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Jesus:
Light of the World
John 8:12-20
Jesus makes His bold
claim of being the light of the world right in front of the temple
during the big festival of tabernacles, with a great crowd gathered.
At night they would surround the temple mount with candelabras,
and the atmosphere was illumined.
I believe it was at that time that Jesus spoke our text...I am
the light of the world! It
was true 2,000 years ago when He said it, and still true today. In the beginning,
Christ was part of the Godhead which said, Let there be light.
He was in the burning bush which spoke to Moses and that pillar
of fire which led
Our world depicts
Christianity as a leap of faith into the darkness, but the fact is, it's
a step into the light! Jesus illuminates the
darkness. v. 12 What is darkness?
Simply put, it is the absence of light.
If you walk into a dark room and you don't like it, it does no
good to stand there and curse the darkness.
The best thing to do is to turn on a light, and then darkness
flees. Biblically speaking,
darkness is a symbol of life without God, who is light.
To live without the knowledge of God and His Word is to walk in
darkness...a spiritual darkness.
The world walks in 3 kinds of darkness: 1. Mental/intellectual darkness. [Ben Stein / Richard
Dawkins clip]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlZtEjtlirc Man chooses to walk in
darkness because to step into the light would expose him as the sinner
that he is. 'Tis better to
lurk in the shadows! Man has always sought
the answer to the 3 great questions:
Who am I? Why am I here?
Where am I going? The world has no good
answers to these questions.
I'm no one special, I have no real purpose, and I'm going nowhere.
At death I will cease to exist.
That's not light, that's darkness, and people are sucked in like
a black hole, having no direction, not knowing where their life is
headed, unless a beacon appears on a hillside, a lighthouse I say,
showing them the way! And if only you can answer those 3
questions, then it matters not if you never even passed grade school,
you have more light than all the enlightened PhD’s in the world! I know I am the
direct, special creation of God, made in His image.
And I was made for the distinct purpose of bringing glory to Him.
Where am I going?
First of all, somewhere, for I have an eternal soul that will go on
somewhere, depending upon what I do with the sacrifice of Christ! ill.--man has built
models of our solar system, to scale.
They are really quite fascinating when you see them in motion.
If you tried to convince an atheist that that model resulted from
an explosion, he would never believe you.
And I say, if you can't believe that, how can you believe the
real thing came about that way?
They walk in darkness
because they want to. 2 Peter 3:5 2. Moral darkness. The world calls good
evil and evil good. They
scoff at things morally good, and praise low morality. [Letterman clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHe-HuHEKw4 ] Whoopi Goldberg
defended Roman Polanski saying what he did wasn't 'rape-rape' because he
used a drug and didn't hold the girl down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFcI0kAypu8 ill.--kids YouTube
their fights at recess and we call it pecking order, or survival of the
fittest...only the strongest survive.
Might makes right?
Light and darkness do not
mix. They are not tolerant
of one another. If we want
light in the schoolyard, then you'd better allow that light in the
classroom! What we believe
affects how we behave. We
have taught darkness, therefore our kids are walking in darkness. I'm glad you are here
today. Show me your Bibles.
We are here today to turn on the light, and walk in that light!
mental darkness/moral darkness... 3. Spiritual darkness. The New Age movement
is a mixture of pantheism, mysticism, and the occult.
And they say there's no personal god, but that god is what you
want him to be. Now, they
talk a lot about LIGHT. It's
not true light, is the artificial, counterfeit light of satanic forces.
All that glitters is not God! Likewise, many
'churches' today would say Jesus is the light, which sounds good, but
then they base their beliefs on tradition instead of the Lamp of God,
and they walk down dark paths of works salvation and social improvement,
instead of walking in the light of Jesus' own words which beg us to face
the negatives of sin and judgment, hell and punishment, in order to
dispel true darkness and walk in true light. Meanwhile, the few
faithful churches which remain have some Christians who DO hide their
light under a bushel and DO let Satan blow out their light...so how in
the world are we going to get the world to see the light of Jesus? Joke—2 guys were
carpenters, and 1 always was teasing the other, not known for being very
smart. One night he shined his flashlight up to the 2nd
story of a house and said, ‘Would you mind climbing up this light beam
and getting my hammer for me?’ The nitwit said, ‘Hah, how dumb do
think I am?’ ‘I’m sorry,’ he replied. ‘You’d better be, I
know you too well…you’d let me get halfway up and then turn the light
off!’
Sounds like our witness,
God opens a door for us and we get part of the way there and then go out
like a light! God has deposited the
light in 3 places: In the
Scriptures, in the Savior, and in the Saints.
[truly saved persons] Since His Word is a
light, every time we speak it and preach it we are turning on the
lights! Jesus is the Word, and
is the light of the world: John 9:5 [5] As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
Without Him, it’s a dark place, that is, unless He shines thru us! And so, the light was
deposited in the saints:
Jesus looked at His crew of common fishermen and blue collar disciples
and said, You are the light of the world!
The subject of His sentence was in the emphatic tense, meaning,
You and you alone are the light of the world!
That's funny, since the Greeks were known as the enlightened
ones, not these commoners.
Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato had already given their full teachings,
and the Greek's art and architecture gave them placement as the most
advanced society. So how
ironic is it when Jesus then turns to this hairy bunch of Duck Dynasty
looking characters and says, You and you alone are the light of the
world...I'm depositing the light in you so you can go out to a dark
world and illuminate! I'd
rather be a redneck Christian, Lord, than anything I know! Why were they the
light of the world? Not
because they in some way produced light, but rather, because they
reflected HIS light! Even
better, the light is INSIDE of us, so I like to picture myself not as a
mirror reflecting light, but as a glass globe, out of which the light
can shine. I don't want
people to see me, but Jesus in me.
So it is not the quality of the globe, but the quality of the
light that men see. Matthew 5:16 These are great days
in which we live, because they are dark days, and that's when our light
can really shine. "Pastor, pray for me,
I'm one of the only Christians where I work."
"OK, I'll pray for you."
"Yeah, pray that I get a different job."
What? ill.--that's like a
light bulb that doesn't want to go to a dark place.
What if every light bulb wanted to be a part of the display at
Menards? They would all be
useless, and none would have an impact, stand out, or get noticed, or
make any difference at all!
Quit whining and start shining! 2 Cor. 4:3-4 [3] But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: [4] In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
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