Witness to the Light

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made that has been made.

In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify

concerning that light, so that through him all might believe.

He himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light.

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

Have you ever read a scripture so thoroughly that you believe there's nothing

else that you can possibly glean out of it?

Well, that's what I've always thought about the beginning of the book of John.

You can read it over and over and over, and surely there's nothing more you

can get out of. But once again, I've been proven wrong.

Seems like a habit in my life. I get proven wrong a lot.

But there's more to this story in this passage than what we see,

even in what we discussed last week.

Verse 8 seems to leap out at us. John 1 verse 8 says, he himself,

John 1:8

speaking of John, or John the Baptist, was not the light.

He came only as a witness to the light.

So what is a witness to light? That's a strange statement.

How many of us have walked outside on a summer day and said,

I would just love to bear witness to this bright and sunny morning?

Yeah? You don't do that? Nobody's ever walked out there and just said that. Me neither.

Anyone standing around would wonder what you've been putting in your coffee.

Light does not need any witness.

It's self-evident. It's self-revealing. It bears witness to itself.

If you go outside, you don't have to give witness and say, look, there's light.

What a beautiful light, because you see it all around you.

And yet there's this statement in this passage, he came as a witness to the light.

So it must mean that John is talking about another kind of light, and indeed he is.

In John 8, verse 12, Jesus says, I am the light of the world.

John 8:12

And Adam even referred to that. But he was grieved because men loved darkness

more than the light. That's still true today, isn't it?

Darkness gets far more press than the light. In fact, even yesterday,

we heard of another shooting.

There are shootings in malls. There are shootings in schools.

Kids are abducted before they are molested and murdered.

I read this morning about a woman in Florida who was mauled by her neighbors.

Two pit bulls mauled to death by our two pit bulls.

We see darkness all around us.

Girls are being purchased and boys and sold as sex slaves around the world.

Politicians and judges are taking bribes to give favorable rulings for the donors.

Tabloids are flying off the stands with stories of the latest scandals about

the Hollywood elite. Evil sells.

There's a lot of witness about darkness, isn't it there?

I think that people love to see how bad others are so they don't feel bad about

themselves when they do lesser evil acts.

Well, I'm not so bad. You should hear about so-and-so.

And without any light to expose the darkness, the world would be in a terrible mess, wouldn't it?

Without light, there would be no sight. Without the sun, if the sun were to

suddenly burn out, we would have eight minutes of light and heat left.

It takes eight minutes for the light and the heat from the sun to come to the earth.

And if the sun were to suddenly burn out, we'd have eight minutes of light and

heat left. and then planet Earth would slip into a permanent deep freeze,

and we would no longer exist.

In the Pacific Northwest, where it's overcast most days, lots of people suffer

from light deprivation, which results in mood swings and depression.

There's even a scientific name for this problem. Do you remember what it is?

Seasonal affective disorder, or SAD.

People suffering from sad must set up special light panels in their homes and

get heavy doses of illumination in order to be happy campers.

We need light. We can't survive without it.

It is true that we need the sun's light, but there's another light that we need even more.

We need the sun's light, spelled S-O-N.

Our souls deepen on the light, depend on the light of God. in this spiritually

darkened world, God uses us as his witness.

Does that kind of sound familiar? Let me see. In this spiritually darkened world,

God uses us as his witnesses to point out the light.

The light has always been there. The light has never gone away,

but people who are in sin or distress and despair sit in darkness and cannot

see light. Does that sound familiar?

It's kind of like this.

Read that with me. God is on a mission to redeem a lost world to himself,

and he chooses to use us, his chosen people, to accomplish his mission.

In one gospel, Jesus said that he was a light, while in another gospel,

he told his followers, you are the light of the world.

Jesus is the true light from heaven, but much like the highway signs that reflect

the high-beam headlights of our car, we are the reflections of Christ's light.

And by reflecting his light, we give directions to those around us.

Our headlights, or the sign that our headlights are shining on,

are giving witness to the light from our headlights. In the same way,

we give witness of the light that's in our life.

We're talking about true light, the light that came into the world,

the light to whom John the Baptist pointed and said, he must become greater, I must become less.

John was a witness, according to our scripture, and he came to testify to the light.

So we too have been called to this task, and so let's consider what a witness

is and does. First thing is, a witness has seen something. We all know that.

If you've ever watched any courtroom movies on TV or seen that,

you know that a witness to an event is valuable because he or she has seen something,

and they can give first-hand testimony, something crucial that could either

convict a criminal or set an innocent person free.

Our testimony of Jesus is crucial, too, because it can mean life or death for

a soul who is hanging in the balance of eternity.

Our testimony, our witness to the light, might be that impetus that causes somebody

to turn to Jesus and avoid a Christless eternity. But you know that.

You can't witness to something that you haven't seen or heard, right?

The question then comes, have you seen Jesus? Have you heard Jesus?

Have you experienced Jesus? I'll never forget the experience I had in Estes

Park, Colorado in 1975 And I know that's before some of you were even bored, right Liz?

Some had graduated from high school, and I was attending a free Methodist national

family camp as a member of our church's Bible quiz team.

Now, I was really good at faking things.

I was really a good fraud. I could learn the text of almost anything,

but I never received it internally.

I could read the passages that we were going to be quizzing on,

and I could know how to answer many of the questions, but it never became part

of my life, or not at that time.

I was able to bluff my way through the quiz meets very

well because I was a fast enough jumper to get out of the chair to be first

one up so that I would block out the other team's members and either answer

the question correctly by myself or give my teammates enough time to think of the right answer.

But I was living a life of darkness and evil, involving myself in activities

that I knew were not Christian. I didn't care.

I hated the church and everything it represented because of the rejection that

so many were getting in the church and because of the evil that was being done against my father.

I wanted no part of Christianity, and I tried to get as far away from it in behavior as I could.

I was finding more love and acceptance from my friends in school that were doing

drugs and things like that than I was in what I was finding in the church.

Besides, I was finding, like I said, more love and acceptance from others.

I was choosing to walk away from God.

But at a youth service in Estes Park, Colorado, God began to speak light into my heart.

He began to remove that darkness that seemed to be dwelling over me,

and he revealed himself to me.

He gave me the revelation that confronted me with the fact that I wasn't really

hurting anyone else, but I really was hurting him by my behavior and by my rejection of him.

I came face to face with the realization that if I died that night without God,

I would be in hell for eternity.

God spoke to me and said It doesn't matter what anybody else does right now

What matters is that I love you And I want you to be my child.

It was at that point I broke down and turned away from my sin and asked God to be my father.

The light that came into my life was so overwhelming that even though I was

unaware of doing it, as I've told you before,

I witnessed to people on our flight home of everything I had experienced and

the fact that God loved me and loved them too.

Later, I found out that when I arrived home, people came up to my parents and

asked, what happened to me, because the first time since they'd known me,

I seemed happy and had a smile on my face, and what seemed to be darkness had

been wiped away, and there was a light in my eyes.

Scripture said that John the Baptist was not the light of the world,

but they came to bear witness to that light.

You cannot see, be a witness to the light if you haven't seen him and experienced him in your own life.

If you're trying to be a witness to Christ, for Christ, without having him in

you, it's just emptiness.

It's just talk. It's not worth of any value.

Second thing, a witness has something to say. In a court of law,

a witness isn't called to the stand just to sit there and look fashionable.

He or she has testimony that they've been asked to say.

Psalm chapter 71, verse 24 says this, my tongue will tell of your righteous

Psalms 71:24

acts all day long. A witness has something to say.

Question is, are we saying it?

I've heard some Christians say, I don't have to talk about my faith.

I just have to show my faith.

Well, the same people never really do show their faith.

These same people have no problem talking about their job, their favorite restaurant,

the football game last Sunday, or the last computer or cell phone upgrade they received.

Sure, we are to show our faith. Jesus said in Matthew 5, verse 16,

Matthew 5:16

let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

So we do have a lot to do, but we also have to say, he also said in Mark 8,

Mark 8:38

verse 38, if anyone is shamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful

generation, sound familiar?

The Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels.

If we are not in an adulterous and sinful generation now, I don't know when we've ever been.

It's not enough to talk. We must do. But we cannot leave out the talking either.

If we really have compassion for the lost, if we really care for those around

us who are dying without Christ, we will talk to them and befriend them and

make them a part of our lives.

So we can share with them the good news about Christ.

If we really care for those around us, we will talk to them about what God has

done in our lives through Jesus Christ. We will be a witness of what we've experienced.

We're taught from an early age. If you see someone in an emergency that threatens

your life, what do you do? Call 911.

You know, it's about time that the people of the kingdom of God start calling

911 and getting on that emergency phone line to God and asking God to do some

work and change the situation. Our world is in an emergency situation.

Our family members, friends, neighbors are destined for a Christless eternity

if we don't do something about it and call on God's emergency lifeline.

And it seems like the whole world is so nonchalant about Christ.

Take it or leave it. We need to be working with him. It's not enough to do something.

We must talk. Responsible witnesses come to court, that's action,

and they share their testimony, and that's talking.

But then again, we are not all called to witness in the same way.

There's a book that I have in my library titled Becoming a Contagious Christian.

It's written by Bill Hybels and Mark Middleburg, and it discusses how different

personalities shape evangelistic approaches.

A Christian professor might use an intellectual style and reach people who are

geared toward intellectual thought, while a minister on the streets of Los Angeles

would most likely be approach people in a confrontational manner.

Do you know where you're going to spend your eternity?

A homemaker in Texas reaches out to her neighbors with an interpersonal style,

while across the street in a soup kitchen, a volunteer uses the service approach

to help people find Jesus.

Divergent people with divergent styles, yet all witness to the same life-changing

reality of Jesus Christ. Paul said, I do what is necessary to win people to Christ.

And we must also take into account

what matters to the person we are witnessing to and what they need.

My favorite style of evangelism is relational evangelism.

If you don't know that by now, I like to get to know people,

and it drives my wife crazy because it doesn't matter where we go,

whether it's at Walmart or restaurants, I'm always going up to people and talking

to them. I got my mom in me a little bit that way.

I want to know about people. I want to know what makes them tick.

I want to experience a relationship with me.

I believe that people need to know they belong before they will come into a

relationship with me enough to hear what I say and believe.

And when I speak or witness, as hopefully you see in my sermons,

and as I trust the students and faculty at the high school see,

I try to paint a picture with words or give examples as parables to the truth of God's word.

But I don't get the right to tell them or show them Jesus until I've built a

relationship with them and they know that I care about them as people.

I remember my dad telling me something years ago that has become part of my

witnessing and part of my ministry ever since.

He said, people will not care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Friends, it's my opinion that we will never be effective witnesses for Jesus

Christ until we have first seen and experienced him ourselves,

and until we have enough of the compassion of Jesus that he had for people in

our hearts and to bring them into our circle.

When John the Baptist was in prison awaiting certain death, he sent some of

his followers to Jesus to ask, are you the one who is to come or should we look

for another? And Jesus told them.

To go back to John and tell them what they had seen and heard.

They immediately became witness because of what they had seen and heard.

They watched what Jesus did, and they were able to go back and to say,

he is the one because this is what he did.

The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, and oppression has been removed.

If you're a witness, you have something to say, and God will use your own style to say it.

And then third, a witness has a dangerous job. To put yourself on the witness

stand exposes you to brutal cross-examination and in some cases,

physical danger if you give damaging testimony.

When I was at Deaconess Hospital in Oklahoma City, he was director of materials

management and we had a lawsuit against the hospital and I was called in to do a deposition.

And at one point while I was sitting there at the table giving questions,

the opposing attorney got up on the table and crawled across to me and shouted

in my face, we're going to face some of those things.

If we are truly witnesses, we have damaging testimony to others and we're going

to be facing some of those things.

That's why our judicial system has witness protection programs for mob informants.

Being a witness can open you up to danger, but we have a stronger witness protection

program in our Father God.

Being a Christian witness is not an easy thing to do. It's certainly unnatural.

Our flesh would rather not bear testimony.

The bottom line, we're afraid. We're afraid of ridicule and rejection.

We're fearful that someone is going to think we're intolerant or insensitive at sharing our faith.

Being a witness for God has never been easy. All you have to do is read the

latter part of Hebrews chapter 11. And if you really want any more,

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

there's a book called Fox's Book of Martyrs.

You can find how dangerous it is to be a witness for Christ,

but how rewarding it is as well.

Those who testified of the true light were mocked, flogged, thrown in prison,

forced to hide in caves, and even sawn into John the Baptist got his head lopped

off for witnessing to the light.

The only one of the apostles that we do not have record of an execution or a

brutal death as John the Apostle.

So many Christians want an easy life, a life with no fuss, no cross-bearing,

but Jesus promised no such thing.

He told his followers to expect persecution and rejection.

He said we must deny ourselves and take our crosses. He said,

in effect, that we would have to die, die to our pride, die to our egotistical

ways, and are bent toward self-indulgence.

He said, we must follow him, and in so doing, follow him into dangerous territory.

The real world, where there are perversions and cynicism and greed and crooked

living, is full of people who don't act like us or talk like us or think like

us. Have you ever noticed that?

Right after Thanksgiving one year, a church sent out a holiday issue of their newsletter.

On the back page was a huge caption that announced, Christmas is for Christians and is church.

And while I understand what they were trying to say, I'm afraid that they may

be like circling the wagons.

You see, Christmas isn't just for Christians.

It's for everyone. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son.

The ultimate evangelistic program occurred on Christmas more than 2,000 years ago.

In the form of a baby in a manger, God slipped into a world,

ruled by a pagan empire, a world of unfair taxes, oppressed masses,

and sickening religious phoniness.

The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. Why did God do that?

Why did God risk all that?

He did it to shed light into a dark world, to make sons and daughters of light.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are to continue God's first Christmas

program in these dark generations and bring people to the light of the world.

We are not the light. We have only come as witnesses to the light.

The true light that gives light to every man has already come into the world, and his name is Jesus.