The Light & the Darkness — John 8:12-30 (06.14.2026)

Please remain standing as a way of reading or as a way of honoring the reading of God's word.

Today's scripture reading comes from John 8, verses 12-30.

John 8:12–30

After our finished reading, I'm going to say, this is the word of the Lord if

you would respond with, thanks be to God.

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. 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.

Yet, even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone who judge.

But I and 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? 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.

So he said to them again, I am going away, and you will seek me,

and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.

So the Jews said, will he kill himself? Since he says, where I am going, you cannot come.

He said to them, you are from below. I am from above. You are of this world. I am not of this world.

I told you that you would die in your sins.

For unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins.

So they said to him, Who are you? Jesus said to them, Just what I have been

telling you from the beginning.

I have much to say about you and much to judge.

But he who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him.

They did not understand that he had been speaking to them about the Father.

So Jesus said to them, When you have lifted up the Son of Man,

then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing on my own authority,

but speak just as the Father taught me.

And He who sent me is with me.

He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.

As He was saying these things, many believed in Him. This is the word of the Lord.

All right. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Go ahead and be turning in

your Bibles if you're not there yet.

To John 8. And as you're finding your way to John 8, I'm going to pray for us.

If you don't have a Bible, hopefully you got a bulletin and there's an insert

in there with the scripture, and it'll also be on the screen.

Let me pray. Father, we do thank you for this wonderful opportunity now to open

your word and to see your son, Jesus Christ, clearly through your word.

God, we do have a terrible tendency to forget as Psalm 106 talks about.

We see your glory and then by the next Sunday or even by the time we get to

lunch, we have forgotten about what we've seen because we get distracted.

We thank you, Lord, for your steadfast love toward us and your patience with us.

Would you help us now to see your glory through this passage and for that to

lead us to real worship and wonder?

And would you help these truths to stick in our minds and lead us toward a deeper relationship with you?

We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

So before we jump into the passage that we are in today, verses 12 through 30,

I want to briefly just talk about something that you're going to see if you're

reading through John and you come to, there's a section that we aren't,

we're not talking about this morning.

Right before this, verses chapter 7, verse 53.

Through chapter 8, verse 11.

And it's, you're going to see, if you look at John 7, 52, right after that,

probably if you have a more modern translation,

something bracketed, like the earliest manuscripts do not include 7, 53 through 8, 11.

And I just want to explain that to you so that when you come across that in

your Bible, it doesn't throw you off. So.

What has happened here is that modern translations are going to make that note

because most New Testament scholars who've given their lives to studying,

the original manuscripts that we have, have come to the conclusion that this

section of scripture is not original to John.

And the reason is because the earliest manuscripts that have come down to us,

and we continue to discover more early, early manuscripts. These earliest manuscripts

do not have that included in them.

So what has likely happened, and it's pretty clear what has happened,

is that somewhere along the line, this story probably did happen.

It most likely did happen. Like John even talks about that. We cannot,

he says, there's no way to include all of the things that Jesus did in one book, right?

And there are so many things that Jesus did and taught that we don't have record

of, but there were oral traditions being passed down to the churches,

and likely one of those was this story,

and a scribe decided to insert it here in John.

Somewhere along the way.

And so then that began to get copied in later manuscripts.

But even in like later manuscripts, there would oftentimes be like an asterisk

or some kind of a mark denoting that this was probably

different, that there was something different about this passage because some

of the expressions, some of the grammatical construction,

was different from anything else that you see in John's writings. And so.

So that's the reason that that's there. And that's the reason that we're not

covering it. We don't believe that this is something to be afraid of. This is what we know.

Our Bible, we can have confidence in the Bibles that we hold in our hands because.

There are no ancient documents that are more well attested to than our New Testament.

There are something like almost 5,800 ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, 5,800.

And so just to give you a way of comparison, by way of comparison,

Plato, that we have no trouble believing is an ancient, correct document,

there are seven copies of Plato.

We have 5,800 copies in the Greek. And if you include other languages,

it's something closer to 20 to 25,000 ancient manuscripts, ancient copies of the New Testament.

And so when you have that number of copies, you're more likely to have some

things that are added or different.

But when you look at the whole, we can have incredible confidence that the New

Testament, the Bible that we hold in our hands is indeed the word of God.

So I just wanted to make that.

Just talk about that briefly, just so that you understand what's happening there

when you come across a note like that in your Bible.

And there is only one other place in all of the New Testament that's like that,

that would be the end of Mark. So, I mean, we're talking about two places in

the entire New Testament that have been added in by scribes.

Okay, so let's jump into our passage today. So to remind us of the context,

we are still in Jerusalem during the Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast of Booths.

And Jesus has been teaching publicly in the temple and his teaching is creating increasing division.

You got people in the crowds who are believing in him. You also have people

in the crowds who are wrestling with who is he, what is this,

who is this guy and where has he come from?

And then you also have the religious rulers who are growing in their hostility

toward him and want him dead more than ever.

But everyone is debating the question of Christ's identity. Who is this guy

and where did he come from? And Jesus is answering that question.

And remember, if you were with us at the end of chapter seven,

the religious rulers were claiming to use the scriptures to show that Jesus

was not the Messiah because Jesus was from Galilee.

Remember this? And they had missed this prophecy that is in Isaiah 9,

1 through 2, that says, The land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations,

the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.

Those who dwell in a land of deep darkness, on them a light has shone.

So John didn't include that in his gospel here, Matthew does.

But Jesus has clearly, he is the fulfillment of that prophecy coming from Galilee,

and on them, a light has shown.

So just at the end of chapter seven, you have these religious rulers who are

saying, no, no, no, this cannot be the Messiah because the Messiah doesn't come from Galilee,

completely missing this clear prophecy that the Messiah is going to come and,

shine light into Galilee.

And now you have immediately after that, Jesus making this claim.

I am the light of the world. I am the light of the world. It's the second of his, I am statements.

So here is the big idea that we're going to see in this passage.

Jesus is.

The light of the world is the only one who can save you.

A Jesus of your own making cannot save you, but Jesus, the light of the world

lifted up on the cross, is the only one who can save you from dying in your sins.

Point number one, Jesus is the light and he defines who he is.

All right, so here's his claim. I am the light of the world.

His first I am claim was, I am the bread of life.

And so that was talking about the fact that he is the only one who can save us.

He's the only one who can satisfy us. He is like manna that came from heaven,

but he can ultimately satisfy us forever and give us life.

This I am statement points to the light that is gained by gaining Christ.

Before we meet Christ, we are in darkness.

And in fact, the whole world is in darkness.

That refers to our wickedness, but also to the fact that we are deceived and blinded by Satan.

We cannot see what is true and good, and we cannot see reality.

You might remember earlier in John that John says that people rejected Jesus,

that he came into the world and people rejected him because they loved darkness rather than light.

We've talked about that. Now Jesus very publicly declares himself to be the

light, not just a light, not just one of many, but the light.

Think about that claim for just a moment. It means that all light comes from him and there.

Now, we have to think about darkness as well. Darkness isn't produced the way that light is.

It is an absence of light.

How do you get darkness? You don't have a source of darkness.

You have an absence of light. You remove light, and that's how you get darkness.

The further that you travel away from a light source, the darker the darkness gets.

What I'm trying to do here, and I hope I can be some help, is help you to see

the world the way that Jesus is seeing the world,

to have a biblical worldview so that when he says this astonishing claim,

I am the light of the world, you can start to kind of grasp what all is wrapped up in that.

In verse 15, he's going to say, you judge according to the flesh.

In verse 23, he is going to say, you are of this world. I am not of this world.

In Jesus's worldview and in the biblical worldview, there are two realms.

There are two kingdoms, two realms, two kingdoms. There are the realm of light

or the kingdom of light and the realm of darkness or the kingdom of darkness.

The realm of darkness, again, is a realm that is void of all light because it

is separated from Christ.

Christ's kingdom operates on truth and always leads to life.

The realm of darkness is void of truth and always leads to and produces death.

It operates according to the flesh.

And that to understand what's wrapped up in that world a word we need to consider

the fall of humanity for just a second,

so in the beginning you had adam and eve in the garden the the first humans

created and they were created without sin they they had no sin within them,

and they dwelt in perfect fellowship with God.

They lived in the light.

They were governed by truth. There were no lies corrupting their nature,

their minds, their souls, or their bodies.

All three, mind, soul, and body, were operating as God intended for humanity

in perfect harmony with truth.

But when they heard the first lie uttered to humanity by the serpent,

and they believed that lie,

they joined in a rebellion that had been started by Satan, by the serpent,

the one that first departed from God and started this realm of darkness.

And so their sin created a separation between them and God, a separation from the light.

They, in effect, entered into darkness. And everyone who was born after Adam

and Eve inherited that state.

Okay, that is all of us, everyone born in that state, the state of the flesh,

a mind, a soul and a body totally corrupted,

by sin, completely separated from light, or the biblical word for that would be death.

We were born dead in our trespasses and sins.

So when the Bible talks about the flesh, it's not only, it is in darkness, it is ignorant of truth,

is one way that the Bible will talk about it, ignorant of truth,

ignorant of God, but also at enmity with God and at enmity with truth.

We have to understand this in order to appreciate the gospel,

in order to appreciate what Jesus has done when he comes into this darkness as the light.

So the flesh is opposed to God, Romans 8 says, and it cannot please God.

It's not just indifferent, but at enmity, opposed to God.

So how do we, now that Jesus has come, come out of this darkened state where

we actually love this darkness? We are opposed to God.

We cannot see reality. We cannot see and comprehend truth. What does he say?

He says, whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

Now, I mean, leading up to this point in the gospel of John,

it's talked a lot about believing in him, believing in him, believing in him.

And that's one way that the scripture talks about it.

That when we come to trust him, when we come to truly believe in him,

that we are saved from this darkness. But now Jesus throws in another word,

which is also in the other gospels, whoever follows me.

So which is it, Lord? Is it that we need to believe in you or is it that we need to follow you?

And what we're going to see is that these two things are describing the same thing.

To believe in Jesus is to trust him in such a way that you follow him, right?

He is not only our Savior, but our Lord.

Not only our Savior, but our teacher. And so to believe in him,

to really trust him is to follow him.

We heard earlier in the service, this reminder of the Israelites in the wilderness

and they're following a pillar of fire, right?

Imagine now that's their light.

That's what's guiding them where they're supposed to go. Now imagine if they

said to God, well, God, we trust you, but we know you're going that way,

but we're going to go this way.

Well, that would show clearly that they didn't trust him, right?

So to trust him, to believe in him is to follow him. So to say,

I believe in Jesus, I'm just not interested in bringing my life under his lordship.

I'm just not interested in following his word. Well, that's a contradiction.

It's not true belief. And that's one of the things that we need to see here.

So he says, if you follow me, you'll have light.

You will have understand. you will begin to see things in truth,

beginning with seeing who he truly is.

So as quickly as he makes this claim, the Pharisees attack it, right?

They come against that in verses 13 through 20. They prove that they are still

themselves in spiritual darkness, even though they're the leaders,

they're the religious leaders in Israel.

And Jesus essentially responds saying he doesn't need their validation.

The father is his witness.

And he knows where he came from and he knows where he's going.

He's speaking of his divine origin. I know where I came from.

He's speaking of his mission. I know where I'm going. He's speaking of his future

reign, right? I know where I'm headed.

But their judgment of him is wrong because it's according to the flesh.

It's, they're blind. They do not have light.

He goes on to say that ignorance of him is ignorance of God.

Now, that's a huge statement there. In other words, those that claim to believe

in the God of the Bible, but reject the Christ of the Bible,

Jesus, they don't know the God of the Bible.

You cannot know. This is one of the things that Jesus is saying when he says, I am the light.

He is the revelation to us of God.

You cannot know the biblical God apart from Christ. You cannot know.

You cannot come to him apart from him. You cannot know him apart from him because he is the light.

And without light, we are still in total darkness.

So that's point one. Point two is the consequences of getting Jesus wrong.

Look at verse 21, what he says. He says, I'm going away and you will seek me,

and you will die in your sin where I'm going. You cannot come.

He warns these religious leaders that they are headed for the absolute worst

possible outcome for a person,

if they continue in their unbelief they will die in their sin and particularly

in view here is the sin of rejecting christ,

if they continue to reject christ they will die that's first thing that he says,

death is final it is absolute at the point of death there is no there is no

more opportunity to turn to christ to be saved,

this is this is what he's saying you will die you will die in your sin he's saying.

You will die still under God's judgment. You will die under condemnation.

If you die still rejecting Christ, there's not some second chance.

And that's so important that we see that if we will have compassion and burden

for the lost who do not yet know Christ, we have to consider what that means.

We have to consider what happens if we die apart from Christ.

We have to consider the reality of hell. That if we live in darkness for our

whole lives, when we die, we will be cast into outer darkness for eternity.

Separated from all light. Separated from all that is good.

From all that is true. From all that is beautiful.

We have to consider these things. He's saying, if you continue in this rejection

of me, you die. You will die in your sins. Look at verse 24.

I told you that you would die in your sins for unless you believe that I am

he, you will die in your sins.

That means there's a lot wrapped up in that phrase.

Unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins. It means that it

matters that we believe in the biblical Christ.

It means that we don't get to make a Jesus of our own creation, of our own imagination.

It means we must not fall for that.

Lie that we can just sort of believe that Jesus is who we believe he is in our hearts.

What matters is, according to Jesus' own words here, is that we believe that

he is the great I am and that he is the Messiah who fulfills the promises made in the Old Testament.

And that means that doctrine matters.

It means theology matters very much.

We need to know who is this Jesus that we are following, or else we could end

up following a Jesus of our own making.

Let me share a quote with you that I came across this week. Pastor and theologian

Kevin DeYoung, speaking on this very passage, says this, Oh,

it sounds very good to say it's all about Jesus, but then you have to ask the next question.

What sort of Jesus is it all about?

And why are we all about Jesus? And what does it mean for us to be all about this Jesus?

Well, then you have to start talking about theology and content.

A contentless Christ does not save.

You are not saved merely by having warm feelings in your heart about the word Jesus.

Verse 24 tells us, unless you believe that I am he, suggesting you must understand

something about the person and the nature and the work of Jesus Christ insofar

as you are given mental faculty and ability to do so.

A contentless Christ cannot save.

It is the one and only biblical Christ that saves. Belief in him that saves.

So we have to understand something about the nature and work of Jesus Christ.

That is why, church, we do things here that are like read creeds,

statements of faith together.

It's because we're trying to build our Bible literacy.

We're trying to wrap our minds around what is it that, not just that we believe

now in 2026, but what has the church historically believed for 2000 years?

And in particular about God and the gospel.

Christianity, of course, is more than creeds or statements of faith,

but it is not less than a statement of faith or creed. You have to believe something specific.

And so it begins here. What do you believe about Jesus? Do you allow him to

define who he is through his word?

And so here's a diagnostic question to help us. Does your Jesus always agree

with you in your worldview?

Does your Jesus just kind of get on board with whatever your plans are? Does he ever push back?

Does he ever challenge your 21st century way of thinking about the world and righteousness?

If not, then you're following a Jesus of your own making.

Jesus says, unless you believe that I am he, the Messiah, the one that the scriptures

attest to, you will die in your sins.

So make sure the Christ that you are following is the true Christ of scripture.

Born of a virgin the divine son from the father the long-awaited specifically

described messiah promised in the old testament scriptures who was crucified

under pontius pilate dead and buried and raised on the third day

who is now ascended back into heaven and is seated at the right hand,

of god the father ruling and reigning,

and this is another reason why right doctrine matters is it leads us to the cross.

And that brings us to our third point. The cross reveals who he is most clearly.

Jesus came, and one of the things that he is saying repeatedly in this section

and that he has said in previous sections is that he came to reveal the Father

to us, who is invisible, cannot see.

So Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, becomes a human

being, steps into human history.

And we can see, we can see who God is.

And Jesus tells these unbelieving Pharisees, verse 28, when you have lifted

up the son of man, then you will know that I am he.

There is no moment or scene in Christ's life on earth where God's glory was

more clearly seen than at the cross.

If you want to see just who God really is, look no further than the cross where

his son died in our place.

On the cross, as the sinless Savior died in the place of sinful men and women,

we see the holiness and justice of God.

His holiness meant that our sin had to be paid for. He couldn't ignore it.

His justice meant that his wrath had to be poured out on a human substitute,

someone who was truly man.

There's no other way to deal with our guilt.

But also on the cross, we see the glory of God's grace, the glory of God's mercy,

because we see a God who chose to love sinners, people who had rejected him.

We see a God who went to such great lengths that nothing would stop him,

even unto death, to reconcile us back to God.

So at the cross, we see God's holiness, sin cannot be swept under the rug.

We see his justice. He cannot ignore this.

There's a way that this must take place. There must be a human substitute. And we see his grace.

He says, I will be that man.

I will take that punishment for sin. I will pay that price.

Truly because Jesus was lifted up.

We can know without a doubt that he is the Messiah who came to set his people

free from sin and the power of death and to redeem them, to reconcile them back to God.

Jesus is saying to these Pharisees as well, I already know what kind of death,

by what kind of a death you will finally kill me.

And when it happens, you will have no doubt in your minds that I am he.

When Jesus died, you may know the way that this goes down. When he dies.

The earth, the middle of the day, it's as dark as night.

And the moment that he breathes his last, there's an earthquake,

rocks are split in two, the temple in the curtain is torn from top to bottom, graves are opened up.

I believe that in that moment when that happened, there was no intellectual,

misunderstanding on the part of these Pharisees.

I think they knew who it was that

they had just killed, but they loved the darkness rather than the light.

And that intellectual understanding of what had happened was not enough to save

them. They chose the darkness.

And there are still going to be today people who, they may be intellectually

convinced, but they are not going to choose to leave the darkness.

Look at verse 30. He says, many, it says, as he was saying these things,

many believed in him, many.

What about you today? I mean, the evidence is abundantly clear.

All you have to do is open your eyes and look around at the world that we live in.

The heavens declare the glory of God.

All you have to do is listen to the incredible testimony of Scripture.

All you have to do is look at the testimony of lives transformed.

The evidence is before you.

What will you do with it? Will you trust Him? Will you turn from darkness to light?

Will you receive forgiveness of sins? Will you accept this wonderful gift that's

before you that you can be transferred from the domain of darkness and into

the domain of light, the kingdom of the beloved Son?

Unless you let the Word define who it is that you're trusting,

who it is that you're believing in.

You'll die in your sins. But if you do believe, if you do trust him,

the biblical Christ, then you will be saved. You will be forgiven.

This suffering and dying and resurrected Savior wants to bring more into his kingdom.

He wants to save more from the darkness. Will you let him?

He's calling us out of our darkness-loving old lives of sin into the light.

Follow the biblical Jesus, the light of the world, and you will not walk in

darkness, but you'll have the light of life. Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for not leaving us in our darkness.

As we sang this morning, in the darkness we were waiting without hope,

without light, but from heaven you came running and there was mercy in your eyes. Thank you.

Thank you for coming to us, for stepping into this dark world,

for taking our sin upon yourself on the cross,

for taking the punishment, the penalty for our sin and dying for us so that we could be saved.

Lord, help us not only to believe that wonderful news, but now to take that

wonderful news to others, to share it with others so that,

those who are in darkness could see a great light.

We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.