Rejoicing In The Light

Good morning. May God's blessing, blessings be with us this morning. I greet you in Jesus' name.

There's something about when you get together and you think of sharing. I think it's good and right, but never do you feel like I greet you in my name. It just doesn't come to that.

But we are wanting to serve the Lord and so it's always very real to me when I think of that. Having studied the word of God and thinking of God's children, then I'm reminded of that. I really appreciate many of the books in the New Testament, the greetings they have.

Very formal greetings, but yeah. So I greet you in Jesus' name. And also welcome to George and Henry and Ellie, your family, Bill and Margaret, your family.

We're still going through the feelings of they're over there and we're over here. For us, it's still just an event. No, it's good that you've joined us.

Turn with me to John chapter one. And yeah, John chapter one. I'd like for us to pray before we before we continue.

Maybe stand. You can stand if you would like. We'll stand and pray.

Heavenly Father, we bow before you this morning. Lord, we give you thanks for your blessings for us. Thank you, Lord, for each one that's here, us being gathered together.

Lord, we come to you now and pray. We pray together. Lord, we come to you and we seek you for wisdom.

We seek you for counsel. And Lord, I pray that you would teach us this morning. Lord, I pray that you would reach our hearts and help us, Lord, to come to you and give ourselves to you.

Lord, I pray that you bless us as we fellowship here together. It may be for your glory. In Jesus name we pray.

Amen. So for the message this morning, yes, I in preparation for this message, I felt like I had to do a battle. Somehow the the Lord seen it fit.

And it's one of those things with seeking his word. I think one of the one of the comforts and yet not comfortable things of seeking God's word is he seems to want to pierce our hearts first. And so we pray and we pray and maybe we feel like there's a bit of a wall.

And Lord, what are you trying to show me or teach me? And I found myself going back and forth and battling my own heart and went through a battle of surrender. Yeah, level of surrender again, where I just felt like there's things that I had placed on a higher level, maybe placed into a place where they're more important than God, than God was. And so I had to battle through that.

So with this, with me having to surrender, giving up to God's will and wanting to give up to God's will. I studied, I studied for us for us this morning. And I, my prayer is for me personally, that what I share here this morning, it can be a blessing from God to us.

And I will say, when you find yourself, I don't know if you've been there, but as I found myself going through this bit of a struggle of surrender to God's will, I was just aware that these types of struggles can influence my studies or my thoughts. And I don't want them to, I don't want to be influenced by my personal struggles. I would like the Lord to speak to us.

And without me being in the way, this area of surrender that I had to give up to the Lord, it actually has to do somewhat with preaching. I often find myself pondering and thinking and reading God's word. And God does a wonderful job at how He brings forth His word.

But I found myself, yeah, struggling with this, this battle relating to preaching. And to give you an example, it's kind of like when maybe there's a group of teenagers, they're playing ball, and you've got maybe a few really good players on one team. And what I want to highlight is all of a sudden, these players that are that are wanting to play this game, they really feel that they should be able to win.

They've got good players, they should be able to win. And they really set their hearts on winning. And they encourage each other to win.

And then I've been in a game like this, and then we lost. And you kind of go through the game plan. And how was it possible? How could I lose? So when I think about preaching, I sometimes feel like that's an area where I've struggled to surrender.

This battle that we go through in life has to do with me and God and you and God. I always felt like we Christians have to win. We have to win.

And we so often hear, others will share, how people are not walking with God, or they're struggling, or it seems like they're looking for wisdom that cannot be found. They want to seek the wisest counselor to try to gain the victory. And so there's all these issues, there's this battle.

And as I've studied the Word of God, I feel like I'm easily persuaded as it seems. And I come to a place when I think of preaching to others, I find myself at a place, I'm telling you, we have to win. And so I get kind of maybe strong will towards that, that, you know, God's Word has the answer, and we have to win.

And by it, by it, I think I offend the listeners, because God has, God has given each of us a choice. And God also wants to work in each of our lives. He wants to work in your life.

He wants to direct you. And I have found myself being on your side, probably doing this. Come on, what are you doing? Anyhow, so the Lord had me give up this aspect of just being able to share His Word without that strong feeling of we have to win.

Anyway, I hope that makes sense. Does that make sense to you? So something I, yeah, it was just on my mind. And even as I was studying, it just kept coming back.

And I said, Lord, okay. It's like saying, Lord, I know your Word can do it, but I'm supposed to accept that it's not going to do it. But I know that's not what God intends to do.

God intends for us to spread the Word, and for the hearers to make their choice, and God will work in them. And so I've given that up to God that He may do so. Okay, so where we'll start this morning is John chapter one, verse four.

And we're going to read the first four words. First John, or John chapter one, verse four. And it says, in Him was life.

I pondered this phrase. I was thinking about it, thinking about it. And so in Him, we know that this is referring to Christ.

In Jesus, there is life. What is life? Any of you wanting to give an explanation? What is life? Very good. Yes, okay.

Very good. And that's the answer I'm looking for. Yeah, so yeah, I was pondering this, this verse.

It kind of, so my burden, the Word that came to me, I just felt like I wanted to share about, had to do with light. And I was going to title the message, Rejoice in the Light. And I found, as I was studying, there's a few things that'll come together.

And you'll see it at the end of verse four. So if we'll get that far this morning, in Him was life, and the life was the light of men. Now, I don't know if you are very strong in English, in the English language.

But I did find myself, you know, being caught by these phrases. And I asked myself, what, how can I, how can I process this and understand what he's saying here? So in Him was life. If I would ask you, Myron, do you have life? Just because you gave me the answer, you're not dead.

Yeah, life. Do you have life? And we could, and basic questions here, where did you get it? Where did you get life? Did you or I have a say before we received life? Did we have a say if we wanted life or not? Is life a mere existence? I have here, what is the opposite of life, which is death? What causes death? Some feedback there. What causes death? Okay, good.

What else causes death? Absence of life. Good. Realistic things.

No food, starvation. Sorry. Accidents, tragedies.

Where did death start? Sin. Yeah, that's where I wanted to go as well. So I don't know if you've ever pondered, but have you ever pondered the combination of these thoughts here? So where did you get life from? And we know that we're born children.

You know, there's little babies. The Lord blesses someone with a little baby and they come into this world and they have life. Where did they get life from? Now, it's not like a machine or a car.

You put a lot of steel pieces together and give it all the parts that it needs, rubbers and engine and so on. Connect a battery and put the battery, batteries on and turn the ignition and there you have a car. Now it's running.

And though this car is running, it has no thoughts. It has no memory and a lot of those other things. This car is, it's a tool.

It can do what it was made for, but it does not have life. It doesn't have life like you and I do. And so yeah, I was pondering that.

Where does life come from? We know the easy answer. Oh, it comes from God. That's an easy answer.

But we, but often it's not lived that way, that it comes from God. So we have a few combinations that we want to build on here. So in him, in Jesus was life.

What did he have? Let's go to, so we are at John. We're going to read verses one to three now. So John chapter one, one to three.

And I do find that this, this will be a bit of a study. And so try to follow along here with where we're going. I want to build on this mystery of life.

You and I have life, but there is a connection that is not very, um, maybe it might not be very visible to us. So reading John chapter one, verse one to three here, it says in the beginning was the word and the word was, was sorry. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God.

And the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made.

We're going to take a note of a word here and it's the word, word in the beginning was the word and the word. What was the word? You don't have to answer that yet, but what, what do you think it was? What was the word we would say here? Jesus. Now that's an, that's an educated answer.

Yes. Um, yeah, Jesus Christ is the word, but what I'd like for us to do a bit this morning is I want us to, I want us to be a little bit more practical. What was the word? And it says here the same was in the beginning with God.

And it's this word through this word that everything was made and not nothing was made without this word, without Christ. So all life comes by and through the word. Turn with me to Genesis chapter two, verse, we'll go to verse seven.

Genesis chapter two, verse seven. I'm just going to ask the question again here or make the statement that in Christ there was life. Yeah.

Genesis two, verse seven says, and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils, the breath of life and man became a living soul. Now, if we were to have, uh, if we were to try to create something like we would do with a car or anything else that we build, um, we would have what you have in the first part of this verse and the Lord God formed a man of the dust of the ground. I was trying to imagine in this, as I was thinking about creation, God created man.

And here it'll tell us that man was given life. But before man had life, God makes man takes the dirt forms man, however he forms them. And what if we were to stop at that verse there and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, what do we have? A body, a corpse, a dead person.

Okay. So that's a starting point. Where do we get life from? So God takes, takes the dust, moves it around, puts it together however he pleases.

And there you have a body. And then it says, and breathed into his nostrils, the breath of life and man became a living soul. So God breathed into his nostrils, the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

Even here, we'll notice two parts in the creation of man. Um, I want you, it might be a little humorous, but I don't want to be humorous. I want you just to picture the, the, we're going to go from the, uh, the shallow heart.

And we'll go a little bit more in depth here in this thinking. So I want you to picture with me that you're at the beach and you, you know, put all the sand together and whatever you got to do, and you make this form of a man. You make this form of a man and you give the man CPR.

What would happen? Well, he didn't receive any life. You take this, this body that's made of dirt. And maybe you plug his nose and from by the mouth, as they do, they would give CPR.

You blow into, into this sand pile and the sand would probably go blow all over the place. And that's your man. So that's the physical speaking that we would relate to.

And very often when we think about life, you and me, when you think about life, do you think about your soul? Do you think about the spiritual side of life? Something that's, uh, that is good for us to process as we think about this, this aspect of life. So we look at, we're going to say, we look at the world and the unbelievers. They, those that don't believe in God and they have life, they've received this life, but they say there is no God.

And you look at the practical method of trying to build a man. No man can, can build a man. And so God created you and me in two parts here.

We have, uh, God breathing into man, uh, the breath of life. And then it says, and man became a living soul. In other words, um, man has, uh, many functions.

We would, as we would often say, we have the body, uh, heart, soul, mind. Um, and sometimes we could reference it in two parts where it's just the soul and the body and those two are together. So I, as a person, I have a soul.

You as a person, you have a soul. And we ask ourselves that, um, you know, you have received life. Where did you get life from? And you received life from God.

So that's the physical part. Now we're, now we got to the point where we have a person and he's living. You and I, we're living.

We have received life. But there's more to this mystery of this topic of life. We, I think someone referenced, uh, or said it already.

So I have been given life and that's happened to Adam and Eve. God gave them a physical life and God says they became a living soul. So now they had a physical life and God gave them spiritual life.

Same for you and I, when you are born, you are born with physical life and you are born with a soul and our soul will never die. And here we have Adam and Eve. They have physical life.

They're in the Garden of Eden. They, they have a healthy spiritual life. And as we know the story, they sin against God.

They disobey God. And what happens? Any thoughts? What happens? Adam and Eve disobey God. What happens? They die spiritually.

Can you explain, do you have any thoughts? And I want you just to meditate on this a little bit. Meditate on this, uh, this, uh, this, um, creation here. God creates Adam.

He makes them out of dust, gives them physical life, gives them spiritual life. And here's what I want us to ponder. And then what Adam does, God says, God gives Adam instructions and Adam and Eve, they decide to disobey.

So they did not do what God said they should. How can that cause death? Physical, literal death. Not only were they going to die at a certain age, but it also caused spiritual death.

How did them disobeying God cause death? You don't have to answer it yet. So we're going to ask ourselves a different question here now. Did God create life or is he life? Did God create life or is he life? And I believe that God is life.

This is an area that we cannot explain. We will hopefully understand it when we meet, we come face to face with the Lord. But God is life and he created all of creation and gave it life.

So where do we get life from? We get life from God. Again, John 1, 4, there in him, in Christ, there is life. So what I'm trying to do here this morning, I want us, I want that word to stand out, that the idea that Jesus has life and it's more than, there's a mystery behind this, that's more than, I'm alive today, I make choices, I have a soul, I have a mind, I can do this or that, and I'm alive.

There's more to this life than that. So Acts 17, 28, it says, for in him we live and move and have our being, the latter part of verse 28. John 5, verse 26, it says this, for as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself.

Jesus has life within himself. So if God is life and he gave man life, why can something cause death? What is the connection? Let me see if I can bring to you what I'd like for you to see. If God is life and he gave man life, why can something cause death? Death, and we want to connect here, we'll stretch our minds, we want to connect here, we have spiritual death, we have physical life, and we have someone who disobeys God and he spiritually dies.

And did Adam and Eve spiritually die simply because God had said, if you were to take of this fruit, you would die? An example I have here is this, and this will, I'll try to prove my point with this here. So is it like telling a child, if you don't obey, you have a consequence? And say your child disobeys and you give it a consequence. Here's what I want to highlight.

If I said to my child, I want you to sit, and if you don't sit, I'm going to give you a pinch. And say he does not sit down. With him not sitting down, does that cause him the pinch? Do you follow what I'm saying? I want to show you something with what is connected with death.

There's going to be a little mystery that's coming out of this. So again, you ask your child, I would like you to sit down, if you don't sit down, I'm going to pinch you. And the child does not sit down.

Did that cause him to get pinched? Or was that a pinch? Him not sitting down. He made this choice, Adam and Eve, they made this choice, we're going to do what God asked us not to do. It caused death, right? So when the child does not sit down, it does not cause a pinch.

But when he doesn't sit down, I pinch him, an outside force. An outside force pinched the little one because he didn't sit down. But I don't believe that death that came upon Adam and Eve came the same way.

I don't believe that God sat there and said, listen, I've told you, if you eat from the tree of good and evil, you're going to die. And I'm going to be angry and I'm going to make sure you die. That would be an outside force.

You follow what I'm saying? So that's what I want to highlight. Death did not come by an outside force. Okay, so it's more like this.

You tell the child, do not touch the hot stove, because if you will, you will be burnt or you will get burnt. And as the child touches the stove, what happens? It gets burnt. So did touching the stove burn him? Yes, it did.

His action, his direct choice, there's the stove, I'm going to touch it and that by me doing so will burn me. Okay, that's how I believe death came upon Adam and Eve. Death came to Adam and Eve when God said to them, there's going to be a fruit that you don't see that will come with you deciding to eat from the tree of good and evil.

God wasn't there with a stick saying you're going to die if you do it. But God was letting them know, if you partake of that tree of good and evil, the fruit of it will cause you to die. Again, which makes it a personal decision for them to disobey God and to receive this death.

Now, so this is what they did. And I don't believe that death started there. But this is what they did to receive death.

There's something about life, though. There's something about life that has a similar fruit. And we'll, I'll, yeah, we'll come to that yet.

But I'll mention it here. There's something about life after a person has been born again. Or, let's go back to Adam and Eve.

So if their choice to touch the stove would burn them, a simple example would be, if they chose not to touch the stoves, they would not be burned. So for them to have life, going back to this aspect of life. So if they chose to eat of the tree of good and evil, it would cause death.

That was the fruit of it. And what would they have had to do to have life? Here's what I want to bring out. What would Adam and Eve have needed to do to have life? They would have had to live.

We're gonna, we're gonna call it, they would have had to live by the principles of God. So here's what I'm wanting to say here. I believe that if a person would take God's Word at face value, even with the, with the sinfulness, the struggles, and everything within their hearts, if they have all of that, they have their need, they're not a Christian.

If they were to take the Word of God, and they would try to use it like a manual, but with an open, honest heart, I believe it would bring them to repent of their sin and come to Jesus. And so like a person touching the stove gets burnt, or disobeying God gave them death, for Adam and Eve to have lived God's Word would give them continually life. So there is a fruit that comes from this life.

And I want to build on that in just a moment. And maybe in order to do so, oh yeah, we'll build on that in just a moment. So by Adam and Eve choosing to disobey God, and what did they choose? They chose the same sin that Satan chose, that they wanted, he, Satan, wanted to be like God.

And so Satan comes to Adam and Eve and tempts them with the same reasoning, hey, if you eat of the true of good and evil, it'll make you like God. And so they chose that they wanted to participate in and be aware of evil. They wanted to get to know evil, and they disobeyed God, and this evil brought them spiritual death.

I believe there's a depth to good and evil that God will show us one day to help us understand that there is really very, there's two very strong worldviews. One is the one of life, and the other one is the one of death. And for us in this world, we tend to look at death to the level of our being.

Someone gets sick and they die, okay, they've died. And we realize that there's the eternal life coming. But often for us, death is a matter of, we're so aware of our everyday normal circumstances.

To us, death is simply to part from this body. And the scripture gives us a lot of teaching on, there's something about, our physical death is a curse that man received from the fall of man. But with death, there's also a lot of teaching about evil.

Evil and death are often used in a similar way. James, we might read out of James there, where us sinning will cause death. So every day, you and I, every day you and I make decisions that will bring out something of this two worldviews.

You'll be making decisions today, and definitely as a child of God, you will be making decisions today that will aid you in life, or you'll make decisions that will be a hindrance and a curse to you, which is death. So I want for us to connect So James 1 verses 13 to 15 is where it talks about that God cannot be tempted of evil. God would not tempt any man, but man is tempted of his own lust, enticed when lust hath conceived, and it bringeth forth sin, and sin when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

So if we could look at this idea of death, and maybe we could look at it as a tree, and all of our decisions would be part of two trees. The one tree is a tree of life, and every decision you made would be a fruit that would come off of that tree. So we're going to picture that, and death would be the same way.

Death is a tree, and every decision that you make is a fruit from that tree. What I'd like to have us think about is this. Death is a lifestyle.

I don't know if you would understand that if I say that. Death is a lifestyle, and it's a lifestyle where we disobey God, and we're separated from God. And what we're going to see here in a little bit of Jesus, Jesus is life, and what I want to bring to us this morning is Jesus and life.

I'm going to say life here. Life is also a lifestyle. Picture before we were born, we would have the option of choosing, and someone would educate us of these two trees.

The tree of life, and what it would look like. And here's what I would like us to think about. Just the fruits of life.

Before we were born, God gave us this chance and said, listen Adam, here's a choice I'm giving you. If you want to live, if you want to have life, if you want to live, here's what you'll do. And he would teach Adam all the things that he would do.

He would love, he would forgive, and all the things that we are taught in the New Testament. He would be kind, he would help others, and so on. So all the good things that man would do, that would give him life.

And that's what God would teach Adam. And then God says to Adam, but here is death. If this is a lifestyle that you want, here is death.

If you're going to pick from this tree, the fruit of this tree, you're going to be selfish, you're going to be evil, you're going to hate, you're going to murder, you're going to steal, and all of those things. So what I'm bringing out here is that there is a lifestyle with life, and there is a lifestyle with death. In John 1 verse 4, it says, in him was life.

Let's look a little bit more there in John chapter 1. So John chapter 1, and actually before I read that, I want to explain one more thing to us. Maybe this will bring it together here. So here's what I'd like to show us.

This is going to be an equation here. So we were granted physical life, and here's going to be a, here's an equation that needs to get put together. So we have physical life plus spiritual death, right? That's when Adam and Eve sinned.

So you and I, we are born, you and I are born into this world spiritually dead. So we're given at birth physical life, at birth spiritual death. You and I are disconnected from God.

And then we have believing in Christ, so we come to Christ, and then we have spiritual life, and then we have physical death, and then we have eternal life. Let me say that again. We start in this world with physical life plus spiritual death, and then we come to believing in Christ, and then we receive spiritual life, and then at the end of time, whatever the time amount God gives to us, we experience physical death, but have eternal life.

Look at how the other one works. We come into this world with physical life and spiritual death, and we disobey God, which leaves us that. So physical life, spiritual death, disobeying God, physical death, eternal death.

That's how that would work. And so as I was pondering this about life, Jesus is life. And I'm going to, we're going to read a few verses that will build on the aspect of the ending of verse four, and the life was the light of men.

If we were to meditate on what that is saying, in him was life, what was there? So in definition, in him was life, is it saying that there's forgiveness of sin? Is that what life is? Or is it saying the physical life that we received at birth? I believe what it's telling us is the definition of life is two parts. One, it is life, but two, it is the way of life. It's the way we live.

It is love and all those other teachings that Jesus brought to us in the gospels. Jesus comes into this world, and he teaches us what life is. So life is living the ways of God, two parts.

We receive physical life, and then when us as sinners, when we can come to God and be reunited with God, so we get born again, so now we have spiritual life. And from there, life, the life that Jesus brings to us, the life that we should live is a lifestyle, and this life is a life of living God's will, God's principles, God's ways. And as we would remember, for Adam and Eve, what caused them death? It was disobeying God, yes, but it was also participating in this, yeah, it was them choosing to participate in death.

They chose that Satan should be their ruler rather than God. They chose a different lifestyle. They chose evil, and evil has all of its explanations of what that is, you know, hate and murder and all those evil things, but they chose to be part of evil, not by a clear decision, but they were deceived.

So here, in Jesus, so in him was life. Yes, he made a law in the beginning of creation that he would create man, and man would have life, and man would have a soul. So that's one part of this life, but I believe the next part of the two-part life that is in Christ, it's life plus living out God's ways, and that is a complete definition of life.

And then here Jesus says, and the life, Jesus, and the life was the light of men. So if Jesus is the light of men, which is Jesus showing man what life is. So what was it? It was death.

What is death? It's the evil way, and so this is where this comes together here. In him was life, and the life, the example that Jesus was, and who he is, was the light of men. It would show men in darkness who they were.

They were in death. They were in darkness, and it would show them how they could come to Christ. Repentance, and then again, what would they do? They would repent of their sin, and then live for God.

It's a lifestyle. Living for God is a lifestyle. So in verse 5, it tells us, and the light, which is Christ, shineth in darkness.

So what is shining in darkness? When we read the verse, we see the word, just simply light. It's maybe like a bulb. When a bulb, it's a dark room, and you turn on the light, and the light just spreads over the whole room, and darkness is gone.

The saying is, darkness is the absence of light. So what about when it comes to evil? Is evil the absence of good? Why do I want to bring this? Why did I want to share this with us here this morning? I was pondering these words here, and there's many more verses that we could read together. We have 1st John.

Let's turn there, if you will. 1st John. It has a very similar reading that we'll read here, and I believe there is a... I'm going to say, I would invite us with what I am sharing here this morning.

I would invite us, which we exercise, I would invite us to a love relationship with God and His ways. Serving God is... I made the phrase yesterday. I said the phrase yesterday.

So often as a Christian, we can find ourselves, woe is me, I can't live the life I want to live. So many times, we are a Christian, but we have this heart set like Adam and Eve. We look to what the death of the world offers, and we would love to participate in that death.

We think of that as something good. You know, as young children grow up and grow older, they look into the world, and the world has so much to offer. A person that's not born again, they go, they're always in this state where they have physical life, they're spiritually dead, they're disconnected from God, and so the world really appeals to them.

They struggle to believe in Christ, they struggle to believe their need for Christ, and often end up with disobeying God, and physical death, and then eternal death. Again, if any of you here are not walking with God, you're not born again, you're not reconnected with God, that would be your cycle. If you're not connected with God, then we would invite you to believe in Christ, and then if you believe in Christ, you receive spiritual life, and after death, eternal life.

So it's a way of life. 1st John chapter 1, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, so it's something that's been said, which we have seen with our eyes, and which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life. There it says it again, the Word of Life.

We had John, it says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, it was the Word. Verse 2 here in 1st John, for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life. What would they show unto them? For the life was manifested, so Jesus was living, He was living about, and they say, we have seen it, we've seen Jesus live, we bear witness of His life, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.

Now verse 3, that which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. And then it goes on, and we're going to combine three words here.

One is Life, the other one is Word, and the other one is Light. Verse 5, this then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is Light. What is God? He is Light.

What is the opposite of Him? And it says here, and in Him there is no darkness at all. So there's no evil, there's no sin, there's no darkness, but there He is Light. Then look what it says going further.

If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, okay, so in Him is no darkness, but we possibly could be walking in darkness. What is that darkness? It's a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle of not living for God, evil deeds.

We lie and do not the truth. Then it says, but if we walk in the light, this is God's calling for us. In Jesus, there is life.

What does this life look like for a believer? And I believe it's verse 7 here. But if we walk in the light, how do we walk? Would walking in the light be a simple matter of believing that Jesus Christ died for me? It's a simple faith, which is right in part, but is that all it would be is having the knowledge that Jesus has died for my sin, and I can have eternal life? Is that walking in the light? Well, as we would know, that is not all that it is. So if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin.

Okay, so what did I want to bring out here? That is that living for God and Jesus having life is a two-part life. One is having received Christ in spirit. So that actually would be that second part.

First is our physical life, but one having Christ in us for us to live this life that Jesus gives is for us to live God's principles, for us to live God's way. John 17 has some beautiful verses that will go with this. John 17 and verse 3, here's what this says.

So John 17 verse 3, it says, and this is life eternal. So this is eternal life, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou has sent. Yeah, whom Thou has sent.

And here's where we're going to do a few more connections. So that's verse 3. This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, God, and Christ, whom Thou has sent. And we're going to say, this is the complete knowledge of who God is and that Jesus is our salvation.

That together is eternal life. Look what else it says about that. Verse 6. So John 17 verse 6 goes on.

So eternal life is knowing God. And we were, as we read, Jesus is life. Verse 6, he says, What's the combination here? Again, I want to just lift up.

Death is a lifestyle. Death is not just a consequence of, you didn't do what I asked, now you have to die. Death and evil is all together a way of living.

And this way of living brings death. I wouldn't want to say it this way, but just as a little bit of a thought here, it's us destroying ourselves. That's what death is.

We do things that kill us. In other words, if you live life and you are willing to, you know, you're willing to have evil deeds, what are evil things? The evil things of the carnal flesh. So for you to simply have hate, just have hate in your life, that's death.

For you to be bitter, that's death. For you to have other sins, where you've mistreated your neighbor, that's death. Where you've stolen something, that's death.

You're participating in death. Here's a note. Mankind chooses every day to be in this, to live this death, we might say.

He has a span of time in this world where he will live out deeds of death. And God has called us to a much better and a much higher calling. He has called us to live life.

He has given us life, but what is that life? And it's that two-part. It's us living the principles of God, having received salvation through Jesus Christ. That is life.

So let's look at John 17 verse 8. Here it says, Notice that? I have given them that have life. I've given them the words which thou gavest me. What words? I believe living God's principles is life.

As a born again, someone that's not born again cannot have that blessing of life because he needs to do something with his sin. Someone who lives in sin cannot have the blessing of doing these, participating and doing these good things that give life. Good deeds to a sinner do not make him, give him life.

But when he comes to God and he repents of his sin and accepts Christ, then good deeds, loving your neighbor as yourself to you, is life. Giving to the poor is life. And again, we could use many examples.

Not being angry and sinning, that is life. Life is more than just existence and trying not to do this or that. We could actually look at serving Jesus Christ.

We could look at that whole picture as, maybe an example would be, we look at someone that that we really admire. We say, wow, I'd love to be like him. Well, I think that should be our viewpoint when we serve Jesus.

We should look at Jesus, seeing who he is. And again, let's use this example. If Jesus is love and you love your neighbor, what does that do? It glorifies God.

How? How is it possible? Jesus is love. You love your neighbor and it shows the world Jesus. How? Because what you do represents Christ.

Again, serving Jesus, life is more than existence and trying to do the right thing. And you know, whether it matters or not, it's not a big deal. Our view of life should be, how can I live? Or, yeah, how can I live for Christ? And we should learn to have a joy in following God's principles, because those principles themselves lead us to life.

So, for I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me. And it's all of the Gospels. Look at what Jesus taught.

You know, divorce, all the evil things. It's again, looking at Christ and seeing how he gave the perfect remedy for man's need. Jesus didn't come giving us the word so that he could bash people, judge them and, you know, condemn them to hell if they didn't repent.

Jesus came as a perfect, humble, honest doctor that said, this is your disease, here's the cure. And that is life. Literally, for us to see when people, someone who is not born again, going through the misery and all the difficult things they go through, and they're just dying.

They're spiritually dying. They're living death. And even though the Christians, they pass away as well from their physical life, but they will receive eternal life.

So, the word of God. He says, I have given them thy word, and they received it, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me. So, living for Christ.

Jesus has life. For us to live for Christ is more than just believing all the things that Jesus taught are part of his life. If you were to study these three words, they come together as one.

Life, light, and word. They're all together one. And so, for me to say, I have life, or I have Christ, I have the word, I have light, I'm walking in the light.

And if you study the context of those verses, you will find two things. One is that I have Christ, I have received him. And number two is that I live his principles.

Loving, forgiving, giving, all the good principles that God teaches, they are life. We think of Adam and Eve being created. What were they created for? And again, maybe it's, I'm not sure how vague it would be.

We think of them as created, and God gives them instructions on how to live in this world. But I'm going to say this morning that God did not just give them instructions to live, as in the way we would think of life, living. Get up in the morning, eat breakfast, do whatever you do all day, go to bed, do the same thing the next day.

I believe God's calling for Adam and Eve to live was for them, Adam and Eve, to have physical life and enjoy physical life, and to have spiritual life, which was connected with God, to enjoy spiritual life. And the harmony between physical life and spiritual life is obeying God and his principles, his word, and so on. We see from Adam and Eve, when Adam disobeyed, that harmony stopped.

It was separated. When we, as God's children, having received life, we live for God, and we do the, we live the principles of God, then we are in harmony with Christ. And our life can harmonize with Christ.

And I'm sure you've experienced that. As God calls you to obey, to follow him, when you obey and you follow him, you have peace, you have joy, and the Christian life is complete. In other words, if you, as a Christian, live or disobey God in your life, you also experience how disobedience to God brings guilt, you know, guilty conscience, it brings weight, heaviness, and it brings death.

And that's what James tells us. That's what will happen. We could read, we could be reading in Philippians there.

Yeah, let's read that. I'll read that in closing here. So Philippians chapter 2. Philippians chapter 2, 12 to 18.

Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, so now they're in harmony. This is God. This is life.

They receive Christ. They live for Christ. That's the outcome.

They've obeyed. Not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence. Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. And to think of that. That God is in us, and that would be a whole other discussion.

We've received God. We have his life. We have his light.

We have his word. He is in us. He works in us to will and to do.

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. Holding forth the word of life. That I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain, neither labored in vain.

Yea, and I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith. I joy and rejoice with you all. Actually, I'm going to stop there.

I feel again this morning, my thoughts were spread abroad. So I want to just quickly give here a little bit of a closing overview, maybe. My heart was, as I read this, that the ending of verse four, and the life was the light of men.

I was pondering this whole aspect of life and I just see that there's much more when there's much more to be learned, I guess, when we think about life. So often, Christianity is so much this staggering back and forth where it seems like we're blind men, can't find, can't find our way. And hopefully, you know, by pleading and begging for God, we somehow can make it.

And I think that's a very poor vision of living for God. I do see that our physical, our flesh, our mind is in need and therefore cannot always see what God's will is. But I believe living for God is a great privilege.

It's a highlight. There's something beautiful about living for God, having life that Jesus gives. So Jesus gives me life when I get born again.

And that life that he gives me is that second part of creation. I already am in body. I speak, I breathe, I talk.

So I have that. But when he gives me life, he gives, he again fixes the second part. I was separated from God and I was spiritually dead.

There Jesus says, I will give you life. So now I have spiritual life. And from here on, me having received forgiveness and spiritual life for me to live, as Paul says, for me to live is Christ.

But for me to live now is that I would live out the word of God. And as we already said, there's a lot of references of what it is to have the word, the word, the word of life, and so on for me to walk in the light. That's God's will for me.

I should count it a privilege. I should count it a joy to live. And when I say this now, I should count it a privilege to live.

What I mean is that I would live God's will. I would live God's way. I will leave it with this far.

Do you follow my train of thought? Can I bring it far enough around in the back end here? For us to live is more than existence. For us to live is to enjoy God's blessings. And I think we often make a mistake when we value things.

We value them wrong. We value, how many times do you hear of a person seeing someone participate in evil and sin? And how many times does our heart not go with that person and say, oh, I wish. See, that's a wrong.

As a Christian, I believe Christianity and the true word of God, the true value that God and that Jesus puts on His word, like Him saying, I do all the things that God gives me to do. Jesus says, I only did what God told me to do. That's a very strong statement.

But what were those things? And then you look at the gospels. Look what Jesus did. He fed the poor.

He taught. He preached. All the things that Jesus did.

Jesus says, I only did what God told me to do. That was life. That was true life.

That's what we want to participate in, is true life. So in our time, the world values evil. And evil is a lifestyle absent from God.

Whether, and again, examples we could give many. And I'm just going to use this type of example. When the flesh is intrigued and then is jealous over something someone else has, that is evil.

But that's so familiar to us. But let our value system be when we look at God's word. And I know some of you are, I'm actually reminded of some of you, when you help, you offer help to someone.

Some of you are so quick and you're all so ready to be a blessing, to be kind, to do all these things. And I just want to say for us this morning, that is life. Someone's in need.

Hey, I'm here to help. That is life. And again, I don't want to go back into all examples.

So our value system needs to be, we look at what God says is life. And then we say, that's what I value. So when I get the chance to bless my neighbor, I say, hey, that's life.

When I have the opportunity to share the gospel, to pray for someone, or all the other examples I could use, let us see God's life, His principles. Maybe we should reference His principles are not what's the verse? Not bondage. They're not grievance.

And that's perfect. God's word and God's ways are not grievance. They are life.

I'll leave it at that.