. The call to come to the light is now. Scott, you can come. Uh ushers can kind of get ready because we're about to take communion. And as we close, I kind of want to point out two more passages of scripture as we close in Matthew chapter 5. This is kind of the first teaching Jesus gives. Um, it's it's the beginning of his ministry. He goes up on a mountain and he's talking to the crowd, he's talking to the people, and I think he's referencing himself. This is what he says, kind of a no-brainer statement, but it's kind of profound. Matthew 5, he says, You, he's talking to the people, are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but they put it on a stand, and it gives light to all the house. Kind of the no-brainer thing that Jesus says is when you light something that you want to illuminate the room, you put it high. You don't hide it, you don't stuff it down, you don't put it

The Cross Communion And A Call

Thomas Grocki 38:51

in a cabinet, you put it high in the middle of the room where that light has the most exposure type possible. John chapter 12. Jesus says, And I, when I'm lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. He said this to show what kind of death he was going to die. Jesus, when he plunged into darkness, when the light of the life plunges into darkness, he does not do so in the privacy of his own home. He does not do so because of cancer or because of um kind of a private assassination attempt. He doesn't do that. He knows that the way that he is going to die is high and lifted up for all of the world to see. The cross is where he goes, and it's where he's pinned down with nails in his hands and his feet, and they use kind of leverage to lift this cross high like a billboard so that people can see what the effect of breaking the law is. And for him, it was heresy. It was claiming he was the king of a people that he had no business being the king of. But it was true, and the people, his subjects, didn't like it. And so they hoisted him up high for all to see. All people groups, all nations, all languages are able to see this humiliation, this shame, the light of the world is on his stand. And this is what Luke records when Jesus dies. Now it was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun's light failed, and the curtain of the temple was torn in two, and Jesus calling out with a loud voice, said, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. And having said this, he breathed his last. You know the reason the woman wasn't stoned when she kind of deserved to be due to the law? It was because Jesus took that for her. And that story of that woman illustrates all of us spiritually. We may not have committed adultery, we may have. But whatever it is that pops into your mind when I talk about the deepest, darkest secret you have, Jesus died for that, so you wouldn't have to. The darkness is, in a sense, snuffed. It's put out. He dies, literally, actually. And three days later, as the sun's light broke, the news broke, he was back. The light of the world could be um veiled, it could be snuffed, but it could not be snuffed forever because he is the Lord of life. And so, the true light reveals the beauty that is hidden, it reveals the ugliness in all of us, and it reveals the character of God who wants to bring us to the light for our own healing. Our response this morning is twofold. For the unbeliever, come to Christ. You may have been out late last night shooting fireworks with your friends, and maybe stayed the night with them, and they said, Hey, we're going to church, you had no idea what to expect. Welcome. The call is to come to Christ. Pray for sight to see where sin leads and the beauty and the kindness of Christ. Pray that God would put his light on you so that you could find healing in your bones and in your soul. Unbeliever, the call is now. Settle it. We'll have prayer out on the back porch. If you want to come and talk with someone about this, if you want to pray with someone about this, believer, in a world that loves darkness, we are called to live as light. Jesus, you are the light of the world in the light. We still have darkness, we still have sin, we still have mold in our hearts that we still need to habitually bring to the light. Keep pressing on. So that's how we'll close. We'll close with uh communion. And so, what these elements kind of represent as you guys come and take is um the broken body of Christ. It was bread. Scott unpacked last week. I'm the bread of life, torn for you. The same loaf feeds all of us, so to speak. And the blood or uh the juice represents the blood, the new covenant, the new operating system in this world of grace. In the old way, they would sacrifice animals because they had done wrong. And this one, Jesus sacrifices himself and gives us his own blood to say, we are now in grace. And so I'm gonna pray for us. Again, there's gonna be prayer on the back porch. Um, but when I say amen, you guys can stand and um take the elements as you're ready again for non-Christians. We would ask that you don't um partake. This is a family meal. But if you guys would um pray with me, Lord Jesus, Lord of light, I thank you that you give us sight, that many of us have received this sight, that you have taken what was blind and given us um new eyes to see. Um I pray that as we enter into a time of reverence, into a time of communion, that um as we sing here, I am to worship, Lord, that you would take that melody and put it on our hearts. That as we eat the bread and as we drink the juice, that we would be reminded of yes, your sacrifice, but also of your love for us, your willingness, your joy to take this yoke upon yourself so that ours could be light and easy and not burdensome. And so, Lord, um, have your way with each of us this morning. We love you, and it's in Christ's name that I pray. Amen.