Audio
Have
you ever experienced “total darkness,” the state of being completely isolated
from any and all sources of light? It is a rarer experience than you might
imagine. There are only a few places on earth that one can experience total
darkness: the deepest points of the ocean, or in underground caves, mines or
tunnels away and hidden from the points of entrance or exit, and not many
places elsewhere. A few years ago, my family had the experience of total
darkness while visiting Mammoth
Cave National
Park
While we may not all have the experience of witnessing total
darkness in this physical way, the Bible tells us that we live in a world of
spiritual darkness because of the presence of sin. In 1 Samuel 2:9, we read
that the wicked are silenced in darkness. Proverbs 4:19 says that “the way of
the wicked is like darkness; they do not know over what they stumble.” In Romans
1:21, Paul says the lost mass of humanity has turned away from God, and their
foolish hearts have been darkened. In Ephesians 4:18 he says that those who do
not know the Lord are “darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life
of God.” Jesus says in John 12:35 that “he who walks in the darkness does not
know where he goes.” And this is the state of the entire human race, unless and
until light enters in and shatters the darkness. And into this dark world, the
Lord Jesus came and proclaimed, “I am the Light of the world.” This is the
first reality that we see in this text:
I. Light has dawned on the world’s darkness in Jesus Christ.
Let us remember the setting of these words. The scene has
not changed since the beginning of Chapter 7; multitudes have come together in Jerusalem for the Feast
of Tabernacles. Every aspect of the Feast of Tabernacles was designed to remind
the people of God’s faithfulness to Israel during the Exodus and the
wilderness wanderings before they entered the Promised Land. One of the most
joyous and festive aspects of this celebration was the nightly ceremony of
illumination. In the Court of Women at the Temple , four enormous lampstands, each one 75
feet tall, were lit. The light was so bright that it was said that every
courtyard in Jerusalem was illuminated from the
glow of the Temple .
As these great lights burned, the men of Israel would dance before them with
lighted torches and sing songs of praise throughout the night.[1] This
was repeated every night of the weeklong celebration of the Feast of
Tabernacles.[2] This
ceremony of illumination was a reminder of how God had led the people in a
pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.
That pillar of cloud and fire that led the Israelites was a
visible manifestation of the presence of God among His people. This was known
among the people of God as the “Shechinah Glory” of the Lord. God revealed
Himself and His manifest glory in visible manifestations throughout the history
of Israel ,
most often in the form of light, fire, cloud, or some combination of these.[3] As
the Tabernacle was constructed, God promised that He would sanctify the Tent by
His glory – His Shechinah – and He would dwell among the children of Israel and
be their God (Ex 29:42-46). Once it was completed, the Shechinah Glory of the
Lord took up residence in the Tabernacle, dwelling above the cherubim on the
ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies, the most sacred inner sanctuary of
the Tabernacle (Ex 40:34-35). And God’s Shechinah Glory would lead the nation
of Israel
through the wilderness every step of the way, as a pillar of cloud providing a
shade to the nation in the heat of day and a pillar of fire providing light and
heat in the dark of night.
When Solomon’s Temple
was built, the glory of the Lord began to reside there in the Holy of Holies,
just as He had done in the Tabernacle (1 Kings 8:11). And so this manifest
presence of God’s glory remained among the nation for some time, though we are
not told whether or not it was always visible. In due time, as Israel violated
her covenant with the Lord by chasing after idols and disregarding God’s Law, God
raised up the Babylonians to chasten His people by invading the land,
destroying Solomon’s Temple and carting off the Jews to live in Babylon during
that time we refer to as the Babylonian Captivity. The prophet Ezekiel was
among them as they were taken away, and from Babylon ,
he was given a vision of what was going on back in Jerusalem . In his vision, he beheld the most
alarming tragedy of all – the Shechinah Glory of God was departing from Israel . Ezekiel
saw the Glory of the Lord lift up from the Holy of Holies and move to the
doorway of the Temple (9:3; 10:4), and then to the eastern gate of the city
(10:18-19), before moving out to the Mount of Olives (11:22-23), from which the
Shechinah Glory departed from Israel and disappeared from Jewish history.[4]
In time, the Israelites returned from Babylon
and reconstructed their temple, but it paled in comparison to the Temple of Solomon
The exuberant celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles was
always tempered by the reality that the glory of the Lord had not yet returned.
And now, another Feast had come and gone. The great lampstands of the Temple were being snuffed
out yet again, and the people would be reminded once more that they walked in
darkness through a world without the manifest glory of God. And it was on this
occasion, at this time, in the very court where those lampstands had burned,
that the Lord Jesus again spoke to the people, and He said, “I am the Light of
the World.”
The Feast of Tabernacles had been established and practiced
among the Israelites for centuries. Only here and now at this particular time
was the true meaning of it revealed to them. In Chapter 6, Jesus had told the
people that He was the true manna from heaven, more satisfying than even that
which miraculously appeared on the ground every morning during the Exodus. In
Chapter 7, He had told them that He was the true rock, which being struck would
bring forth living water more satisfying than that which flowed from the rock
that Moses struck in the wilderness. Here in this passage, He is saying to them
that He is the Light of the World, the true pillar of fire – the true Shechinah
Glory of God. He is the true Tabernacle – the dwelling place of God among men.
In John 1:1 we are told that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. The eternal preexistent Divine Word, we are told
in John 1:14, “became flesh and dwelt among us.” The word that is used there
“to dwell” is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word for Tabernacle. In Jesus
Christ, God had pitched His tent among humanity; He tabernacled in our midst.
And John says there, “and we beheld His glory.” The glory that was remembered
by the kindling of the lampstands in the Temple
courts was now surpassed by the return of the Shechinah Glory to the temple in
the person of Jesus Christ, the Light of the World.
In Jesus, the glory of God was made manifest again to the
nation of Israel , but not
exclusively for the nation of Israel .
He is the Light of the World. Into this
world – the one in which you and I live; the one that is filled with darkness;
the one for which Israel was chosen by God to be a missionary people, declaring
the light of God’s truth to all nations; the one which has languished apart
from the manifest presence of God in sin and moral decay – into this world, Christ has come, and the
Light of the World has dawned. You are not cut off from that Light by your
ethnicity, geography, or chronology. You do not have to be a Jew to behold the
Light; you do not have to live in Israel ; it does not matter that you
live twenty-one centuries after Christ lived and died on earth. You walk in
darkness; you live in a dark world; you are separated from the brightness of
God’s glory because of sin. But, as the prophet Isaiah had foretold 7 centuries
before Christ’s coming, “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; Those who live in a dark land, the light
will shine on them” (Isa 9:2). Jesus Christ is that light.
II. People who live in darkness have to respond to the
Light.
Have you ever come out of a dark room, say a movie theater
perhaps, in broad daylight? You feel as if your retinas are being fried, and
your first instinct is to slam your eyelids shut to block out the light. You
have to consciously overcome that urge if you want your eyes to adjust to the
light. And the same is true spiritually. When light penetrates the darkness, we
have a choice to make: to remain in darkness, or to emerge from it into the
light.
Jesus speaks of one response here: following Him. He is the
Light of the World, and He invites all who live in darkness to come to Him and
follow Him. In John’s Gospel, the idea of “following” Jesus is often synonymous
with “believing in Him.” But when we speak of “believing in Jesus,” we need to
be clear. We are not just talking about agreeing to certain historical facts.
We are talking about a personal relationship with Him where there is a faith
commitment, where there is trust. Thus, the imagery of following is
appropriate. As the Israelites journeyed through the wilderness, they didn’t
know where they were going or what they would find along the way. But God was
leading them by a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night, and
they had to trust that He would lead them in the way that He wanted them to go.
And their task was to believe that, to trust Him, and to follow. In a similar
way, Jesus has become for us our pillar of fire, and on our journey through the
wilderness of this world en route to the homeland that has been promised us, we
must follow Him. But the road will not always be easy. He never said it would
be. In fact, when Jesus spoke of following Him, He spoke of it in difficult
terms. He said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, He must deny himself, and
take up his cross daily and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). Following Him means daily
dying to self, and embracing the hardships that He leads us to encounter,
following Him even if it means following Him on a path to death. We can do that
because we know Him, and we trust Him. We know that to follow Him is to walk in
the light, which is better by far than groping and stumbling about in the
darkness. He has come to shatter the darkness of our sin by the light of His
glory, and He bids us to arise and follow Him – to leave the life of sin behind
and walk in His light.
It may not seem like much of a choice, given the
alternative. An offer like this might seem to some of us irresistible. How
could we not follow the Light of the
World? Well, amazingly, multitudes upon multitudes opt for the alternative. In
John 3:19, Jesus said, “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the
world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were
evil.” Their deeds were evil, and they loved the darkness because it was a
cloak for the evil of their deeds. They don’t want to come into the Light of
the Lord because their evil deeds will be exposed. This is why, at the root of
so much professed unbelief today, there is not an intellectual argument but a
moral one. In Romans 1, Paul speaks of those who “suppress the truth in
unrighteousness.” For so many people, it is not because there is no evidence,
argument, or reason that might compel them to believe. It is because they know
that to acknowledge God is to acknowledge that their sins have to be dealt
with. And because they don’t want to deal with their sins, instead they look
for reasons to not believe in God, to not believe in Christ, and/or to reject
the truth of God’s Word. If they can cloud out the Light, then they can
continue unimpeded in the enjoyment of their sin in the darkness.
I didn’t read any books about that or conduct any scholarly
research. I lived it for many years! But as I have talked to others, I have
seen that my situation was not unique. And as I read the Bible, God’s Word
corresponds to my experience. It would have been a lot easier to just read
God’s Word to start with and learn it that way, instead of the hard way. But I
loved the darkness more than the light because my deeds were evil. So I argued
my way out of the light, and hid myself away in the darkness. And the same is
true for many people. I wouldn’t say it is true of every unbeliever, but it is
true for many, and may be true for someone here today. But Jesus has come as
the Light of the World to penetrate the darkness, and He offers you a choice.
You can come out of the dark and follow Him. And there are great promises
offered here to those who do. That’s the third and final point. First was that
Jesus has come as the Light of the World. Second is that we are driven to make
a response to the Light, and third …
III. There are great promises offered to those who follow
Christ as the Light of the World
A few months ago, the floodlight on the corner of our house
burned out, and, well, I hate to confess but, I just haven’t gotten around to
changing the bulb yet. The result of this is that every night when I take the
trash out, I have to fumble around in the dark, walking through spider webs, tripping
over tree roots, bikes and scooters, basketballs, and trying to figure out
what—or WHO—is rustling around in the bushes! It’s an unnerving experience. You
would think I’d be more strongly motivated to replace that bulb. I guess I’ve
just gotten used to walking in darkness, even though I don’t really enjoy it. I
think there are a lot of people who are used to walking around in spiritual
darkness – it’s all they’ve ever known. But if you could catch them in an
honest moment, they might confess that they really don’t enjoy it. They just
don’t know how to fix it. The fact of the matter is, they can’t fix it. The
Bible makes it clear that there is nothing that we can do to bring ourselves
out of the darkness of our sin. That is why the Gospel is good news. What we
could not do for ourselves, Jesus Christ has done for us. When the best we can
do is feel our way around in the darkness, the Light of the World has come and
He promises us that if we follow Him, we will not walk in darkness, but will
have the Light of life.
At some point in our lives, we may have memorized a Bible
verse in Vacation
Bible School
The same Apostle John who penned this Gospel picks up this
idea once more in his first epistle, as he says, “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). As we walk in the Light
of Christ, following Him in faith and trust, in fellowship with Him and with
others who are walking in the Light, we are kept from sin, and cleansed from
sin, by the blood of Jesus, which was poured out on the cross for our rescue as
He died in our place. We have this promise: Jesus is the Light of the world.
Follow Him and you will not walk in darkness. Job said, “By His light, I walked
through darkness” (Job 29:3). As Israel ’s way was illuminated by the
Shechinah Glory in the pillar of fire, so our way is illuminated by the light
of Christ. We do not walk in darkness.
And the promise continues: If you follow Christ as the Light
of the world, not only will you not walk in darkness, but you will have the
Light of life. In Chapter 1, John said of the preincarnate Christ, the Divine
Word of God, “In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men.” The Light of
life was something that Christ possessed in Himself. But here He says that those
who follow Him shall have the Light of life as well. It is something that His
followers possess, and the present tense suggests that they possess the Light
of life perpetually. If you are a follower of Jesus, the Light of life is
within you. You have HIM. That is why it is no contradiction for Jesus to say
here, “I am the Light of the world,” and to say elsewhere to His followers,
“You are the light of the world” (Matt 5:14). You are the light of the world,
because the True Light of the world lives within you – Christ has taken up
residence within you in the person of the Holy Spirit just as the Shechinah
Glory inhabited the temple and tabernacle in days of old. It is not your light
which others see, but His light in you. You are the light of the world in the
way that the moon is the light of night. It has no light of its own, but shines
as it reflects the light of the sun. So, you are the light of the world as you
reflect the light of Christ, the Light of the world.
Though darkness may surround you, it will not envelop you,
because you have the Light of life.
Though death itself should threaten to shroud you in darkness forever, you have the Light of life in Christ, and the
Light of life in Him will never be darkened. The Bible says that we will dwell
forever in His light. In the book of Revelation, John gets a glimpse of heaven
and says of it, “I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the
Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of the sun
or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has
illumined it, and its lamp is
the Lamb” (Rev 21:22-23). He said, “And 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; and they will reign forever and ever” (Rev 22:5). In Jesus,
because He is the Light of the world, we do not walk in darkness. We have the
Light of life. And we will live forever in His light.
When
Jesus Christ died on the cross, bearing the wrath of His Father for the sins that
you and I have committed, the Bible says that there was darkness over the whole
land for three hours (Mk 15:33; Lk 23:44). He is the Light of the world, yet He
endured the darkness of death under the judgment of God for us, so that by
following Him, we might have the Light of life forever. He walked through our
darkness for us, so that we might walk in His light. He says, “I am the Light
of the World. He who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have
the Light of life.” The converse is true also. Everything and everyone that is not Jesus is not light. If we are
following anyone or anything other than Him, we will walk in darkness (indeed,
we cannot walk in His light), and we
will not have the Light of life, only the darkness of death. So there is a
choice to be made. Come into His light and follow Him. Or, love darkness more
than light because of the evil of our deeds. That is the choice we all must
make. Some of you have made it, and you are walking in the Light. But you know
others who are still languishing in the darkness of sin. Jesus, the Light of
the World, said that you who follow Him are the light of the world. A city set
on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the
lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 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 5:14-16).
[1] Mishnah Sukkah 5.2, from The Mishnah: A New Integrated Translation
and Commentary. Accessed online: http://www.emishnah.com/moed2/Sukkah/5.pdf,
August 1, 2013.
[2] Alfred
Edersheim, citing Talmud Sukkah 53a
and Talmud Jerusalem Sukkah 55b, in The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (Peabody,
Mass.: Hendrickson, 1993), 589; cf. also Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel (Downers Grove, Ill.:
InterVarsity, 2001), 141.
[4]
Fruchtenbaum, 420-421.
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