Light of the World (John 8:12)

Our Awesome God
He is the Light of the World
1 John 1:5-10

INTRODUCTION:
A hurricane hit South Florida in 1992 and damaged the home of a woman named Norena. This elderly woman received a settlement check from the insurance company and hired a guy to repair the electrical work. However, when the money ran out, the work stopped. And the contractor left Norena in a house with no electricity.

For 15 years! This elderly woman lived in this house for 15 years with no electricity! No heat, no air, not a single hot bath or shower. Her refrigerator and cook stove ran off electrical cords running into her house. I don’t know why someone did not do something to help her - until the mayor of Miami-Dade learned of it and a few hours later, a new contractor was on the job and finished it.

As you might expect, the first thing the woman wanted to do was run a bathtub full of hot water and take her first bubble bath in 15 years! She said, “It’s hard to describe having [the electricity] come on, the switch on. It’s overwhelming.”

Men and women are walking in spiritual darkness and they do not realize that they are just inches away from the Light of the World.

God is pure, spiritual light - the Radiant One. He is everything holy and righteous and good. To call God “light” is to say that God is pure in all He is, says, and does.

GOD IS LIGHT:
In 2 Samuel 22:29, King David said to God: “For You are my lamp, O Lord; and the Lord illumines my darkness.”

In Psalm 27:1, King David wrote a song about God being His light: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the defense of my life; Whom shall I dread?”

The holiness of God - that He separate from sin - is connected to His holiness by Isaiah in 10:17: “the light of Israel will become a fire and his Holy One a flame, and it will burn and devour his thorns and his briars in a single day.” That is, God’s holiness, pictured as a light or a flame, will consume the sinfulness around Him.

Another passage from Isaiah that is important relative to God being light is found in Isaiah 2:5: "Come, house of Jacob, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.” That text is important because it is fulfilled in the coming of Jesus Christ and the establishment of His church…

JESUS IS LIGHT:
Jesus taught that He was God-in-the-flesh through many different metaphors from the OT which had been applied to the Father. “Light” is one of them. In John 8:12, Jesus said, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” Jesus will state this same thing two more times: John 9:5; 12:46.

Heaven takes on the nature of God in many ways and “light” is one of them. In 1 Timothy 6:16, Paul writes that God “dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see.” John pictures heaven in Revelation 21:23 and 22:5 in such a way that there is no need for a lamp (a menorah) in heaven because God Himself is the light of heaven.

In that text we have from 1 John 1:5, John writes that “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” This means that there is sin, no dishonesty, no deception, no self-interest in God’s nature at all. He is pure holiness.

GOD’S WORD IS LIGHT:
In a famous passage from Psalm 119:105, which was written to praise the commandments of God, the author wrote: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

In another famous psalm, Psalm 19:8, a psalm written by David, we hear his sing: “The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.”

Because the Bible is the Word of God, it reflects the nature of God so that the Bible is just as holy, righteous, and good as the God who speaks its message.

The Bible is light. That is, the Bible is holy. In our study of Ephesians, we just saw in 4:24 that when we are recreated in Jesus Christ by God, we put on the “new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” Do you see how Paul has combined “holiness” (or “light”) with the truth?

As if we need to emphasize this any more but it is the Word of God that makes us holy and our obedience to it, because it is the word that reflects the nature of God. In the OT, we read in 2 Chronicles 35:6 that the Israelites were to slaughter the Passover animals and “sanctify themselves” by doing according to the “word of the Lord by Moses.” In the NT, we have the same idea reflected in Ephesians 5:26 where Paul writes that the church is the bride of Christ and He “sanctifies” the church by washing her with the “word.” The word of God, when we obey it, it makes us holy and clean in the eyes of God. Why? Because it is light and it reflects the nature of God.

So Jesus prayed in John 17:17 to God the Father: “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.” The word of truth which is the Gospel message sanctifies us or makes us holy because it is light, reflecting the nature of God.

Some people do not like the Bible for this very reason. In John 3:19-21, Jesus says, “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. “But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.” You can read this paragraph and insert both “Jesus” and the “Gospel” - let’s see that…

Paul also writes in 2 Corinthians 4:4 that Satan, the god of this world, corrupts the Gospel message so that people cannot see by that light: “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

CHRISTIANS ARE LIGHT:
When you and I trust Jesus Christ and we obey His Gospel - His light - then we, in turn, become lights in the world.

Jesus taught His disciples in the Sermon on the Mount: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:14-16).

It is interesting that in Acts 13:47, the apostle Paul quotes a passage from Isaiah 42:6 and / or 49:6 to the effect that Christians (missionaries in this case) were a “light to the Gentiles.” The passages from Isaiah were applied to Jesus first in Luke 2:32. So you and I are light, when we teach the Gospel of Christ and we live and reflect the nature and character of Christ.

When we do what Paul says to do in Romans 13:12 - “put on the armor of light” - we are living the teachings of Christ in our lives and we are directing people to Jesus Christ, the true light.

In Ephesians 5:8, Paul tells Christians “you are light in the Lord, walk as children of light.” In the next verse, Paul will say that if we “walk as children of light,” people will see in us: goodness and righteousness. That’s the fruit of the light of Christ in our lives.

As Christians now, we are to “proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). And we are to walk in Light as Christ Himself is the Light (1 John 1:7). We cannot say we are walking in the light and yet hate our brother (1 John 2:9-10).

Our awesome God is light; Jesus is the radiance of that same Light. The Bible, being the words straight from the mind and heart of God, are also light. When we obey that light and live that light, we too become light to the world.

Take home message: Walk in Jesus Christ and shine His light in the dark world around you.