Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible Hour Podcast. And you ever seen one of those superhero movies where the superhero fights a bad version of himself? Maybe it's not literally a clone of himself, but maybe. Or maybe it's just somebody who has the same powers, but they're bad. The message of these movies is the good guy and his nemesis. They're two sides of the same coin. The one cannot exist without the other. And now they're going to fight, but neither of them can get ahead because they have to have each other. I guess. I don't know. It doesn't make I don't make the rules of superhero. It's just that's how it goes. And inevitably, they end up putting their main power right up against the other one. So like they both have punching power, they'll both go to punch at the same time, and then they punch each other right in the fist. And it's like implosion. The universe couldn't handle that. It doesn't work because some sort of weird notion of balance or something. Or if they have eyelasers, they'll both wind up and shoot eyelasers at the other one right at the exact same time. And then they meet in the middle, which if you think that's weird, by the way. That means they were both aiming directly for the other person's eyeballs, which is serious. But then they smash in the middle, and like the red laser guy will push the blue laser guy back, and the blue laser guy will grunt and bear down a little bit, tighten his buttocks, and it'll push the red laser back a little bit. And then again, maybe there's like an explosion because it's two sides of the same coin. You can't undo balance. Balance is the most true, most real thing in all of existence. And it's hokey and it's ridiculous, and it's philosophical pablum and yeah, whatever. It makes for good superhero drivel. But I'm not sure it's a great way to think about the universe. And it certainly is not how John thinks about light and dark when he writes about stuff in the Bible. I mean, more so even than superheroes. What is the balance thing that you hear the most? Probably the two are love and hate are two sides of the same coin. They're equal and opposite forces. You can't have one without the other. You couldn't know what love is without hatred. I reject that, but that's how the thinking goes. Light and dark, they're two sides of the same coin. You can't have light without darkness. I think I reject that one as well. This kind of thinking was also very popular in the ancient world. The fancy term for this is dualism, the idea that the main forces that drive and underpin reality as we know it are polar opposites, and it's the tension between those two forces that makes everything go. Now, I could see how at first glance maybe it would look like that's how the universe is, but I think when you look closer, you realize, no, some stuff is better, some stuff is worse. A lot of the things that people casually mistake for being binary opposites that need each other to exist are actually a situation where one thing is beautiful and the other thing is a perversion or a twisting of that beautiful thing. These dualistic assumptions really do undergird a lot of thought in the ancient world, in the modern world now, among sophisticated people, among simple people. Yeah, maybe it's politics too, that we're beat down and we're tired of fighting with people. What's the best way to avoid fighting? Well, it's to say, okay, well, you know, all thought is on one line, and at the one end you got the one set of opinions, and at the other end you got the other set of opinions, and you just gotta find that balance in the middle. The middle must be where the good is. Even that is a fallacy, but it's a very common one, born out of political exhaustion, idea exhaustion, fighting fatigue. Well, the Bible does not play by these rules at all. This concept of everything being in necessary tension and a balance between good and evil is what makes everything work. That is not the teaching of Scripture. That is not the assumption of Jesus, that is not the assumption of the book of John. And so, in order for us to read this book well moving forward, with you know this concept of light happening all over the place, if you want to understand what John is doing, we kind of have to flush that dualistic understanding of light as an equal and opposite and morally equivalent foil to darkness. We got to get rid of that. And instead, we got to come at it like the Bible comes at it, which is a gigantic celebration of light and a condemnation of darkness. Light, good, dark, bad, not equals. One is more powerful than the other. Light always beats dark. I'm gonna read you a bunch of passages, rapid fire style from John, where he deals with the idea of light, and just see if you detect any ambiguity in any of these verses as to which one is good. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. Okay, you've heard that one a lot. Seems like light is team good guy there. See what else we got. Here's a pretty famous one. John 3, 19. This is the verdict. Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light, because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God. I mean, I don't maybe you're catching something I'm not catching, but there is not ambiguity there. You would want to be on the side of light, and the side of dark is bad. John 5 35. Here Jesus is talking about John the Baptist. John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light. Light good, dark bad. 8.12. I've read you this one, but I'm going to read it again because this is one of those we're going to try to memorize. I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. I say again, nothing here is giving us the impression that Jesus or John have the typical lazy worldview of light and dark are two sides of the same coin. It's just red eyelasers smashing into blue eyelasers, whatever. They need each other to exist. You can't have the one or understand the other without the other. Nope. What we're getting here is a completely different sense of how the world is. John 9 5. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world. John 11 9. Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours of daylight? A man who walks by day will not stumble, for he sees by this world's light. It's when he walks by night that he stumbles, for he has no light. John 12 35. Then Jesus told them, You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light before darkness overtakes you. The man who walks in the dark does not know where he's going. Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light. Then ten verses later in forty-six he goes on, I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness. Now we're going to skip way forward toward the end of the Bible, 1 John 1, 5 through 7. This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you. God is light. In him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his son, purifies us from all sin. And then in John's final book, which is the final book of the Bible, Revelation, here, toward the end of Revelation, Revelation 18, 1. After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. With a mighty voice he shouted, Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great. She's become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit. The rest of that passage is awesome, but for the sake of time, I'm going to jump ahead to how the story rounds out. And then right at the end of this book, which is right at the end of the Bible, where everything goes to plan, and God gloriously wins and he defeats the curse of sin and death right at the end of chapter 21 and into the final chapter 22. This is Revelation 21, 23. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. A few verses later in chapter twenty-two, starting in verse three, no longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and the Lamb will be in the city, and the servants will serve him. They will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light, and they will reign forever and ever. There's no getting around it. The Bible is not dualistic. John does not treat light as the equal and opposite force of darkness, and from a certain perspective, dark might be good. No, unequivocally. Light good, dark bad. Darkness cannot drive out light. Light can drive out darkness. Light is truth. Light is the presence of God. Dark is the absence or perceived absence of those things. So whenever we see that light motif playing out in John, 1 John, 2nd John, 3rd John, Revelation, we have to intentionally reject the ideas about light and darkness that our recent fairy tales have poisoned us with. We have to push those lazy assumptions about the relationship between light and darkness that have just sort of osmosed into our brains and our assumptions from culture. We got to push all that to the background and we have to lock on to how the Bible is treating light and dark, where light and truth and life are from God and it's all unequivocally good. That's it for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.