I Am No.2 The Light of the World

Father, we come to you and ask for a sense of your presence this evening. Through the empowering of your Spirit, charge this atmosphere so that we might know that though we've met together and honorably so, we've done more than that. We've come to have an audience with the King of Kings.

We've come to present ourselves before your great throne. Sinners that we are, we're thankful for our Lord Jesus and for what he has done for us. And we feel that if we did not praise you with enthusiasm as well as with intelligence, the very stones that compose this lovely sanctuary would have to cry out.

So be with us. May we feel at home with one another and by your grace and mercy at home with you and make this service increasingly meaningful for Jesus' sake. Amen.

When I was a school teacher, now many years ago, my particular lot was to try and educate some kids who put up a fairly stiff resistance to such a goal, who lived under the shadow of the Tottenham and Hotspur football ground. If there was much religious practice, it occurred more there on Saturdays at three o'clock. Amongst my kids were a group that I shall never forget to my dying day in the third year.

They weren't the most intelligent of lads, but some of them were very friendly. And occasionally we'd swap stories. And one of these choice individuals, Robert Neville, some of you who are school teachers, you know that there are certain boys and girls whose names you will never forget.

Robert came to me and he said, you know what happened? The football match in the evening last week. So I said, no. He said, all the lights went out and the game couldn't be played.

So I said, well that's unfortunate. He said, well it wasn't really because something remarkable happened and like a sucker I fell for the story. So I said, go on.

He said that they got an electrician to try and sort it out, but it was no avail at all. And then a Chinaman came along and he said that he could help. And so over the public address system to the instructions of the Chinaman, everybody in that vast football stadium held hands.

And miraculously the floodlights came on and the Chinaman said, it's very easy. Many hands make lighty work. Okay, there are only third year kids in my school.

It wasn't exactly the Eaton of the metropolis. Making the light come on, making the light work. Let's turn, shall we, John's gospel to chapter eight, because our Lord Jesus has a lot to say about light.

The New Testament speaks about spiritual illumination. John 8 and verse 12. Let's read it together.

If you don't have a Bible and the person alongside you does, you will discover that he or she is very friendly and will let you look over and read it out with me. Here are the words of our Lord Jesus. John's gospel, chapter eight, verse 12.

Let's say them together. When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

And again, when Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. We've got a song that's become very popular, gone around the globe, that speaks of the light of the gospel.

And Ruth will help with others to lead us in this song and couple it with another. Number four, four, five, shine, Jesus shine. Please stand and sing.

Shine on him. Shine on him. Shine, Jesus, shine.

I come to your awesome presence. From the shadows into your radiance. By your flood I may enter your brightness.

Touch me, try me, consume all my darkness. Shine on me. Shine on me.

Shine, Jesus, shine. Fill this land with the Father's glory. Praise to his name.

Set our hearts on fire. Glory of God, love your nations with grace and mercy. Spread forth your word, your word let there be light.

Based on your kingly brightness, the faith sets display your likeness. Ever changing from glory to glory, mirrored here may our lives tell your story. Shine on me.

Shine on me. Shine, Jesus, shine. Fill this land with the Father's glory.

Praise to his name. Set our hearts on fire. Glory of God, love your nations with grace and mercy.

Spread forth your word, your word let there be light. Shine, Jesus, shine. Fill this land with the Father's glory.

Praise to his name. Set our hearts on fire. Glory of God, love your nations with grace and mercy.

Spread forth your word, your word let there be light. We can just thank him, all those that believe in him, that we were once in darkness but we no longer are. We're going to sing number 74 in the supplements, I was once in darkness.

Now we're going to sing it in a round, so we'll all start by singing the first section together and then the ladies will follow me and repeat the first section as the men carry on and sing the chorus and then going back and singing it all over again. I was once in darkness, now my eyes can see. I was once God, Jesus, Lord and family.

Oh, what glory of hers! Oh, what peace he gives! I will sing forevermore his. I was once in darkness, now my eyes can see. I was once God, Jesus, Lord and family.

Oh, what love he hath for me! I was once God, Jesus, Lord and family. I will sing forevermore his. you, through Jesus Christ our Lord, help us this night to see Him more clearly, to love Him more dearly, and to follow Him more nearly, throughout the remainder of our lives, Amen.

So, let's go back to John's Gospel, Chapter 8, which leads off with an incident that in one sense is unpleasant. There are some folk who are not too sure that this was part of the original New Testament. I do believe it has the imprimatur, the authority of the Spirit on it, and therefore it needs to be considered.

It's the concept of a lady taken in the act of adultery, and insensitive men propelling her in front of Jesus, and ultimately those who were against her fade into the background, embarrassed by some reasoning of our Lord, and she's left on her own, and Jesus, ever the friend of sinners, speaks to her and says, I don't condemn you. Presumably reading her attitude of repentance, and He sends her out with self-respect restored, saying, Lord, go now, and leave your life of sin. And having made that comment, then Jesus stands up, and with all the authority that is His, He speaks out even more wonderful words because He is directing what He has to say, not just to this woman, or His immediate hearers, but if you are sensitive to His teaching, He speaks to you right now, I am the light of the world.

Whoever follows Me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Jesus, the greatest Son of King David, whose life we've been looking at in previous Sunday evenings, makes this second declaration, which either proves that He is a Lord, or the Lord, and needs to be listened to, or else it demonstrates that He's a lunatic, and you should have sympathy. His first grand assertion was, I am the bread of life, and the implication is that the sustainer of the cosmos is what He is claiming to be.

Now He goes further, I am the light of the world, and any illumination in our universe comes as a result of the circuitry, the circuit that I have set up between my Father in heaven, and amongst you on earth. And so important is our Lord's declaration that I would go so far as to say that go through life without an understanding of what He is He declaring, and you go through life like a blind man. It is most important that you come to appreciate what Jesus is here arguing.

I don't like the darkness. I've told you that before. I was brought up in the years just after the Second World War, and I can still remember those final years of the war as a kid when the air-raid sirens would sound in my home city of Sheffield, and my mother would take my brother and myself struggling into the air-raid shelter, and when you went there, it was pitch black.

I don't like pitch blackness. On Doulos where I'll be next Sunday, I will ask them if they will give me a cabin, not in the heart of the ship, but towards the sides of the ship, so there will be some natural light. I empathize when I read the autobiography of Terry Waite, and listened and read how that man who was taller and heavier than I was one day compressed into a deep freeze, and then they took the freezer, pushed it in the back of a van, and drove him through the streets of Beirut.

Asthmatic that he was, it nearly turned him mad. The lack of air, the lack of light. You know, we have an expression, don't we? Not thinking in these terms literally, but thinking metaphorically.

He's in the dark. He doesn't understand the mysteries of algebra. He can't quite grasp the science of physics.

In this particular situation, nobody has informed him. He's in the dark. The reverse of that is, someone who's fully understanding, they've seen the light.

I now comprehend what I didn't grasp before. As fearful as it is to be physically in the dark without a trace of light, it is much more difficult and dangerous to be spiritually in the dark and not have any understanding of the reason why you came into this world. There are two sorts of ignorances.

There is culpable ignorance. That's ignorance on the part of people who do not want to know. A few days ago, reference was made to the freeing of the inmates of Auschwitz, one of the most bestial concentration camps that the Nazis had.

There were people who knew what was happening, but they allowed their minds to be eclipsed, and they tried to convince themselves that this wasn't really the case. They committed culpable ignorance. There are people in India, where I'll be bound on Tuesday, who do not know about Jesus Christ, because they've never been told.

There will be people in the Middle East, if I make Dubai, some seven days later, who will be in the same situation. You cannot blame them for what they were never told. There are two lots of ignorances, but the ignorance that is culpable, the ignorance that should cause men and women to be fearful, is that deliberate turning of your sights from what you know to be the truth, as to why Jesus came into the world, and what your condition is without Jesus Christ.

So you see, in the Bible, not only just in a metaphorical use of the word, he's seen the light, or he's in the darkness, you find these terms employed, sometimes literally, sometimes spiritually. Literally, well, the world at the beginning was in darkness. Great darkness was upon the face of the earth, and God spoke, and eventually the light came from the sun, and the reflected light of the moon.

When the Hebrews were in Egypt, and the great Passover night occurred, Egypt was plunged into darkness. When our Lord was on the cross of Calvary, even though his punishment, even though his offering for sin, was in the middle of the day, an uncanny, eerie darkness descended. Physical darkness.

But the Bible speaks about that spiritual darkness. It says, for example, when Paul is writing to the Ephesians in the fifth chapter, in the eighth verse, Paul addressing folks who have been converted, he says, once you were darkness, but now are you light in the Lord. Here is the Apostle Peter, and he's writing to some people that he led to the Lord Jesus some years before, and as he does so, he says that God has called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

Do you know there are two kingdoms in our world? There is the kingdom of light, and that's inhabited by those who trust Jesus as their Savior, and there is the kingdom of darkness. That's those who have rejected Jesus Christ. There is no twilight.

There is no third option. You are either in the one, or you are in the other, and Jesus came into the world to make it possible for you to move from the realm of darkness into the realm of his eternal light. So, here he is, in Jerusalem, making this grand declaration, having told us that he is the bread who feeds men and women spiritually, now he tells us he is the light, and he illuminates men and women spiritually.

You know when the Jews went to church, church in inverted commas, when they went to their temple, they really did have a ball. I mean by that, one thing you could never have said about Old Testament worship is that it was boring. It was anything but.

They had the Hebrew Philharmonic Orchestra in full swing. Pilgrims would empty the villages and the towns. A couple of times a year, even more, if they could make it, they would throng Jerusalem.

And one of the great happiest occasions was the Feast of the Tabernacles. And during that feast, some remarkable things happened. One was this.

On the first night, in the court of the Gentiles, which had galleries all around it, at a certain point, two or three candelabra, actually four, were lit. And the light was such a blazing light that not only did it illuminate the whole of the temple area, but it is said that every courtyard in Jerusalem benefited by that light. And from the early evening, right through to the cock crow the following morning, the holy men of God, the leaders of Judaism, the influential clergy in the temple, would spend their time dancing before the Lord, singing his praises, and using the Psalms of David.

So with the whole area bathed in light, there is this mass religious party. And Jesus gets up towards the end. And in effect, he says, you know nothing.

You know nothing of what real light is. Because even these blazing lights on the candelabra, they will soon be extinguished. And the darkness will follow tomorrow night and the next night.

But I have come into the world as the one who will bring such light to the human breast, that whoever follows me will be infused with that light to this degree. They will know the light of life forever. I will light something in their hearts which will never go out.

Indeed, as a result of commitment to me, they will know eternal life. So when Jesus makes this grand declaration, he is asserting that he has come from heaven onto earth to engage humanity with deity, to make it possible for God and man to have a relationship. If your light bulb is going to be illuminated, then there must be wiring into some plug, and eventually the electricity has to go across the circuit in order for the light to come on.

And Jesus says, there is a generator in heaven that I represent, and I have come on this earth to make life connections in the hearts, in the minds of men and women. Only I can do this. And anyone who knows this and does not put their trust in me shall go into darkness, not only in life now, but also eternally.

So Jesus says to those who are listening to him, some who were not sympathetic to his claims and did not fully comprehend what he was saying, he was saying, he said, you are of this world, verse 23. I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be.

You will indeed die in your sins. And there is nothing more dark than to be out of a relationship with Jesus Christ. And on your deathbed, to have no hope whatsoever.

So Jesus makes a similar sort of claim that we heard him last month when I introduced these great I am's to you. If you want food, you've got to come to me. If you want light, you've got to come to me.

So we take the second part and deal with this quickly of this assertion of our Lord's. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness. What does it mean to follow Jesus? What does it mean to follow the Lord Jesus? The Greek word has several suggestions if you analyze its nuances, its shades of meaning.

The slave that accompanies the master, accepting the opinion of a counselor, obeying the laws of a city, following the line of argument of a teacher. Our Lord Jesus is saying this, if you accept what I say and commit your life to me, if you acknowledge my lordship and that you are subject to me, then you are being plugged in to the light that I have come to bring to this world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

Look, years before our Lord Jesus gave this teaching, concurrent with his birth in Bethlehem, you remember there were shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night. The whole scene was plunged in darkness and then suddenly, literally, there is a light that disturbs the darkness. And the angels communicate to the shepherds that born in Bethlehem is a child who will bring light to the world.

And those shepherds who were physically at that moment in darkness, and also spiritually too, they went to Bethlehem and they began to understand what God had done in sending the Lord Jesus into the world. They got off their bikes and they moved to Bethlehem. Wise men saw a star giving light in a powerful way.

And as a result of intelligence that they received, they went with the star again to the place where Jesus was born. And they came to an appreciation that that star was God's great sermon, directing them to an even greater star, even the Lord Jesus. But the point is this, they got out of the chairs where they were sitting in Persia and they moved because they wanted spiritual illumination.

Now here, as I come to the conclusion of my address, you have an option. Jesus said, men prefer darkness rather than light. You see, to commit yourself to Jesus Christ is in one sense to engage in an uncomfortable experience.

Because when you come to Him, all those things that He does not like, you will be embarrassed about. You'll want to walk in harmony with Him. His light will illuminate all the contradiction and sin in your life.

But when that has been dealt with by His grace, then to continue a courtship relationship with Jesus Christ is the most wonderful experience, this side of eternity. It's to know Him increasingly, moment by moment, month by month, year by year. I can't do that for you.

If I could, I'd do it a thousand times. The wise men had to move. The shepherds had to move.

Here is your choice, darkness or light, knowing the benefits of the gospel and moving through life with those benefits being experienced increasingly. Or like a blind man, playing blind man's buff, going from one experience in life to another, one month to another month, one year to another year, not really understanding the purpose behind life at all, and one day dying. Your physical life extinguished, but your soul going on into an abyss of darkness, like weight placed in that refrigerator and carried through Beirut on a lorry, not just for a month or two months, but for an unending age, an eternity without God, darkness forever and ever.

Jesus said, I have come to avert that. I am the light of the world. He who follows me and embraces my light will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

Many hands make light work. No, two hands, nail pierced on the cross, the hands of Jesus stretched out with his body in agony for you and me. That becomes the connection, his life, death, and resurrection, bringing the potential of light to every son of Adam, to every race of man.

I ask you, are you in darkness, or are you, by God's grace, in light? I proclaim him King of Kings, we lift high his name, heaven and earth shall bow at his feet, when he comes to reign. Ladies. Savior of the world is he, heaven's king come down, judgment, love, and mercy meet at his thorny crown.

We proclaim him King of Kings, we lift high his name, heaven and earth shall bow at his feet, when he comes to reign. Men now. Life has sprung from house of stone, by the spirit spread.

Hell shall take the captive dog, life has conquered death. We proclaim him King of Kings, we lift high his name, heaven and earth shall bow at his feet, when he comes to reign. Blood has flowed that cleanses from sin, God his love has proved.

Men may mock and demons may rage, we shall not be moved. We proclaim him King of Kings, we lift high his name, heaven and earth shall bow at his feet, when he comes to reign. We proclaim him King of Kings, we lift high his name, heaven and earth shall bow at his feet, when he comes to reign.

It's your blood that cleanses me. It's your blood that gives me life. It's your blood that took my place.

In redeeming sacrifice, and washes me. Whiter than the snow, than the snow. My Jesus, God's precious sacrifice.

Just listen to the instruments. Just sing quietly. It's your blood that cleanses me.

It's your blood that gives me life. It's your blood that took my place. In redeeming sacrifice, and washes me.

Whiter than the snow, than the snow. My Jesus, God's precious sacrifice. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering.

Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he took our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God and smitten by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. Lord Jesus, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for being willing to humble yourself, to give us your body as a ransom for our souls.

Thank you, Jesus. Amen. As we take of this bread together, we don't treat the bread as any holy thing, but it does speak to us of a holy thing.

It speaks to us of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. It speaks of his willingness to die. It speaks that he took every single sin from us.

Not most of them, not all, but that one that keeps nagging us, every single sin of the Christian. That's a good job for you, that's a jolly good job for me. Praise the Lord.

The body of our Lord Jesus, broken for us. Heavenly Father, I can think of two things when I'm here. Lord, how unworthy I feel of being in your presence.

And Lord, the grace of Jesus Christ, I thank you, Jesus, that you cared for me, that you cared so much for me, Lord, that you died on the cross. You shed blood for me. I want to thank you for this wine that we drink to remember that fact.

Thank you, Jesus. Amen. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness.

No forgiveness without the shedding of blood. Jesus' blood, shed for me, shed for you. Let's drink together and be thankful.

I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus Christ, and the sacred power of the Holy Spirit.