I Am The Light Of The World

12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

13 The Pharisees challenged him, “Here you are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid.”

14 Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going. 15 You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one. 16 But if I do judge, my decisions are true, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father, who sent me. 17 In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true. 18 I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me.”

19 Then they asked him, “Where is your father?”

“You do not know me or my Father,” Jesus replied. “If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” 20 He spoke these words while teaching in the temple courts near the place where the offerings were put. Yet no one seized him, because his hour had not yet come.

Message Introduction/God Story:

So, how do you feel about Daylight Savings Time this morning?

Illustration: Benjamin Franklin's Crazy Idea

There are some who feel quite strongly that Daylight Savings Time is an affront to God’s Time. If He set the earth in motion around the sun, they say, then why should we start messing the clock. In fact, this become quite a raging debate… whether we should stay with it or do away with it.

But I have some good news for you this morning… and especially for all of you who are feeling a bit salty about missing that extra hour of sleep. Are you ready for it? Ready or not, here it is: Daylight Savings Time was actually conceptualized by Benjamin Franklin for two reasons, to give us more access to daylight and to save on electricity. We move our clocks forward in the summer months to move an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening.

Now, let me add to that one other beautiful and beneficial divine arrangement of timing: Because Daylight Savings Time began earlier today, I suppose it’s quite fitting that we’re going to discuss the “Light of the World” this morning. Isn’t that cool… at least in some small way it makes me feel better about being here early this morning!

So let me begin this morning with a personal recollection of an experience I shared with my wife and some of my kids last summer. It’s was a memorable experience that I suspect will remain vivid to me for years to come, and which happens to provide a great point of connection with what I’m teaching on today.

Illustration: Lights on Long’s Peak.

It was Thursday, July 25th.

Imagine this… rising so early that it’s not bright and early… it’s actually dark and early… or about 3am.

Why? So we can be parked & on the trail by 4am…

We began hiking through the darkness, with only the light of our headlamps to show us the way.

Eventually, once we were well above the tree line, we could see off in the distance back to the east, the glowing lights of Boulder.

But then, one of the highlights of this experience was stopping our hike to watch the sunrise from about 11,000 feet up a mountain. It was a moment of profound beauty… and worship. A moment to truly stop and behold the goodness and the nature of our God. In that moment our dinky little headlamps became useless.

It was a moment of deep gratitude as we soaked in the light and the warmth of the sun. But more importantly, that moment was an incredible reminder that the LORD didn’t just create light so that we can see the pathway before us more clearly… He is light.

So, as we pick up the storyline of Jesus’ life again this morning, this time in John 8:12ff, here’s the context: Jesus is in Jerusalem, at the Temple, and once again the Jewish Religious leaders are having issues with how he represents himself. In fact, if anyone ever suggests to you that Jesus didn’t really know or say that He was the embodiment of God… then here’s how you might respond. You might ask a simple question something like this:

Why do you suppose the Jewish religious leaders are frequently described in the Gospels as wanting and trying to kill Jesus for blasphemy? The answer is this: Because they couldn’t believe what he was saying about himself. To them it was perfectly clear, and our story from John 8 this morning bears that out. As we saw last week in John 6, Jesus’ ministry was consistently and rather ironically opposed by the very people who should have welcomed him and supported him most… the religious leaders of Judaism at that time.

That bit of background brings us to our focal point for this morning, found in the first verse of our text, John 8:12

Ref. John 8:12. When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

This is the second of seven "I Am" statements made by Jesus, and recorded in the Gospel of John, which essentially identify him with the Father in Heaven whose name is "The Great I Am". Last week we looked at the first "I Am" statement: "I Am the bread of life." So this week we turn our attention to this statement in John 8:12: "I Am the light of the world".

As we think about the meaning and application of this together, let's start here:

Message Point 1:

Jesus is to seeing with the eyes of our heart/soul what light is to seeing with our natural eyes.

Back at Christmas time, when we met together with Spirit of Christ Church for a Christmas Eve Worship Gathering, I had an opportunity to reflect and share on this verse, so those insights are still fresh for me.

At that time, I shared about an occasion last fall when I found myself stumbling through the upstairs hallway in our home when I had to get up at night to let the dog out. A simple little insignificant experience in the grand scheme of life, yet it was instructive. I didn't want to turn the hallway light on, for fear of needlessly waking up others, so I decided to make my way through the darkness. Note to self: a night light in the hallway might be a clever idea!! But on that fateful night there was no night light, but there were several objects strewn through the hallway that made it into an obstacle course.

Have ever attempted to chart an obstacle course in the dark? Trust me, it doesn't work so well. That, my friends, is the voice of experience speaking.

So of course, I banged my toe on some hidden object, and then let out a yelp that could have woken others up with or without the lights.

Why do I tell you all this? It's simple really: Walking in the dark, with no ability to see where you're going or what's in your way, can be a unique challenge.

And yet, many people live their lives this way all the time: they are spiritually walking in the darkness. As a result, should anyone be surprised to find that people walking in the darkness tend to run into all kind of obstacles that become spiritual stumbling blocks.

Let's think about a few examples: There's the use, or misuse, of money. There's the use/misuse of food and drink. There's the use/misuse of people and relationships. There's the use/misuse of power and position.

There's the

Now look closely with me at the list I've just put before you, and notice something important: None of those things are necessarily bad and meant to be avoided at all times. Money, food and drink, relationships with other people, and even the holding of a position of power over others are not evil things. But they can be easily misused by self-centered people who don't see clearly how those things are meant to be used.

Have you ever been mistreated or hurt by someone walking in the dark? What this experience amounts to is being taken advantage of in some way by a person who is seeking their own self-interest before all else.

When you live life in spiritual darkness, you fail to see what the right thing to do is. You fail to see what the right way to treat others is. This is what Jesus referred to as "walking in darkness".

In fact, here's another cross reference to give you some added perspective on this analogy. Look at...

Ref. 1 John 2:11 But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.

You see, the analogy John is using here is the very same analogy he heard and learned from Jesus... the very same analogy used back in John 8:12. The idea is that those who walk in spiritual darkness are essentially blinded from going in the right direction. They do not really know where they're going, John says, because they can't see properly. So then, as a result, people like that act in ways that are hateful and hurtful to others.

In contrast to all this, walking in the light is all about seeing clearly by the light of abundant and eternal life... which is Jesus himself.

As John put it in the introduction to his gospel:

Ref. John 1:4-5 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Ref. John 1:9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

Friends, let's remember that those words are the first hand account of the one disciple who became Jesus' closest and dearest companion. John saw Jesus up close and personal, and this spiritual enlightenment is what he came away with.

So if we hope to have a similar experience, here's the single most important thing we can do. Do you know what it is?

Message Point 2:

To be enlightened by Jesus is to open our hearts to all that He wants to show us.

Let me diverge into a really brief but super interesting science lesson for a moment:

Illustration: Light to the eyes.

Did you know that your pupils actually change size any time they encounter a new level of light? We call this dilation of the pupils. Here's how it works: Your pupil of course is the small black dot in the middle of your eye. They may seem insignificant, but they're not. In fact, they have a very important job: they grow or shrink to allow just the right amount of light to enter our eyes so that we can see.

So here's an experiment you could do to observe this: Go into a windowless room, turn off the light and close the door so that there's just enough light to see your own pupils in a mirror. Under those circumstances your pupils will be far larger than usual - or dilated as they say - to their maximum size in order to allow as much light as possible into your eyes. Then, if you were to immediately turn on a light while watching your own pupils in the mirror, you would see them shrink back to a small dot almost immediately, to compensate for the amount of light they've been exposed to. In other words, you can watch your own pupils grow and shrink right before your very eyes!

Now, here's the point I really want you to consider: the principle of dilation doesn't just apply to our pupils. Dilation, in general, is the action or condition of becoming wider, larger, or more open. So, I submit to you that it can also apply to the human spirit. The spirit of a man, like the eyes, is meant to become more dilated - or open - whenever it's exposed to a true source of spiritual light. That's the way YHWH designed our eyes, and our spirits to work. So the point is that we have eyes in our hearts... or spiritual eyes, that allow us to "see" or behold spiritual things properly whenever they have been enlightened. Think about what it means to dilate your heart toward Jesus.... to open it wide so that the light of who he is and what he wants for you can flood in.

This experience of spiritual dilation is what Isaiah was describing when he prophesied 600 years before Jesus' birth about the impact he would have on people.

Ref. Isaiah 9:2 The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.

This experience of spiritual dilation is also what Paul was praying for the Christians in Ephesus when he wrote this

Ref. Ephesians 1:18-19 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

Spiritual dilation is the act of opening your heart/spirit to the light of Christ Jesus, and allowing your vision for life to be informed by what he shows you. He wants to show you the hope that he's called you to live with. He wants to show you the riches of the glorious inheritance he's prepared for you. And he wants to show you the incredible and incomparable power he offers you by way of the Holy Spirit. But we can't ever really see or appreciate these things if we don't dilate our heart toward Jesus.

What happens when we do this? We receive revelation… enlightenment if you will. We receive an ability to see things and know things in the spirit that would otherwise be hidden to us. He shows us what he wants us to see by the light of his presence at work in our lives.

What I'm saying is that both entering into and growing in a personal relationship with Jesus is all about the posture of our hearts toward him. So ask yourself the question: is my heart properly dilated toward the light of the world, and if now, why not? What are the things in my life that are sources of darkness rather than light?

Here’s the irony. Many of the very people Jesus said this to in person never saw the light. They saw him in person, yet they couldn’t see who He really was. As a result they missed.

Illustration: Hank Williams Sad Story (by Don Boys)

Country singer Hank Williams, Sr. held the world in his grasp then lost it all in the back seat of his Cadillac, dying from a drug overdose on New Years Day, 1953 at the young age of only 29.

He had a string of hits including “I’m so Lonesome I Could Cry” in 1949; and the haunting “Cold Cold Heart” in 1950; and “Your Cheatin Heart” in 1952. It seems that Williams could massage a song to get the most from it and was proficient with his guitar, but he couldn’t handle fame, money, and life in general. As a result, he was often drunk or drugged.

His songs reveal that Williams had some exposure to the Gospel. One of his songs reveals his knowledge of salvation “How Can You Refuse Him Now?” The chorus asked: “How can you refuse him now, how can you refuse him now, how can you turn away from His side, with tears in His eyes on the cross there He died, How can you refuse Jesus now?” Hank evidently refused Him.

He wrote his famous “I Saw the Light” in 1948, although the melody was exactly the same as the Chuck Wagon Gang’s 1935 country gospel song, “He Set Me Free.” Williams often sang his song as if he was a man facing the end, desperate to believe in a salvation that he didn’t think existed. Was he trying to convince himself of the reality of the Gospel? He sang: “I wandered so aimless, life filled with sin; I wouldn’t ask my dear Saviour in. Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night; Praise the Lord, I saw the light!”

The chorus went, “I saw the light, I saw the light. No more darkness; no more night. Now I’m so happy no sorrow in sight. Praise the Lord, I saw the light!” The second verse: “Just like a blind man I wandered alone, Worries and fears I claimed for my own. Then like the blind man that Jesus gave back his sight; Praise the Lord, I saw the light!” The third verse: “I was a fool to wander astray, For straight is the gate and narrow is the way. Now I have traded the wrong for the right; Praise the Lord, I saw the light!”

They lyrics are beautiful and compelling. But the trouble is Hank apparently never really did see the light despite the fact that He usually closed his shows with this famous song.

Near the end of his life he was doing a show in San Diego but stumbled drunk off stage after only two songs. His friend, country performer Minnie Pearl tried to sober him as they rode around town in the back seat of his Cadillac so he could do his second show. She got him to join her in singing “I Saw the Light” thinking it might help sober him, but after one verse, Hank put his head in his hands and said, “O Minnie, Minnie, I don’t see no light. There ain’t no light.”

Not long after that, on Jan. 1, 1953, Williams died in the back seat of his car on the way to a concert in Charleston, WV. He was to do a show the next day in Canton, OH in the Memorial Auditorium. Williams’ Drifting Cowboys band opened the Ohio show with a spotlight on the curtain after the packed crowd was told that Hank Williams had died the previous day. The band, behind the curtain, sang “I Saw the Light.”

More than 20,000 people attended his funeral on Jan. 4 at Montgomery’s (AL) Municipal Auditorium where an overflow crowd listened via loudspeakers. Roy Acuff sang “I Saw the Light” as Hank’s body lay in front of him in its casket. Acuff was joined by Bill Monroe, Little Jimmie Dickens, Carl Smith, Red Foley, Webb Pierce and others. Dickens began weeping uncontrollably during the song. It seemed to be appropriate to this huge crowd of fans that Hank’s “closure” song was used to end his last public appearance—his own funeral.

Williams is buried in Montgomery, AL and across the front of his huge tombstone are the words, “Praise the Lord, I Saw the Light.” What a terrible tragedy that a man could talk, write, and sing about seeing the light, and yet apparently never actually see it.

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