Why He Gives Us Light

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I’ve put a picture up here for Brother Jack to show you. It should be there. These are a group of men who were soldiers in a different war.

These men fought in World War I. I almost said World War II. These men fought in World War I, First World War, fought for the United States.

All of these men in this photo have ties to Oklahoma. As a matter of fact, I believe every one of them was from Oklahoma, and they were members, as I am, of the Choctaw Nation. And these men, pictured here, were instrumental in several battles toward the end of the war.

They and some others like them, were instrumental in some battles toward the end of the war, because late in the war, things were not going well even then for the American forces. They were pinned down on the Western Front. You’ve probably seen movies, documentaries, where they were dug in in the trenches there in France, and there was kind of a stalemate between them and the Germans.

And one day, one of the commanders of one of the units realized that two of his soldiers were speaking Choctaw to each other. And he had no idea what in the world they were saying. And it gave him the flash of an idea.

He thought, if I don’t know what they’re saying, the Germans don’t know what they’re saying. Because nobody in Germany speaks Choctaw. And so he realized in his unit battalion, I’m not great on the terminology, but in his group of soldiers, there were eight Choctaws.

And they began to put them on the radio to send messages back and forth. Now, you’re probably familiar with the story of the Navajo code talkers from World War II. We did it first. These men were first. Eventually, by the time the war ended, there were 18 of these men who were trained to transmit messages back and forth on open radio.

And the Germans could hear it, but they couldn’t understand it. As a matter of fact, as time went on, the code got more sophisticated, where they would, even in their speaking of Choctaw, they would encrypt it where other Choctaw listeners who had not been trained might understand the words they’re saying, but not know what they meant. They would use words like, I tried to memorize some of the words.

I can’t remember, it’s a long thing, but for machine gun, there’s not a word for machine gun. So they would say, little guns shoot fast. If they were talking about a grenade, they would call it a tole, a stone. In World War II, when they did this again, because it worked so well, they were able to replicate it in World War II, they didn’t have a word for tank, so they called it a luxi, a turtle.

They were able, they were credited with, in short amount of time, turning the tide of several of these battles toward the end of the war, because they were able to communicate in a way the Germans couldn’t understand. This code worked exceptionally well because it was secret and it was hidden, but the only reason it really worked is because there was somebody on the other side of that radio call who was given the ability to understand. Sometimes things need to be hidden for a purpose, but they still don’t work, they still don’t make a difference unless somebody’s given understanding.

If they were just shouting Choctaw words into the radios, it would have made no difference except that there was somebody on the who could understand. And that’s how the Word of God is. That’s what we’re going to look at today in the parable of the lamp in Luke chapter 8.

Jesus talked about how the Word was hidden, but it’s not hidden forever. It’s not hidden from everybody. The purpose of the Word is there for for him to reveal it so we understand.

It does no good to hide it. Somebody has to be able to understand it. That’s what we’re going to look at today.

If you’ll turn with me to Luke chapter 8. This is where we left off a couple of weeks ago, Luke chapter 8, starting in verse 16. And once you find it, if you would stand with me as we read together from God’s Word.

If you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Luke chapter 8, it’ll be on the screen for you right there. But let’s read together. We’re going to look at six verses here, this parable of the lamp, and then what Luke says comes next.

Verse 16 says, now no one, after lighting a lamp, covers it over with a container, or puts it under a bed, but he puts it on a lampstand so that those who come in may see the light. For nothing is hidden that will not become evident, nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light. So take care how you listen, for whoever has to him more shall be given, and whoever does not have even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him.

And his mother and brothers came to him, and they were unable to get to him because of the crowd. And it was reported to him, your mother and your brothers are standing outside wishing to see you. But he answered and said to them, my mother and my brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it.

And you may be seated. So last week, Mike Hand was with us talking about missions. It was the week before that we looked at the parable of the sower, which is the thing that comes right before this in Luke chapter 8.

And this parable about sowing seed, it was given so that the meaning would be concealed from the non-believer. As he’s preaching there to a mixed group of people, some people who had trusted him and believed him and others who were skeptical, others who were on the fence, Jesus wanted his disciples to understand what he was talking about with the fact that certain hearts are receptive to the Word of God and others aren’t. at least at a particular moment, a heart may not be receptive to the Word of God.

He wanted his followers to understand this, and so he told it in a parable that the people he was talking about wouldn’t necessarily understand, because it wasn’t for them to understand yet. But to these believers, his disciples, he said it was granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God, and that’s why he explained the parable to them. But here, he goes a step further, and he goes from using seed to using light to express the principle that he does not intend his word to be a mystery to his people.

That’s the one thing that probably the most important thing I want you to take out of this message today is that if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, he does not intend his word to be a mystery to you. Now, that doesn’t mean we understand everything all at once. There’s no, you know, you come to Christ and suddenly everything is downloaded into your brain and you understand everything.

We’re never going to understand everything on this side of eternity. But we shouldn’t either be in a place where we’re going, I can’t make heads or tails of what I’m looking at here. Okay, especially as we go on and we grow in Christ, we should be able to understand His Word.

That’s His will for us. But there’s a few things that He tells us in this parable of the lamp. As He tells this short story about what happens when you light a lamp, what it’s there for and what it’s not there for.

The first thing he tells us that he intends for us to understand is that God speaks intending that his people would understand. He speaks intending that his people would understand. We see this in verses 16 and 17.

It says, no one, after lighting a lamp, covers it over with a container or puts it under a bed. And what he’s describing here, putting it under a container, that would just, you wouldn’t be able to see the light, blocking the light. Putting it bed is not like we think of sliding it under a bed.

That’s a good way to catch your mattress on fire. Back in their day, they had mats they slept on. We’re talking about like if you throw a blanket over a fire to try to put it out.

Nobody’s going to put their bed over this lamp so that as soon as they’ve lit it, they extinguish it. He’s saying this is crazy, especially in a world like they lived in where lamps were a little bit pricey. I won’t say they were a luxury item, but you were going to be very careful with your lamp and you’re going to use it when you needed it because there was a cost involved in that lamp.

He says, nobody lights it just so they can hide the light or extinguish it altogether. No one went through that trouble and that expense just to put it out immediately. He says instead there in verse 16, but he puts it on a lamp stand so that those who come in may see the light.

So instead of taking it and hiding the light or extinguishing the light, as soon as you’ve gone to all the trouble and the expense of lighting the thing, he said the lamp is lit so that it could be put in a prominent place. This was done so that an entire space could be filled with light and everybody could receive the benefit of that light. We’ve had enough power outages between tornadoes and just the fact that Cotton Electric decided to redo all of the lines in our neighborhood right after we bought the house, so we spent about two years with them just shutting the power off whenever.

One time they notified us in advance. That was nice. But the rest of the time we just had random outages.

And so we kind of learned to keep some LED lanterns and things handy. You get one of those lanterns, and especially if you get a good one, it can put off a lot of light. But you don’t necessarily set it in the floor.

You know, we’d stack stuff in the middle of the floor, put it in the middle of the room, put it up high, where suddenly the whole room is lit up. That’s the purpose of having a light like that, having a lantern. And so Jesus is saying the purpose of having the light, the purpose of having the lamp, is so that the light can shine on everything, so that things can be seen.

Otherwise, you’re just stumbling around in the dark. Now, it’s important that we stop here and understand what he’s talking about and what he’s not talking about. I struggled with this message, putting this together, because I just couldn’t understand.

Okay, I think I know what he’s trying to say. I had it wrong. What I always tell you the most important thing to understanding God’s Word, apart from the Holy Spirit, is context.

And so I’m looking at this, and I’m thinking of what Jesus said elsewhere about letting your light shine before men. And I’m thinking this has to do with our good works. He’s telling us to put our lamp on a stand.

I saw other commentaries that said we’re supposed to put our lamp on a stand. This is talking about our performance. This is talking about our good works.

This is talking about us shining the light. In context, that’s not what he’s talking about. When you go back and look at what he had just said earlier in Luke chapter 8, he’s talking about how the truth would be hidden and then the truth would be revealed.

And then he comes over and he talks about the lamp and he’s talking about the light being hidden and it’s not supposed to be that way. The light is there to be revealed. And I realized he’s talking about his word.

He’s talking about his truth. That’s why these two stories are together. This is not about us and what we’re supposed to do, although we can take application from it.

This is about what He does. This is about His promise to us that He has not given us the light of His Word just for Him to put it under a bushel, just for Him to extinguish it. We’re not given the Word so that we can just sit here and be puzzled.

He speaks to us with the intent that we would be able to understand, that He’s going to give understanding to His people. He’s sharing the truth in parables. And he did this throughout his ministry.

There were times that not everybody needed to know everything. And we might say, well, that seems kind of elitist. That seems kind of discriminatory. He didn’t want everybody to know the truth.

If everybody understood everything that Jesus was teaching, they might have taken him out and tried to stone him. As a matter of fact, they already did that on a couple of occasions. As we read the Gospels, and especially as we read them in order.

We see Jesus is trying to thread this needle because God’s purpose, the Father’s purpose for him to be there was not to get stoned to death in Galilee. It was also not to be swept into power as an earthly king. And if Jesus, I’ll just say it this way, if everybody knew everything, there was a very real danger of one of those two things happening.

And so Jesus, in obedience to the Father’s will is telling just enough to just enough people so that his disciples would understand what he was here to do, but the crowds wouldn’t either try to sweep him into power or try to stone him to death. Because Jesus’ destination was not assassination in Galilee, and it was not a throne in Galilee. It was a cross outside Jerusalem.

And that’s why Jesus kept some of the truth that he was revealing very close to the vest. That’s why sometimes these things, these truths had to be hidden. But to them, to his people, he gave the light that was needed to see the meaning of what he said. That’s why he tells us in verse 17, for nothing is hidden that will not become evident, nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light.

He’s telling us here that God wants his people to understand his word. I tell my kids to do things. I give instructions because I want those things to be understood and done.

Now, sometimes I’m not always clear about it. My wife will tell you one of my biggest flaws is that I can be a little too indirect, telling the kids, you know, it might be a good idea if you went and, you know, cleaned up all your toys before I try to mow the yard, and she’ll say, why don’t you just tell them to get out and do it? I thought that’s what I was doing, but they didn’t read the subtlety.

Okay, get out there and do it. Now, I tell them, I give them instructions because I want them to understand what I’m asking them to do. I go through a drive-through.

I give instructions. We all do. That sounds rude to say I give instructions, but we tell them what we want because we want them to understand.

It’s very difficult to understand. No cheese on the burger, but I digress. We give those instructions because we want people to understand.

God is the same way. We look at His Word like it’s a big, huge mystery. And again, there are things that are easier to understand and there are things that are more difficult to understand in His Word.

But God didn’t give us this so we could be in perpetual confusion about what it all means. He gave it to us so that we would understand. He wants us to understand.

He also wants us to work at it and study at it and be dedicated to it, but He wants us to understand. So understand that. When you come to your reading and study of the Bible, God is not against you in your quest to understand.

God is for you in your quest to understand because that’s what he put it there for. But there’s a second point here in verse 18. God speaks intending that his people would listen.

I just realized when I typed out the slides, all of those should say his people. Yes, God would like everyone to listen to what he says, but here we’re talking specifically about his people. God speaks intending that his people would listen.

We get to verse 18, and he gives a command to his disciples, because again, they’re the only one. Everybody else thinks he’s over here talking about seeds and lamps they don’t understand. His disciples are the ones that he’s given the understanding to, and so he’s talking to them, and he gives a command, and he gives a warning here in verse 18 when he says, take care how you listen, okay?

The command here is that we must pay attention to how we approach His Word. When He says take care, when He says consider, He’s saying you need to pay attention to how you approach His Word. Yes, it’s God’s intention for you to understand, but it’s not God’s intention just for you to understand so you can fill up your brain and move on and do nothing with it.

He says take care how you listen. Pay attention to how you approach His Word. And we can think about what that means, and that may apply differently to each of us, because we may each struggle in different ways with how we approach God’s Word.

But some of the thoughts that come to mind in terms of how we approach God’s Word and what it would mean to take care and to consider. Some questions that came to my mind, are we eager to hear His Word? And hear His Word covers a whole lot of territory.

Are you eager to sit down and read this and hear what God says? Are you eager to come to church and listen in the service and listen in Sunday school and take in what God’s Word says and the instruction? And I’ll put a little disclaimer on that and say, and compare the instruction to God’s Word.

And if what I say or what any other teacher says doesn’t line up with God’s Word, ignore us and listen to God’s Word. But are we eager to hear His Word? Or do we just walk in and say, this again?

I’ve got to listen to this again. I’ve got to sit down and read my Bible again. Are we eager to hear what he has to say?

Do we treat his word seriously? Now, when I say seriously, I don’t mean somberly. Okay, let me turn off the lights and light the candles and put on my best black outfit and somber music, and now it’s time to read God’s word.

That’s not what I mean by taking it seriously. But do we treat it like it’s the actual word of God? This is not a book of fairy tales and fables.

This is not a book invented by men. Now, the Bible does say that the Holy Spirit used men to write it, but it was very much inspired by the Holy Spirit. This is not a product of human imagination.

This is not something that becomes the Word of God. This is not something that contains the Word of God. Do we approach it like this is God’s Word to us?

God is speaking to us in and through this text. Do we listen to it? Do we treat it?

Do we take it seriously and say, I’m going to this book so I can engage with the mind God? Do we take His Word seriously? Do we prepare ourselves to hear God’s Word?

Let me tell you, He talks about being given and being taken, and it’s talking about spiritual growth. We’ll get to that in a minute, and it deals with understanding. But if we come to God’s Word, whether it’s in our personal study, whether it’s listening to somebody preach or teach, and we get nothing out of it, that has a huge amount to do with how we’ve prepared to engage with God’s Word.

And I know this from my own experience. I know this from sometimes having a bad attitude. I’ve walked into conferences and thought, oh, this guy, I got to listen to this guy.

There are some guys that are just boring. I try not to be one of those guys, but I may be at times. There are some people that bore me.

There are some people that just bug me. It’s not even that what they teach is heretical. There’s just something about them that bugs me. Love them in the Lord, but I don’t necessarily want to sit there and listen to him for 30 minutes.

And if I walk in and I have that kind of attitude, guess what? I’m getting nothing. And I’m walking out of there saying, well, that was a bust. Well, that’s on me because that guy stood up and preached the word.

But if I catch myself doing that and say, it’s not about him. It’s not about me. It’s about the word.

I’ll give you an example. Last year, I went to Falls Creek with the group from the church. And I kind of had a little bit of a, Just a teeny tiny bit of an attitude walking into that.

I’m also not their target demographic. But walking into that, I am used to people watering down the message when they talk to teenagers. And so I just walked in and thought, this is going to be cotton candy fluff.

This is, I’ve got to sit through a whole week of this. And about the time the message was starting the first night, the Holy Spirit convicted me and said, knock that off. You’re going to get out of this what you expect to get out of this.

and so I sat down and said okay I may not he may not do it the way I would do it but let’s see what those were some of the best messages I’ve ever heard in my entire life I don’t know what happened any other week I don’t know what happened any other year but I know that week how I prepared to hear the word had an enormous effect on what I got out of it do we believe his word when we hear it? Are we sitting there saying, maybe, maybe not, or do we believe it’s true because it’s His truth? He told, we saw two weeks ago in the parable of the sower, that if we don’t believe His Word, we’re not going to understand it.

Do we leave space for His Word to change us? Do we come to His Word again, whether in our personal study or in a setting where we’re being taught, do we come to his word saying, oh, that’s interesting. Doesn’t apply to me.

Or do we come saying, God, how do you want to change me today? Tell you, that’s one of the most dangerous questions you can ask, but it’s also one of the best. God, how do you want to change me today? Do we leave space for his word to change us?

So there’s this command that we’re supposed to pay attention to how we’re approaching the word. Are we approaching it to actually listen? And there’s a warning that accompanies that.

The warning here in verse 18 is what happens based on how we listen. So he says, take care how you listen. And here’s the warning, for whoever has, to him more shall be given.

And whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has, shall be taken away. And he’s talking here, this is not a salvation thing. Nowhere in here is Jesus talking about salvation.

He’s talking to his people, and he’s talking about their understanding of the word. So he says, take care how you listen, take care how you engage with my word because those who have, more is going to be given to them. Meaning you have that understanding because you’re listening, you’re paying attention, you’re ready to soak it in, you’re going to get more of that.

You’re going to get more understanding. You’re going to get more spiritual growth. But if you’re sitting there saying, I can take this or leave it, I don’t care about this, I’m not worried about being changed by it, it’s going to go in one ear and out the other.

Even what you think you have of spiritual growth and spiritual maturity, it’s going to be taken. an understanding it’s going to be taken. The less committed we are to God’s Word, the less we’re going to understand it and the less we’re going to grow in it.

It’s that simple. So if we intently pursue the Word of God, He’s going to grow our understanding and He’s going to grow us. But if we’re careless or we’re unconcerned about the Word of God, then what we do have is going to be taken away.

So whether we listen and how we listen to the Word of God has a direct impact on our spiritual condition and growth. And again, to be clear, I’m not just, this is not, hey, come in and pay better attention on Sunday morning. I’m talking about the way we engage with God’s Word every day.

When we’re sitting there reading it ourselves, when I’m listening to preaching on the radio in the truck, when Scripture is quoted in my house by one of my kids, whatever it is, how we engage with God’s Word, how we listen, and whether we listen has a direct impact on our spiritual condition and growth. So the question we need to ask ourselves is, what is it that keeps us from taking the word to heart like we should? Is there something that keeps you from taking the word to heart the way you should?

Is there something where God has said, this is what I want you to do, and it’s clear in the word, and you say, no, I’m not doing that. That doesn’t apply to me. You say, no, Lord, I’m not doing that.

Is there something that keeps you from taking the word to heart. And then very quickly, Luke kind of tells the story out of order here. It’s not a contradiction.

It’s not an error. He doesn’t say this is the next thing that happens. He says, and, not then.

But there’s a story that happened a little earlier that we read, and Luke puts it at the end of this because I think Luke is making the point that what Jesus did next illustrates his point. His mother and his brothers show up, and they want to see Jesus. And the people say, your mother and brothers are here.

And he says to them in verse 21, my mother and my brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it. See, God speaks intending that his people would obey. Luke is connecting these two stories so that we understand.

God wants us to understand his word. He wants us to listen to his word and take it to heart. And then he wants us to actually do what his word says.

Jesus with Him. If we want to grow closer to Jesus, and if we want to become more like Him, it’s not just a matter of understanding. It’s not just a matter of knowing what the Word says.

It’s not just a matter of understanding how it fits together, and not just a matter of taking it to heart. It’s taking that next step and actually doing what it says. He gives us the understanding, and He calls us to listen so that we can obey, so that we can grow closer to Him.

So the question I ask myself, and I’d suggests you asking for yourselves. Are you aware of anything that His Word says that you’ve left undone? Now, all of us have something in His Word that we’ve left undone because we don’t have perfect understanding of His Word.

But is there something you’re aware of? Something that you’d say, how did you know? How did you know I’ve been struggling and God’s telling me to do this and I’ve been resisting?

Whatever that is, whatever that thing is God may have just brought to your mind, that’s that’s the next step of obedience you need to take. God has given us his word so that we would obey. Obedience to Jesus is how we live out our salvation, but it’s not how we get it.

Everything Jesus has said in this passage, he’s saying to people who are already believers, people who already trust him. The expectation is that if you are a believer, somebody who’s trusted in Jesus, that you will listen to him and obey him. But the way we become his people is by trusting Him in the first place.

And what we mean by trusting Him is that when He says that He’s God’s Son, that He’s Israel’s Messiah, that He’s mankind’s Savior, when He says those things, we believe it. That when Jesus predicted His own death on the cross and said that it would be for the sins of mankind, when He said that He had come to seek and to save that which was lost, we believe Him. When He predicted and accomplished His own resurrection and said that it was proof of who he was.

We believe him. When he promises eternal life, when he promises forgiveness of sins, if we’ll simply believe in him, that we believe that. And so where this relationship with Jesus starts is not obedience.

It’s not try harder, do better. It’s understanding Jesus died to pay for your sins. All the times we’ve disobeyed God, they incurred a penalty, and Jesus died to pay that penalty so that we could be forgiven.

And he rose again to prove it, And he asks us to believe that and believe him and ask for that forgiveness. And we’ll have it. If you’ve never trusted Jesus as your Savior, it’s that simple.

Don’t start out with, oh, I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to fix that. I’ve got to obey.

Believe what Jesus said about himself and ask for that forgiveness.