I AM, Part 4: I Am the Light of the World

Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.

Church of the Lookout is an older Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love.

Visit us online at thelookout.church.

Hey, good morning, everybody.

Spring has finally arrived.

And I am excited about it.

I happen to be a fan of the sunshine.

So, hey, if we haven't met yet, my name is Luke.

And if this is your first time to the lookout, so glad that you're here.

So glad that we could spend the morning together.

And I do want to open with some prayer and and uh let's just become aware of the Lord together.

I don't know about you.

You know, I we I come every week.

Um you guys know that.

But we're not here just because it's on the calendar.

We're here to encounter the living God.

And we need to remind ourselves from time to time that we're uh we're here for more than a good church service.

We're here to see the face of Christ.

So together, before we jump into words, uh into the word, before I say anything more, or before you hear anything more from me, let's quiet our hearts across the room.

Just close your eyes across the room, and um if you will just join me in a moment, of let's just wait and become aware of the presence of the Lord among us.

You are holy.

Holy is your name.

What an honor it is, God, to come before you.

To be with your people in your presence today, God.

Give us eyes to see and ears to hear the things of the kingdom of God.

Illuminate our hearts, God.

Illuminate this room.

We thank you for the light of Christ.

We welcome you today, Jesus.

And it's in your name we pray together.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Hey, if you have your Bibles, you can open up.

We're gonna start in John chapter 9, is kind of the main text we're starting from today.

John 9 · chapter mention

And while you're turning there, just one more quick plug for Bob Sorge next week.

Some of you know who he is, some of you don't know.

One of the interesting things about Bob Sorge, you're gonna find out he doesn't actually have a voice.

And what I mean by that is uh uh probably 20, 30 years ago, he was a worship leader, itinerant speaker, and then uh just powerful ministry would travel to the United States and speak about worship and about the intimacy with God, the presence of God, and then one day something in his vocal cords just snapped and he lost his voice.

And so ever since he only he's only able to speak in a whisper.

He can only speak for about one hour a day or two hours a day before it's tremendous pain.

So what you're gonna experience next week, and we'll we'll shoot out a video this week that you can experience in beforehand, but what you're gonna experience next week is as he speaks, we have to turn the mic way up, almost to where it's feeding back, and he whispers, but he whispers the things of God.

And you'll find that he doesn't have a voice, but he's given everything he needs to declare the word of God.

It's it's really powerful, it's anointed, and I'm telling you, um it'll be it'll be different than what you've experienced before.

But I believe he's coming with the word for us next week, all right?

So come with faith, come with expectation.

You don't need a rah-rah speaker, you need the word of the Lord.

So this morning we are picking up in um this continuing conversation we've been in the last several weeks called um I am.

And the whole idea is we're walking through the seven I am statements of Jesus.

In the Gospel of John, um, John had a way of weaving together the I am statements with Jesus.

We've talked about I am the resurrection of the life.

We've talked about I am the great shepherd, I am the door last week.

Today we're talking about I am the light of the world, and I think it's particularly important that we look at what Jesus has to say about Jesus because we have a lot to say about Jesus.

The world has a lot to say about Jesus, there's a lot of opinions about Jesus, there's a lot written about Jesus, but the only thing that matters about Jesus is what Jesus says about Jesus, which is highly interesting.

And so today we are talking about what Jesus has to say about himself and how to anchor into that together.

So um, I'm gonna read a couple passages just to get started.

I'm gonna start in John 8, and then we'll go to John 9, verse 1 in seconds.

John 9:1

John 8, 12 says, Again, Jesus spoke to them saying, I am the light of the world.

Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

John 9, verse 1.

John 9:1

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth, and his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

And Jesus answered, It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day.

Night is coming when no one can work.

As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

There's our I am statement.

Having said these things, he spit on the ground and he made mud with saliva.

Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud.

And he said to him, Go wash in the pool of siloam, which means sense.

So he went and washed and came back seeing.

Amen.

Um so we read in this particular passage upon encountering a blind man, whose name we actually never learned, the disciples immediately start to assemble a story of why he was the way he was.

Why was the blind man blind?

Was it because of his sin?

Was it because of his parents' sin?

In other words, he must be like this because he did something to deserve it, to deserve it.

So they were kind of in this karma thinking type of thing of what were the actions that led to this moment?

And the disciples of Jesus, like us, were storytelling people.

They uh um they they took facts and assembled narratives that help make sense of circumstances.

What we do too.

We evaluate our lives, we look at our lives, what's working, what's not working, and then and then we start to assemble a series of, oh, cause and effect, this happened, and so now this is happening.

We want to know why things are as bad as the way they are, or just why the way they are.

That way we can diagnose problems and fix them.

The interesting thing is looking at how Jesus responds to this kind of this kind of dialogue in this scene.

Jesus, he starts, he doesn't really even respond to anything they say in a direct way.

He redirects the conversation and gives new context.

He indicates that it has nothing to do with his sin or his parents' sin or anything like that, but that the works of God, that this is happening, so that the works of God might be displayed through him, because everything Jesus did and said was purposeful.

And so in this passage, he not only declares himself as the light, but he begins a sermon illustration to demonstrate what it's like to see for the first time.

So he so not only does he declare himself in the light, but in a very unorthodox healing method, he he hawks a loogie into the into the dirt.

What?

I'd say he spits into the dirt and he picks it up.

We don't even get an indication that he asked the man how he's doing or what his name was.

We know nothing about this guy.

I just want you to imagine just being in a crowded marketplace with your eyes closed, you hear all the commotion, you hear a group of men coming near you, talking amongst themselves about what's going on, and then without your permission, you feel some wet, you know, substance being spread across your eyes.

And it says that his eyes were anointed with this mixture of saliva and dirt.

And then Jesus from there tells him to go wash.

He wasn't healed right away, he had to go participate in his healing, he had to go wash in the pool of siloam.

And then upon that, his eyes are open.

But as Jesus was declaring himself as the light of the world, demonstrating that this man, he was also revealing his larger purpose.

It was an undeniable reference to the prophetic promises of the Messiah that he would be the one who would be a light to the Jews and the Gentiles, referencing back to Isaiah 9 when Isaiah speaking prophetically, in Isaiah 9, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.

Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, a light has shown.

And so Jesus doesn't seem to be obsessed with why the man was blind.

He simply uses the moment to reveal himself as the light.

And I think that's a good word for us today.

Some of us are so con so uh obsessed with why our lives are the way they are, and Jesus is coming and says, I'm not as concerned with that.

I'm come to convince you that I am the light that you've been looking for.

He is the light of the world.

And so he could have healed this man without all of the showmanship and the mud and the spit and all the things, but he mixes it into his hand, he takes the raw substance of the dirt and he makes a new paste out of it, anoints the man's eyes as if to say there is a new kind of creation, just like I created the dirt, I created the heavens and the earth in the first place, there is a new creation that I am unleashing and I am creating something new.

He anoints the man with this perspective of new creation.

And as the man would obey and go wash himself, he opened his eyes for the first time.

And what Jesus was trying to say was what he did for the first this one man, he was intending to do for the whole world.

Because the truth is we were all born blind.

And Jesus came to remove the obstructions that block our view of him.

Can you imagine what it had been like to be this man and upon washing your eyes open?

And the first thing that you see is the face of Jesus.

Can you imagine that?

There's a hymn writer, Fanny Crosby, I believe in the 1800s, she wrote about 8,000 hymns in her lifetime.

So what have you done with your life?

Okay.

She wrote only 8,000 hymns.

And somebody came to her at one point and said, Wow, it's such a shame that God gave you such well here's the thing with Fanny Crosby, she wrote 8,000 hymns, but she was born blind.

She's blind from six weeks old.

So she's she never saw anything.

All she had was music in her heart.

She just had a song to the Lord.

And somebody asked her one time, What a shame that you were, you have such a gift of songwriting, but God never allowed you to see.

And she responded to them.

She said, um, she said, if I have run one request, is that it's that I would have been born blind.

And they said, Well, why would that be?

She said, Because when I get to heaven, the first sight that will gladden my face is the face of my savior.

She wouldn't have done it another way because she knows that when her eyes are open, she gets to see the light.

And I imagine what it was like for this man as he was seeing for the first time and trying to make sense of what he was seeing, and then what comes into clear view was not just a crowd or marketplace, but a person, a man, the face of Jesus.

See, we were made to live in the light of the face of Jesus.

That's what we were made for.

We were made to know his face.

Do you know what the highest grossing movies of all time have in common?

Just to think about this.

Highest grossing movies, uh, rattle off a few that you can think of.

Star Wars, Avatar.

Star Wars, Avatar?

Avengers.

Avengers.

There you go, the top three.

Star Wars, Avatar, Avengers.

Somehow Titanic got in there.

I don't know.

I don't know why that's in there.

Love story, the love story of all love stories, Titanic, Jack and Rose.

But yeah, I mean, you think about these epic movies, the highest-grossing movies of all time, the amount of hours that humanity has spent in front of a screen watching these movies.

Certainly a lot of this because of special effects and just the production quality and all that kind of stuff.

But I think it was the storylines that came across.

What they all have in common is this epic theme of the battle of light and darkness and good and evil.

Will truth and beauty and goodness win?

Will the bad guys succeed over the good guys?

Who's going to win at this battle?

And most of these movies that you guys just named are not just, you know, basic stories.

They're otherworldly, epic, the stakes are high.

Usually these are intergalactic movies because there's something about it that pulls on these heartstrings that we know that we were made for another world.

We were made for more than what we can see.

And these movies in a broad way teach us something about ourselves that we are drawn to this, to the epic story of living into a narrative of light and darkness.

That's what the scriptures are.

The story of God and the scriptures from start to finish is a battle between light and darkness.

It starts off with the beautiful declaration from the mouth of God, let there be light.

And then there was light because he spoke it and his words are light.

His words, when he speaks, action happens.

So he says, Let there be light.

And then the moment that Adam and Eve decided to take matters into their own hands, a shadow appeared.

There was some obstruction that happened in the face of humanity, and darkness entered into this story.

And we know that prophetically, as even as we're talking about, there is a prophetic picture, there's going to come a day where light will come back into the picture.

And light will come for all of time.

And so we know that as Jesus came, he came as the light, as the promised one of light, to make us children of light.

And in the end, the scriptures end with the beautiful promise and revelation.

There's actually going to come a day where we won't need the sun or the moon.

The sun will be completely irrelevant at the end of the day because the light of Jesus will be so bright, we won't need any other source of light.

That's what's happening.

That's the story that we are in that we're headed for.

So we know a little bit about the end of the road for us.

The battle isn't necessarily whether light will be darkness.

All of us in the room understand that.

No, no, no.

We know the end of the story.

Light overcomes darkness.

In fact, light, darkness can never extinguish light.

That's the beautiful thing.

When you light a candle, there's no amount of darkness that can extinguish that light.

You cannot overwhelm the light.

But when the light has been lit, darkness has to flee.

Darkness is pushed back.

And we are in a story where the light of God is moving and is permeating all things.

Light is expelling the darkness.

So, question: why is there still so much darkness?

Why is there so much darkness in the world?

Why sometimes is there still so much darkness in the church?

And even among the people of God.

Why does that happen?

And closer to oh, why is there so much darkness in us?

And forget about the world and even other groups of people and you know, throwing the church under the bus and this whole thing.

But but we look to us, why is there so much darkness?

See, the great battle is not whether the light of God will win, the battle is whether we will continually live in the light that God has come to give us.

The work of Satan is actually not to overcome the light.

He's not that stupid.

He knows he can't do that.

Satan knows he cannot overcome the light.

So the enemy of our souls is not trying to overcome the light that will win the day.

The enemy of our souls works to obstruct our view of the light, and he will do anything possible to get between you and the face of Christ.

He will do anything to obstruct your view of the radiance of the beauty of God.

And this is exactly what Jesus talks to his disciples about.

So we're gonna pull over to another passage in Luke 22.

Jesus is in this scene, he's kind of starting to prep his disciples a little bit more intimately and intentionally and seriously for his departure.

His departure in his bodily form.

So he's talking to Peter in Luke 22, and he says this in verse 31.

He says, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat.

But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.

And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.

So you know this is intimate, but because he uses his name twice.

When God uses your name twice, he's trying to get your attention.

Simon.

Simon.

Satan has asked, he's demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat.

Okay, let's stop right there.

Sift you like wheat.

Metaphor is a little bit lost in me because I've never sifted wheat, all right?

Probably most of us haven't done a lot of wheat sifting in our life, but sifting of wheat is the pulling apart of the grain from the chaff, and and there's a separation, and it's almost like Satan somehow came to Jesus and said, I I I want, and the you here is not just about Peter at this point in time, it's about you all, like y'all.

I've demanded y'all, right?

I he came to Jesus and and he asked that he have permission to pull them apart like wheat, to dismember them, to sift them, to separate them, to pull them apart from the inside out.

Which is, if I was Peter, I'd have some questions at this point in time.

Uh okay, so you had this conversation with Satan.

How did you respond to him?

Like, did you rebuke that?

That would have been a good time to rebuke Satan, you know?

Did you punch him in the face when he asks you if, you know, did you do any of that?

We don't get uh we don't really understand how that conversation went.

That sounds a lot like Job in the Old Testament of Satan asking to test Job.

But Satan somehow came to Jesus asking to sift them like weep, but Jesus promised to Peter was, but listen, I've I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.

And what's really interesting is this idea of fail, the the Greek here is this word ecleppo, which is where we get the word eclipse from.

The word eclipse.

So Jesus, you could say, uh, I prayed for you that your faith may not be eclipsed.

No, what is an eclipse?

Um, some of you guys remember a few years ago this epic moment of the solar eclipse.

You guys remember this.

Um, and some of you actually went to uh get in the middle.

Who went to Wyoming to see the solar eclipse?

Okay, so yeah, I remember that because most of you skipped church that morning to go to Wyoming.

To go be in the pathway of darkness.

Like, what is your problem?

Sinners.

I'm joking.

But I think we have a photo of an eclipse that we could put up if you guys.

Have it seen an eclipse, but an eclipse is very simple.

It's just something when there's an obstruction of light.

And it blocks the light that's there.

Now, the interesting thing with an eclipse is that the moon can come and actually block the pathway of the light.

It does nothing to diminish the power of the sun.

The sun doesn't actually become any weaker.

The sun doesn't come any less bright.

The sun isn't any less radiant.

It's just there's something that passes in the way of the sun that causes us to not see the power and the glory and the illumination that it brings.

And so it's really interesting because when Jesus is talking to Peter, he said, I'm praying that your faith would not be eclipsed.

But when you turn, strengthen your brothers.

See, the enemy's strategy, oftentimes for us, he can't do anything about blocking the light of God.

But what he can do is he can work his tail off to make sure that in our lives the light of Christ is eclipsed in any way possible.

And this is where Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 4.

It says that the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel, the glory of God, who is the image of God.

The God of this world has blinded, has blinds eyes.

The God of this world seeks to create an obstruction, an eclipse, an obtrusion, to come in between our sight and the sight of the only one that can illuminate our lives and bring us light and freedom and joy.

And so the question is for us is what actually, how does the enemy do this?

What eclipses the view of God in our life that keeps us from living in the light of the radiance of God?

And how might we position ourselves rightly before Him so that the enemy is not able to eclipse us?

And so a couple of things we'll point out this morning.

What blinds or blocks us from the light of God?

Number one, sin eclipses our view of God.

Now, sin is a tricky one in church because we hear the word and automatically just feel ugh.

It's just one of those downer things, and it should be a downer thing.

Sin at its core is rebellion against God, it's a turning from God.

But I think in what we see very on, sin can also be seen as believing there's another way to life outside of God.

Sin is a belief that there's another way to get to life while bypassing God.

This is what Eve did when she pulled of the fruit was a promise that you can become like God if you take matters into your own hands.

And so oftentimes the way sin works in our life is it's underneath the action, it's a promise.

If I follow through on this, it will bring me something that I deeply long for.

And that's why it's destructive, not just because the action is destructive, it's because any kind of sin actually separates us from leaning into our view of God and the dependency of God as the source of all things.

So, for instance, somebody who has wronged you, maybe you caught somebody speaking behind your back or somebody who took the promotion that you worked for, you can hold a grudge or a judgment against the other person as a way of accessing a feeling of justice.

When you withhold forgiveness for something, you actually access a feeling, a God-given feeling of justice, except without God.

And it's the world's way of justice, not God's way of justice.

And so when we hold a grudge or a judgment against an individual or a person and we refuse to walk in forgiveness, we're entering, it's sin because we're choosing the world's way of justice and not God's way of justice, which is about forgiveness and mercy and entrusting them to the justice of God.

Sin might be allowing your career to be more than a divine calling.

Our jobs are holy unto the Lord, but when it becomes an emotional obsession and we can't turn it off and we can't remove ourselves because somehow inside of it we're trying to access security and some aspect of eternal life.

If I can just uptick my career in this way, it's going to get me to that life that I need.

And what happens is in that process, rather than relying on God for security, we actually settle for a life of greed and this emotional obsession with trying to do something for us that only God can actually do for us, right?

Sin might be allowing our mind to dwell on something that's not yours, be it a house or a spouse or a car or an opportunity, believing that you're only one step away from the life that you really want.

And so what happens is we settle for envy rather than turning towards the light.

And so, sin, the reason why it's destructive, it's not just a naughty list, right?

It's not just the here's the ten things to don't do.

Sin at its very core, when we when we when we let God illuminate it, it comes to desire.

It's about misplaced and misordered desires and finding and seeking life outside of God.

And so what happens is when we partner with sin, there's an obstruction that keeps us from seeing the light of God.

But so that's one way that sin works in our life, which is why it has to be confessed and it has to be repented of, and it has to, and we have to turn back towards the light.

That's one way that sin creates that obstruction for us.

The second way is just as devious.

Because if if the first sin didn't remind us that our view of God is obstructive, the second part of sin is just as destructive.

Because what happens is when we know that we have sinned, the shame itself of falling short oftentimes is just as bad as the sin in the first place.

Do you guys know what I'm talking about?

So what happens is when we do sin, the reason why it's so destructive is because Satan takes whatever wrongdoing we've done, he dangles it in front of our face and says, I knew you'd be back.

I I knew you wouldn't be able to get over this.

Like you're you're there's nothing new about you.

You're just this thing that you've done.

It's it's like clockwork.

You're pathetic.

You you'll you're not gonna get over this.

And you you really should beat yourself up over this because I don't know, God saved you from this, so you should be as you should be ashamed because you don't, you know, there's just no way that you're gonna be able to get past this.

And so it's almost as destructive as this the original sin in the first place of the turning away from God, is the shame that the enemy dangles in front of our face as another obstruction of the face of God.

Shame blocks us from seeing the face of God.

Do you guys understand that?

But the good news in all of this is this the good news is that even when we can't see God, even when our sin is blocking us, and even when our shame obstructs us from living in the light of God, the scriptures say when we call on the name of the Lord, we will be saved.

Even when you cannot see God, when you call upon the name of the Lord, we will be saved.

Because what happens?

We call upon his name.

He brings us back to a revelation of the cross, the body of Christ broken, the blood of Jesus shed, where the power of sin and death was broken.

And so when the enemy comes to obstruct our view, we get to respond back and say, no, no, because of the body and the blood in the name of Jesus, the sin and the shame has no hold on me.

Satan, get out of my way.

But he tries night and day to accuse you before the Father.

Satan works to obstruct you because we have to remember Satan is more afraid of you than you are of him.

He is afraid of you.

He is afraid of sons and daughters walking in the light of Christ.

Do you understand that?

He is more afraid of you than you are of him.

And his goal is dead set on creating the kinds of conditions that will eclipse the light of God.

But God has equipped you with his name and his power and his blood and his spirit.

He's given you all things that pertain to righteousness and godliness.

Some of you need to know that today.

Your shame has no power in the presence of Jesus.

Your shame has no power in the presence of Jesus.

Amen?

So we stay in the light through confessing our sin, through receiving the gift of mercy, through not pretending to be something that we're not, but living as we are, trusting that it's enough for the radiance of God to illuminate, for the joy and the delight of God, his belovedness to permeate every part of our lives.

And that's how we receive mercy.

Alright, so sin eclipses our view of God.

Second thing, self eclipses our view of God.

If sin doesn't do the work to eclipse our view of God, oftentimes Satan will hold up a mirror in between you and the light of God.

Satan loves to get us obsessed with ourselves.

He loves to get us obsessed with ourselves.

And I don't think this is a surprise, but we live in a time of self-enlightenment, self-illusion.

We really love ourselves in this day and age.

The self-improvement section is the most, the the the any bookstore, the self-improvement section is going to be the largest section in the whole story because we love improving ourselves.

And there's nothing wrong with improving ourselves.

Self-awareness is not a bad thing.

Self-obsession becomes a problem.

In fact, we cannot know God.

We cannot mature unless we're aware of how God is interacting with us and we allow God to examine us and investigate our hearts.

But what happens is Satan loves for us, for the light of God to be eclipsed when our vision is no longer on Jesus, it's on ourself.

And this is again, this is what Eve had to contend with in the garden.

She was thinking of herself, and she had then upon entering into sin, she noticed something about herself that she hadn't previously noticed, that she was naked.

But the thing is, when we're only looking at our own reflection, all we see is our false selves.

When we look at the face of God, we see our true selves.

You actually can't know yourself until you look into the face of Christ.

So you can study yourself all day long, but it's until you look into the face of Christ that you know what you were made for and what you were designed for.

And yet we're living in a time where almost every part of culture we're convinced that we can redesign and redefine everything based on our own thinking and what we think is the best for ourselves.

We can redesign sexuality, we can redesign a lot of different things based on what we feel right.

And it's a sense of being addicted to our own image.

And again, the scripture says a lot about that, but Jesus, this is why his call to his disciples is that if any man are to come and follow me, you must take up your cross.

You must deny yourself and take up your cross and come follow me.

That doesn't mean that God hates the real you.

He's saying that the false part of you that you build your whole life around has to be crucified and denied so you can find your life that was hidden and prepared for me from the very beginning.

Do you guys realize that our addiction to self has to be confessed and repentative so that we can live in the full light of Jesus, radiating who we truly are in Him.

This is what we are made for.

So self eclipses our view of God.

And we know that because when we look, when we are obsessed with our own image, it has its own fruit to it.

It produces anxiety, it produces fear, it produces uncertainty, it produces second guessing.

I was talking to some neighbors the other day, they're freaked out about where the world's going.

And they're asking me about, are you freaked out about where the world's going?

I was like, no, I'm not.

They're like, are you serious?

I'm like, no, it's, you know, there's there's things that are happening.

There's a lot of darkness in the systems of the world, by the way.

You take everything we're talking about and you enhance it with every organization or you know, power struggle and governments and societies, and it's it can get really dark.

But but fear is not a better option to follow.

Fear is a terrible leader because it only leads us to become more obsessed with preserving ourselves over time.

When we follow the voice of fear, we follow the voice of fear into self-preservation and uh and second guessing and disappointment and a hopeless future.

It's not actually a better way to live.

And so we have to be reminded that that Jesus, that God is holding all things in his hand, that God is the one through whom all things hold together.

In history, there's this pretty amazing story.

Um in the first few hundred years uh uh A.D., um you guys have heard about Alexander the Great, but he had this really interesting relationship with a philosopher named Diogenes of Sinobe.

Now, Alexander the Great, as you know, conquered the whole known world.

And uh again, adding to kind of like the you know, what have you done with your life?

Uh Alexander, you know, he pretty much had that covered.

Um, everything you can think of.

He conquered all of these countries and and he lived for the appraise of man, but specifically one person.

There's a couple people that he really respected.

He wanted their praise and their acclamation.

So one of these was a philosopher named Diogenes.

And so what happened was one time after uh Alexander came back from a conquest, he returned to Corinth after one of these conquests, and he was he was pretty excited about what he had just accomplished.

Crowds of people came out to cheer him on, and they're you know, screaming his name, Alexander, Alexander, Alexander, out in the streets.

But there was one person missing, it was Diogenes, because he didn't really care much for Alexander and all the pomp and circumstance.

And uh, but that mess with Alexander because he was committed to get all of the praise and acclamation that he wanted.

So Diogenes, uh so it confused Alexander that Diogenes didn't actually come out to meet him with the crowds.

You wonder all right, I gotta do something to make this right, to win his praise.

And so several other people, Alexander took several people, they went to find him, and they found out that he was at his home uh bathing in the sun.

He was sunbathing.

He didn't really care much to go out into these welcome home parties.

So Alexander comes up to Diogenes and stands right in front of him and says, Hey, I'm here.

Anything I can do for you?

And Diogenes responds back to Alexander.

He said, Yeah, you can you can get out of my light.

You're in my light.

Can you step to the side, please?

And so Alexander, obviously, he was kind of taken aback by that, but it actually earned his respect.

He's like, here's the guy, he just came back from conquering the world, and this guy's telling me to get out of his light because he's in the sun.

It's a really funny story, but I love I love the fortitude, I love the confidence that Diogenes has here, because the moment his son is obstructed, that he has one thing and say, Listen, Alexander, I need you to get out of my light.

I wonder, as a people, that if we were to grow in that kind of confidence, that we were to grow in that kind of resilience, that kind of holy defiance, that anything that is blocking your view of the light, that you're able to turn back to the enemy and say, Satan, you need to get out of my light.

Anything that eclipses your view, anything that is currently in that.

And I know that in a time like this, and even across the room, some of us are in seasons where things feel very dark.

Maybe you've felt eclipsed for a long time.

Maybe you've been eclipsed by failure, maybe you've been eclipsed by disappointment, or just confusing.

There's there's certain things that if you were to actually be honest right now, in your current walk with Jesus, you would say, um, it's felt dark for some time.

I just believe this morning that some of you, God wants to arm with the words and with the authority of Christ to be able to speak to the enemy and say, You need to get out of my light.

I was made to be a children of light.

I was made to live in the radiance of the face of Jesus.

This is what I was made for.

And maybe for a while you've settled for the darkness that you're in.

The good news is this, guys.

The good news is this Jesus is the light of the world and he is praying for you.

He's praying for you.

He's praying that when that eclipse happens, he's praying that your faith would not fail.

And he's praying that when that eclipse is over and that turns, that you have a strength to bring back to the people in your life.

You have a strength to administer, you have a strength that you didn't have before because you trusted God even in the darkness and even in the eclipse.

But sometimes in these places of darkness, it can feel, it can feel scary, it can feel like your faith is disappearing.

And some of you know what that feels like.

I do.

I know what it feels like to be in the ebbs and flows of faith to not have a clear picture of the light of Jesus or what he's doing.

Brendan Manning in his book Lion and the Lamb tells a story about a priest from the Bahamas.

He said, a two-story house caught fire.

The family, the father, mother, and several children were on their way out of the house when the smallest boy became terrified and ran back upstairs.

Seconds later, he appeared at a smoke-filled window.

His father outside shouted to him, Jump, son, jump.

I'll catch you.

But then the boy cried, But Daddy, I can't see you.

I know, his father called.

I know, but I can see you.

This boy is at a window.

He's he's afraid.

He can't see out the window because of the smoke.

He hears his father say, Jump.

And he's afraid to jump.

He's afraid to go where his father is because he can't see him.

But the father shouts back, No, I know you can't see me, but I can see you.

And I think that there's some people here today.

You need to know you may not be able to see the father today.

You may not be able to see through what is eclipsing your life right now, but the father can see you.

And he's saying, You can trust yourself to me.

Call to my name, jump, come to where I am, jump into my arms.

I want to reintroduce you to the nearness of my presence.

So this morning, I just want to pray into that for a second.

Before we sing, I'm just gonna invite the light of God to come.

And just around the room, if you just join me in prayer, let's just invite the light of Jesus to come.

We thank you, Jesus.

We thank you, Jesus.

We thank you, Jesus.

We thank you, Jesus, that John wants says that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

No amount of darkness can overcome who you are, Jesus.

We thank you that the scriptures say, for God who said, Let light shine out of the darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

We thank you, Jesus, that you are the image of God given to us.

We thank you for the radiance of your face that illuminates all things.

You illuminate every part of our lives.

You show us who we really are and who we're not.

We thank you that you're the one who comes and reveals to us the things of the Spirit and the mind of Christ.

We thank you, Jesus, that you've called us a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.

You called all of us a people for your own possession, that you may pro that we may proclaim the excellence.

And today, Lord God, we take up our identity as a people of light in a time of darkness, God.

And we declare over our lives here in this room.

We declare over our families and over our marriages and over our kids and over our governments and over our nation and all of the strongholds of our region and our cities and era.

We say, Let the light of Christ come and illuminate the darkness.

Let every shadowy thing be exposed and let reality shine forth in the name of Jesus.

We thank you, Lord Jesus, for an explosion of the light of God and that even in the church that we can become in the name of Jesus.

And we say, Enemy, you must go.

We thank you, God.

We thank you to loosen the power of shame across the room.

Loosen the power of sin.

Loosen the power of addiction.

Loosen the power of hiding.

Jesus, let us be a people who know what it means to walk in freedom, the freedom, the glorious freedom of the children of God.

We thank you, Jesus, that you dwell in inapproachable light.

You dwell in pure light.

And God, as we come nearer to you, Father, you wash us clean.

You illuminate us.

You illuminate not just our sin, but you illuminate our belovedness.

You illuminate your delight in the core of who we are.

I thank you, Father, for a church saturated in your belovedness, God.

We thank you for the light of God.

We invite you, Jesus, to shine your face on us, God.

Let us see your face, God.

We need to see your face.

If that's your heart's cry, would you join me this morning?

Jesus, we want to see your face.

We want to see the face of God.

Turn your face towards us, Lord.

We thank you.

We thank you that the Son of Righteousness rises with healing as we are the Son of righteousness.

We are yours.

At your name still, call the sea to still the rage in me to still at your name.

Jesus, Jesus, you make the darkness tremble.

Jesus, Jesus.

You silence fear.

Jesus, Jesus.

You make the darkness tremble.

Jesus, Jesus, silence fear and breathe.

Call these bones to live.

Call these lungs to see once again.

I will praise Jesus, Jesus.

You make the darkness tremble.

Jesus, Jesus.

Jesus.

You make the darkness tremble.

Jesus, Jesus.

Your silence fear.

Your name is a light that the shadows can deny.

Your name cannot be overcut.

Your name is alive.

Your name cannot be overcut.

Your name, your name is alive, and the shadows can't die.

Your name cannot be over.

Jesus, Jesus.

You stand in Jesus, Jesus.

You make the darkness tremble, Jesus, Jesus.

You silence fear.

Jesus, Jesus.

You make the darkness tremble.

Jesus, Jesus.

You silence fear?

You silence fear.

How do you love us?

How do you love us?

I feel like the Lord wants to say somebody in here, I know you really struggle with trusting me.

And I know that your heart feels really tender into the this place of you're just not totally sure you can give him everything.

But you can't.

You can't always sense it.

But he loves you.

He loves you.

He's paid it all for you.

He's paid it off all of this.

All of this is because he loves you.

Father, would you come and help us as a body?

Help us as these broken humans to just lean in and trust your love.

Father, would you reveal yourself to us?

Would you reveal yourself to us the areas that have darkness that the light is trying to penetrate through?

But Lord, we are letting it be eclipsed.

Father, reveal these things to us so that these things can be broken off.

Break off the bondage, Lord.

Break off the shame.

It doesn't matter that we keep failing, that we keep stumbling, Father.

We can trust your love.

We can trust you.

You are good.

You are good.

You endure forever.

Jesus, Jesus, you silence fear, Jesus, Jesus.

You make the darkness tremble.

Jesus, Jesus.

You make the darkness tremble.

Jesus, Jesus.

You silence with Jesus, Jesus.

You make the darkness tremble.

Jesus, Jesus.

Your name is a lie.

That the shadows can't die.

Your name cannot be overcut.

Your name is a lie.

Your name cannot be overcue.

Your name is a light that the shadows can't die.

Your name I overcuff.

Your name is alive forever lifted high.

Your name, I'm good, Jesus.

Jesus.

You make the darkness true.

Your silence fear.

Thank you, Father.

You make the darkness chill.

Jesus.

Thank you, God.

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, God.

Just a moment.

We're gonna announce the name of Jesus.

Not softly, but loudly.

We're gonna announce the name of Jesus.

But when we're in pre-service prayer today, somebody brought this passage and from Hebrews 12, and this is perfect for us here today.

Hebrews 12 reminds us, it says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by a huge crowd of witnesses, huge crowd of the saints that have gone before us, witnesses of God, unobstructed view of who He is.

Since we're surrounded by a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up.

Let us run with endurance the rates God set before us.

We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.

Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame.

And now he is seated in the place of honor besides God's throne.

Do you guys believe that this morning?

So this morning, with our voices and with our breath that we've been given, can we announce the name of Jesus and let it shake the atmosphere of not only this room but this whole county and this whole city together?

Let's sing it, Jesus! Jesus! We love you, Jesus! Give the name of God.

We love the name of Jesus.

We announce the name of Jesus that you are the author, that you are the perfecter of faith.

And anything that eclipses us from a view of you, we say, be gone in the name of Jesus.

Light wins at the end of the day.

The light of Christ is the light of the world.

We love you, Jesus, and we give ourselves to you.

Your name is a light that the shadows cannot deny.

And this morning, God, we thank you to illuminate freedom and life and joy and glory in the hearts of your people, Lord Jesus.

We thank you.

And it's in the name of Jesus we pray together.

Come on, everybody, say it.

Amen.

Amen.

Come on, let's thank Jesus together.

We thank you, Jesus.

We thank you, Jesus.

And listen, as we leave here today, guys, as we end our time, we're we're ending the service, but we're not ending our encounter with God.

Some of you need someone to partner with you in prayer.

We're gonna have a ministry team up front.

If you're here today and there are things eclipsing you, you need faith in your heart for the day that you live in.

I want you to come forward, to not leave, but to ask for prayer, to come to anybody that's coming up front.

They're gonna join you, they're gonna believe with you, they're gonna partner with you in what God is doing in your life.

And listen, as we leave, parents, go get your kids, bring them back into here for conversations.

If you have not yet visited our prayer room on the third floor, you can follow signs to our prayer room.

Go get some time with God.

Look into the face of Jesus up in the prayer room.

It's a fantastic place to do that.

And for the rest of us here today, let me pray a blessing over us.

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

May He make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you and give you rest.

I bless you, beautiful lookout family to go in the peace and strength of Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.