Jesus, the Light of Men

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⟦Transcript⟧ Ever since it started getting dark earlier, well, a lot of things have happened since it started getting dark earlier. But I’ll head home when it’s dark outside, and I’ll get to where I turn off to go back into our neighborhood. And more often than not, I’ll get ready to make that turn, and out of the corner of my eye, this light will catch my eye.

And I will think that there is got to be a massive semi-truck with bright headlights barreling down on me. And I’ll kind of flinch because it looks like it’s just right there. And then I remember it’s just this house that’s sitting close to the corner that has, I don’t know, they’ve got this bright LED spotlight on the side of the house like something you would use to make spies talk, right?

It just shines several hundred feet and looks like one of those bright lights. It just stands out, which is kind of the point of lights. But I notice they’ve all gotten this way, the new LED headlights.

I’m glad you can see because I can’t. And people are putting those on their houses now. The light just kind of pierces the darkness.

It pierces my skull. It pierces everything. They’re starting to remind me of the police search helicopters.

I haven’t seen this since I moved here, because we’re kind of out in the country. But I remember growing up in Oklahoma City, it was nothing for you to be out in your backyard or your front yard late in the evening. How do you say not up to no good without it being a double negative?

But you’re just doing what you’re supposed to be doing. And the police would come through and they would shine this spotlight. And you realize they’re looking for somebody.

It’d light up your whole backyard. And they, you know, I remember a few times they’d spotlight me and they’d stay there for a few seconds looking until, you know, you can see your skeleton from the rays. And then they realize you’re not the suspicious person they’re looking for.

You may be suspicious, but you’re not the one they’re looking for. And they just, they go on. but that light, it felt like, would light up the whole world.

And that’s what light’s supposed to do. You know, as irritating as it is to be spotlighted by somebody’s headlights, or the police helicopter, or the side of somebody’s house, it makes no sense to have a light that’s just going to kind of barely glow and not light anything up. You want a light that’s going to pierce the darkness.

For it to accomplish anything, it’s got to pierce the darkness. That’s what a light does. And John compares Jesus to that kind of light.

That kind of light that stands out in stark contrast to everything, illuminates everything else. As we continue this study that we started last week in John chapter 1, that’s the picture that John gives us of Jesus coming into the world. I told you last week that instead of going to Matthew or Luke, and there’s nothing wrong with them, but instead of going to Matthew or Luke and looking at the story of what happened in Bethlehem, I want us to spend a few weeks looking at John and what he says later about why what happened in Bethlehem was so important.

Last week we looked at the first three verses of the book of John, and how John ties the coming of Jesus to creation, and who God was and what God was doing even before creation, and ties Jesus to that, and makes the case that Jesus is the creator, and that Jesus is in fact God the Son, has always been God, and could never be not God. Today we’re going to move into verses 4 and 5 and look at the concept of Jesus being the light that brings light to mankind. And so if you would turn with me there to John chapter 1.

John chapter 1, we’re going to look at this together. If you don’t have your Bible with you, if you’re using a device, there’s a link in your bulletin that’ll get you there. It’ll be on the screen, but once you find it, if you’ll stand as we read together from God’s Word, Just these two verses this morning.

Actually, just for context, I’m going to start at verse 1, just so we can get the whole thing. It says, In the beginning was the Word, that’s Jesus, as we talked about last week. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. Verse 4, In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. And you may be seated. So John here continues explaining why the coming of this baby in Bethlehem, who would grow up to be his master, John would grow up to be.

John would go on to be a devoted servant and follower of this baby and who he grew up to be. But John explains why this was so important, and he moves from describing him as the creator of the physical world to the power behind the spiritual world. That’s what all of this is about the light.

He starts out with creation and the physical world and Jesus being responsible for all the life that’s here in creation. But then in these two verses, he moves beyond that physical life and explains how Jesus is responsible for the life that dwells within us, the part of us that lives forever, and how Jesus is responsible for giving us that life that lives forever with Him. And so he says in verse 4, in him was life.

And this is sort of a bridge between the two sections where it discusses Jesus being the creator. Jesus gave life in one sense to everything on earth. Everything that lives, life originated with Jesus.

And I know the skeptic might say, well, I have physical parents. They’re responsible for my existence. Okay, what about their existence?

Well, they have physical parents. You go back far enough, life had to start somewhere. One of the things that we know about science is that life does not come from non-life.

It doesn’t happen. It’s not something that we can recreate in a laboratory. It’s not something that we can conduct experiments and make it happen.

I believe people have tried. But life just does not come from non-life. As a matter of fact, centuries ago, they thought it did.

They did experiments because there were thoughts, for example, that flies came from meat. I remember reading about this in our science textbook when I was a kid. They thought that flies came from meat.

Well, what they didn’t realize was that flies were laying their eggs on the meat, and as it rotted, you know what happens. More flies were born from the eggs. What they realized, and I want to say it was Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, somebody like that, They did experiments where if you sterilize the meat, guess what?

Life does not come from non-life. If you sterilized it, you enclosed it, you didn’t have life just spontaneously springing out. As we have understood our universe more through scientific inquiry, we understand life does not come from non-life.

Organic material does not arise from inorganic material. We have at least three science teachers in the room at any given moment. Am I correct in this?

please tell me yes where are they jack yes am I I’m right okay thank you I’m not a science expert I’m fascinated by science but I’m not an expert I need reassurance sometimes life doesn’t just arise out of nowhere john says jesus is responsible for this physical life the plant world the animal world the human world he’s responsible for all of it but it’s not just limited to our physical life Jesus is responsible for all life anywhere it’s found and he didn’t need anybody to give him life because it was already there see Jesus is all together different from we from us he didn’t have a beginning so he doesn’t require a creator he just is and always has been and so he is the creator that’s why it says in him was life not in him became life not he found life somewhere along the way, it’s just in Him just was life. It’s part of who He is.

He’s the source of all life because He’s always had it in Himself. And this ties back to what we know about God. Because remember, John spent the first three verses explaining to us that Jesus is God.

Not just a good man, not just a great moral teacher. Jesus Christ is God in human flesh. And even the name of God says something about Him always being and always existing and always having life within Himself.

the four-letter Hebrew word that is used as the name for God, the closest we don’t know for sure how to pronounce it, but the closest we can get is the word Yahweh. It’s the word that later on evolved through German into our language as Jehovah. This proper name of God from Hebrew is related to the Hebrew word to be.

It shows up in Exodus 3 where God tells Moses, I am who I am. When Moses says, when I go to the Israelites, when I go to my brethren, who do I tell them sent me? And God says, I am who I am.

God’s name is tied to this verb that says, I am. Being, existing, not just I will be or I have been for a little while, but just at any point in human history and before that, before creation, before there was anything into eternity past. He is, He was, He always has been. He just is.

And that’s why Jesus later on said in John 8, really irritated the Pharisees. He told them before Abraham was, I am. That’s not Jesus being confused about verb tenses.

That’s Jesus making the point, hey, you just think you know a little something about God, but I was God way before Abraham even showed up. And that’s why the Apostle Paul tells us in Acts 17 that God is not dependent on us. He says, nor has He worshipped with men’s hands as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.

The Apostle Paul was speaking to a group of Greek pagans who they created their gods, and their gods were dependent on them for their sustenance. And he says, the God of Israel, we didn’t create Him, He created us. And He doesn’t depend on us, we depend on Him.

John here is tying all of this back together to who Jesus is as the source of all life. In Him was life. It was just there.

He has always had it. He has always been. He has always been teeming with life, and He’s the source of life anywhere life is found.

And then it says in verse 4, and the life was the light of men. So this tells us that Jesus didn’t merely give us physical life. I’ve already hit on this a little bit.

It wasn’t just physical life. It wasn’t just our hearts beating and us breathing. More importantly, He’s the source of spiritual life.

He’s the light that gives us light. There’s this concept that’s taught in the New Testament of us being spiritually dead. The Bible talks about us being dead in sins and trespasses.

Death in Scripture is a picture of separation from God. Now some people teach that this spiritual death means we’re dead like a corpse where we can’t even respond to the gospel when we hear it. I don’t think that’s what Paul means by that.

Death is a picture of separation from God. Just like when a loved one is dead, we are separated from that loved one. There is a gulf fixed between us and them.

We can’t cross it. They can’t come to us. We can’t come to them.

The fact that we are spiritually dead means that we are separated from God and we’re separated from the life that He brings. We are not just wandering around with spiritual life of our own and then He makes it better. I like.

. . I have to be careful quoting people because sometimes they do terrible things.

There was an apologist, and I’m not going to name him by name because he got into some hot water. Still, the thought is correct. But he used to say, and I only say that so it doesn’t sound like I’m plagiarizing and passing this idea off his mind.

He used to say that Jesus didn’t come to make bad men better. He came to make dead men alive. He came to take people who were separated from God, who had no spiritual life of their own, and no way to get to God and give us life.

And the light that Jesus brings was enough to pierce our darkness. And so apart from Jesus Christ, the picture here is that we’re just stumbling around in spiritual darkness. We’re separated from God, and we’re unable to do anything about that separation.

We are unable to find our way back to God on our own, if we even wanted to. Now the Bible does teach that men like the darkness more than light. We understand that.

I know it doesn’t sound spiritual to admit it, but sin can be fun. And it’s okay to agree with Scripture. As humans, we like sin.

If we didn’t, we wouldn’t do it, right? Apart from Him, apart from Jesus, we can’t find our way back to God even if we wanted to. But then John says in verse 5, this light shines in the darkness.

Think about being lost in the dark and feeling helpless. You can’t find your way out. You can’t even see any light to orient yourself.

I was here somewhere in the building. I can’t remember where exactly, but I didn’t realize how dark it gets in some parts of this building when there are no lights on. There’s one day I was locking things up and I shut the, I may have been down in the basement, I shut the lights off on myself, not realizing the lights were off in the hallway, out here by the fellowship hall as well, and my goodness, all of a sudden you couldn’t tell which way was down and which way was up.

Now fortunately I hadn’t moved away from the light switch, I just turned it back on. But think about being lost in the darkness, no way to orient yourself, not even a glimmer of light somewhere off in the distance that you could go to like a moth to the light. And that’s where we are spiritually.

But His light shines in that darkness. That’s where mankind was, separated from God. And yet Jesus Christ showed up and pierced that darkness that we were lost in.

The light shines in the darkness. The light that Jesus bears stands in stark contrast to the darkness around it. By the way, it’s not just a faint little flickering glow somewhere off in the distance.

It’s one of those bright spotlights. And the way it uses this word shines here, it’s a continual thing. Jesus’ light didn’t pierce the darkness just with His coming and then go away.

He’s left it. Jesus still shines His light, drawing us to Him and drawing us to the Father. That invitation to come into the light is still there.

But it says here at the end of verse 5, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it. I’ll tell you, I’ve taught this verse wrong before. I haven’t taught anything heretical. I haven’t taught anything that wasn’t true.

I just taught things that this verse wasn’t actually talking about. Because this word comprehend has changed over time. And the word behind it, I’m trying to remember off the top of my head, it was a long Greek word.

The word behind it is a complicated word that has lots of shades of meaning. It’s one of those words like love that I’ve talked to you about recently. It has a lot of nuance and a lot of shades of meaning all rolled into one.

It can mean that the darkness didn’t understand the light, but really, in context, what this word seems to mean is overtake. It can have the connotation of saying the darkness didn’t understand it. And I could see Satan there scratching his head going, what is God up to?

Because any one of us would think if God was going to send His Son to be the Messiah, to be the Savior of Israel, to be the Savior of mankind, we would probably imagine that Jesus would be born as a king or that he would just show up fully grown as a king, as a powerful military leader, a charismatic political leader. We might expect Jesus would show up as one of these things. We might expect him to be born to a wealthy family with influence and privilege.

Jesus was born to an unwed mother, basically. He was born in a stable or the equivalent of a stable. He was laid in a manger, which was a feeding trough for animals, wrapped in swaddling clothes which were rags, Jesus didn’t come the way we would have expected the King of Kings to come.

And so I could see the possibility of this playing out and Satan scratching his head and going, what is God up to? But I think there’s more to this word than that. We know darkness can’t overcome light.

That’s not the way it works. Darkness is just the absence of light. Anytime the light shows up, the darkness is what goes away.

I said, we’ll turn off the lights at the house, and we’re turning off lights in different rooms, and I’ll tell the kids, somebody turned on the dark. They’ve started to realize, wait, that doesn’t make sense. You can’t really turn on the dark.

We can’t turn on the dark. We don’t flip the light switch in a dark room and the two arm wrestle over whether the room is going to be light or dark. No, the light shows up and the darkness has to flee.

The only variable there is how strong the light is and whether anything stands between it and what it’s supposed to illuminate. But where the light shines, there’s not a contest between it and the darkness. So as long as the light shines, the darkness can’t overcome the light.

And if you put those two meanings that this word can have of understanding and overcoming, overtaking, defeating, if you put those two meanings of the word together and read it that way and try to fit all these shades of meaning in there. The light of Jesus shines into the darkness of this world and the darkness of this world doesn’t know what to do about it. Doesn’t understand it, can’t defeat it, just stands there as powerless as it really is.

And when that baby was born, he didn’t come to stay a baby in the manger. He didn’t come just to be a pretty Christmas card picture that we cherish at Christmas time and then we put away for the next 11 months. He came to be the light that shines in the darkness and despite all the power that darkness has in this world, despite all the strength, despite all the cunning, the darkness of this world looks at the light that Jesus Christ brings and doesn’t know what to do about it.

He is utterly lost, is defeated, and doesn’t even realize it. The light of Jesus is so powerful and so piercing and stands in such stark contrast to the darkness of this world but the darkness of this world is just lost about what to do about Jesus. And my point in sharing this with you this morning is that Jesus’ spiritual light cannot be destroyed.

His light, His goodness, His truth, His deity, all of the good things about Jesus, they shine into the darkness of this world, and they cannot be overcome, they cannot be defeated. Jesus’ light cannot be destroyed, but it can overcome the darkness anywhere, even in the human heart. By the way, that may be the darkest corner of our world.

is in the human heart. But the light can shine in the darkness even there. What John is telling us here in this passage, he is pointing out the incredible, transformative power of Jesus to bring us light, to bring us life, to connect us with God.

Jesus not only created us, but He can transform us from what sin has degraded us into into what God created us to be. By default, we are in darkness. I know sometimes we come to church and we like to pretend that we’re not.

We like to pretend that we’re wonderful people and we have it all together. And don’t get me wrong, by human standpoint, I think you are wonderful people. And by human standards, I may have moments of wonderfulness.

I won’t say I always am, but I may have moments. But by God’s standards, we are separated from Him. We are sinners.

Our hearts are in rebellion against Him. And if we look down deep at who we are, we know it’s true. Because it doesn’t matter how well I behave.

It doesn’t matter how religious I am. This is just the first example that comes to mind, but it’s the one I always give you. I get in traffic and I see who I really am.

Now, I’m not an aggressive driver. It drives my wife crazy. I’m a passive driver, but I’m a passive aggressive driver.

I get angry within myself over what people are doing around me. I see the anger and the ugliness that is here and that comes out here sometimes. And it’s a reminder of who I am.

And we all have, folks, it’s not just in traffic. I have moments of selfishness. I have moments of pride.

I have moments where thoughts cross my mind that I say, Lord, wow, where did that come from? It came from the sin nature. There’s darkness in each of us because that’s what sin has done to the world and that’s what sin has done to everybody born into the world except Jesus Christ. He’s the one that brings the light.

He’s the one that can transform us. It’s not about behaving better. It’s not about behavior modification.

It’s not about trying harder to be what we think we ought to be. It’s about trusting Jesus who brought the light and brought the spiritual life so He could connect us to God and so He could transform us into what He created us to be. Now when I say connecting to God, when I say receiving this light, please understand, I’m not talking about this in new agey Oprah kind of terms, alright?

We are sinners separated from God and walking in darkness. That sin separates us from God. That sin incurs a penalty that we deserve to pay.

And that penalty is eternal separation from God in a place called hell. The only way for us to avoid that penalty, the only way for us to have a relationship with God, the only way for us to walk with Him, is that Jesus Christ came into this world as God in human flesh. He lived a life without sin so that when He went to pay for sin, it was ours and not His.

And Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross in my place and in your place where He suffered and bled and died to pay for those sins in full. And because He did that and He rose again three days later to prove it, not as a spirit, not as a hologram, but as God in human flesh once again, rose again three days later to prove it. Because He did that, God now offers forgiveness, a clean slate.

He offers eternal life and He offers a relationship with Him if we will simply believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior and ask for that forgiveness. And once we have received that forgiveness, we are assured that we have eternal life. The Holy Spirit of God comes to live inside of us and begins to change us, transform us from the inside out.

He does the work of making us what God created us to be, not us. It’s not about anything we can earn or deserve. Let me tell you, you don’t want what you deserve from God.

I don’t want what I deserve from God. As a matter of fact, when I get a little whiny with God about things in my life, I will say from time to time when I remember, Father, I’m sorry, I don’t want to act like I don’t deserve this. I don’t want what I deserve.

I want what Jesus paid for. He’s brought the light so that we can have a relationship with God and walk with Him. But for us, it starts with acknowledging Him as our Savior who died on the cross and rose again and asking for the forgiveness He purchased.

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