"The Light of the World" (Nettleton) | John 8:12-20

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Please stand for a reading from John chapter 8, verses 12 through 20.

John 8:12–20

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.

So the Pharisee said to him, You are bearing witness about yourself.

Your testimony is not true.

And Jesus answered, Even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going.

But you do not know where I come from or where I am going.

You judge according to the flesh.

I judge no one.

Even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone who judge, but I am the Father who sent me.

In your law, it is written that the testimony of two people is true.

I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.

They said to him, therefore, Where is your father?

And Jesus answered, You know neither me nor my father.

If you knew me, you would know my father also.

These words he spoke in the treasury as he taught in the temple, but no one arrested him because his hour had not yet come.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

My name is Will Nettleton, and I'm one of the pastors here.

And if you are new with us, you may be like, Since when?

I don't know you.

And that is because for the last three months I've been on sabbatical, uh, which is a great gift that uh we're so thankful for, and we are also really excited uh to be back.

So if you are new with us within the last couple months and we haven't met, I would love to meet you.

I'll be at the back door after.

Please come by and say hi.

Uh before we jump into our passage this morning, just a word about something.

For those of you who are very observant, you may have noticed that between last week's passage and this week's passage, we're making a jump.

We are actually skipping over the first 11 verses of chapter 8 in John's Gospel.

And if you've got your Bible open in front of you, you may notice that that whole account of the woman caught in adultery is set off in brackets in most of our Bibles.

And there's a footnote that comes with it, and it's actually the reason that we're not going to preach that text this morning.

And the reason is that the earliest and most reliable copies of John's Gospel that we have don't actually contain those verses.

And the later copies do, and when they do have it, the passage tends to move around a little bit.

Sometimes it's here in John, sometimes it's over in Luke.

And whenever that happens, when we're looking at the manuscripts of the scriptures that we have, we almost certainly know that it was added in later.

And so our judgment is that this is a true and treasured story about Jesus.

We think it's reputable enough that uh it was being passed around in the Jesus community by true eyewitnesses.

We think that it represents something faithful and true about him.

We just don't believe this is something that John originally had in his gospel.

And so, because of that, we're gonna gently set it aside.

Now, for some of you this morning, this is the first time you're hearing about this, and so it may raise a question for you.

If they could just add this in, how do we know that any of the rest of it wasn't just added in?

How do we know that any of it is true or faithful to the original?

And I actually want to turn that around on you because the reason we can see that this is not actually a part of what John originally wrote is because we have so many, and so many copies, early copies of the Gospel of John that are all very consistent with one another.

The differences are very small.

And so that makes it actually very glaring when there is a big difference like this one.

And that's true for almost all of our Bible.

There's really only two substantial sections in the New Testament manuscripts that we have questions about.

There's this one, and then there's the long ending of Mark, which if you've got your Bible, you'll see also has a similar note.

And we believe that neither of those touches any of the essentials of what we believe about the faith.

And so I say all that to say there's this is not a crack in your Bible.

This is a window into how carefully it has been kept.

How carefully it has been preserved.

Uh, we're gonna record a podcast later this fall.

If this raises a ton of questions for you, we're gonna try to go into this with some scholars.

Uh, Brian and I are.

So uh stay tuned for that.

We want to try and handle those questions.

If you do have those, if this is a big hang up for you, please feel free to grab me or one of the other pastors.

We'd love to walk through that with you at some point.

We just don't have time to do it all together this morning.

Uh for now, we just say you can trust the book that's in your hands.

One other programming note as we go.

Um, you're gonna see in your outline that we have two points this morning.

And I'm just gonna tell you on the front end, we are not getting to that second point.

Let's not happen.

And I'm gonna blame part of that on being off for three months and being rusty and forgetting how to write a sermon.

And then I'm gonna blame the other part of it is that as I wrestled with this passage this week, um, I could not get past the beauty of verse 12.

And so that is where I want to camp out this morning.

There are things that we believe about Jesus, that we say about Jesus, that we hear from Jesus, that we've heard so many times that we kind of become numb to them.

And what I want us to do this morning is to try and, if we can, knock off the cobwebs and come back to this claim that Jesus makes fresh.

Because the claim that he is the light of the world is extraordinary.

It is an extraordinary claim.

And if it's true, it's the best news any of us have ever heard.

He is the light of the world.

I will tell you this.

The short version of point two is just this.

Jesus makes that big claim.

I'm the light of the world.

And the Pharisees basically say to him, You can't just say that.

You gotta have backup for that kind of claim.

You gotta have a witness.

And Jesus says, I have one.

The Father bears witness to me, but you don't know him.

He's basically saying to them, God is my witness, and if you knew him, you would believe me, but you don't, so you can't.

There you go.

That's point two in a nutshell.

Can I do point one that fast?

I cannot.

And so uh we're gonna jump into that.

Let me pause and pray, and then we'll jump into it.

God, we are we marvel at your word.

The way that you are able to pack so much of yourself into even just a few words of this, your holy and inspired word.

And so I pray that you would open our eyes to see wonderful things from it this morning.

We're talking about light this morning, Father, and so we need your illuminating Holy Spirit, the one who breathed out these words, to come here, to pull the scales from our eyes and to open them that we might see you, Jesus.

I pray the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing to you, our rock, and our Redeemer.

It's in Jesus' name that I pray.

Amen.

Well, one of the major recurring themes in the Gospel of John is that Jesus keeps doing these I am statements.

You may know this about the Gospel.

There's seven of them in the Gospel.

We've already looked at one of them back in John 6.

I am the bread of life.

And we come to another one this morning.

I am the light of the world.

And these I am statements are significant because they aren't just metaphors telling us who Jesus is.

They are that, but they aren't just that.

If you recall in the Old Testament book of Exodus, when God meets with Moses and he sends him to go into Egypt and to lead his people out of slavery, Moses asks God a question.

If they say, Who sent you?

If they say, What's his name, what should I tell them?

And God says, tell them, I am sent you.

I am is the name that God chooses for himself.

And so when we see these I am statements of Jesus, we are encountering much more than a metaphor about what Jesus is like.

We are hearing him stake his claim to be one with the great I am.

But each one of these metaphors do unpack a lot about who Jesus is as God in the flesh.

And the light of the world is an especially powerful one.

Think with me for a minute about our relationship with light.

Without light, you and I don't have life.

We can't live.

Our world needs the sun's light for anything to grow, for us to eat, so on and so on.

It is a life-giving source.

And at the same time, too much of that same sunlight can hurt us, as the pale among us like me can testify, right?

And of course, overexposure can over time even lead to death.

You get too close to that light, and it'll kill you.

We're not made of the right stuff to survive the encounter.

Depending on what you're doing in any given moment, you can find yourself drawn to or repulsed by light.

We're back in school now.

Parents, what is your greatest weapon on a school morning when no one wants to get out of bed?

It's the light switch, right?

That's when you choose violence, right?

And the exorcism starts.

When nothing else has worked.

We'd flip on the lights.

Why is it so alarming to go from that moment of sleeping to having the overhead lights just come flooding on?

Because when you're used to the darkness, the light can be painful.

We can find ourselves repulsed by light.

And yet, too, we often find ourselves longing for the light.

It's funny, those same children who often hate the light when it's time to go to school long for any light when the power goes out in the middle of the night.

When you're walking in darkness.

So light can be life-giving, but it can also be dangerous.

It can be overwhelming, but it can also be comforting.

Light can also be revealing.

Without light, we can't see anything.

We can't see beauty or goodness or what's true.

We need the light for all of that.

But with that can also come exposure.

The light can reveal beauty and goodness and truth, but it can also expose us.

Are you beginning to see why Jesus saying, I am the light of the world, is such a powerful metaphor for him to claim.

But there's even more because Jesus makes this claim in a particular place at a particular time with a particular people.

And because of that context, the people standing there would have understood Jesus to be saying something even more.

And so let's jump back into the passage.

Look back again with me at verse 12.

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.

So I say a particular people in a particular moment in time in a particular place.

That's our context.

It's going to help us see, it's going to help us hear that I am the light of the world, as his original audience would have heard it.

So John tells us here at the beginning, again, Jesus said to them.

And if you look back up at chapter 7, verse 37, you get where that again is referencing, what it's talking about.

It says, on the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

And if you go back to the beginning of chapter 7, you'll realize this is a continuation of the preaching that Jesus has been doing in Jerusalem, in the temple, at the Feast of Booths.

So what's the Feast of Booths?

If you haven't been with us, I know we've explained this the last couple weeks, but if you're new or perhaps you just forgot, the Feast of Booths is one of the three obligatory festivals for the Jewish people at this time.

There are festivals for which they have to travel to Jerusalem to worship at the temple.

They have the Feast of Passover, we're often familiar with that one, the Feast of Pentecost, and then the Feast of Booths.

And what this feast celebrates is the provision that God made for his people while they were wandering around in the wilderness.

Those 40 years after leaving Egypt, as they're making their way to the Promised Land, there are multiple moments where God intervenes in miraculous ways to provide for them.

And the Feast of Booths is a celebration of all of that.

Specifically, they celebrated three provisions that God made for the people.

And if you've been with us for this study in John, a lot of what Jesus has been saying about Himself is connected to these.

So I'm going to kind of start to click for you in just a moment, I think.

So they celebrate these three miraculous provisions of God in the wilderness: manna, the bread from heaven, the water from the rock when Moses struck the rock and water flowed out.

And then the light, the fiery cloud that led them out of Egypt.

So bread, water, and light.

And so far Jesus has claimed the first two, right?

Remember, after the feeding of the 5,000, what did he say?

I am the bread of life.

And last week we saw him say at this same feast, as they were doing the water ceremony, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

And now he's laying claim to the third.

I am the light.

It'll help you actually to have a picture of what's going on as Jesus even says this.

As they're at the Feast of Booths, the celebration of the light is when the party actually really starts at this feast.

The priests would light these four massive towering menorahs, and they would be full of seven and a half gallons of oil.

And they would light these four, and the fire would blaze all night long.

And they would light torches all around the temple, and the priests would come in and dance.

Priests don't normally do that.

They would dance all night long in the light, and the Levitical orchestra would go crazy, and tens of thousands of people would come and sing praise to God.

They would party until dawn.

It's often said that during the feast of booths at night, the temple looked like it was on fire.

And that would have been such a powerful image for the Jewish people.

Why is that?

If you remember Exodus, when the people are leaving Egypt, there's this moment where this thing just appears before them.

And during the day it looks like a cloud.

But at night, when the sun goes down, instead of kind of fading like a normal cloud would, this one starts to radiate.

And so they call it a pillar of fire.

And this fire cloud was the very thing that when they got to the Red Sea and Pharaoh and his army are coming after them, and they think they're dead because they're backed into a corner.

There's a sea in front of them, and they're enemies behind them, and all looks lost.

The cloud that's in front of them moves behind them and gets between them and the enemy.

It's the thing that protects them as Moses lifts his staff and parts the waters, and they walk across on dry land.

And Exodus 13 tells us exactly what or who that cloud was.

The Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night.

The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people.

The light, the fire cloud, is the very manifestation of the presence of God among them.

It's how they know God is with them.

God Himself was their light.

That's what they're celebrating.

That's why they gather at night and light these torches and dance and defy the darkness.

Because God, their light, was with them.

And Jesus stands up in the middle of that.

You notice verse 20, it said they're in the treasury.

That's right in front of the candelabras.

And Jesus stands up in the middle of all this and says, I am the light.

I am the light.

And now you start to get why John is saying in verse 20, no one arrested him.

That kind of hits you funny at first.

Like, why would somebody arrest him?

He's saying he's the enlightenment.

It's just kind of a nice thing.

I'm the light of the world.

No, he's claiming to be God.

It's not this vague, fuzzy claim to be a source of enlightenment.

He's saying the light you celebrate, the light that was the presence of God among you, is here again.

I am the light of the world.

Okay, so what?

Jesus is the light of the world.

So what?

For them, so what for us?

You'll notice in your outline that we said this claim is both exclusive and inclusive.

What do we mean by that?

Jesus uses the definite article there two times.

I am the light of the world.

I'm not a light, I am the light.

Jesus is saying, if you want access to the life-giving light, if you want out of the darkness of this world, there is one way and one way only.

And it's Him.

Other religious figures might claim to point you to the light.

Jesus is saying, I am the light.

He's the only way.

It's an exclusive claim.

But it's also an inclusive claim because Jesus says he is the light of the world.

Who's this light for?

It's for the whole world.

It's not just for one particular people in one particular place at one particular time.

It is for all who will come.

All who will turn to Him.

He's fulfilling all those Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah, like the one in Isaiah 49, I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

So it's exclusive.

He's the light, there is no other.

And it's inclusive.

It's for everybody.

All who would come.

And so if that's you this morning, if you want to walk out of the darkness that has defined your life so far, if you want life-giving light, what do you do?

Listen to Jesus.

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

Come and walk with Jesus.

That's what we're trying to do here this morning.

We'd love for you to join us.

Walk out of darkness into his light.

You don't have to make your own light.

He has that covered.

How did he do that?

Jesus went to the cross to deal with the darkness.

It's a fascinating little detail in Luke's gospel when Jesus is hanging on the cross.

It says there was darkness over the whole land from noon until 3 p.m.

That's not normally when it's dark, is it?

Why did the sun go out?

Why did the sun's light fail, as Luke puts it?

Because as Jesus hangs on the cross, the light of the world is going dark.

But he was going dark that we might come into the light.

That's why he came.

If you want out of the darkness, come follow the one who walked straight into it to bring you out.

Many of us are following Jesus this morning or trying to.

What does it mean for us that Jesus is the light of the world?

There is one other time that Jesus uses this language about light of the world.

I wonder if you remember where it is.

It's in the Sermon on the Mount, actually.

And he doesn't say there, I am the light of the world.

He says, You are the light of the world.

A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.

In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

If you're following Jesus this morning, is that true of you?

Is your light shining in such a way that people see what you're doing?

The answer is no for me, too, by the way.

Is your light shining in such a way that people see what you're doing and people who Don't even believe in God are saying, thank God for them.

Thank God for them.

People are drawn to the light.

Are people drawn to us because of the way we follow Jesus?

Do they sense that we have something that they don't?

Of course, I mentioned earlier, light can also have another effect.

People can also be repulsed by the light.

I think that's true for us too.

There are going to be times for us as Christians where to follow Jesus and to let our light shine is going to expose darkness.

And rather than being drawn to our light, it's possible that people will want us to put it out.

And we may be tempted to oblige them.

Tim Keller was a pastor in New York.

He used to tell the story of a police officer he knew actually in New York City, who is a member of the NYPD, who became a Christian.

And he became convicted about the way that he'd been doing his job.

He had, this particular police officer had been taking bribes.

And he and his whole squad actually had.

And they'd been taking bribes from a certain gang that just said, hey, just stay away from these couple of street corners.

And he became a Christian and decided he couldn't do that anymore.

And some of his fellow officers came to him and told him, You start taking the bribes again.

Or else the next time you call for backup, there won't be any.

What do you do in a situation like that?

Where for you to walk in the light means the darkness of others is exposed.

And they are tempted to say, put it out.

When was the last time we had that experience where we were faithfully following Jesus, shining his light?

And someone repulsed by that said, put it out.

Those are going to be realities for us.

We're going to have people who are attracted to us because of the light.

People are drawn to it, and others are going to be repulsed by it.

It's part of how we know we're following Jesus.

We're no longer walking in darkness.

We have the light of life and we let it shine.

And that means we live in such a way that it attracts those who long for the light.

And it means we're going to have to live courageously in the face of those whom it repulses or outrages.

One final thought, and I'll just close with this.

Jesus says here that those who follow him will not walk in darkness.

Which means there may be things this morning that we have been doing in the dark that have to stop.

There are secret things that we do that we want no one to know, and I won't list them because if you're doing them, you know.

And I know that it is a scary thing to bring that into the light.

You are scared of the consequences.

I get it.

I have been there.

The reality is that it will hurt, but it will be worth it.

We use this story a lot around here, but it's one of my favorite from the Chronicles of Narnia, where Eustace, you remember the cousin of the Pevensey children, gets greedy and he goes after a dragon's treasure and it turns him into a dragon himself.

And he has that encounter with Aslan where Aslan tells him to remove the scales, and he can't get them off on his own.

And he realizes that Aslan's going to have to be the one to do it, and he wants to change, but he's terrified of how much it's going to hurt.

But he's so desperate that he agrees.

And this is what Lewis writes about that moment.

As Aslan tears his talons into Eustace the dragon.

The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.

And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt.

But once Aslan had the dragon skin off, he picks him off and he throws him into a well, into some water.

And that hurts and stings as well because his flesh is all raw and new.

But after a moment, he begins to swim and splash and he begins to laugh because he realizes it worked.

He's a boy again.

He's not a dragon anymore.

He'd been healed.

Aslan had wounded him to heal him, to make him whole.

Perhaps you were walking in some secret dark thing this morning.

And you were afraid to come into the light because it will hurt.

It will hurt.

And it will be worth it.

Because on the other side of that, you will be made whole.

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

There is no darkness in you that can overcome the light of the world.

He walked into the grave.

He walked into darkness itself, and he swallowed it whole.

And he came out the other side.

There is no darkness in you that can put out his light.

The light of the world shines in the darkness, and the darkness is not overcome it.

Come and follow Jesus this morning.

Amen.

Let me pray.

Jesus said, Do you pray if there are any here who are walking in darkness, who have never come into your light?

I pray that they, Lord, would not be repulsed by the light, but would be drawn even further in.

Would they come and follow you and find it to be, as your word calls it, a marvelous light?

And I pray for those of us who have walked into it and are so prone to wander back, Lord.

We're so prone to go back towards the darkness.

Perhaps there are even some here who fear because they're supposed to be a good Christian.

They're not supposed to have these kind of secrets, they're not supposed to walk in this kind of darkness.

And they fear that it will kill them to come to the light.

Lord, I pray that you would open eyes to see that the light is sweeter, that on the other side of that death is a resurrection like none they've ever known.

That there is healing in you, the Son of Righteousness, who's risen with healing in his wings.

I pray you would draw us to that light even now.

It's in Jesus' name that we pray.

Amen.