John: Letting the Light into Our Darkness

All right, and take a seat.

So we're working our way through the book of John on Sunday mornings, and so we're at the end of John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

Last week we talked about this conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus.

Nicodemus is this religious man, he's a man of the law, which means he was a man of Old Testament law.

So he lived his life kosher.

He lived his life by the law, eating the right things, doing the right things, making the right sacrifices.

And this was the life that he would present to God, and he felt by doing these things, God would accept him.

And Jesus comes along and says, you know, all right, what you're doing here is never-ending, it's futile.

You can't do enough.

The law, the righteousness of the law is too much for you.

You can't handle it.

And Jesus comes along and says, There's another way.

I am actually the other way.

I will fulfill the law, and it's by grace, it's by a gift, that you will be accepted by God.

And this is like we talked about last week.

We talked about this is like a cloud in front of Nicodemus, of seeing a great mountain.

He just can't see it.

His human pride of wanting to be the one who is his own savior, his own deliverer, wanting to be the one who does enough and to control that.

This is all part of his bondage to the law, which is this is our life.

This is our life of wanting to be our own deliverers, wanting to be our own saviors, rather than humbly receiving that somebody else did it for us, and that we have to receive from God rather than present our merit to him.

This is the conversation going on in John 3.

We get toward the end of last week's sermon, and what we discover is this very good news where Jesus says, you know what, I didn't come to condemn you.

You're already condemned by the law.

You're already being condemned because you're not living up to the righteous standard.

Either you're condemned by law, righteous moral law, or you're condemned by worldly law because you're not as successful as you wanted to be.

You didn't get married at the age you wouldn't have enough as many children as you want, or your children don't behave like you want them to.

Your job didn't end up being as good as you thought it would be, unmet dreams, unmet expectations.

So you're being condemned somehow, somewhere.

And Jesus comes to that.

Well, I didn't come to condemn you, I came to actually love you out of the condemnation.

Alright, now the conversation continues this morning at the end of John chapter 3, verses 19 through 21.

John 3:19–21

And this is the verdict or the judgment.

The light has come into the world.

And people love the darkness rather than light, because their works were evil.

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed.

But whoever does what is true comes to light, so that may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

So when I was twenty years old, I think even mentioned last week, yeah, between my sophomore and junior year of college, uh, me and three other friends, we uh went backpacking around Europe for about a month or so.

And so one of my friends had come home, and my friend Kevin and I, Christy's older brother, me and him were friends through college before Christy and I even dated.

So I was dating my best friend's sister, that always goes very well.

So we are in Paris for a couple days, uh, and of course the museums are on strike because that's just how life works, right?

You get probably one chance to be in Paris in your entire life, museums are on strike.

Great, thanks.

So we take a train out of Paris up to Normandy to go see the beaches of Normandy and see Omaha Beach.

So this is where World War II, this is where the Allies came in Omaha Beach.

There's about a five-mile stretch there, and so we go up there and we go to the museum as soon as we get there.

And and we, you know, I didn't pay a lot of attention in high school to a lot of stuff.

And so a lot of this was sort of like, oh, I yeah, okay, okay, I remember that, you know, going through the museum, and just to remember and to relearn the the amount of death that just occurred on that beach, about 2,500 Allied forces, people died on that beach.

About four to nine thousand Germans died on D-Day, that invasion.

So we go out to the beach, and it's a it's a pretty undeveloped beach.

And it's northern France, you know, it kind of drops off into the ocean there.

There's beautiful green hills, kind of come down little bluffs to dunes and really wide beaches.

It was gorgeous, very undeveloped, and it was late in the day, and not many people were there.

And so we we get out there and we're gonna camp on the beach.

I don't know if it's legal, it's probably probably not legal to camp there.

But we so we set our tents up and um it's evening, we get our dinner, and we're sitting down, and um the sun's starting to set over kind of to our left where the kind of the land and the waters come together over on the horizon, the sun's setting.

And I mean, literally we we are camping uh amidst bunkers, like the bunkers where the Germans were hanging out waiting.

Um and and we you know, walk on the beach, the sun's setting, and just to it's just a little eerie to tell you the truth.

I mean I mean, uh a beautiful place, an unbelievably beautiful beach, and a beautiful sunset, but just to know how much death had occurred there, and you know, to walk in those bunkers and then be camping right next to them, and the sunset, and it got dark, and it got it got really dark, because there's not a lot of development there, like I said, and it got really dark, and Kevin went his tent, and I went my tent, and uh and I fell asleep for a little bit.

I didn't sleep great.

It was just a little eerie uh being there, and it was an incredibly dark place at one point in history.

Um just sort of one of those nights where you wait for the morning to come.

You know, where I'd wake up and I'd unzip the tent and look out.

You know, is there is there any light coming yet?

No, there's not.

You know, lay back down.

And it came.

It always comes, right?

In the morning.

The sun comes up.

The light always comes up, and when it comes up, what happens?

That the darkness recedes.

And this happens when we flip the switch, when we light the fire, we open the door, light comes into darkness and it illuminates and it drives away darkness.

I was sitting with a friend of mine this week and I wanted to talk about light and darkness with him.

He'd experienced light and darkness, I think, to a different level than a lot of us, um, because he was an addict.

And so I wanted to talk to him about that.

And I don't think it's that he's he experienced light and darkness, and and and somebody else who's not an addict to something doesn't.

It's that I think he knows it more real, and and we pretend like we're not quite like those people to some degree.

And so I said, tell me about this.

What do you what do you think about light?

What do you think about darkness?

How do you think about this?

He just said, he said, you know what?

He said, My life a year and a half ago came crashing down.

Was that a secret life?

You know, and and my my my secret life had to do it was immoral, it had to do with women, and it was tied into my workplace, lost my job, uncertain about my family, my children, my wife.

I mean, whole world, everybody knew, it's humiliating and embarrassing.

He he goes off to a counseling center and starts to get counseling for for decades of a secret life.

Decades of a darkness amidst living life.

And starting to learn that he could become rigorously honest with his own darkness.

And he just said, you know what, darkness is about secrets.

It's about the unseen.

And that's why we go there, that's why we stay there, that's why we we hide there, we hide in the darkness because nobody will see our secrets, no one will see us.

But what actually happens is the darkness, it hides our reality, it hides the very thing we need because what we actually need is the darkness is lying to us.

It's lying to us about wounds and pain and anger.

Instead of us facing those and letting light come into those, darkness has allowed us to keep hiding it and hiding it and hiding it.

So after my lunch, I got a little curious.

I went on the AA website to do a little research.

I read a book about AA years ago, and there's something about these 12 steps at work.

I don't think anybody could argue with it.

These 12 steps that get bridged into all sorts of different addiction counseling platforms.

There's something about these at work, and I think it's in the first three.

I'm only going to read the first three.

They're so fantastic.

I'm not even gonna go to the next nine.

First three, number one, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives have become unmanageable.

We're powerless.

Number two, we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Number three, we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood them.

Right?

I mean, what is this?

This is humility?

This is receiving, this is rigorous honesty.

I mean, this is what the gospel is.

I wouldn't say the gospel works because AA's principles work.

AA's principles work because it's the gospel.

I mean, they were written in a St.

George church in New York City.

They're written by Christian people.

And this church, our community was never gonna be us them, like, oh, well, well, we are really good, oh, those addicts or whatever, you know, or oh, those people out in culture, those people out in society, you know, if they got their acts together, everything's gonna just be great.

You know, we on the other hand, we already have our acts together.

If everybody behaved like us and act like us, we'd be great.

That's not healthy for anybody.

The reality is, is there's there's darkness out there, there's darkness in here, there's darkness with you, there's darkness with me, there's there's darkness with an addict who's addicted to pornography or addicted to women or addicted to drugs or alcohol.

There's there's an addict addicted to work, addict addicted to just like approval.

I mean, all of this is darkness.

I mean, religious pride has caused as much destruction in the world as debauchery.

I mean, the misleading of what Christianity is, the judgment, the lack of compassion, prejudice, mistreatment, slavery, closed-mindedness, wars.

So we can't just act like, well, well, well, you know, darkness is just debauchery.

No, no, no.

Darkness is also pride and moralism.

It's any time you're acting as your own deliverer.

It's any time you're trying to be your own light instead of receiving Jesus as light.

Sometimes this is in pews, sometimes this is in strip clubs, sometimes this is in classrooms, sometimes this is in families.

I mean, sometimes this is is controlling your eating to the point of, you know, because you're so obsessed with your body and approval.

Sometimes this has to do with work, sometimes this has to do with just like that one more Facebook post, because if I get 20 likes on it, 20, I will feel very approved.

Right?

Or you know, I post the picture on Instagram, and and really this has become much more than just me posting a picture.

This has become about me and my identity, and I feel so loved when everybody just kind of, oh, what a lovely family.

And I love the pictures we post because we can have a horrible day as a family, right?

I mean, things can be so chaotic, things can be so broken, and then we take the pic, the great picture, the cutest picture, and post it like this is representative of our whole reality.

And then you get the, you know, the 15, oh, what a cute family, you know.

And it's like, no, well, that's not the whole story here.

But we do it in all sorts of ways.

I was sitting with Jim, who he he came maybe a month ago or so, he prayed at the beginning of our service, and he's he's my my mentor, he's a pastor in Smyrna, and he's a pastor to me.

And we we all need pastors.

I'm very resistant to having a pastor.

He gets up in my bed, he asks me questions, I mean, you know, is it my all my independence, right?

Of just wanting to be independent and just kind of stay away, and I'll be, you know, you're cool and I'll cool, we'll have a meal or whatever.

But but you know, he he takes he takes that step that a pastor should step, where he just kind of, you know, he asks a little bit more than what I want him to ask.

And he just said, he said, Well, how are you doing with all this?

With starting a church, your family, little kids, how are you doing?

I said, Well, you know, I get overwhelmed, you know, and it's not with elders, except for Brad, it's a little bit with Brad.

Um, then it's not with elders, it's not with the church, it's not with my family, it's not with my wife, it's not with anyone, it's just with a a lot of life going on, and it can just start to feel overwhelming.

And a lot of this has to do with my fear of failure, from dishonest, and my own expectations, and my desire for just more.

I mean, I just get so tired of my desire for more, of whatever, right?

I mean, just whatever, more whatever it is.

It doesn't even matter what it is, just so consumeristic.

I mean, all of this kind of feeds into just feeling a little overwhelmed.

And you know, he just he just looked at me and he said, Russ, how is the gospel freeing you?

And I just kind of shrugged and I knew what he was talking about.

And he just looked at me and he said, God really loves you.

And he is wanting more and more freedom for you.

You know what he's saying?

He's talking about light and darkness here.

He's talking about letting more and more light into your life.

John 3.

So verses 19 and 20, and this is the verdict, this is the judgment.

The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil, for everyone who does wicked things hates the light, does not come to the light, lest his work should be exposed or seen.

I mean, verse 19 is a story of humanity.

It's our story, judgment, the verdict.

This is about people choosing to be their own saviors like us talking about, and thus living in the condemnation of falling short of this.

I mean, this is not a separate conversation from last week.

I know it's kind of harbors two sermons.

So last week we talked about the law, we talked about the condemnation of trying to always live up to some standard, and you're always falling short, and thus you're condemned by it.

And he still taught this same conversation.

And so we are we are judged.

The verdict is given to us in this way of life.

We're trying to be our own light, and this is sin.

Trying to be your own light is sin.

Self-deification.

Jesus is the light.

He's the rescue, he's the break in the system.

He's the source of all that's good and true, and it it sounds so cliche almost to say Jesus is the light, because we just say it.

We just say it all the time or we hear it all the time.

But he's the break in the darkness.

He's the break in the condemnation of the law, he's the break in the condemnation of the world.

He's the break that say you don't have to earn love.

You don't have to work your way out of your shame, you don't have to work your way out of your addiction, right?

We're powerless in our situation.

It's unmanageable.

I need a power outside of myself.

This is God coming to us incarnate, Jesus.

Verse 20, everyone who does evil hates the light.

The verse answers, why?

Why, why do why do we do what's going on here?

Everyone who hates evil hates light.

Why?

Fear.

Fear.

And this is what my friend was talking about over lunch this week, as I just questioned him.

He said, There's so much fear to come out of the darkness.

Fear of rejection, fear of repercussions, fear of acceptance, fear of approval.

I mean, even the very reason why you go into darkness, you stay in darkness, you dabble with darkness, is is out of fear.

I mean, verse 20 tells us what we know by experience.

The option to come into the light is overwhelming to us as people.

Because we're afraid.

And there's a little bit that we believe a lie about the light.

We just think the light's going to be harsh.

But it's not.

The light's Christ.

Verse 21 but whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

So we know from this conversation with Nicodemus, even from last week, the earlier part of John chapter 3, walking in the light's not about being perfect.

John 3 · chapter mention

It's about being rigorously honest about your condition, confessing it before God, and receiving from him the very life you are trying to earn on your own.

That we are in darkness, and he came into the darkness.

It's believing this, it's resting in this.

And then the second part of verse 21 says, basically, any good, any good that's been manifested in our life, we understand that it's the effect of the light.

So we're not prideful.

We don't look down on somebody who's in a bad situation, somebody who's made a horrible mistake, somebody's life's come crashing down.

We don't look down on them, we don't judge them, we don't sit in judgment on them, because we know any good that has been coming out of our life has become as the effect of the light in us.

That on our own, we'll just sit in darkness.

We'll just keep trying to be our own saviors.

And whether we choose a debauchery route or whether we choose a religious moralistic route, we're gonna choose, that's where we're going on our own.

But the route of being humble and receiving from God, this is light coming into our life.

This is the very grace of God active in us.

There's just no room for pride.

When you believe this way, there's just there's just not a lot of room for pride.

I was thinking back to when I was 13 years old.

Uh my dad had just left our family.

I don't know if you've picked up on a little bit of my family background.

My parents separated when I was about 13 years old, and there's been lots of great reconciliation since then.

Uh but when I was 13, dad had just left.

So I'm kind of this lost 13-year-old.

I have a friend, Grant.

Grant's friend just got his license.

And so we're gonna go bowling.

I asked mom, can I go?

Grant's friend got his license.

These are friends through church, that helps things, right?

So it doesn't make things better, but it helps things with mom.

And so mom says, sure, you can go.

And so we go bowling, we steal the games, we don't pay.

And all this was new to me.

Like this sort of just kind of do your own thing, who cares?

We bowl the games, we walk out.

We drive to a phone booth.

Do you remember a phone booth?

It was in front of the Eckerd Drugs, and I drive to the phone booth, and and and we want to go roll some friends.

And so I I call her and I lie.

I can remember it so clearly because I I I wasn't, that's not that's not what I did.

I didn't lie to my mom and my dad.

And I can clearly remember being in front of the Eckerd Drugs at the phone booth, put the quarter in, called, called home, and I just lied to her.

I said, you know, we want to bowl a few more games, is it okay?

She said, sure, what time do you think be home?

Okay, great.

So we go buy a bunch of toilet paper, which is always a little awkward when you buy like a hundred rolls of toilet paper at the grocery store because everybody knows what's going on.

Uh, and then things got worse, right?

It's like, I we have one bad step, another bad step, and we decided, well, toilet paper's not enough.

What we need is is we need a couple of those blinking lights, the construction blinking lights.

I figured we figured, you know, they're on the side of the road.

So we we pull up to a bridge where there was some construction, and I'm in the back seat, and I hop out and I start to rip one of these blinking lights off of the side of the bridge.

But man, it's tied on with metal.

I thought this was going to come off really quick.

It's tied on with metal, and Grant's working on another one up there, and you know, and it's not real late, right?

I mean, we're not like really old.

I mean, so it's dark, but so we're we're in and I I find I get one undone, he doesn't get his undone, we get back, we get back in the car, and you know, we just stole.

I mean, obviously, right?

I mean, we we've stole bowling, we've lied to mom, and now we stole something else.

This is not headed in a good direction.

And I know it the whole time, the whole time.

But one light wasn't enough.

We really wanted two lights.

And so we circle back around.

And so I get back out again, and I was the one who was successful the first time around, so I'm the one who gets back out again, and so I'm out there ripping, and sure enough, a police car pulls right in behind lights, a little siren.

I jump back in the car, we don't go anywhere, cops right behind us, and this this light.

You know the light on the side above the mirror on the cop car?

He shines that thing straight into that car, and it is like a beam of light coming from behind, and just the just fear, complete fear of what is about to play out here.

And he walks up, and at the time I thought he was incredibly stern, of course.

You know, it I think he was actually really nice.

Um, but the light just kept, it was there.

I mean, it was just it was exposing everything.

All you wanted, all I wanted was darkness at that point, right?

Just get me into the dark is what you wanted.

But uh does.

Light is just shining through and it won't stop.

And he comes up, he says, I saw you stealing the light.

You came around the first time, I let you go.

You came a second time, and that's it.

And he says, I need your IDs.

Well, I'm 13.

You know, I'm lucky if I own a wallet.

I'm 13.

I mean, I I think I had a wallet.

I I can remember him asking for my ID, and I said, Well, I don't I don't have an ID.

I'm 13.

And he says, Well, what do you have?

I said, Well, I have a Y card.

I gave him my Y card.

And so he takes the Y card and he says, Well, what's your mom and dad's name?

And I said, Well, here's my mom's name.

I live with her, and here's phone number.

He calls her parents.

And so, up drives mom.

And I am humiliated.

I'm not hard.

I'm not, I don't care.

I am humiliated.

I am embarrassed.

I'm broken.

And I just sort of make it through that initial.

Mom walks up, what's going on?

You have to kind of confess everything.

Get home.

I break down and just, I just wept.

I just wept.

I think it's very easy to misinterpret the light.

It never dawned on me.

In that moment, sitting in that car, it never dawned on me that that light shining from behind was actually for me.

Never dawned on me.

Because I because I had been operating in darkness.

Right?

It never dawned on me that that policeman was actually for me.

I mean, he could have handled that in a lot of different ways, right?

I mean, he called my mom and she came and picked me up.

I mean, this is this was about the best scenario possible.

But it never dawned.

It's so easy to misinterpret to light, to remain in isolation, to remain in darkness, to refuse the love, to refuse the light.

Because what does light do?

It exposes.

And all the fear rises up.

I've experienced darker places that I don't care to talk about in public.

But I don't know your darkness.

I don't know what creates your fears.

But I bet it has something to do with feeling loved or accepted or important.

The same John who wrote this about light and darkness, he later wrote these letters at the end of the New Testament.

And in those letters, he wrote that God is love.

And here's what he said about love in 1 John 4.18.

He says, there's no fear in love.

But perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment.

The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

So what do you do, right?

I mean, what do you do about darkness?

Well, at first is you receive the light of Jesus as the break in the darkness.

The break in your shame, the break in your guilt, the break in your merit-based living.

You receive Jesus as the light.

And I think you wake up and you affirm yourself in the light.

Right?

I mean, you affirm yourself, God is love, God is light, the justice of God towards sin has been absorbed in Jesus.

I don't have to worry about that anymore.

He has handled sin, so he loves me.

And we affirm and seek to understand his perfect love more.

This is what quiets our fears.

And whether we've been very religious and moralistic and judgmental towards others, the fear of how people see us and approval, you know what calms those fears?

The love of God.

Jesus as your light, not your merit.

And whether it's been debauchery and addiction on the other level of irreligious activity, the fear of being seen, the fear of shame, the fear of guilt, you know what calms those fears?

Jesus being your light and your rescue.

That you don't have to work your way out of it.

But that he'll love you there and that light becomes into us and begins to expose and show us.

And then we begin to see, you know, we always say, you know, what do you do as a Christian?

Pray and read your Bible.

Pray and read your Bible.

Why are we doing this?

Why are we reading our Bibles all the time?

You know why we're reading our Bibles?

Because we need to be reminded.

We need to be reminded of what God's done for us, we need to be reminded of who we are, and we need to learn.

We need to learn how do we think about God, and how do we think about ourselves, and how do we think about what is good to think about?

What is true and right and noble and good, so that when we're thinking a certain way, and we're thinking crazy and we're thinking dark and we're thinking sinful, that we catch it.

And we said, that's that's not headed anywhere good here.

And you catch it and you go, No, I want to, I want to take my thoughts a different direction, and I and in Jesus I get that power, and so I'll be thinking about this.

That's what reading your Bible is about.

The humbling good news this morning is that you are not the light of the world.

Not the light of the world.

You might be a light on the hill, right?

We hear that.

We're a light, we're not the light, and you don't have to be the light in your own life.

Jesus came to be that for you.

Let's pray together.

God, we confess that we all we all dabble in darkness.

And whether it's just self-reliance of pleasure, of addiction, or whether it's self-reliance of moralistic pride, God, we confess we all do it.

And it's dark and there's there's not hope in it, and we we feel condemned.

In either direction, we feel condemned.

And God, we thank you that Jesus came to free us from this.

We thank you that while you say we were a light in this world, it's only because you're in us.

Because the light is in us.

Would you help us to just humble ourselves before you and just kind of hold everything out?

And that your light would shine in new places, new parts of our hearts and minds, wounds, anger, pain, escape, that we might have more and more freedom in life, more and more joy, more and more peace, and that you would be glorified in unbelievable ways.

For there would be no explanation for how we could live like this.

We thank you that we we rest solely, solely in what you did for us.

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.