SPEAKER_00: We're in the middle of uh three weeks just in this first chapter of John's gospel, just looking at different aspects of who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: Last week we looked at Jesus the Word, uh, and now that the image kind of moves on in that Jesus is now the light.
SPEAKER_00: We'll be looking at what it means for him to be the light uh of the world, that light that gives life to men.
SPEAKER_00: Let's uh read God's word together, beginning at John chapter 1, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
SPEAKER_00: He was in the beginning with God.
SPEAKER_00: All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
SPEAKER_00: In him was life.
SPEAKER_00: And the life was the light of man.
SPEAKER_00: The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it.
SPEAKER_00: There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
SPEAKER_00: He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him.
SPEAKER_00: He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.
SPEAKER_00: The true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world.
SPEAKER_00: He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.
SPEAKER_00: He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.
SPEAKER_00: But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
SPEAKER_00: And the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
SPEAKER_00: And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
SPEAKER_00: John bore witness about him, and he cried out, This was he of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.
SPEAKER_00: And from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace.
SPEAKER_00: For the law was given through Moses.
SPEAKER_00: Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: No one has ever seen God.
SPEAKER_00: The only God who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.
SPEAKER_00: And so reads God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: Your word, O Lord, is a lamp unto our feet, a light to our path.
SPEAKER_00: Illuminate our minds now, we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Shine your gospel light in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: That we might love and follow and walk in the light.
SPEAKER_00: We pray it for the sake of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Living in around any sort of city, and Dublin is no different, uh, rarely means that it gets so dark that you can't see, right?
SPEAKER_00: Light pollution leaves that kind of sodium glow in the in the clouds that it doesn't matter where you go, you're not really in pitch darkness.
SPEAKER_00: Now, yes, there's there's alleyways and streets that you don't walk down.
SPEAKER_00: There are dark and shadowy corners, but by and large, it's never really pitch dark.
SPEAKER_00: You know what pitch dark is like?
SPEAKER_00: Pitch dark, you get that in the countryside.
SPEAKER_00: You go out a few miles, get out into the country, and on a starless, moonless night, you can barely see your hand in front of your face, right?
SPEAKER_00: Have you experienced that?
SPEAKER_00: You've been out in a starless night like that, where it's utterly dark.
SPEAKER_00: So dark you don't know how sure your next footfall is, right?
SPEAKER_00: You don't know where you're where you're going.
SPEAKER_00: It's incredibly disorientating to be in darkness like that.
SPEAKER_00: In the ancient world, in the time when John was was writing his his gospel, uh gospel, uh the book of John is basically a biography.
SPEAKER_00: John is one of the four biographers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, there's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and in the time that he was writing, you simply didn't travel at night.
SPEAKER_00: You just didn't do it.
SPEAKER_00: Unless you absolutely had to.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've been to Israel, um, but if you've seen pictures of it, perhaps you can call to mind what the terrain looks like.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's rocky, it's arid, it's dry, there are sharp rocks and precipices.
SPEAKER_00: Uh one of the one of the markers of that landscape is they have these these narrow little valleys that they call wadis.
SPEAKER_00: They flood during the during the rainy season, uh, but they are incredibly dangerous.
SPEAKER_00: So you don't go stumbling around at at nighttime.
SPEAKER_00: The other danger with walking around in the dark is that there are always people who are familiar with the dark, who know the terrain, and who are watching you.
SPEAKER_00: One of the reasons why you didn't go walking from the Jerusalem Road down to Bethany, for example, or down to Jericho, is because you might get attacked.
SPEAKER_00: The dark is dangerous.
SPEAKER_00: It's no wonder that you see it in movies and TV shows.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the dark is used as a device to increase tension.
SPEAKER_00: Because the dark is, it's uncertain and unpredictable and disorientating and dangerous.
SPEAKER_00: You know, that that kind of well-worn uh movie or TV trope where they uh where the high school girl is walking into the into the cave or kind of downstairs into the into the basement of the dark and creepy house, and she's got her her torch or her flashlight, uh, and she's walking down, and what what's gonna happen to the torch, right?
SPEAKER_00: The torch is gonna begin to blink.
SPEAKER_00: She's there kind of whacking it and saying, Oh no, and then the lights go on, and that's when the tension really wraps up.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's dark.
SPEAKER_00: And creepy things live in the dark.
SPEAKER_00: Things that want to kill you live in the dark, not to give you all nightmares.
SPEAKER_00: Happy Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: Come back to our Carl service.
SPEAKER_00: There'll be none of this there.
SPEAKER_00: There'll be all be all twinkly lights and mold wine.
SPEAKER_00: But then the dark will come.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Because the dark has this effect, this physical psychological impact, it's no wonder that it's also actually used as a as a metaphor, okay?
SPEAKER_00: You might say, oh, that you know, his mood was dark, or they're in a pretty dark season right now.
SPEAKER_00: And we all know what that means.
SPEAKER_00: We all have a sense of it anyway.
SPEAKER_00: I would say that most of you here know what it means to be in a quote-unquote dark place.
SPEAKER_00: To be in an emotional, mental, or spiritual darkness.
SPEAKER_00: It's a place of little clarity, little direction, little hope.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a fun place to be in.
SPEAKER_00: Where it feels like there is no one to help.
SPEAKER_00: But the Bible understands that sort of darkness.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible talks about darkness in those sorts of ways as well.
SPEAKER_00: There's an example in uh in uh the book of Isaiah.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah was a prophet who lived 800 years before the events of John's gospel, and and he writes, uh, in chapter 25 of Isaiah, he writes of a veil that covers the nations.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and in uh Sarah's Zachariah reading alluded to something similar.
SPEAKER_00: This veil that covers the nations, that casts a shadow over the whole world, this shadow of death, the darkness that is extended by death that exists over all of us.
SPEAKER_00: Most of us here in this room have felt that darkness.
SPEAKER_00: We know what it's like to stand at the graveside of a family member or of a loved one, to feel the darkness of grief.
SPEAKER_00: Elsewhere in Isaiah, in Isaiah chapter 9, which we will read in our cycle service, very famous prediction of Jesus, again, 800 years before he steps onto the stage of human history.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 9 promises a baby, an unusual baby, because it's a baby who will cause warfare to cease.
SPEAKER_00: Has Ezra done that yet?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: This baby wins.
SPEAKER_00: He'll cause warfare to cease.
SPEAKER_00: He'll rule governments, he'll be called mighty God, wonderful counselor, prince of peace.
SPEAKER_00: And what is the context of that prophecy?
SPEAKER_00: What's the context of that promise?
SPEAKER_00: On those who have dwelt in a land of darkness, on them has a light shined.
SPEAKER_00: Those who walked in a land of deep darkness, on them a light has come.
SPEAKER_00: Darkness in Isaiah 9 is the darkness of oppression, warfare, death, destruction.
SPEAKER_00: And Isaiah is promising that a light will shine.
SPEAKER_00: Darkness, if you think about it, it's an interesting thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's a curious thing to be scared of the dark.
SPEAKER_00: Because darkness isn't a thing itself.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a tangible thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's rather the absence of something, it's the absence of light.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Darkness exists where light doesn't shine.
SPEAKER_00: And here, John, in his prologue, in this first part of this first chapter, he describes Jesus as the light that shines in the darkness.
SPEAKER_00: That shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.
SPEAKER_00: The darkness cannot overcome it.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: The light shines in the darkness, the darkness cannot overcome it.
SPEAKER_00: What does it what does John mean by overcome?
SPEAKER_00: Overcome could possibly be better rendered by the word mastered.
SPEAKER_00: The darkness has not mastered it.
SPEAKER_00: So you students who've been doing exams, assignments these last weeks, perhaps you're still in the thick of it.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that you're working towards is mastering the particular discipline that you're in, understanding it to a sufficient degree of competency.
SPEAKER_00: At least that's what you're aiming for.
SPEAKER_00: That's what you're paying your money for, right?
SPEAKER_00: Okay that's mastering.
SPEAKER_00: But there's also master in the sense of to subdue, to oppress, to shut down, to master it.
SPEAKER_00: The darkness can neither comprehend the light with sufficient clarity, nor can it extinguish it.
SPEAKER_00: That gives us great hope.
SPEAKER_00: That's such good news, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: So, what does it mean, therefore, for Jesus to be that light that cannot be overcome by darkness?
SPEAKER_00: Let me offer you three things of what it means for Jesus to be the light.
SPEAKER_00: First, Jesus the light is the very presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus the light is the very presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: We've already alluded in last week when we were looking at Jesus as the Word that one of the ideas there, one of the allusions there is that the Word is divine.
SPEAKER_00: So you see that the Word was not only with God, but was God.
SPEAKER_00: Here also, in this idea of light, we see a sense of God like quality because light in the Bible is always associated with the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who dwells in inapproachable light.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus shows up on the road to Damascus to apprehend Saul and make him Paul the Apostle, what does Paul see?
SPEAKER_00: He sees any blinding light.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a couple of references from the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 27, verse 1, the Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?
SPEAKER_00: See that association with God, the presence of God, with him being light.
SPEAKER_00: Or Habakkuk 3.4, Habakkuk, if you're American.
SPEAKER_00: Habakkuk 3.4, his radiance, talking about God, his radiance is like the sunlight.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the the image that John would like us to call to mind is the is one from the book of Exodus.
SPEAKER_00: In the book of Exodus, you're familiar perhaps with the story from the Prince of Egypt or something, you know, the killing of the lamb and putting the blood on the doorposts and that whole bit, and time to go and frogs and gnats and get out, right?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so once everybody leaves, about a million or so people, uh, they leave Egypt and they go into the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: And God leads them for 40 years in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: How does he lead them in the wilderness?
SPEAKER_00: Well, during the day, he leads them by a pillar of cloud.
SPEAKER_00: You have a big cloud, and they follow it around.
SPEAKER_00: At nighttime, how does he lead them?
SPEAKER_00: He leads them by a pillar of light, a pillar of flame.
SPEAKER_00: That light signifies that God is present with his people, rescuing them from slavery.
SPEAKER_00: And what Jesus is doing, what Jesus has done for us, and what John is telling us the story of, is that Jesus is bringing about another Exodus.
SPEAKER_00: He is rescuing you and I again from slavery.
SPEAKER_00: Not slavery to a geopolitical tyrant.
SPEAKER_00: None of us are captives in in Israel under the yoke of Pharaoh, at least, well, I don't know how you'd be here, but um it's rather slavery to our flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Slavery to sin.
SPEAKER_00: Because what is sin after all?
SPEAKER_00: Sin is sin is self-love.
SPEAKER_00: It is being obsessed with the approval of another.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are enslaved by other people's opinion of you.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are enslaved by your pursuit of success.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are enslaved by your image and presenting the right sort of image to the world.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are enslaved by wanting to be comfortable.
SPEAKER_00: It's all slavery.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus has come to liberate you from it.
SPEAKER_00: He is the light that will lead you out of that slavery into what?
SPEAKER_00: What did the children of Israel get led into?
SPEAKER_00: Get led into.
SPEAKER_00: The very presence of God are being constituted as the people of God, living under his good rule, having his presence with them.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is bringing about a better Exodus.
SPEAKER_00: Liberating you from those things that gnaw away at your soul.
SPEAKER_00: From those things that keep you awake in the dark and bitter watches of the night.
SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, the light of God's brilliance was too terrifying for the people to stand.
SPEAKER_00: Moses spent some time up the mountain.
SPEAKER_00: He's the guy that receives the Ten Commandments, right?
SPEAKER_00: You might have seen those images like the Charlton Hesson movie.
SPEAKER_00: So he spent some time up uh up in the mountain.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking to God and comes back to the camp uh after some time, and his face is glowing.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Because he spends so much time with God, he's just radiating God's brilliance.
SPEAKER_00: And they can't stand it, they're terrified by it, they can't look at it.
SPEAKER_00: And so they get Moses to cover it, to cover his face so that they cannot see the brilliance of the glory of God in the same way that you cannot look at the brilliance of the sun on a clear day.
SPEAKER_00: It'll damage you.
SPEAKER_00: God's presence in a similar sort of way is dazzling, it's overwhelming.
SPEAKER_00: It has always been thus in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: People say things like, and do you excuse me if this is part of your testimony?
SPEAKER_00: People say things like, When you became a when I became a Christian, I felt a real sense of peace.
SPEAKER_00: Just felt a real peace.
SPEAKER_00: In the Bible, when people encounter God, they very rarely feel a sense of peace.
SPEAKER_00: They feel a sense of, I'm dead.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of the opposite, right?
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah again, just three chapters before Isaiah 9, Isaiah chapter 6, he sees God in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: He's in the temple, he's ministering away.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I shouldn't have shown it.
SPEAKER_00: This baby in the didn't budge.
SPEAKER_00: Would you like me to be quieter?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: New father in the room.
SPEAKER_00: He sees God in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: He's ministering away there, and God shows up.
SPEAKER_00: And what's Isaiah's response?
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah's response is woe is me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm ruined, for I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell amidst the people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the glory of the Lord Almighty.
SPEAKER_00: It's like I'm done.
SPEAKER_00: I'm dead.
SPEAKER_00: Tap out, finished.
SPEAKER_00: See you later.
SPEAKER_00: We cannot see the brilliance of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's too much for us.
SPEAKER_00: It's dazzling, it's overwhelming, it's terrifying.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, it will lash out and it would kill us.
SPEAKER_00: How amazing then is it that in the incarnation.
SPEAKER_00: Incarnation.
SPEAKER_00: Incarnation just means made meat, right?
SPEAKER_00: Chili con carne.
SPEAKER_00: Carney, meat, right?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was made meat for us.
SPEAKER_00: Next time you're having some chili con carne, praise the Lord that He was made meat for you.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a vegetarian, I don't know what the equiv is.
SPEAKER_00: Not roast.
SPEAKER_00: Don't eat that.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was incarnate for us, right?
SPEAKER_00: And do you what's so amazing about that?
SPEAKER_00: It means that we can now see the dazzling brilliance of God.
SPEAKER_00: We see it in the face of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way that you cannot look at the sun in the sky without putting a filter over your eyes.
SPEAKER_00: You need to put your sunglasses on, right?
SPEAKER_00: You need your Polaroid lenses before you can see the sun in the sky.
SPEAKER_00: You need a filter over the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: What's the filter over the glory of God?
SPEAKER_00: It's the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see.
SPEAKER_00: Hail the incarnate deity.
SPEAKER_00: Pleased with man as man to dwell.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, our Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_00: Come again at 6:30 tonight.
SPEAKER_00: We'll sing that one.
SPEAKER_00: And you'll be able to call to mind this afternoon sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus takes on to himself that divine light takes on to himself humanity, losing none of his divinity, takes on to himself humanity so that we can behold the glory of God in his face.
SPEAKER_00: That's why John says, on Dine, and we have seen his glory.
SPEAKER_00: The glory as of the only Son from the Father.
SPEAKER_00: How do you see the glory of God?
SPEAKER_00: Because it's veiled in flesh.
SPEAKER_00: What beauty, what mercy of God this is.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus is both God with us and God leading us, God present with his people to draw us to himself.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, Jesus, the light, illuminates.
SPEAKER_00: Illuminates things.
SPEAKER_00: That's what lights tend to do.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus the light illuminates things.
SPEAKER_00: At this point, this second point has two briefer subpoints.
SPEAKER_00: He illuminates, first of all, what the world is really like.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember the moment?
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps for some of you it's quite recent.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember the moment when you realized that your parents weren't perfect?
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember the moment when you realized that people lied to you?
SPEAKER_00: And what you were what was happening in that moment is you were realizing the world as it truly was.
SPEAKER_00: I'm very happy to be Superman to my children, as long as I can pull that veil over their eyes.
SPEAKER_00: But one day they'll realize that I'm not.
SPEAKER_00: Alright.
SPEAKER_00: And you begin to see the world as it truly is, or perhaps you had the experience that I have, is that when you get older in your family and as you kind of mature through your family, you get more access to the skeletons.
SPEAKER_00: You get the secrets.
SPEAKER_00: It's quite cool.
SPEAKER_00: You say, oh, I'm advancing, but then you're like, what?
SPEAKER_00: You know, whatever happened to Uncle such and such.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, he ran off with that guy from down the road.
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: Or is that just my family?
SPEAKER_00: True story.
SPEAKER_00: You actually get to see the world for it truly is.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, the light, shows us the true nature of the world that we live in.
SPEAKER_00: And it takes some.
SPEAKER_00: It's hard to look at.
SPEAKER_00: Because what he exposes, he exposes some dark things.
SPEAKER_00: He exposes dark things in us.
SPEAKER_00: He exposes dark things in the world.
SPEAKER_00: He says in John 3 that people love the darkness.
SPEAKER_00: There's something in you and something in me that actually doesn't really want to come into the light, that actually likes the dark.
SPEAKER_00: And why do we like the dark?
SPEAKER_00: John 3, 19 and 20.
SPEAKER_00: Because our deeds are evil.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want, whether it's the embarrassment, the shame of exposure, the having to change, and so we stay in the dark.
SPEAKER_00: There's part of us that quite likes the dark.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus shines his light on that and puts his finger on it in the most uncomfortable way.
SPEAKER_00: The light always gives exposure to dark things.
SPEAKER_00: You think of something like a discipline like investigative journalism.
SPEAKER_00: That job is to shine lights in dark places, to expose secrets and lies and to bring it all out into the light so that people might truly know what was going on.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus shows us the true nature of reality.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why people wanted to kill him.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees wanted him dead because he showed up.
SPEAKER_00: He exposed the emptiness of their religion.
SPEAKER_00: He exposed the fact that they were whitewashed tombs.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean by that?
SPEAKER_00: Painted and clean on the outside and full of death on the inside.
SPEAKER_00: That's a Pharisee.
SPEAKER_00: That's a hard thing to comprehend, especially if you're here this morning and you like giving the look that you're okay, but actually you know inside you're full of death and you're rotten.
SPEAKER_00: Looking in Jesus' light can be a very uncomfortable exercise at that point.
SPEAKER_00: That's why they wanted him dead.
SPEAKER_00: He showed them the.
SPEAKER_00: And how uncomfortable that would make you feel.
SPEAKER_00: John gives us a warning in John 3.
SPEAKER_00: If you love the darkness, you will never come into the light.
SPEAKER_00: You have to begin to hate the darkness.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way that if you're in the countryside walking down a dark road, you need a light in that ancient world.
SPEAKER_00: You needed a light in order not to stumble into one of those waddies.
SPEAKER_00: Or even in your own house, you ever had that experience where you're coming down the house and uh in the middle of the night in the pit in the pitch darkness, and you're coming down the stairs, and you know that there's a final stair coming up, but you never quite know which one it is.
SPEAKER_00: And you do that thing where you oh no, there we go.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh or is that again, is that just me?
SPEAKER_00: Um we need light in order to be able to navigate our world, our place in it.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is that light.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus illuminates the path of the disciple.
SPEAKER_00: What's a disciple?
SPEAKER_00: Disciple is a Jesus follower.
SPEAKER_00: If you are a believer in Jesus, you are a follower of him.
SPEAKER_00: In doing so, Jesus mercifully, wonderfully, he doesn't leave us to our own devices.
SPEAKER_00: You know, he doesn't leave us to kind of work out what it means to follow him, groping around in the dark, kind of trying to figure out how to please Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, he's the light.
SPEAKER_00: He shows us, he shows us what it's like to follow him, to walk in his ways.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read John 12, 36.
SPEAKER_00: Again, picking up this theme of light.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes.
SPEAKER_00: While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become sons and daughters of light.
SPEAKER_00: So what does it mean to follow the light here?
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to walk in the light?
SPEAKER_00: It means to believe in the light.
SPEAKER_00: The light is something that you believe in.
SPEAKER_00: You think, well, that's odd, because I don't I don't tend to think of the lights around here.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, I don't, okay, I believe in that light.
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
SPEAKER_00: So what does it mean to believe in the light?
SPEAKER_00: It's to trust.
SPEAKER_00: It's to trust that the light is illuminating the way that is good for you to walk in.
SPEAKER_00: To walk in the light that Jesus gives us is to believe that what he says is true.
SPEAKER_00: What he says about himself, what he says about the nature of humanity apart from God, the nature of the world, what he says about our need of him, it's to trust that.
SPEAKER_00: And to trust that what he says for us is good for us.
SPEAKER_00: One of the reasons why you might stay in the darkness is if you do not believe that what Jesus says to you is good.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus rule, his lordship, his light guidance of you is good.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want you to stumble in the dark, but to walk in the light.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, Jesus, the light, is life.
SPEAKER_00: You see that there, verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
SPEAKER_00: So there's an association between light and life, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And that you think about that just for you know 10 seconds, and that makes sense because you're drawing on the physical world a little bit there, because the big glowing ball in the sky, uh, Irish people are unfamiliar with.
SPEAKER_00: Um, if it wasn't there, um if it wasn't there, all of life would die, right?
SPEAKER_00: We need it.
SPEAKER_00: The light gives life.
SPEAKER_00: So the dawning of Jesus, the light, gives us life.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
SPEAKER_00: You push it a little bit further.
SPEAKER_00: Just as the sun in the sky, the uh the the glowing self-exploding ball of gas, it generates life.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, it generates light from within itself and emanates life from its own being, right?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, in the same way, generates life to us, to those who walk in his light.
SPEAKER_00: You and I, you and I have been gifted life.
SPEAKER_00: We have derived life, right?
SPEAKER_00: Your life has come for you as a gift from God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is not like that.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has self-generating, perfect, eternal life within himself.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what he gives to his followers.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to walk in his light, to receive that sort of life.
SPEAKER_00: You see, all the way through John's gospel, Jesus is not just presented as a guru to help us to finally attain eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, he is the source of that life himself, which is why we walk in the light.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you approach Jesus as though he were a massive insurance policy.
SPEAKER_00: He's your ticket to ride when you die.
SPEAKER_00: I just got my car insurance uh policy through an email this week.
SPEAKER_00: That's a great thing.
SPEAKER_00: Uh now you can just let it roll on over.
SPEAKER_00: Just click a button, and I don't need to think about it anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Just rolls over, it'll start again on the 4th of January, and that's another year sorted.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to impact my day-to-day.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps that's your spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: You keep your relationship with Jesus ticking over, but he doesn't figure into your week, doesn't impact your decisions, doesn't impact your love life, doesn't impact your relationships, doesn't impact your marriage, doesn't it impact how you work, doesn't impact how you use your money, doesn't impact what you value, doesn't impact how you treat others.
SPEAKER_00: You just keep him ticking over, right?
SPEAKER_00: He'll come in handy later.
SPEAKER_00: If that's your relationship with Jesus, can I encourage you that you've missed the point?
SPEAKER_00: That's not what Jesus is offering.
SPEAKER_00: He's not just your ticket when you die.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who enlivens, enriches, and transforms every part of your existence now.
SPEAKER_00: You imagine for a second that you walk into a dark room and you flick on the light.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the case that uh that that from the light shines shines a single beam lighted up a single point on the floor.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: You turn on the light and it enlightens the whole room.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus the light dawns in your life, he enlightens your entire life.
SPEAKER_00: You love differently, you work differently, you value things differently, you value your money differently, you value your comfort differently, you value your successes differently.
SPEAKER_00: Because his light is dawned.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus doesn't just shine a spotlight on your eternal life, he enlightens your life now.
SPEAKER_00: And how is it that he is that life-giving light for us?
SPEAKER_00: How is it that Jesus, Jesus the light, gives us life?
SPEAKER_00: How does he do it?
SPEAKER_00: It is because he plunged voluntarily into deep darkness.
SPEAKER_00: Darkness in John's gospel is where sin and death reign.
SPEAKER_00: It's the realm of the evil one.
SPEAKER_00: It's the place of ignorance and rebellion from God.
SPEAKER_00: And so when you when you read in John 13, when Judas goes out, Judas goes out, and there's a little phrase in John 13 that says that he left the gathering, and then John says, and it was night.
SPEAKER_00: Why does John say that?
SPEAKER_00: Because the darkness in John's gospel is the very epicenter of evil.
SPEAKER_00: Nicodemus, John 3.
SPEAKER_00: John 3, it starts at Nicodemus came to Jesus by night.
SPEAKER_00: He's in that veil of ignorance and sin and rebellion.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just John isn't interested in telling you really what time of day it is.
SPEAKER_00: He's using it as a metaphor, do you see?
SPEAKER_00: And because darkness has this effect in John's gospel, can you see how starkly Jesus the light stands in distinction from it?
SPEAKER_00: You see, Jesus the true light goes into the very heart of darkness.
SPEAKER_00: He does it by dying for us.
SPEAKER_00: He experiences the darkness of rejection and abandonment.
SPEAKER_00: He experiences the darkness of God's right wrath and judgment because what falls over the cross?
SPEAKER_00: Over the cross?
SPEAKER_00: What falls?
SPEAKER_00: Darkness fell over the land for three hours.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus hangs there in the heart of darkness, the light of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And he goes to the darkness of death.
SPEAKER_00: He plunges himself with all of our sin into the abyss of the grave.
SPEAKER_00: But the glorious story of the gospel is that Jesus, that pure life light, that life that is perfect and inextinguishable, flooded the grave.
SPEAKER_00: It flooded the grave and bleached our sin away with the purity of his radiance so that the grave is not full of the light of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's why death is no longer something to be scared of, because it's not somewhere where somewhere where the light exists.
SPEAKER_00: Light is flooded into the grave.
SPEAKER_00: So we need not fear it.
SPEAKER_00: We fear things like the dark, scary basement because it's dark.
SPEAKER_00: But death no longer is dark.
SPEAKER_00: It is flooded with the glory of God because Jesus, the light, plunged himself into that abyss and shone his radiance through it all.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see?
SPEAKER_00: Do you see how glorious it is?
SPEAKER_00: Do you see how you've got nothing to fear?
SPEAKER_00: Do you see how beautiful it is that Jesus is this light for you?
SPEAKER_00: Would you not follow him?
SPEAKER_00: Because what is the response?
SPEAKER_00: And with this I must finish.
SPEAKER_00: What is the response?
SPEAKER_00: In John's Gospel to the light, you do two simultaneous things.
SPEAKER_00: You come into the light and you walk in the light.
SPEAKER_00: Loving Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Trusting Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Believing in the light, those are all the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: Means coming into the light.
SPEAKER_00: That means putting your faith and your trust in Jesus and believing that he is who you said he was, that he absorbed death and conquered it for you.
SPEAKER_00: That he is now risen and reigning for you.
SPEAKER_00: It means believing and trusting that.
SPEAKER_00: But walking in the light and coming into the light is also a community exercise.
SPEAKER_00: It's something that we do together.
SPEAKER_00: It's something that we must do together.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's one thing I know.
SPEAKER_00: Sin grows in the dark.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: And in the context of community, in the context of your family, your brothers and sisters here sitting with you.
SPEAKER_00: We shine the light of the gospel into one another's lives.
SPEAKER_00: You want to begin to walk in the light and make progress in a sin that you have kept in the darkness for some time.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing that you can do is tell somebody else here about it.
SPEAKER_00: It might sound terrifying.
SPEAKER_00: We fear coming into the light because we think that all of our crap will be exposed and we'll be left, and you know, we'd just be left being pointed up by everybody else in the darkness.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not the case.
SPEAKER_00: We walk into the light and have all of ourselves exposed.
SPEAKER_00: And we looked at either side of us and we realized that everybody else is there.
SPEAKER_00: We're all there.
SPEAKER_00: We're all in need of the purifying light of the gospel of the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So part of the ways that we love one another is by shining that life light into one another's lives, pointing one another to the scriptures and what what Jesus has done for us and who he is for us and what he said in both testaments, right?
SPEAKER_00: Old and new.
SPEAKER_00: What does the psalmist say?
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist says that your word, O Lord, is a light unto my feet, or a lamp unto my feet, and a light to my path.
SPEAKER_00: We walk in the light together.
SPEAKER_00: We do it in love.
SPEAKER_00: In love for one another and in love for the one who absorb the darkness of this world for us until we see him face to face.
SPEAKER_00: Why don't we pray together?
SPEAKER_00: Father, by your Holy Spirit, would you so assure us of your love for us that we willingly and joyfully come into the light?
SPEAKER_00: That we come into the light by being honest with ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Being honest with you.
SPEAKER_00: Being honest with one another.
SPEAKER_00: May we be a community that walks in the light together.
SPEAKER_00: And that in doing so puts on display the light of Jesus.