Jesus, the Light of Men

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Transcript:

Turn with me again to John chapter 1. We’re going to pick up where we stopped this morning. And we were talking this morning, if you weren’t here, we began talking about the story of Christ’s first coming, the Christmas story in essence, from John’s gospel.

And John doesn’t spend a huge time talking about the manger. He does mention Christ’s coming in the flesh down in verse 14, and we’ll get to that the Sunday before Christmas. But instead of explaining the mechanics of how it happened, the way Matthew and Luke do, this is what happened, this is what happened next, this is who was there, this is where they went, all these things, John looks at it from a spiritual perspective and says this is what it was all for.

This is who he is, this is why he came, this is what he came to accomplish. And so for the next couple weeks, we’re going to look at the Christmas story according to John’s perspective, the first coming according to John. And this morning we talked about how we tend to freeze people in roles we’re comfortable with, whether it’s our children not wanting them to grow up, whether it’s loved ones we don’t want to, we don’t want them to die, we don’t want them to move away.

We want to keep things as they are. We want to keep things where they’re comfortable, and how the world, and too many times Christians, have said we want to freeze Jesus in that little box called the manger and keep him there where he’s, you know, he can just be a nice addition to our life, but he doesn’t have any expectations for us. He doesn’t make any claims that we have to take seriously.

In other words, I can live my life exactly the way I want to and still have Jesus a part of it because he’s just the little baby in the manger. And we talked about how according to John’s gospel here, he’s not just the baby in the manger. He was and is God in the flesh.

We’re going to read through the passage again tonight because I want you to get familiar with it. But it says in John chapter 1, starting in verse 1, 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. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light.

That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

John bare witness of him and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake. He that cometh after me is preferred before me, for he was before me. And of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace.

But the law, or for the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father. he hath declared him. And we talked this morning about the attributes that Jesus Christ shares with God the Father that make it impossible for us just to keep him frozen in the manger, but instead force us to take a good look, eyes wide open, at who he really is.

That he shares the Father’s eternality. He was before there was anything. At the beginning of the world, at the beginning of time, he was already there, and even before that, he was there.

That he shares the Father’s divine nature in every sense that the Father is God, Jesus Christ is God as well, and that He shares the Father’s power and authority. The power to create, the power to judge, the power to forgive sins, all of these things are within the hand of Jesus Christ. Tonight, we move on from Jesus, the creator of all that we discussed this morning, and we move on to Jesus, the light of men, as John calls Him. And the light is a funny thing, how it can overcome the darkness.

I know you’ve heard the illustrations before about how light just dispels the darkness. But I was reminded of it firsthand last Monday. I had been running some errands, and Madeline and I came into the church.

We were going to, well, I was going to do some work, and she was going to work on napping. But we were both going to be about our tasks. And we pulled into the parking lot about the same time that Ray did, and it took me a minute to get out of the car with her.

As you know, it does take you twice as long to do anything with little kids. And about the time I went in, Ray said, I don’t know what you’re planning on doing up here, but there’s no electricity. Oh my goodness.

I have this long list of things I need to do today. And sure enough, he was right. We’d had a lot of wind and electricity was off.

I walked in and the emergency lights were on downstairs and it was pretty dark down there. It’s kind of eerie seeing nothing on except those emergency lights. But, you know, we had the light from the doors and the light from the door up here coming down the stairwell and you could still see pretty well in the hallway and I thought well okay I guess I can go find something else to do wait until there’s electricity and Ray said somebody ought to call the electric company I thought that’s a good idea couldn’t hurt it’s crazy but it just might work and I said okay all of the phone books are in the office so okay I’ll go down there and you know it’s kind of light in the hallway but you turn through the doorway into the office and it wasn’t so light after all.

And I know where things are in the office and yet I could not find my way over to the table. It was pitch black. And I got my cell phone out of my pocket and I’ve got this neat little free app that the phone becomes a flashlight, so to speak.

I mean, it’s not something I’d use on a search and rescue mission, but it gets the job done. It’s just a little white light that comes from the cell phone. And I got that out and as pitch black as it was, turned it on, it made that little weird high-pitched whining noise that it makes when it turns that thing on, and all of a sudden there was a little bit of light, and just enough light with that tiny insignificant little screen, enough light that I was able to find my way to the table, find the phone book, and then came up with the brilliant idea, works better, silly, if you’ll take the phone book out to the kitchen where there’s sunlight to read it by.

Wouldn’t you know, it was easier to read the numbers. But even just that tiny little light illuminated the things around it. Now, it didn’t make it like broad daylight, but it gave us enough light to see.

And to look at that in there, the contrast between that and the pitch blackness around us was unmistakable. I mean, you couldn’t get a clearer contrast than that. Folks, the light is so different from the darkness that there’s a stark contrast. And we see that played out for us in spiritual ways, too.

the difference between the light and the darkness. This world is full of darkness, as we’ll discuss in just a moment. And Jesus Christ not only is full of light, but He is light, spiritually speaking.

And Jesus Christ is not just an addition to the world, as we like to portray Him when He’s just the baby in the manger, somebody I can add on to my life and do whatever I want to do. He is, by His very essence, light and life spiritually. He is in stark contrast to the things and principles and values of this world.

He’s not something that we can have both and, him and the world. He’s something that when he comes into our lives, he changes everything. And that contrast cannot exist. The darkness cannot coexist with the light.

And yet so many men around us are still living in darkness. We’re going to focus in tonight on verses 4 and 5 of the chapter that we just read, or the partial chapter that we just read, where it says, In him was life. I think I heard that flashlight thing going.

He’s got the same thing I do. All right. So that’s the noise I heard where I knew I was going to be able to find the phone book.

It says in verse 4, In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. Now, there’s a lot to be said in just a minute about the darkness comprehending it not.

But the Bible says here that Jesus in him was life, and the life that was in him was the light of men. See, before Jesus came, there wasn’t this light of men. If we were born, and I know there are some groups professing to be Christians who claim that we’re all born with this inner light, and depending on what they mean, maybe they’re right.

But from what I understand of what I think they mean, they’re talking about each of us being born essentially good, and we’re all basically good. Folks, that’s not what my Bible says. My Bible says that there is nothing good in me.

It says there are none good but God. It says we all are like sheep have gone astray. It doesn’t say here that there was light in men and Jesus came and made it even brighter.

It doesn’t say that. It said in Him was life and that life was the light of men. Any light that we have within ourselves at all comes from Him.

Any life that we have at all comes from Him. And we can read between the lines here and realize that, hey, if He had to come and bring life and light with Him, that means we were lacking in those things. It makes sense, doesn’t it?

If He had to come and bring those things to us, it was because we were lacking. Jesus didn’t do anything unnecessarily. As I read through the Gospels and the accounts of His ministry, I don’t see things happening by accident.

There are things that happened that the disciples may have looked at and said, well, that was a coincidence. Gee, I’m glad things worked out that way. But we have the benefit of seeing how everything happened, and we can see everything He did, every trip He made, every person He talked to was part of His plan and to accomplish something.

Folks, when He came to bring light and life, it was not because we were good and He just needed to us better, it was because we were completely and utterly lacking in those things. And it’s a teaching not just of this passage, but of the Bible as a whole, that men are spiritually dead. The Bible talks about us being dead in trespasses and sins.

Now, some people want to take it a step further and say that means we can’t even respond to the gospel, but the Bible says the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. It doesn’t say there’s another step in there. But apart from Christ, we’re spiritually dead.

We’re not born knowing the way to God. When you take the Bible away from people. You can see this illustrated.

When you take the Bible away from people and say, what do you think about God? What do you think about heaven? What do you think about the way we’re supposed to live?

We don’t tend to be right on target in our answers, do we? I don’t mean us, but as a human race, take people, don’t expose them to the Bible at all and say, what do you think about God? Well, I just think they’ll describe Him in various ways where it bears no resemblance to the God of the Bible, where He’s just a cosmic Santa Claus, gives us whatever we want, just hugs on everybody, doesn’t notice the wrong we do, and certainly He has goodness in His nature.

Certainly, He is love, but we tend to have a one-sided view of God, an incomplete view of God separated from the Bible. We can’t even figure out who God is on our own. How do we get to heaven?

The world thinks you leave it to themselves and leave the world to itself, and People have devised all sorts of religions about what can I do to get to where God is. And they usually boil down to, I’ve got to do X, Y, and Z. I’ve got to make enough sacrifices.

I’ve got to pray to the ancestors. I’ve got to go and worship in this particular spot. I’ve got to go and give money.

And it all boils down to, I’ve got to, I’ve got to, I’ve got to. When the Bible clearly teaches, there is nothing good that we can do. See, we’re born spiritually dead.

Man died spiritually in the garden with Adam and Eve when they sinned against God. Romans chapter 5, I believe it is, talks about death entering into the world through sin by one man. They were born spiritually dead.

But the good news in that we find in the same passage here in John chapter 1. And we see in other places like Ephesians chapter 2. It doesn’t just indicate that we’re spiritually dead.

It indicates that Jesus Christ is life and brings life. In Him was life and the life was the light of men. Ephesians chapter 2, if you want to turn there just briefly, one of many passages that illustrate this same principle.

Ephesians chapter 2 says, and you hath he quickened. When you see that word quick or quickened in the Bible, it’s an older English form to make alive. If you quicken somebody, it means you make them alive.

When it says he’ll judge the quick and the dead, it doesn’t mean fast people and dead people, as I used to think. I thought, what about us who are alive and slow? No, it means those who are alive and those who are dead, he judges.

And you hath he quickened or made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath even as others. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. By grace are you saved, and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show forth the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

And then it goes on from there to a familiar passage that I’ve preached on before. for by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, lest any man should boast. But what it says in the beginning of chapter 2 here is that we were all dead in sins, and what that means is exactly what it goes on to say, that we were under the power of Satan. We were sinning, we were following every form of sin and depravity, because that’s what, we were in bondage to sin, and we were in bondage to the devil.

And you may say, Well, before I was born again, before I was saved, I wasn’t that bad. I’ve told you before I was saved at five. How much trouble could I really have gotten into?

It’s not to say that everybody’s as bad as they possibly can be, but we’re bad throughout. We’re sinful throughout because we’re not under the power of God. It’s not to say He doesn’t have power over us, but we’ve submitted in obedience to Satan.

That’s just our default nature to be in bondage to sin. And yet in that position, while we are dead to sin, it says Christ quickens us, makes us alive, brings us back to life. So in Him was life, and that life was the light of men.

Men are spiritually dead, but Christ is life, and Christ brings life. When we understand that point, it’ll affect us in our witnessing. It’ll affect us in our relations with other people.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve gotten very frustrated at times with the way people live. I’ve gotten very frustrated with the way people act. I’ve gotten very frustrated, especially with the things people believe, and tend to be just ready to write them off.

They say, well, that old heathen. Why even bother talking to him about God? He doesn’t care.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, maybe he doesn’t care, but it may not be that he doesn’t care. It may be that he doesn’t know any better. How is that possible?

We live in the Bible Belt. There are still people, there are people tonight in Fayetteville, Arkansas, that if they know anything about Jesus Christ, they may know that He died. They may know that He died for the world, but they don’t realize that He died for them.

They don’t realize that His death was payment for their sins. And we can’t hold that against them. They don’t know.

They’re spiritually dead. 2 Corinthians talks about the God of this world, not our God, but the God of this world, with a little g, having blinded their eyes. People around us aren’t, excuse me, none of us are born basically good.

I hate to say that because my children were just recently born and I loved them, but they were not born basically good. And people are not born knowing how to live godly lives. Because of society’s customs, we can learn how to act, we can learn how to do good things, but at our core, we’re still corrupt.

I’ll tell stories from time to time. Benjamin did such and such. You’re never going to believe what Benjamin said.

And something that I always think of is something Brother James has said a few times. Boy, that sin nature is always there, isn’t it? Yes, it is.

It’s a reminder to me, yes, he needs to be disciplined, but maybe I should not get so mad at him. It’s his nature, just like it’s my nature. We’re born sinners.

But you know what? Even while we were yet sinners, Romans says, Christ died for us. So he didn’t come just to be born and be a pretty story in a manger.

He came to bring spiritual life to those who are completely lacking it. None of us know the way to God on our own. None of us have a shot at being good enough for God on our own.

Most people in the world, ladies and gentlemen, are so caught up in sin and so blinded to the gospel, so blinded to their need that they don’t even realize their sinful condition. Now, people in the world realize that they do bad things. I think we have a sense of right and wrong.

The Bible says that God’s word is written on our hearts. God’s law is written on our hearts. But you ask people out on the street, and the vast majority of them will tell you, if I can just be good enough, it’ll all even out.

It’s kind of a Muslim theology that if the scales tip in my favor, if there’s enough good to outweigh the bad, I’ll be all right. The world does not realize that we serve a God whose standard is absolute, 100% sinless perfection. We’re spiritually dead.

We’re born spiritually dead, and so spiritually dead, we don’t even realize how dead we are. And yet Jesus Christ came to bring us life, came to show us the way to God and provide the means for our reconciliation with God. Turning back to John chapter 1, In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. The Bible talks about us living in darkness, and darkness so deep that we couldn’t even comprehend the light. That’s not to say that men couldn’t see the light.

I think everybody that ever met Jesus knew there was something different about him, knew that he was not like us at all. But being so lost in the dark and being so disoriented to the things around us, that to see that light and say, I can’t even figure out what that is. That is so alien.

That is so foreign to me. Ladies and gentlemen, we stumble in the dark spiritually by nature. The world around us, let’s be honest, we get frustrated, as I talked about a minute ago, because they don’t act right.

I get frustrated because people around me don’t live like Christians. They cuss, and they drink, and they have affairs, and they do all these things that just are irksome, that bother me, that make my skin crawl sometimes, to be honest. And we could sit around and wag our fingers at them and judge them all day and say, you know, shame on you for not doing this. But folks, our job is to get the lost saved, not to teach lost people how to act like saved people.

Now, once they’re saved, we ought to teach them what God’s Word says. But our job as Christians is not to teach saved people how to, or excuse me, well, it’s not either that, to teach saved people how to act like lost people. But what I was trying to say is it’s not to make lost people act like saved people.

Because you know what? You’ll end up with a lot of well-behaved people in hell. Our job is to take lost people and show them the light of salvation.

Jesus came to be a light. And then, with that comprehension of who he is, they’ll be able to walk in the light. But just in our normal, spiritually dead state, we see the light and we don’t understand it.

We see people trying to live for Jesus, and we think, a bunch of holier-than-thou snobs, a bunch of judgmental church people, And don’t realize that people in church were just normal people with the same flaws, the same troubles that everybody else has, who simply realize how lost we were, how dependent we are on God’s grace, and trying so hard to please Him out of gratitude for what He’s done for us. But the light shone in darkness, and the world didn’t comprehend it. People don’t always comprehend the light when they see it today, and they certainly didn’t in Christ’s day.

Had they understood, had they completely understood who Jesus Christ was and what he came for, it probably wouldn’t have been a good thing initially because they wouldn’t, hear me out on this, they probably wouldn’t have crucified him. They would have tried to sweep him into power, as some of them did, tried to sweep him into power and make him king. But what he came for was to be crucified, to die for our sins because he didn’t come just to establish a political kingdom and solve things that way.

He came to solve our greatest problem, which was the problem of the sin and the darkness in our hearts. The light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not. So the bad news there, just like in the first case, the bad news is that we’re spiritually dead apart from Christ. The bad news here is that we stumble in the darkness.

Not only do we not realize our lost condition and don’t know the way to get back to God, even if we did realize it, we don’t understand what it takes to please God. We don’t understand what it is to live a godly life apart from Jesus Christ. But He is the light, the Bible says. the light shineth in darkness.

And you know what? At first, as I said, they were so disoriented by the difference of him that they didn’t comprehend it. But as time went by, by the power of the Holy Spirit, they understood who he was.

There was a time, probably for many of us, when we heard the gospel for the first time and it didn’t make sense. I grew up in church. I’m sure I heard the gospel many times before I actually understood it.

Because I was, as I said, I grew up in church. Every week we were in Sunday school. We were in morning church.

We were in children’s church. We were in evening church. Wednesday night, visitation, prayer meeting, we were there.

And I would sit there and I would pay attention. I’d sometimes talk back to the preacher too. My parents like to remind me of those stories and tell me I’m going to pay for it one day when Benjamin gets a little older.

But I’m certain I heard the gospel before the time I understood it and responded to it. And at that point, it just didn’t make sense. Now, I was only five years old at that time, but I know there have been people who’ve sat in churches for decades thinking they were saved and hearing invitation after invitation after invitation and thinking they were saved.

And suddenly one day, it’s like the lights came on and they comprehended the light for the first time and trusted Jesus Christ. And all this time, they’d been trusting in something else. Folks, the light doesn’t come on for everybody all at once. Sometimes when the light is shown where we’re huddled in the darkness, trying to hide because of our own sin, we don’t comprehend it, but eventually the light breaks through.

Because the darkness and the light can’t coexist, and the darkness flees wherever the light is shown. And when Jesus came, he brought light to the world. Jesus said in John chapter 8, it says, Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world.

He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. Ladies and gentlemen, he is the light. He came not just to be born as a baby, not just to be a cute story, but he came to bring us the things that we were most desperately in need of.

He came to bring us light, and he came to bring us life. Not physical light, not physical life, but spiritual. Where we were dead in sins and trespasses, he’s able to quicken us, to make us alive again. Where we stumble in the darkness, he’s able to provide us with light.

And it’s as simple, when we get frustrated with the world around us, those of us who are believers, when we get frustrated with the world around us and why won’t they act right and want to write them off. We need to realize, we need to understand what our condition really is apart from Christ, what He really came to accomplish. Because as I said, it will affect our witnessing, it’ll affect our relationships with people to realize they’re just living out their job description.

As one of my favorite radio preachers, Alistair Begg, will say, they’re just pagans living out their job description. It’s as simple as that. They’re just doing what they know.

And our job is not to teach them how to act right and clean up their lives and sanitize their lives, but to introduce them to the one who brings them life in the first place, to introduce them to the one who brings light in the first place. And if all they ever hear from us is about the baby in the manger, they miss that. And we miss the joy of telling them that.