During a 4-hour drive last Monday, I was reminiscing with
Matt and Heather about our last trip to Nepal , and we recounted a painful
incident that occurred. I was leaving Matt and Heather’s apartment, carrying
two big suitcases down a flight of marble stairs. When I started down the
stairs, the lights were on, and I was watching every step carefully. By the
time I reached the fourth or fifth step, the power had gone out and it was
pitch dark. I missed the next step and, let’s just say I took the express route
to the bottom. As I was lying at the bottom of the steps, I just knew that I
probably had a concussion and a broken leg. Thankfully, within a few minutes, I
was able to stand and put weight on my leg, but I walked with a limp for
several weeks after that. Those sudden power outages are quite common in many
parts of the world, and in Kathmandu , the
power goes out without warning for 18 to 20 hours every day. I learned a very
painful lesson in Kathmandu to never take for
granted that light will always be available, and it is dangerous to walk in
darkness.
That is the lesson that Jesus sought to instill in those who
heard Him speak here in this text, and to all who read these words. The world
is in a state of darkness, and Jesus has come to be the Light. So, we must make
sure that we take the opportunity we have to respond appropriately to the light
while we have it. As bad as a tumble down a marble staircase was, it does not
compare to the destruction of being overtaken by perpetual darkness. So, as we
look at these verses, let’s consider the dark state of the world, the
availability of the light, and the appropriate response to the light.
I. The world is in a state of darkness.
Among the many trinkets and gadgets that I now possess from
my late grandfather’s estate, my favorite is his Geochron. A Geochron is a
world map that shows what time it is in every time zone of the world, and it is
illuminated in areas where it is daytime, and it is dark in the areas where it
is night-time. Now, if we had a spiritual Geochron that would show us the
spiritual condition of planet earth, it would be all dark, with a few pinpoints
of fiber-optic light breaking through here and there in some places, and large
areas of unpenetrated darkness in many places. The testimony of Scripture is
consistent on this matter: we live in a dark world.
Now, what kind of darkness are we talking about? I suppose
if we were to ask some people, they might say that the world’s darkness is
brought about by ignorance, and education could be the remedy. Others would say
that poverty or disease darkens the world, and economic development or medical
advancement would fix it. Some might say that oppression and injustice are the
reason that the world is dark, and democracy would fix it. But, when we look it
from God’s perspective, we see that none of these are the cause of the world’s
darkness. In fact, these and many other conditions are symptoms, or effects, of
the world’s darkness, but the root cause is human sinfulness. God’s assessment
of the human condition can be found in Genesis 6, just before the flood, where
the Bible says, “the Lord saw that
the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen 6:5).
In Romans 3, Paul strings together a long list of Old
Testament quotations to provide this indictment on the entire human race:
"There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands,
there is none who seeks for God; All have turned aside, together they have
become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one.” Their
throat is an open grave, with their tongues they keep deceiving, the poison of
asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their
feet are swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are in their paths, and
the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their
eyes” (Romans 3:10-18).
Now, there are many who would scoff at that analysis of
humanity. In fact, we find that there are essentially two views of humanity
that are widespread in the world. One is the view that says that human beings
are essentially good, and only become bad as they are corrupted by outside
influences. Maybe someone here today holds that view. If you do, then you need
to know that your view of humanity is at odds with the Lord’s own assessment. The
biblical perspective is that human beings are born in a state of sinfulness,
and it is the outworking of our sinfulness that brings corruption on the whole
world. If you don’t take the Bible’s testimony as truth, all you have to do is
try to raise children. We do not have to teach them how to sin, how to lie, how
to disobey, or how to be self-centered. They come into the world knowing how to
do those things. It is through parental discipline that they learn that they
should not do those things, and
ultimately it is only as the Holy Spirit works in their hearts and lives that
they find the supernatural empowerment to overcome those tendencies over the
course of their entire lives.
Because this is the natural-born condition of the entire
human race, the world is consumed in spiritual darkness. And this is a
dangerous thing. When I was a teenager, we used to go out in the woods of our
neighborhood and play war games at night. We all dressed in black and covered
our faces with black war-paint, and we would virtually disappear into the
darkness of the forest. And Jesus says that this is what happens to us as we
live out the darkness of our sinful lives in a sin-darkened world. He says that
the darkness can overtake you. The
word could be translated overpower, or
master. Because the sinful desires of
our heart are drawn to the spiritual darkness of the world around us, we can find
ourselves consumed by the darkness, spiraling as it were into deeper and deeper
levels of depravity.
If this condition is not remedied, then destruction awaits.
Jesus says that “he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes.” He
or she is just going along, following their carnal desires, marching to the
beat of the drum pounded out by Satan himself and echoed through the offerings
of this world. That is how Paul describes the lives of those without Christ in
Ephesians 2. He says that they walk “according to the course of this world,
according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now
working in the sons of disobedience,” and they live “in the lusts of [the]
flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind” (Eph 2:2-3). The
darkness has overtaken them and they are walking blindly toward destruction.
Of course, no one walks that path intentionally (or at least
very few would). They “do not know where they are going,” as Jesus said. Of
course, “where they are going,” is ultimately hell! Surely, if anyone knew or
believed that the horrors of hell described in Scripture were real, they would
not choose to go there. If only people would know where it is that they are
going as they are swallowed up in the darkness of sin, they would be eager to
find a way of escape! That is why we who have trusted in Christ must go out
into all the world and “proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out
of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). We have to tell the world
that there is an alternative to the darkness in the hearts of men, the darkness
in the world around us, and the eternal darkness of hell. Thankfully, Jesus
tells us what that alternative is, and it is found in Him.
II. Jesus has come as the true light from God into the
world.
I know a lot of you suffer, as I do, from conditions that
produce chronic pain. When you suffer from chronic pain, bedtime is something
that can be quite dreadful. You are exhausted, but you know that the chances of
a good night’s sleep are slim. You toss and turn and wake up over and over
again all night long. If you are like me, sometimes when you see that first
glimmer of daylight creeping in through the blinds, you kind of whisper a
prayer, “Oh thank God! It is finally morning and I can just get out of this bed.”
Well, in a similar way, we should behold the coming of Christ into the world as
the dawn of a new day of grace and the end of the long night of spiritual restlessness.
You’ve heard people say, “Rise and shine!” That comes from
the Bible. The prophet Isaiah foretold the day of Christ’s coming, saying in
Isaiah 60:1, “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord
has risen upon you!” Again, in Isaiah 9:2, we read, “The people who walk in
darkness will see a great light; Those who live in a dark land, The light will
shine on them.” When was this to happen? Just a few verses later, the prophet
said, “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the
government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful
Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” These very verses were
referenced by the godly old man Simeon when he saw the infant Jesus being
brought in for His dedication. They were cited in Matthew 4:16 at the beginning
of Jesus’ ministry. He had come as the Light into the sin-darkened world.
In the first chapter of John’s Gospel, it is written of
Jesus, “The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend
it.” Some scholars have insisted that the phrase should be translated, “the
darkness did not overpower it.” No matter how dark the world was, it could not
extinguish the light that had come in the person of Jesus Christ. He was “the
true Light, which, coming into the world, enlightens every man” (John 1:4-5,
9). Jesus spoke of Himself in these terms. He said, “I am the Light of the
world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light
of life” (8:12). And so He says similarly here, “For a little while longer the
Light is among you” (12:35). This simple statement tells us two things that are
extremely important to understand.
First, we must consider the unfathomable grace of God: “The
Light is among you.” You realize that it did not have to be this way. God would
have been perfectly just to allow every single human being to have his own way
and perish in the eternal darkness of hell. But, because of His infinite love
for His creation, and in particular for His image-bearers, He penetrated the
darkness with the Light of Jesus Christ. He has intervened in our helpless
state to bring Light into the sin-darkened world. It is a remarkable truth that
deserves repeating, not just at Christmastime, that in the amazing love and
grace of God, He has become a man in the person of Jesus Christ and made His
dwelling among us (Jn 1:1, 14). You do not have to remain in darkness. There is
a Light available to you. He can illuminate the darkness of our sinful hearts
and transform us.
It is amazing how Jesus describes hell as a place of outer
darkness (Matt 8:12; 22:13; 25:30), and yet of heaven it is said, “There will
no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor
the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them” (Rev 22:5). But the
light is available to us here and now. In 2 Corinthians 4:6, we read, “God, who
said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our
hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
Christ.” Why would you grope around in the darkness? Light is available to you.
But there is also a warning here. The Light is among you,
but notice it is just “for a little while longer.” Obviously, He is speaking of
His crucifixion, which was just a few days away for Him at that point. The
Light that has come into the world is about to be taken out of the world. It
will not be any easier for them to respond to and receive the Light that is
available to them once it has been taken away. The opportunity is an urgent
one. They must turn from the darkness of sin and embrace the Light of Christ
while He is present among them! But there is another sense in which this is
true for us all, even today. Every time the good news of Jesus Christ is
proclaimed, the Light is shining in the darkness, and someone has the glorious
opportunity to be rescued and saved. But, it is a mistake to assume that the
opportunity will be present forever. There is a window of grace that could
close at any moment.
A few years ago, I was down at Ardmore Park
2 Corinthians 6:2 – God says, “At the acceptable time I
listened to you, and on the day of salvation I helped you.” Behold, NOW is the acceptable time, behold NOW
is the day of salvation!”
Hebrews 4:7 – The Lord “fixes a certain day, ‘Today,’ saying
… ‘Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.’”
The opportunity is present even now for someone who is lost
in the darkness of sin to turn to Jesus and be saved! There were probably
plenty of people in that crowd thinking, “Well, maybe some other time.” Just a
few days later, Jesus was taken from them. And even before then, notice the
tragic words at the end of verse 36, “These things Jesus spoke, and He went
away and hid Himself from them.” That was the end of His public ministry. There
were no more public teachings or sermons, no more miracles, no more interaction
with the multitudes. What a terrible thing it would be for you to turn away
from Jesus thinking that you could return to Him at a later time, only to find
that He has gone away and hidden Himself from you -- or worse, to find that
there is no later time, and your soul is required of you before you ever turned
to Him.
Jesus is the Light of the World, and the Light is among you.
That is amazing grace! But know this, the opportunity may be present for you
only “for a little while longer.”
Now finally, considering the state of the world in the
darkness of sin, and the availability of the Light of Christ …
III. We must make an appropriate response to the Light.
If you recall the previous passage, you will remember that
the crowd had asked him, “Who is this Son of Man?” In other words, “The
Scriptures teach us that the Son of Man will remain forever, and You keep
talking about dying, so what kind of Son of Man are you?” We explored that
question and its implications a few weeks ago. But notice here that Jesus did
not answer their question directly. He had no intention of entering into a
theological debate. Rather, He forced the issue upon them of what they would do
with the Light of God while it was available to them. As long as they want to
stand around and debate about it, they are procrastinating the major issue. Many
want to do this today. They want to debate minor points of doctrine,
philosophical theories, and existential issues. They’ll discuss anything to
keep from dealing with the primary issue. The primary issue is always about
what we will do with Jesus. So, as He speaks to them of the destructive dangers
of darkness and the availability of the Light of God-in-Christ, He issues a
series of imperatives challenging them to make the appropriate response to Him.
And the same challenges are relevant to us as well.
He says, “Walk while you have the Light, so that darkness
will not overtake you” (v35). Then He says, “While you have the Light, believe
in the Light, so that you may become sons of Light” (v36). So there are three inseparable
truths here about our response to the Light. There’s the response itself, the
relationship that ensues, and the result.
First, the response: we must believe in the Light; that is,
we must make a personal faith commitment to Jesus Christ. To believe in Him
does not mean to believe in the intellectual or historical sense. It is not the
same as saying that you believe that there is such a creature as a duckbilled
platypus exists or that you believe that Abraham Lincoln was the 16th
President of the United
States . It would be the rare individual
indeed who did not believe that a person called Jesus of Nazareth actually
existed. When we speak of believing in Christ, we are talking about a matter of
personal trust. Because we are all born into the darkness of sin, we have to
deal with this matter of how we can stand before a holy God who will call us
into account for all of the words, deeds, and thoughts of our lives. Man-made
religions all have one thing in common: they all insist that there is some thing, a ritual, a deed, a performance
of some task, that can be done to placate the deity and earn favor with him.
But Christianity is uniquely different from all other belief systems and
worldviews in that it proclaims that there is no deed that we ourselves can do
to remedy our sinful condition. Instead, we proclaim that God has acted, by His
grace and love, toward us to do all that is necessary on our behalf to save us
from sin. He became one of us in the person of Jesus Christ, and satisfied the
righteous law of God on our behalf by living a completely sinless and perfectly
righteous life. And yet, He died in our place, taking upon Himself both our
sins and the penalty of our sins, and conquering both sin and its penalty through
His resurrection, so that we could be forgiven, clothed in His righteousness,
and receive eternal life. This free gift of salvation is available to all who
trust in Jesus Christ to save them. Will you stand before God bearing your own
sins, or will you trust in Christ to be your sin-bearer that you might be saved
on the basis of what He has done?
It is one thing to look at a picture of a 747 and say, “I
believe that it could carry me across the ocean. After all, it has carried
others, and seems to be a reliable and sturdy vehicle.” It is quite something
different to step aboard the plane, take a seat, and buckle in for the journey.
At that point, one has completely committed himself or herself to the safety
and trustworthiness of that aircraft. So it is with Jesus. It is not sufficient
for us to study Him as the subject of academic philosophy or theology, or to
perceive Him in terms of historical trivia and curiosity. There must be a
personal commitment of faith and trust that says, “I will be saved from sin and
its penalty, not on the basis of what I have done, but on the basis of what
Christ has done for me in His life, death, and resurrection.” We must not
believe that He is one of many lights which we may choose to escape the
darkness, but that He is the only true Light available to us, and our hope is
in Him alone, or else we are hopeless. So, have you made that response of
personal faith commitment? If so, then a relationship has begun.
That is the second truth. We have not merely become adherents
to a system of dogma or an impersonal creed, but we have come into a personal
relationship with God-in-Christ. Jesus said, “believe in the Light, so that you
may become sons of Light.” The Bible describes human beings apart from Christ
as being children of Satan (John 8:44) and children of wrath (Eph 2:3).
Regardless of one’s biological family tree, or how loving a home one was born
into, spiritually speaking, it is as though we were all born into the custody
of a deadbeat, abusive father whose aim was our destruction by keeping us
captive in the darkness of sin. But Jesus has come to rescue us from this
miserable estate by brokering an adoption into the family of the most loving
and nurturing Father imaginable, God Himself. He made this possible through the
payment of the ransom price of His own blood in dying for us, and as we entrust
ourselves to Him by faith, He ushers us into the family of God the Father. As
is promised in John 1:12, “As many as received Him, to them He gave the right
to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were
born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of
God.” We have been born again into a new family, and have received the spirit
of adoption, by which we can call out to God as our “Abba Father” (Rom 8:15;
Gal 4:6). As John will say in his first epistle, “See how great a love the
Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are” (1 John 3:1).
We have become sons of Light. The family traits are
beginning to develop within as God transforms us by His Spirit into the
likeness of His Son. In the ancient Semitic idiom, to be a “son of” something
is to be characterized by the quality of that thing. A son of Light is one who
actually bears the quality of the Light and begins to reflect that Light so
that others can see it. Jesus said that He is the Light of the world (Jn 8:12),
but He also said that we, His followers, are the light of the world (Mt 5:14).
He is like the sun, the true source of genuine light. We are like the moon,
which reflects the light of the sun into the darkness. So Jesus said, “Let your
light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and
glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matt 5:16). That brings us to the third
truth here.
Our response is a faith commitment in Jesus Christ, which
issues in a personal relationship with God-in-Christ as His adopted children,
and then which results in practical action. Our light shines before men as we
live out the good works for which Christ has saved us. Our good works are
powerless to save us, but once we are saved by faith in Him, He begins to
produce in and through us the good works that shine forth His marvelous Light
into the darkness that surrounds us. So Jesus says here, “Walk while you have
the Light.” In Ephesians 5:8, Paul says, “you were formerly darkness, but now
you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light.” In the first epistle,
John will say, “If we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we
have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus
His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). The Greek verb tense here in
our text is a present imperative, indicating a command to continual action. The
true child of God is identified in that he or she is continually walking in the
Light of the Lord. Where there are the secretive and manipulative ploys of
self-seeking, personal agenda-driven, deeds of darkness, we have good cause to
question one’s spiritual birthright. Walking in the Light is, simply put, the
open and public lifestyle of honoring the Lord through one’s ongoing conduct in
the world.
Unfortunately, as evangelicals have placed the necessary
emphasis on the importance of a personal decision to trust in Christ, we have
unintentionally minimized the biblical emphasis on the evidence of genuine
faith that is found in the ongoing perseverance in holy living. So, we have
fallen prey in our day to a mistaken notion of “decision-ism.” People are
falsely assured that they have peace with God because they prayed a prayer in Vacation Bible School
We are born in the darkness of sin, into a world that has
been darkened by sin and its effects. But thanks be to God, Light has come in
the person of the Lord Jesus. That Light is available to you, at least for this
moment in time. Before this moment passes, ask yourself, “Have I responded to
the Light by believing upon Jesus Christ to save me?” If you have, then you
have been adopted into the family of God as a son or daughter, and you have
been called and empowered to live as sons of Light by walking in the Light of
the Lord. As you live for Him and speak for Him, Light is breaking forth in the
darkness around you, giving others the opportunity to respond as well. Arise
and shine, that others would see the Light of the Lord in and through you and
be drawn out of the darkness of their sins. If you never have before, my prayer
is that you would this day. For if you remain in darkness, then the darkness
will overtake you, and you do not know the destruction into which are going.
While you have the Light, believe upon Him and be saved. Become a son of Light,
and walk in the Light.
You have a strong arm; Your hand is mighty, Your right hand
is exalted.
Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne;
Lovingkindness and truth go before You.
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