Only the Blind Will See (John 8:12–30) Myles Holmes | June 29, 2025

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God for the fulfillment of the Great Commission for the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

You guys can find your seat, and I would love as we move to the reason why many of you are here for our child dedication this morning.

I want to invite the Dugards who are one of the two, one of the thirds is up here and they're on their way up in the Del Rose is to come up.

We're incredibly excited to dedicate these children this morning.

And you, many of you know these families incredibly well if you are not family yourself.

Child dedication is a sweet opportunity for really two things to happen.

Um I feel like you guys are gonna gang up on me, so maybe you could come over here.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know.

I just feel like uneasy or I don't know, anyways.

Uh it's a great opportunity for two things to happen.

One is that these families are given the opportunity to make a public commitment to the Lord, and really in our presence as we hold them accountable to this, to bring up their children in the Lord.

This isn't a promise that these kids will be saved.

That takes the miraculous divine work of God, but it is an opportunity for us to express our desire, and especially these families, to express a desire that these children would be brought up in the Lord.

And it's also an opportunity for us as a church and as their families to come around them and to say, we support you in this.

You know, those of us who have kids know like it is they this is the hardest thing that they are embarking on, and it really truly does take a community to raise a child.

And so we really are linking arms with them and telling them this, we're here for you.

We are here to support you in this.

We we we recognize that as important as discipleship is, this is the first flock, and so we want to link arms with you as you disciple your children, and so we've got two kids to dedicate this morning, and the first is a Dugard penny, Penelope Dugard.

Now, that I don't know if you know this, the whole band this morning was a Dugard family band.

Isn't that amazing?

It's amazing.

Now I have two things to say about that.

One is if every time you guys have a kid, we get the Dugard family band.

The worship was so good this morning, we're gonna be asking for a lot more kids from you guys.

The second question, the question, the second question I have for you if this Penny has her instrument picked out yet.

Not yet.

I don't think she's not yet plot this week, though.

She's like, no, no, not a performer.

Well, that'll come.

Well, I want to recogn, I want to uh recommend trombone.

That's what I played.

Yes.

I don't know if that'll have a place on your worship team, but uh Penny was born on November 22nd, 2024, and the name means weaver, and Joel is and Joel and Megan have picked Psalm 139 verses 13 to 14.

Psalms 139:13–14

Why don't you go ahead and read that for us, Joel?

Penelope's name also means duct, by the way, but uh we did a deep dive, and there are no scripture versus no dots.

There is a very famous one about uh the Lord reading us together that should be better both of us here.

Uh Psalm 139, 30 verse 13.

Wonderful art soul.

That is awesome.

Yeah, there it there it is.

That's the performer in her.

There it is.

That's awesome.

She's definitely a singer.

Now, Patrick, when I baptized you, you gave me a holy kiss.

And I just want to I want to make sure, is that gonna happen again this morning?

Or that's so good.

Well, we are uh look at Luca, eh?

Just huge it's a workout to be holding them up here.

That's amazing.

Luca was born on March 9th, 2025.

His name means bringer of light, and uh Patrick and Alicia have chosen Psalm 100.

Patrick, why don't you read that for us?

Psalm 100.

Set fast love and during forever and faithfulness of all generations.

Amen.

On that note, I want to pray for these families as they seek to bring these kids up in the Lord.

Would you join me in prayer?

Father, we bow before you, and God, we thank you for the gift and the miracle that is the gift of life in children.

God, as we consider the road ahead of these two families, Lord, we are very aware that your grace and mercy is necessary.

God, that it is hard, and yet, as hard as it is, God, the joy is overwhelming.

And so we thank you for these great gifts and we pray for these two families, Lord.

God, that you would help us as a church family and for their families that are here supporting them.

Lord, help help us to gather around them and to support them in the most important desire that these kids would grow to know you and grow to love you and grow to serve you.

God, may their lives be lit aflame for your glory, God.

And use us in any way possible to make that happen.

God, thank you for this opportunity that we have to declare our desire to you, God, that these children would love you and follow you.

God, do this work in our midst.

We pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you guys.

Let's give them a hand as they make their way off the stage.

Awesome.

All right, well, Joel told me he was gonna bring this uh pulpit up here for me, but he's also double fisting a Bible and a baby, and so here I am.

I'm just gonna do this myself, and this is all right.

How's that?

Is that okay?

If it falls over, you know, you know exactly why.

Well, if you have your Bibles, you can open them up to John chapter 8.

John 8 · chapter mention

If you don't have a copy of God's word, the ushers are making their way down the aisle.

You can just flag one of them down.

You're gonna need one this morning, so they would love to put one into your hands.

We love God's word here, and so it would bless us if you would take this home, and it would especially bless us if you would read it, because we do believe that God has a word for you.

It's a tragic reality we find in John chapter 8 as we begin our time in verse 12 this morning, and the reality is not only what the Pharisees will experience in this passage, but also what you and I are prone to experience, and that is that you can be in the very presence of Jesus, you can hear his voice, and you can even experience his work and yet be blind to him.

John 8 · chapter mention

You can miss him completely.

It really is a tragedy, and it's a tragedy we read about this morning with the Pharisees who find themselves during one of the most important festivals in Jewish history, the Feast of Booths, standing with Jesus, the Son of God.

Standing with Jesus in the temple of God, the very place where theologically the presence of God was.

And they're hearing the very voice of Jesus, and yet there is this spiritual blindness that is in them that causes them to miss him completely.

And the warning for us this morning is that that's not just a Pharisee problem.

The warning for us this morning is that it is a human problem.

That you and I have that same spiritual blindness in us.

That no matter how blazingly glorious the light of Jesus is shining into our lives, apart from the miraculous work of Jesus, we will miss him entirely.

It's a warning, but what we find this morning is that it's also an invitation because Jesus wants us to know that only the blind will see.

We're going to read this in John chapter 8, verses 12 to 30.

John 8:12–30

So would you stand with me as we read God's word?

And we stand as an opportunity to honor the reality that this is the very voice of God speaking to us this morning, and what a joy it is for us to hear it.

John chapter 8, verse 12.

John 8:12

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 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 that 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 the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and 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.

You can grab your seat.

But that is that we've skipped a section here, and it's likely true that in your Bible, when you look at chapter 7, verse 53 to 8, verse 11, there are some brackets around it.

And as we study this text of what happened with the woman caught in adultery at the beginning of John chapter 8, it is very likely that that actually did happen in history.

John 8 · chapter mention

But what is almost nearly certain as scholars look at the original manuscripts is that what is accounted in the beginning of John 8 doesn't actually, or isn't actually found in the Gospel of John in its original copy.

Now the question is what's going on here, and maybe for some of you that's a really personal question because you know that story of Jesus and and you see in that story such a vivid picture of his compassion, of his love for those that are broken and standing up against the Pharisees.

I want you to know that it's very likely that that story happened, that as we look through church history and especially history around the time, we we see records of something like this happening.

However, the Bible comes to us in really thousands of different copies of various manuscripts.

If you could imagine, the process is kind of like this.

When you don't have a printer, how do you make something widely available?

Now, many of us say, well, you just text it, you know?

Well, we don't have a phone either.

So how do you make something widely available in this day and age where there's limited technology?

And this was the printing process.

The writer would write down the manuscript, and so there's John writing the gospel of John as we know it, and then scribes would gather around John and make a copy, and then scribes would gather around those scribes and make a copy, and there would be copy after copy after copy.

It's this process by which now we look back and through some major discoveries, even in recent years, we have thousands and thousands of reliable historical copies of the manuscripts of scripture.

And so what actually happens in that process, and it's it's actually pretty astounding, is that the copies are copied with incredible accuracy.

It's pretty astounding, actually, as you look at them, how similar they are, how they can go through many different scribes and yet remain the same.

There is incredible precision in the process, but one of the things that can happen is if a scribe either maybe makes a mistake, you know, they're falling asleep, and so they add a second word, or they they you know, they just got a hobby horse, and so they want to add something in, you know, they really like this story, or they don't really like the way that you know the gospel writer put this in there, then they might make a change and then that's copied, and that's copied.

And so what happens then is is uh, you know, very smart people called textual critics take all of these copies of manuscripts that we have and look at them and can compare them to find what was actually in the original.

And what we find here at the beginning of the Gospel of John is that it's found in later manuscripts, but in some of the most early manuscripts, this is not there.

And listen, you don't need to be a textual critic to make sense of this, because at the end of John 7, Jesus is in the festival of booths, talking about the first primary symbol that was celebrated there, and that was water, and we talked about that last week.

Water was symbolic of provision, and there is Jesus saying, I am the true provision.

And here we find Jesus addressing the second symbol, and that is light.

As we transition maybe from more of a teaching time, so that you know, I just don't want you to be unsettled by the fact that we're skipping this.

I want you to actually have more confidence.

The reality that this is here reminds us that we have a very accurate record of what is said in Scripture and that there are differences, but there's nothing that affects the gospel.

There's nothing that takes away from the primary doctrine that we are given in God's word.

We have every reason for confidence.

Now, the context then, again, you see this in John chapter 8, verse 12, is Jesus at the festival of booths.

John 8:12

And just for some historical context, I want you to understand what is really happening here.

Every night, for a week-long celebration, the Levitical priests would come out and they would light four giant lampstands.

I'm talking like 65 feet in the air, they would be lit ablaze.

And I don't know if you could imagine in a world where there's you know no flashlights on your phone, what it would be like to have light at night.

There'd be partying, Levitical priests dancing, the orchestras playing music all throughout the night.

And in the context of that party, here we find Jesus in verse 12 saying this I am the light of the world.

Jesus is looking at the Pharisees and the religious of the religious as they are partying in the light of these lampstands and rejoicing, and there's so much joy.

Like actually, they have in the Mishnah, which is a historical Jewish record of what's happening, they have a quote that essentially says this you don't know joy unless you've seen the joy of the festival of boots.

You know, it's like this was this is the party you gotta get to, this is the dance you gotta be a part of.

And Jesus stands and declares to them, in the light of those lampstands, I'm the light.

If you want to know joy, you need to know me.

And the tragedy that we just read of is that as glorious as the light is of Jesus Christ, there is a spiritual blindness that keeps us from receiving that invitation.

That as Jesus Himself, the very Son of God, is standing in the very presence of God in the temple, speaking to the people that are supposed to be the people of God, they miss him entirely.

It's a great tragedy, it's a great warning, but it's also a great invitation because in this text, Jesus is giving us four heart-level calls that help us to see, that make seeing him a reality.

And the first is this that if we want to see Jesus, we must step into the light.

We must step into the light.

Now the picture has been set.

There are four blazing lampstands, light is shining everywhere, and the Levitical priests are dancing.

The music is playing.

I don't know what comes to your mind when you imagine Levitical priests dancing.

I have a picture in my head, it looks a little funny.

I asked some of the men in our church if they would come up and after the child dedication do a little demonstration for us.

No, there were no takers.

And so we'll have to leave it to our imagination.

Here's what we do know: Jesus, we we know what is on the mind of Jesus.

Because when Jesus sees this celebrating in the light of the lampstands at the festival of booths, he speaks to these people and he says, I am the light of the world.

You see this in verse 12.

Look at this with me.

I am the light of the world.

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

Jesus looks at their celebrating and he points at them and he says, Hey, listen, the true thing to celebrate is here.

It is me.

It's this radical claim.

You need to understand this.

This needs to break through the walls of sort of our Christianese for a moment, because there is this radical claim here that Jesus is saying this.

Listen, if you're celebrating something at the festival of Booth, if you don't know me, you haven't begun celebrating yet.

You're still in darkness.

You must know me.

And he even speaks these astounding words here.

He says these words, which would really be a gasp moment for Jewish people to hear.

He says, I am.

I am.

Again in verse 24.

Look at the text.

Notice he will say this again, even more explicitly, tying it to divine language.

He will say, unless you believe that I am he.

And immediately, maybe your mind goes there, but certainly the Israelites' mind would go to Exodus chapter 3, where God reveals himself to Moses as what?

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

The great I am.

And here is Jesus using those words.

Saying, listen, I am He.

I am God.

I, you know, you are dancing in this light because you're celebrating the fact that God led Israel through the desert by a pillar of fire and cloud.

And here I am, not just a light, I am the light, Jesus says.

And then he points them to the consequence, then.

Look at the second half of verse 12.

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

There are two options here.

I mean, listen, if your faith isn't in Jesus Christ, if you are coming here, you know, kind of like testing the Christian worldview, I just want you to hear Jesus' words for what they are, because they're incredibly offensive.

Jesus is saying this: if you're not following me, you are living in the dark.

You're living in the dark.

I am the light of life.

If you follow me, I will give you light.

Now, listen, that is an invitation to us.

But it is also incredibly hard.

Listen, there's different kinds of sources of light, aren't there?

There's a type of light that's just a flashlight.

You hold it in your hand.

You know what the nice thing about a flashlight is?

You can shine it where you want.

You know, if there are dark places that you don't want to see, you do not have to shine a flashlight at them.

All the control is in your hands.

But there's another type of light that, with all of our modern technology, we cannot control, and that is the sun.

The sun rises and it its light spreads everywhere.

You just don't have a choice.

And I don't know about you, but like especially around this season, sometimes I get annoyed with the sun.

Like 5 a.m.

in the morning, really, son?

You're gonna wake the birds up, really.

And it's like 9:30, I've been ready for bed for an hour and a half.

I'm like, son, why won't you go down?

You have no control over it.

It shines into everything.

And listen, this is what Jesus is saying about your life: that in your life, He He will not be a flashlight.

Some of us want Jesus to be like that, don't we?

Listen, Jesus, I really want you to fix this part of my life, okay?

But just don't go over here, don't go into this room.

I really want you to shine some light on, you know, where I'm gonna be in the next five years, but but don't ask me to change.

Don't ask me to do something uncomfortable.

We want to treat Jesus like a flashlight, like we're the ones in control.

Jesus comes and he says, Listen, I am not a flashlight.

I am the light of life.

If you're going to follow me, I am going to shine light in every area of your heart.

And loved one, it will be uncomfortable at times.

There will be times where because of your commitment to follow Jesus, flood, light floods into the places that you have tried to hide.

Places like the call to give your finances first to the Lord, recognizing that they are his.

Now, something very interesting happens in verse 13.

Can you look at it with me?

Look at verse 13.

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

The testimony is not true.

There's something interesting going on here, and it really has to do with the judicial time uh system at that time, and that is that if you wanted to affirm something in a world where there's, you know, no video cameras and really ways to affirm that something happened other than he said, she said, the Jewish system was what that if you had two witnesses to a truth, those witnesses in affirming that truth could bring clarity and affirmation to the things that you are saying.

And so again, here's evidence that that what Jesus is saying is a radical claim, is that the religious of the religious of that day look at Jesus and say, Listen, you're gonna have to prove yourself.

You're gonna have to prove, you're gonna have to bring me some credible witnesses here.

Someone to show that you are actually telling the truth.

Now, here's the problem with the Pharisees, and I want you to see this morning that it's a problem that we have too, is that the Pharisees are judging Jesus by a standard that they have created.

Isn't that kind of ironic?

I mean, here is Jesus, and in John 1, we are told that Jesus is the word who created the world.

Here are these created beings, the Pharisees and you and I, standing in front of the uncreated one, asking him for verification.

Do you see the irony there?

This is the Son of God that they're talking to.

Now in verse 15, then, Jesus gives them the diagnosis.

Look at this with me.

You judge according to the flesh.

You judge according to the flesh.

You know what Jesus is pointing at us, and he's saying, you know, the problem that keeps you so distant from me is that you come to me with the wrong standard.

You come to me with the wrong lens.

Jesus is pointing at their standard for verifying truth and saying, This, listen, your system is a mess.

And isn't it?

Isn't it, you know, like can't you and I, you know, as modern men and women, look back on that system of verifying truth and say there are some incredible holes in it?

I mean, if all if I only need two witnesses, I've got three kids, and one smarty goes a really long way for them.

I could bribe them to say almost anything and be witnesses on my behalf.

It's an incredibly broken system.

And so Jesus is looking at them and saying, listen, you're gonna use this standard, you're gonna use this lens, you're gonna use this system to try to make sense of me.

And yet I want you to understand this morning that that's the same thing we do.

I mean, we don't have this system of, you know, judicial witnessing, but you and I have worldly systems that we then put on Jesus and ask if Jesus is really doing a job in comparison to those worldly standards.

We have worldly lenses that we put over our eyes and we look at Jesus and we judge whether Jesus is a success as a savior or a failure as a savior according to the reality of whether he's fulfilling those worldly standards.

Let me give you an example.

Think about comfort for a moment.

Can we agree that in our world, comfort is one of the highest priorities?

One of the tenets of modern society is that you deserve comfort.

And here we are, you know, slipping into the summer.

And I'll just remind you, you know, the days are now getting shorter, and fall is coming.

I'm sorry to remind you.

Here we are slipping into the summer, and there's this constant whispering.

Maybe it's just by what other people are doing, maybe it's it's by you know shopping in stores where there's just like comfort and leisure plastered everywhere, but there's this sort of whisper that that if if you are gonna live a good life, you must be comfortable.

You must have uh greater time, more times of leisure.

And so if you and I have this standard that the good life is about comfort, what we then do is we come to Jesus and we have this expectation that what Jesus needs to save us from is comfort, is discomfort, that what Jesus needs to deliver to us is comfort.

Listen, take a moment and just even judge your your prayer life.

Even take a moment to think about your prayer life.

How how many of our prayers are asking God to take what is uncomfortable from our life and deliver into our life what we think will then be comfortable?

I I am constantly shocked at how willing we are to ask God to take what is uncomfortable for from us instead of asking God to transform us in what is uncomfortable in our lives.

We've got this standard for comfort, and then when Jesus doesn't deliver on us, our hands are up in the air, we're looking at Jesus, we're saying, What the heck?

I mean, what kind of savior are you?

And here is Jesus saying, Listen, everything you want is in me.

I I came to bring you comfort, but just not this like shallow on the dock in Muskoka.

Now, listen, I'm going up to Muskoka this afternoon, okay?

So I'm not gonna press too hard into this.

But it's not that kind of comfort, it's an eternal comfort.

It's a dwelling in the glory of Jesus Christ, like we sang about from age to age.

It is a much better comfort.

Listen, that's not the only modern lens we look at Jesus with.

There are there are many, but but let me ask you this what about emotion?

What about emo what about the way the way that that our culture feels about emotion?

This this sort of pervasive sense in our day and age that unless you are experiencing a positive emotion, you are experiencing something less than what it means to be human.

There is this great desire to escape anything that is perceived as a negative emotion.

I mean, you see it, this isn't, you know, pointing fingers or anything, but you see it in social media, don't you?

I mean, just like if I'm just stating a fact, our day and age only celebrates the positive.

And it's hard for us to go to a book like, you know, The Psalter that is all about the emotions that God's people have felt throughout redemptive history and read there that God's people were often in despair.

God's people were often grieving.

God's people were often angry.

They didn't understand what was going on.

And they're experiencing all these things that we would perceive as negative emotion.

And some of us can come to God with this standard of it's all about how I feel.

If the worship doesn't move me to excitement, if my quiet time isn't electric, if I'm not set on fire for the Lord, then he's just not speaking to me, and I deserve to feel that way.

And yet there's this profound reality that so often God is able to do so much more in what we would perceive to be a negative feeling and a negative emotion than he is to do in the positive.

Isn't that true as you look back over your life?

And yet then we look forward and we say, God, you better deliver me to you know this excitement.

I better feel something here.

And I just want you to see, Jesus is inviting you as the light of the world.

He is inviting you into this life where sometimes the most profound things that can happen in your life happen when you feel nothing, but you choose to obey, anyways.

We set these standards on Jesus.

And the application here is lose the lens.

Let Jesus define reality for you.

Let him tell you who he's gonna be.

Let him tell you what kind of savior he will be, which is the second or the third thing I want you to see this morning.

That if we are going to see Jesus, if we are going to embrace the invitation to sight, the third thing we must do is own our blindness.

We must own our blindness.

This is the great tragedy of this text, that when Jesus points to the absurdity of their system, the Pharisees cannot see it.

It's masterful logic here that Jesus uses, and you see it in verse 18.

Look, Jesus takes their system and he says, Listen, let's just play your game for a bit, okay?

Let's just assume that I need two witnesses.

Listen, I got two great witnesses.

You see it here in verse 18.

I am the one who bears witness about myself.

And the Father who sent me bears witness about me.

Jesus is saying, You want two witnesses?

I got two of the three persons of the Trinity bearing witness about me.

You will not find a higher authority in your judicial system.

By their system, Jesus is looking at what they want from him, and he's saying, I have what you want, but you can't see it.

And listen, loved one, the same thing happens with you.

Listen, if you know some of those applications hit you, comfort, emotion, I want you to understand that everything you truly want is in Jesus Christ.

You want comfort?

You know, can you take a step back from your life right now and just say it is not found in a vacation that will end always too soon?

You want to feel something.

Let me just take it, like, let's take a step back together to say our emotions are broken, so that even when you are in the presence of something that should give you such great joy, you can feel the wrong thing.

I mean, it's a mark of our fallen world, isn't it?

Things like postpartum depression at this time where when things are supposed to be so joyous, there can just be unexplicably, for no reason, sadness, despair.

Jesus is coming to say, listen, if you want to feel something, I came, I came to shed light on that, I came to redeem that.

All that you want is in me.

The problem is the blindness.

The question for us then is if Jesus comes with what we want, why don't we see it in him?

And then why do we pursue it in all these other things?

There's a disconnect.

And Jesus is drawing this out.

Look at verse 19.

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.

Here's the problem.

Why can't they see the witness of the father that is witnessing to the truth of the son?

Because they do not know him.

And then in verse 20, we're given these sort of, it's like a gasp moment.

I was gonna ask you guys to gasp when I read this, but I just felt like you wouldn't like that.

So I said, that's not a new market thing.

You know, I'm going up to Muskoka, they'll do that up there.

Let's go up there and ask them to do it.

But, anyways, here's verse 20.

These words he spoke in the treasury as he taught in the temple.

And theologically, what is the temple?

It is the presence of the Father.

You are standing in the Father's house and you do not know the Father.

What's the disconnect?

What is going on here?

What is happening in these people's lives that they can stand in the house of God and not know God Himself?

That they can commit their life to the Pharisaical religious system and not know God.

Well, listen, look at verse 23 here.

Jesus here in verse 23 is exposing the problem.

He's exposing the reason why we don't see in Jesus everything we want in the world.

Look at it in verse 23.

He said to them, You are from below, that is, here on the earth.

I am from above.

You are of this world.

And previously in John, he has exposed that this world is broken, that its systems are corrupt.

And so Jesus is looking at us and he's saying, You're like a fish swimming in polluted waters.

I am not I, look at look at verse 23.

I come from above.

I am not of this world.

And what Jesus is doing here is contrasting the perspective that we have of things in this world and the perspective that he has of things in this world.

What Jesus is saying here is that the perspective that we have of how to find joy and peace and happiness, it is limited.

Isn't it true?

Sometimes the worst perspective you can have is at the ground level.

Sometimes, you know, when you're in the crowd, you just can't see what's going on.

But then you get higher, you get higher, and you can see what's going on.

And Jesus is very literally saying, Listen, you're of the earth, I am from heaven.

You're looking, you're in the earth trying to affirm who I am according to your worldly systems and standards.

I'm from heaven coming to tell you that I have truth because I am truth.

I have light because I am light.

This is the issue.

Limited perspective, which Jesus is pointing at you and I as human beings and just saying we have.

He's saying, listen, there's no debate.

I'm not debating with you.

I'm saying you have limited perspective because you are of this world.

That's offensive to you.

I'm sorry, it's what Jesus says.

The problem is that limited perspective thinks it sees clearly, but misses crucial information.

Limited perspective thinks it sees everything it needs to and can make judgments according to that, but it's missing crucial information.

And Jesus is coming here saying, I don't have limited perspective, I have heavenly perspective on your life, and I don't miss the information that you are missing.

You could illustrate it like this.

Imagine that you accepted a job somewhere in some other province, and you had to tell your kids that, you know, this job was phenomenal, the pay was a lot higher, you know, there were the benefits were so much better for your family.

You could now, you're in a position now where like you can send your kids to college and it's not gonna be a problem at all.

Everything about this job is just a clear win.

You even go to like you know your church and and people that you trust, and there's a church in the air.

So everything's a win.

Like this is the move to make.

Now, when you go to tell your children, what will happen?

It'll be incredibly hard for them.

Because they don't know about salaries, they don't know about benefits, they don't know about saving for college education.

They aren't able to take into account everything that you are with your adult perspective, because they have a limited kids' perspective that is only thinking about their friends and their routines and their schools, and so it's hard for them.

And your heart breaks because you see them in their limited perspective, like they're just not thinking about things the way that you are thinking about things, and so they cry and they wail and they beg you to stop, to change your mind, and they ask for everything to be different.

And yet you are unwilling, you you press through the pain of that because you know that something better is coming.

You have a different perspective.

While theirs is limited, yours is adult.

And here is Jesus coming and saying, Listen, the gap between your perspective and my perspective is much bigger than in that illustration.

I have perspective here.

And so, what does that child need to do?

That child needs to trust.

That child needs to surrender to the love of their parents.

And I wonder, loved one.

I wonder where in your life have you been demanding clarity from God before you surrender?

And God is withholding because he's saying it doesn't work that way.

I'm not gonna give you all the information before you surrender to my will.

Where in your life are you withholding from God until he gives you more information about what he will do?

Because listen, Jesus is pressing into our heart this morning, and he's saying the reason that faith exists is because clarity doesn't.

I call you to surrender when you don't know all the facts, because you will experience something sweeter in that surrender than you would have otherwise.

And listen, can I just share with you how like I'm experiencing this right now?

Last week our church announced that we are beginning the process of investigating this move to East Willembury.

And we have been on a month-long journey as a church at looking at all the different options, and and part of the problem is that there are so many options.

There's so many places for us to go.

And it has been really difficult for me and the leadership, and you know, everyone, all the members of the church that I talk to, it's been difficult as we look at all these options to say which one is the best because we just don't have enough information about the future.

And every one of these options, they cost us in a different way.

Like it's a costly decision to make because each option is kind of costly in a different way.

It kind of feels like no matter what, we gotta embrace something hard, but we don't know what the hard thing is that's going to lead to the greatest fruit.

We're missing tons of information.

I've got to be honest with you, okay?

There have been moments in this season where I have like wished that we were back in COVID.

Now that that's a crazy statement, so let me just like backtrack for a second here.

Because when we were in COVID, there was a season in this church where we weren't meeting together as a church.

We were doing like the whole online thing, and it's like, you know, whatever.

Bring me a barf bag.

It was not ideal.

And what happened was things opened up, and as a church, like we were just ready to meet anywhere.

Give me a janitor's closet.

If we can just get together, like I'm gonna be happy.

And part of me's longed for like that kind of like solo option, that'd be really nice.

But listen, we we don't have that.

And man, you know, if if God would just give me a picture in 10 years of us being in East Willenberry and lost people being saved, and saved people being matured, and mature people being multiplied, I would, I'll tell you right now, the decision would be so easy.

And I know it would be for you.

We would jump through whatever painful, you know, whatever pain we need to go through to embrace and experience that mission.

We would go through it if we just knew the lives that would be saved as God did his work in our midst.

But here is the reality, loved one, that we don't know.

I've asked God, you know, give me the information, give me like a dream or something.

But he hasn't.

And he so often doesn't.

And yet he still calls for the same surrender.

He still calls for faith.

And I'm very aware that this is a season in my life and a season in our life as a church where where in many ways we are being tested.

Are you going to follow me when you don't have all the details?

Are you going to follow me when your perspective is limited, mine is unlimited and heavenly, and I'm calling you to a place.

Will you surrender?

Because faith exists, because clarity doesn't.

And so we must own our blindness.

We must surrender to Him.

But I want you to see what happens when we do that.

It's the fourth heart-level call we see in this text.

It's this to look through the lens of the cross.

We've stepped into the light.

We've made a decision to lose the world standard and lens.

We've owned our blindness, and now Jesus is telling us something profound.

Now, before we rush to the hope, I want you to see the warning in here.

Look at it in verse 24 from Jesus' lips himself.

Would you look at this with me?

Jesus says, I told you that you would die in your sins.

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

It's this sobering picture.

Picture it for a moment that Jesus is watching these Pharisees dance in the light of the lampstands, celebrate the light, and Jesus is on the edge and saying, Listen, I am inviting you to believe and to follow me and to trust that I am the light of life.

But if you keep dancing out there, I want you to understand that you will dance to your grave.

You will die in your sins.

Jesus is on the outside, inviting them into him.

He is the light of life.

And if they will not heed his call, it is them who has chosen their destiny, eternal death.

I love what C.S.

Lewis paints this picture so well that hell has a door that is locked from the inside.

That it is the decision that you choose to walk through, a door you choose to walk through yourself, because Jesus here this morning and throughout your life has been calling you to him, calling you to surrender your life to him, calling you to step out of the darkness into the light that is himself by faith, and you have chosen instead to dance in the light of the world.

And Jesus here this morning with this sobering clarity, but filled with a compassionate heart of love, is calling us, inviting us in.

I'm the light of the world.

Follow me, believe in me, and you can have life.

But choose to not, and you will die in your sins.

And Jesus is all about the good news.

And so in verse 28, look what look what he says to them.

After they didn't understand in verse 27 that he was speaking about them to the Father, he shows them how to see.

He's showing us this morning how to see Jesus in our blindness.

Look what he says.

That may that keeps you from seeing me.

I loved it this morning.

You know, God always so faithful to provide these illustrations.

Woke up this morning early, and as the sun was coming up, the fog was over the field behind my house, and and you know, I saw the fog, and I thought, I gotta get out there quick to take a picture of it because it was just so beautiful with the sun shining through.

And so I, you know, I had a few more things to do.

So I did them, and then I went outside, and and you know what happened to the fog?

It was gone.

And so I have no beautiful picture to show you.

I have other ones, like I got a stake that I made.

I could show you that one, but if you want to see it, I've I missed the fog.

Why?

Because the sun comes up and the fog dissipates.

And here is Jesus saying, When the sun is lifted up, then you will know.

You know what's fascinating?

One of the clearest statements about who Jesus Christ is comes from a Roman centurion who hung Jesus on the cross.

And when there's this miraculous darkness that comes over the land for three hours and an earthquake happens right at the time that Jesus breathes his last breath, this Roman centurion says, Surely this was the Son of God.

Why?

Because the cross brought clarity to who Jesus is, to the kind of savior that he is.

And loved one, I want you to know that the cross brings clarity to your life.

Are you wrestling with shame this morning?

You have those moments of shame that just replay in your head and you have no power over them because they just come in of something that you said, or maybe a way that you were treated, or something that you did.

The cross says this that all the shame has been taken away in Jesus Christ.

When in that moment of shame you run to the cross, you will find the fog of shame lift.

You ever feel abandoned in life?

You ever feel like God has left you?

You ever feel like alone, like God's just not with you?

Loved one, look to the cross and find there that Jesus was abandoned for you so that the Father would never leave you.

And the fog of that abandonment will lift from your life as you look through the lens of the cross.

What about when you suffer and you're just I'm, God, I'm done with the suffering.

I don't want to suffer anymore.

And then you look to the cross and you see the life that came from the suffering of the cross.

You see that though there was a cross, there was a crown after it.

And you're reminded as you look through the lens of the cross, the fog of suffering lifts, and you say, Lord, I'll stay in this as long as I need to.

Facing the hardship of forgiveness and bitterness in your life because of something that someone has done to you.

What happens when you look at the cross and you see there that Jesus has forgiven you of more than you could ever be wronged in this life?

The fog of bitterness, the fog of lacking forgiveness lifts from your life.

And Jesus is calling us to make his cross, to make the moment that he was lifted up on the cross and resurrected with new life for us, to make it the lens by which we view everything.

And so I ask you this morning, loved one, have you confessed your blindness?

Have you stepped into the light?

Have you seen the foolishness of the world's lens and seen the beauty of what Jesus invites you to as he invites you to day after day embrace the gospel?

Let's turn to him in prayer together.

Father, we thank you for the cross.

God, what other hope do we have?

Death was arrested on that cross, and our greatest enemy was defeated.

Because of that now, Lord, we we can walk out of this place with hope.

We can walk out of this place.

Lord, living in a dark, dark world.

We do not look have to look far to see pain, even to know that we're experiencing it ourselves, and we can walk out into this dark world with the light of life, Jesus Himself.

God, we confess it's hard that we need you.

That we cannot do it apart from you.

And so, Lord, we pray for your help.

God, help us to apply the very things that we have been speaking about.

Help us to view our lives from the lens of the cross, to see there that our greatest enemies were defeated finally and forever.

God, we sing this song in response to you, to declare the truth of the gospel together.

It's in your name that we pray.

Amen.

Would you stand and worship with me?