The Light of the World

I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to John chapter 8 and please hold your place at verse 12,

John chapter 8 and verse 12. And as is our custom,

I will invite you to stand and we're going to read the Word of God together. I feel like this mic is a little loud this morning,

I think maybe you had it set for Bert. While you're standing, let me just say thank you, Bert, for preaching a wonderful message last week, giving me the opportunity to minister to the church,

Silver Hills Church in Carson City, Nevada. And I also am not leaving, just to be clear, because I know

I've been out, the spring and fall times are times when conferences happen and I've been asked an awful lot the last few years to go out and speak and I've been taking those opportunities under the encouragement of our elders to go and speak when given the opportunity.

So I'm thankful for Andy and Mike, for holding down the fort, for our deacons who we met with yesterday, godly men who are the hands and feet around here and do so much that are not seen, and for Brother Bert who has such a wonderful teacher and preacher of the

Word. Just so thankful for all of you. Well that being said, let's read our verse for today.

John chapter 8 verse 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.

Our Father and our God, we come to you in Jesus' name and we are grateful and thankful for the opportunity to study your

Word and Lord you know, as I have thought much this week about what

I'm going to say today, you know oh Lord that today is a message that could be easily misunderstood, at least a portion of it.

So I pray Lord for clarity, maybe beyond what I've ever been able to have before.

And I trust Lord that it is your Holy Spirit who teaches, so I pray that I would decrease, that you would increase, that your

Spirit would be the teacher, and that you would give eyes to see and ears to hear.

And I pray Lord that you would keep me from error. I pray that every week

Lord, not because I just want to be repetitious, but because Lord I believe it. I do not want to preach anything that is an error because your

Word says, let not all presume to be teachers, for teachers will be judged with stricter judgment.

So God may it be today that you give me the grace to preach correctly, open the hearts of people to believe, and Lord may your

Word go forth and do what only it can do, and that is change lives. And I pray that in Jesus' name,

Amen. Just to pulp it off. We've come to a point in the text where I'm going to have to spend some time in extended explanation about a decision that I'm making.

And I hope, one, that you will at least give me your grace as I seek to explain the things

I'm going to explain this morning. Especially if you are a visitor with us, it might be that you've never heard anything like what

I'm going to say regarding the text of scripture. And I hope that it will be clear enough to you to understand.

And if you have questions, I hope that you are willing to come and talk to me rather than make assumptions.

I had a funny thing happen just on Friday. I was talking to a friend of mine who lives in another state, and he told me that his pastor had to deal with a text like this and dealt with the text and the sermon, and a lady who had been at the church for years left because of what he said.

And I said, well, that's encouraging. That's just what I need to hear. Thanks, Justin. My friend

Justin told me that story, and I said, well, I would hope that the things that I say today will be clear.

And I want to say this also. For those of you who have been members here for any length of time, you'll know this is not the first time that I have addressed this subject.

I have taught entire courses on this subject in my academy, or our academy, not my academy, but our academy classes.

I've taught on the history of the Bible, the tenacity of the text. I have an entire course on how the

Bible goes from the writers to us. We call it from Moses to me, right? How did, how, what was the transmission of the text down through the ages?

And what we are dealing with today is something we call a textual variant.

A textual variant is a place in the manuscript tradition of our Bible where there is a question about the authenticity of a passage.

And that is something that a lot of people don't even want to deal with. And I will tell you, there was three ways

I could have handled the message today. I could have ignored this and just preached like nothing and that could have been it.

And that's what a lot of guys do. I could have completely skipped it and not said a word, just skip over the variant and move right on to the next part.

And that's what some guys do. But I, I hope you would know this about me.

My heart is the heart of a teacher. And anytime

I'm given the opportunity to explain difficult things, I want to do that. Even if it means that the sermon feels a little weird and it might feel a little weird today because it might come across, at least the first half of today's message may come across somewhat as a scholastic lecture than it will a sermon.

But if you will look at your Bibles and if you're looking at the Pew Bible, which is our English standard version, which is what we use, or maybe you use a different Bible.

If you notice at the beginning of chapter seven, verse 53, there is a mark in the passage.

It looks like a little block there. If it's in the ESV, it's a break in the text.

And that break goes all the way down to chapter eight, verse 11.

And you'll see it closes the block. And either in the text or at the bottom of the text, it will say something to the effect of this.

This section of the text is not in the earliest and oldest manuscripts of John.

Does everybody see what I'm talking about in their text? Now I bring that up because you'll notice this morning

I read verse 12. I read verse 12 last time

I was here, which I know it's been almost a month since we were, I've been preaching through the gospel of John verse by verse.

It's been almost a month since I preached John. We stopped in our last sermon at 752.

Now you would have thought I would have picked up at 53 and read all the way to the end of 12, but I didn't, did

I? I read 12. And at least one of you has already asked, why does it say

John 8, 12 in the bulletin? What happened to verses 1 through 11? Well, I'm not ignoring them, but I am distinguishing them.

I'm distinguishing them because I believe they need to be distinguished. And just in case, as I teach these things today, just in case there is any doubt in your mind about me, let me assure you again that I believe that the

Bible is the inspired and inerrant word of God in its original autographs, meaning that it was written by the original authors

John and Paul and Luke. I believe there were no errors in what they wrote.

But what we possess today is not what they wrote. Does everybody understand that there's no original copy of John?

There's no original copy of Luke. There's no autograph that we can go to and compare and say, this is it.

What we have is we have a vast manuscript tradition that is made up of over 5 ,000 handwritten

Greek manuscripts and over 25 ,000 manuscripts written in other languages,

Coptic, Ethiopic, Old Latin, all of them making up 25 ,000 plus handwritten manuscripts.

We're not talking about printed text. We're talking about where guys sat down and painstakingly took to the test.

How many of you can imagine writing your own Bible by hand, one letter at a time?

This is what we have and we have thousands. There is no work of antiquity that has greater attestation than does the

New Testament. There are more copies of the New Testament than any other work of antiquity and there are closer to the original works of the

New Testament than anything in antiquity. We have sections of the

Gospel of John, pieces of the Gospel of John manuscripts that go back to the second century.

Within a generation of John's death, we still have writings that were copied from what he wrote.

There is no doubt that we can say that the overwhelming majority of the text of the

New Testament has no questions whatsoever. But there are some texts that include variations.

Now some of these variations are what we call meaningless variations.

For instance, there are some manuscripts that say Jesus Christ and another manuscript will say the

Lord Jesus Christ and another manuscript will say the Lord Jesus Christ of glory, right? Like they'll have these, we call that expansion and it makes sense that as the sacred name is expanded in certain manuscripts you'll see

Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ, they'll have that expanded section and that does occur.

We call those meaningless variants because they don't change the meaning. But there are some meaningful variants, meaning that if you remove the text or change the text there will be changed.

But some of those are not viable. I'll give you an example. There is a passage in the book of Mark where it says the rich young ruler came to Jesus.

You all remember the story of the rich young ruler who came to Jesus. And in the gospel of Mark it says Jesus looked on him with compassion.

But in one manuscript it says Jesus looked on him with anger.

Now out of 5 ,000 manuscripts only one uses anger. That's the difference between splachneistheis and orgastheis.

It's two Greek words that look very similar. They even have a similar sounding ending. Orgastheis, splachneistheis has a similar ending.

And only one manuscript has the word anger. So we call that an unviable variant.

What does unviable mean? It's not possible. That 5 ,000 of them got it wrong but one got it right.

That's not a viable variant. And so we have meaningful variants and unmeaningful variants.

We have viable variants and unviable variants. And if your eyes are doing this and your head is spinning, please just stick with me as best you can.

I promise that I try to make these things as clear as mud. I'm doing my best.

But when it comes to the study of these things, we call this study textual criticism.

Textual criticism, also known as lower criticism, is the academic study of biblical manuscripts,

Hebrew and Greek, to identify and correct errors, variations, and alterations made by scribes.

Its goal is to reconstruct the original text or the autographs as closely as possible by evaluating thousands of manuscript copies.

Our own statement of faith here at Sovereign Grace alludes to this. I'm going to show it to you.

The statement of faith of Sovereign Grace Family Church says this. The scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are breathed out by God wholly complete and entirely without error in the original manuscripts.

We point to the original manuscripts because we know that there are variations in the copies.

So the question is not a question of inspiration. It is a question of transmission.

It's not a question of is it true. It's a question of has there been anything added or changed down over the last 2 ,000 years.

And the reason why it is needed is because of those 5 ,000 Greek manuscripts, not one of them reads exactly like another.

Every one of them has variants in it somewhere. And so we have to make comparisons.

I've spent the better part of the last 20 years of ministry in the study of the text of the

Bible and in looking at these variants. I have an entire encyclopedia of what's known as Philip Comfort's text of the

New Testament where I study and look at variations in the text because I love history. And I like to ask the question, what causes these things to arise?

Where do these things come from? I want to know. I'm curious. And I think it helps my preaching, ultimately.

So having said all of this, I want to say that if anything

I say today causes you frustration, consternation, or doubt, please feel free to come and talk to me. I said that already, but I want to say it again.

If what I'm about to say causes you consternation, please come and talk to me because I would never want to leave you confused.

And now on to the text. The text that is in view today is probably one of the most beloved sections of the

Bible. This is also the part that makes today hard, is when I tell you that one of the most beloved stories about Jesus wasn't actually part of what

John originally wrote. That causes people to go, I don't like that.

When I say that what we have in verses 753 to 811 is likely a historical story that was added to the text later, and all of the evidence points to that, we say, but I like that story.

I love that story. It's something I believe is good and true about Jesus. Well, that's fine.

Something can be true and historical without being canonical. Let me say it again just to make sure you hear what

I just said. Something can be true and good without being, or true and historical without being canonical.

For instance, how many of you have ever heard of the Apocrypha? What is the

Apocrypha? The Apocrypha is those books in the Old Testament that Catholics recognize as being part of the

Bible and Protestants do not. Protestants have 66 and no more.

We have 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament. Well, if you open up a Catholic Bible, you will see that there are books that you're maybe not familiar with.

The book of Tobit, the book of 1st and 2nd Maccabees, and others, the longer portions of Daniel and Esther.

There are sections in the Catholic Bible which are not in our Bible. Now, I would never say that those portions are not historical, because there are portions in Maccabees that are totally historical.

It tells the story of the Battle of the Maccabees and all those things. I wouldn't say they're not historical, and I don't say they're not valuable.

I think they're very valuable. If you've never looked into the Apocrypha, I would say, well, study your Bible first.

But if you're looking for more information about the history of the Jewish people, especially between the time of Malachi and the time of Matthew, that 400 -year period, we have historical writings from that period.

We call that the Apocrypha, or some call it the deuterocanonical books, meaning the second canon.

I don't like that term, but that's the term normally used by Roman Catholics, deuterocanon. It's the second portion of the canon.

So here's what I say. I say those parts are useful. They can be historical, but they're not canonical.

What does canonical mean? They're not God's word. They were not inspired by God.

I have no problem looking a Catholic in the face and saying, yeah, Tobit's great, but it's not God's word. And you probably wouldn't either.

You probably wouldn't have any issue looking at a Roman Catholic and saying, you know what? Maccabees is awesome, but it's not

God's word. And so if I say to you today, the story of the woman caught in adultery is awesome, but I don't think it's

God's word. I don't want you to think that I have somehow destroyed your faith.

I don't want you to think that I'm somehow attacking your faith because there's evidence, textual critical evidence, that this was not part of what

John wrote. So is the story historical?

Likely, yes. In fact, I think it's pretty accurate to likely what happened with Jesus.

And I'm going to talk about that in a minute. But is this story canonical? Likely, no. And I'll give you a few reasons why.

First of all, we have something called internal evidence. Internal evidence is evidence in the text itself that would point to the fact that this is likely not part of the original text.

The internal evidence is that, one, it breaks up the narrative. It adds an additional day to the entire situation that doesn't seem to be part of the actual narrative.

Jesus is speaking with and engaging with the Pharisees on the final day of the feast. And he continues to do that in chapter 8, verse 12.

But there's this section between 753 and 811 that adds that they all went home and came back.

That adds an additional day to the narrative in the conversation, which is actually, if you take it out, it doesn't need to be there.

The second thing you see, as far as the internal evidence, is that the language which is used here is not consistent with the rest of John.

This is not a section which agrees with the language and style of the rest of John's gospel.

And as I said earlier, it disconnects the two parts of the story.

Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees, and he's speaking first about the water. He says, any of you who is thirsty, let them come to me and drink, because that's the water ceremony that they're doing on the final day of the feast of tabernacles.

And then he says, I am the light of the world. Why would he say

I'm the light of the world? That's what we read this morning. That's chapter 8, verse 12. Because during the feast of tabernacles, they had torches that were lit up to remind them about the

Shekinah glory, the light that was leading the people through the wilderness during the time of the

Exodus. Both of these illustrations are tied to the feast of tabernacles. But if the narrative of the woman that's caught in adultery is put in between, you end up no longer during the feast of tabernacles.

That has ended. So that cuts up the narrative and breaks apart what is happening.

You can take out John 7, 53 through 8, 11, take it out, and it reads perfectly fine without it.

And here's where we get to the external evidence. The external evidence for this text is one, the oldest and most reliable manuscripts from the first four centuries of the church do not include this story.

It goes right from 7, 53 to, or right from 7, 52 to 8, 11. There's no story there.

It's not there. But in the manuscripts where it is there, it is in different places.

In one, it's at the end of John. In another, it's in the gospel of Luke. So it's a story that was looking for a home.

Does that make sense? The story is part of early oral tradition. This is what I think.

It's part of early oral tradition, but they didn't have a place for it. And it found its home here in between chapters 8 and 7 of John's gospel.

Here's another real important part. You understand we didn't start reading the

Bible in 1950. Right? Like there have been commentaries on the

Bible that go all the way back to the early church. We call them the early church fathers. The early church fathers didn't mention this story in their comments on John.

If you read the early church commentaries on this text, they don't mention this story.

In fact, the first ones to mention this story are in the fourth century. And Augustine, who is in the fourth and fifth century, even notes that this story might not be part of what

John wrote. So this is not new. This is something that they've known about even back then.

Jerome mentions that. You remember Jerome is the one who translated the Vulgate? He even mentioned the fact that this text may be spurious.

He was in the fourth century. So the internal evidence and the external evidence for the story of the woman caught in adultery is it's most likely not written by John, which would mean it's not canonical.

But again, I say that doesn't mean it's not true. And so for a moment,

I want to make some observations about, oh, by the way, let me read one thing before I do that.

If this is true, if what I've said is true, and I believe that it is, if it's historical but not canonical, why is it in our

Bible? Why is it here? Well, it's part of the traditional text which has been used by the church, even though it's been long understood as questionable, as I just mentioned.

And if you read almost every modern translation, it makes the note and says, this is not part of the original.

In fact, the only Bible that probably won't make that note is if you have a King James Bible. The King James Bible normally doesn't include textual notes like that.

But most modern Bibles will at least recognize that this has been a part.

And if you look at the Greek texts, the handwritten Greek texts, some of them have obelisks.

Obelisks is a note by the writer that notes that this text was probably not part of the original.

Even the handwritten manuscripts note this like you have in your Bible. But it's part of the tradition of the church.

And you say, well, why would it still be in my Bible? Because we're not taking it out, but we're also studying why it's being left in and what the question of it being left in is.

This is where the New Testament is much different from other religious texts, especially the

Quran. If you look at the history of the Quran, you will find out they will make a claim that it is without any variation in all of its passed down.

First of all, there's a Greek word for that and it's baloney. There are variations in the manuscripts of the Quran. But one of the things that people don't realize is there was a point in history where there was a man named

Uthman who collected the copies of the Quran that were available, burned them all and produced his own. We don't actually know what

Muhammad wrote. We have the Uthmanic revision of the Quran that is we have no idea of knowing how close it is to what

Muhammad wrote. That has never happened with the New Testament. It couldn't happen. Because as soon as the writings of Paul and Peter and John began to go out into the countryside of the

Asia Minor and into Macedonia and Greece, those books were copied and copied and copied and copied.

And there was an explosion of copies. No one could have ever gathered them all up and destroyed them and made a wholesale new text.

Again, one of the things that God did to preserve the New Testament is he gave us so many that no one could ever come along and make a wholesale change that wouldn't be recognized.

That's the beauty of the history of the New Testament. We have a New Testament that is a tenacious text.

It is a tenacious text. But when it comes to certain texts, and there are three main ones.

By the way, if you don't know this, we call these the big three. There's three main textual variants that scholars love to debate and argue over.

The first one is the shortest, 1 John 5, 7, and it's the only explicit reference to the

Trinity in the New Testament. I believe in the Trinity, of course, but I don't use 1 John 5, 7 to defend it. 1 John 5, 7 is a reference to there are three that bear witness in heaven, the

Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one. That particular text is not in any Greek manuscript in the first thousand years of the church.

It's not anywhere. So that's what we call a textual variant that's not viable.

It's not viable. It doesn't exist in the manuscript tradition for a thousand years. And then we have the longer ending of Mark, which

Mike referenced in his sermon last week. I did listen to your sermon. It was great, by the way. I didn't get a chance to tell you. When he preached at the other church, he mentioned that there was a longer ending of Mark that is a questionable passage.

And when I preached through Mark on Wednesday nights, I talked about that. I did pretty much the same sermon on the ending of Mark.

And this, what we call the pericope adultery, that's the Latin for the story or the pericope about the adulterous woman, this section.

So out of 27 books and thousands of Greek words, we have three main areas that we argue about, and these are the three.

So I think we should be pretty happy about that. The fact that we're not tripping over every other word of the

New Testament, wondering is this right or is this wrong? See, I read verse 12 this morning. You know why I read verse 12?

Because there's no doubt. There's no doubt about verse 12. Jesus said, I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

That is, I can say, thus saith the Lord. No doubt, no doubt. But there's questions about verses one through 11.

I feel like I'm belaboring this, but now that I've said all those things, I wanna just read you three quotes and then we'll move on. Bruce Metzger said this, the evidence for this not being in the gospel of John is overwhelming.

And Bruce Metzger is one of the great Greek scholars of our day. Leon Morris said the textual evidence makes it impossible.

This was his words, makes it impossible to hold this section as an authentic part of the gospel. And Norman Geisler, who is not a

Calvinist, but I still like him. It's a joke, but Norman Geisler is a good apologist.

And he says this, he says, he gives no less than eight reasons why this text should not be considered a part of John's gospel.

I have all eight reasons, but I'm not gonna read them to you because I've pretty much already given them to you. But if you wanna look that up,

Norman Geisler's eight reasons why this is not part of John's writing. Historical, internal, and external evidence against it.

But having said that, I wanna make a few observations. Number one, this passage is great.

I think I've said that already, I wanna say it again. The woman caught in adultery, thrown at Jesus's feet because the men are trying to trap

Jesus in his words. Text tells us that. It says they threw her at her feet because they were trying to bring

Jesus under contempt, trying to trap him. And Jesus gets down and starts drawing in the dirt.

And the men stand there like, hey man, we didn't come to watch you doodle in the dirt. Right, like you better answer us.

And Jesus said, okay, I'll give you an answer. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

Then he went back to writing in the sand. And one by one, they dropped their stones and walked away.

And he looked at the woman and he says, is there anyone here to condemn you? And she says, no,

Lord. And he says, neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. That's the story, and it's a beautiful story.

It really is, and I believe it's true. Again, please don't get me wrong. I think it's historical, I think it's historical.

And it has one of the most quoted passages in the Bible. How many times have you had your unbelieving relatives say, hey, let him who is without sin cast the first stone?

That's almost as popular as Matthew 7, 1. Judge not lest ye be judged, right? I mean, the sinful person loves that passage, right?

Because you can't say nothing to me. Because let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

That's a very popular passage for unbelievers. People say you can't comment on anything unless you're perfect.

Well, that's not what Jesus is teaching here. You have to understand something.

Jesus is responding not to the woman in particular at the beginning. He's responding to the hypocrites who brought her to him.

It says they came to trap Jesus. Now, how would it trap Jesus? Well, Jesus has been preaching love and forgiveness.

So they throw a woman at his feet, and they know one of two things. He's either going to say let her go, in which case they can say you violated the law of Moses.

Or he's going to say stone her, and they're going to say, what's this guy preaching love and mercy and forgiveness?

And now he's saying stone this woman in the street. Or they might even appeal to the Roman law.

We don't have the right to stone her. Try to get Jesus in trouble one way or the other, right? So there's all these things that could be happening, but we know they're trying to bring

Jesus into some type of credibility issue. They're trying to bring him into some type of issue with what is he going to say?

What's his answer? And I want to say this.

Jesus' answer is consistent with other things that he says.

This is why I think it's historical. And here's where I get this. Number one, he upholds the law.

Jesus never once says that this woman doesn't deserve to be stoned. You know the

Old Testament calls for stoning of the adulteress, right? Or the adulterer, right? The Old Testament law calls for everything they're asking for.

And Jesus doesn't say don't stone her. We actually don't know what he wrote in the ground.

There's a lot of speculation about that. Mike Warnke, who was a Christian comedian in the 80s, whose name doesn't get mentioned much, but I like him even though some of the stuff, come to find out some of the stuff he said wasn't really true, but he was a funny guy.

But Mike Warnke was telling this story one time. He said, I think Jesus wrote the names of their girlfriends. Which again, that's just a funny, we don't know what

Jesus wrote. Ray Comfort thinks Jesus wrote the Ten Commandments. Of course, everything with Ray Comfort's the

Ten Commandments. But the idea is writing like he is without sin, cast a first stone, and here's the law, you are all sinners, right?

That makes sense. Whatever the situation, each one of them, one by one, walks away.

And Jesus says to the woman, is there no one here to condemn you? Neither do I condemn you. Now, this is where the story gets a little enigmatic.

She has done something worthy of condemnation. She has done something worthy of death.

And you say, well, how is this consistent with Jesus? Well, the Bible does show many times

Jesus interacting people where he forgives sins. But it's almost always in conjunction with someone's faith.

Remember the woman who came to Jesus and she washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair, right?

And we have that story. And Jesus says to the Pharisee, I came to your house, you gave me no water for my feet, you gave me no oil for my head, but she's not stopped washing my feet with her tears and drying them with her hair.

Like this woman is truly repentant. That's the point. Like she's broken, right?

There's no indication of repentance on behalf of the adulterous woman, but there's no indication of not either.

The Bible is silent on her condition in the same way that it's silent on the condition of Lazarus.

Remember the story of Lazarus and the rich man. When Lazarus and the rich man, the story is told, it says Lazarus dies and he goes to be with Abraham and the rich man dies and he goes to Hades.

And guess what? It never says Lazarus was a believer. It just says he was poor. And I know some people who use that to say that poor people automatically go to heaven.

That's not true. You know, poverty, it's not, you know, what we say, soul of poverty, right?

Justification by poverty only. No, that's not how salvation works. So we can assume on behalf of Lazarus that he believed because he was with Abraham when he died.

And we know justification is by faith. So this woman who is told by Jesus, neither do

I condemn you, we can assume that in the moments of her being dragged away and brought before Jesus and laid at his feet, that there was in her heart, a heart of contrition.

And some people think, some people think you can't really repent if you get caught.

I've heard people say that. They say, oh, he's not really repentant. He's only repenting because he got caught. But you know that sometimes

God lets us get caught so that we will repent. Yeah, God uses that catching us in the act of sin to actually cause us to have our eyes opened, to actually have that moment where we realize, hey,

I need to truly repent because I have been exposed. This woman has been exposed as an adulteress before the world, thrown at Jesus's feet.

And he says, I don't condemn you. The only reason I can think of why he wouldn't condemn her is because she has recognized her sin.

And now under the threat of stones, crushing her skull, she has believed and trusted.

She calls him Lord. I can't prove that that means she understands who he is because the word Lord also can have the connotation of sir in our modern language.

Lord doesn't always mean Jehovah. But she does call him

Lord. So as I said, I think there are things in the story that are valuable and true.

It's true that Jesus would not let himself be caught up in the foolishness of the Pharisees. It was true that they could not outsmart him no matter how much they tried.

And it was true that Jesus was willing to forgive even the vilest of offenders because that is what our

God does. He forgives the broken. So those are true things in this narrative that hopefully continue to be reminded of us today about this story.

But now I wanna move to verse 12. And I wanna look at the very next part of the narrative, which

I believe again, picks up from verse 52 of the chapter before. Jesus again spoke to them saying,

I am the light of the world. Now, as I said before, if the pericope adultery is not included, if that story of the woman is not included, then this is still the final day of the feast.

And the reason why I think that matters is because Jesus is speaking to the crowd.

And I don't know how many of you remember this. Some of your visitors, you weren't even here. But if you remember us walking through chapter seven, do you remember the things that happened in chapter seven?

In chapter seven, Jesus has made his way secretly to the Feast of Tabernacles. And in the

Feast of Tabernacles, he has begun to make himself public and teach. And as he's teaching, there's all these questions about who he is.

He can't be the Messiah. He's from Galilee. The Messiah is supposed to come from Bethlehem, not realizing that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

And then they would say things about Jesus. It said some of them believed and some of them didn't. And the

Pharisees were saying, this man can't be the Messiah. And Jesus says,

I am the bread of life. He said that in chapter six.

But then in chapter seven, he says, I'm the water of life. He says, I am, if anyone's thirsty, let him come to me and drink.

And he's tying that to what's going on in the ceremony. If you remember, I told you the story, how they would come and they would pour water on the altar to remind them of the rock in the

Old Testament that poured forth water. So Jesus is tying himself to the Old Testament imagery, the

Old Testament imagery of pouring out water for life. And now he's tying himself to the imagery of light because where they were in the temple, and we actually learned later that they're in the treasury of the temple.

We read that later and we'll talk about it next week. But in this particular portion, there would have been these lights, these torches that were there, and they were there reminding them of the

Old Testament light that led the people through the wilderness. So Jesus has already tied himself to the water.

Now he's tying himself to the light and he says, I am the light of the world.

I am the light of the world. Light gives life.

Light gives life. In a physical sense, we know that's obvious. I've got a tree in my yard that we have to get cut back every few years because it's a giant oak tree.

And as it grows out, the limbs become so heavy that they begin to droop. And they actually touch the ground and make almost like a canopy around the tree.

And everywhere in my yard, there's grass. We had to buy a big lawn mower to cut our football field of grass that we have in front of our house.

But there's no grass underneath that oak tree. And the reason there's no grass underneath that oak tree is because light doesn't make it to the ground.

Light gives life. And you can see where light doesn't exist because there's death.

Because there's no life. There's no grass underneath that oak tree because the light doesn't make it to the ground.

And the same way that physical light gives physical life, spiritual light gives spiritual life.

And Jesus is saying here in this passage, I am the light of the world. I am the one who came to give life.

And it is through me, it is through faith in me, it is through trusting in me that you will have life.

And the one who follows after me will not walk in darkness. And what does that mean?

Does that mean we're never gonna sin again? I wish. But can anyone in here say they've, since you became a believer, you've been able to keep a perfect record of sinlessness?

Can anybody say you kept a perfect record? Since you woke up? I'm not gonna ask you since the sermon started, but we'll leave it.

None of us has a perfect record. What does it mean when Jesus says, I am the light of the world, and he who comes after me will not walk in darkness?

Well, first and foremost, we know that when Christ changes our life, when Christ comes into our life, when the light of life is shown on our dark hearts, it changes everything.

And I will say this, and we've said this many times in this church, if you believe you have encountered Jesus Christ and he didn't change your life, that should make you wonder if you've really encountered

Jesus Christ. There has to be. Not, again, we don't become perfect, but we do change our, he changes our heart.

He gives us a desire for him. He gives us a desire to go toward light rather than opposed to the light.

The Bible says that light casts out darkness. And you know how you can see that when the gospel is preached in those who run?

They don't want to draw to the light. They want to go away from the light. They don't want to draw near to Jesus. They want to run from Jesus because the light casts out the darkness.

But the one who's going toward the light, the one who loves the light, the one who wants more of the light, that is the person who's been changed.

Their heart has been changed. Jesus says, he who comes after me will not walk in darkness, but he'll have the light of life.

And we learned from John chapter one that the light of life is the light within us that we are given the

Holy Spirit of God. And that light that is within us draws us to the Savior.

That's the role of the Holy Spirit. The role of the Holy Spirit is to come live in our hearts and cause us to want to follow after the

Lord Jesus Christ. This is why I don't understand people say, I'm a Christian. Do you follow after you? I don't have any desire to do any of those things.

I have a desire for the things of God, but I'm a Christian. That's called cultural Christianity.

And you can be culturally Christian without having your heart changed. But a heart change comes with a changed desire.

And again, it's not perfect because you still deal with three pretty powerful enemies. One of them is yourself, the flesh, the world, and the devil.

And it's not like it's three enemies. I've told this before. It's not like you got the flesh over here and the world over here and the devil over here.

No, it's the flesh that's influenced by the world, which is also influenced by the devil.

You walk out into the world and you tell me it's not influenced by the devil. You walk out and look at the things that are put right in front of our eyes to cause us to lust and to cause us to covet and to cause us to hate.

And all of those things are put right in front of our eyes to cause us to do those things. You tell me the devil's not doing his business.

He certainly is. But Jesus says, I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won't walk in darkness.

You remember Psalm 1, blessed is the man who doesn't walk in the way of sinners, sit in the seat of scoffers.

That's the call is that our walk changes. We call it the Christian walk.

It's walking in the light. I want to be in the light as you are in the light.

Jesus said, if any man thirsts, let him come to me and drink. And then he says,

I am the light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

And I want to say one other thing and then I'll draw to a close. Jesus says, I am the light of the world.

Now, I believe when Jesus references the fact that he is the light of the world, he is at least implicitly referencing the fact that the gospel was not for one people in one place at one time, but the gospel is meant for all people in all tribes, tongues, and languages in all time.

Jesus didn't say, I'm the light to the Jews. Now he did say, I came to save the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Like he referenced the fact that he came to the Jews, but to the Jews first and also to who?

To the Greeks, to the Gentiles. The gospel is not meant for only

Israel. The gospel is not meant for only America. The gospel is not meant to be kept.

It's meant to be shared. It's not meant to be held. It's meant to be distributed.

Last week, I had this wonderful opportunity to preach alongside of a man who spent 23 years in foreign missions in Central Asia.

And I want to tell you, I told Jennifer this. I said, I don't even deserve to stand next to this man. I felt like I'd never preached a day in my life.

This guy had taken the gospel to Muslims and people of different cultures.

And his children were born on the mission field. It's like I feel when Scott comes to town.

It's like, oh, like I just want to serve the man of God, right? That's what you feel like, like this guy.

But his name was Zane Pratt. And I got a chance to sit with him. We rode in the car together and just hearing his stories of seeing the gospel go to foreign lands and foreign people.

And it reinvigorated my heart for the unreached people because he said that's what his heart is for.

He says, my heart is to reach people who've never heard the gospel. And I said, man, I love you because that's my heart too.

I want people who've never heard the gospel to hear because Jesus is the light of the world, not just the light of Jacksonville and not just the light of sovereign

Greece. I came home, I called Jackie Ward.

I said, Jackie, let's do the shoeboxes. She's been asking me for weeks about wanting to do the shoebox ministry this year again.

And we hadn't done it. I'll explain it. We hadn't done the shoeboxes for a few years, but this is where at Christmas time, the miracle in a shoebox, the operation

Christmas child. We're going to do that this year. Jackie's going to help head it up. And we're going to do that to try to at least do something to minister to people in foreign lands, minister to people in the missions.

And we're going to continue to do what we do with Scott. And if you don't know who Scott is, Scott Phillips is our, in this church, we don't have 50 missionaries.

We take a big part of our budget. We give it to one family. And this is

Scott Phillips. And he goes to Indonesia and he reaches tribes that have never even seen a white person.

And he goes into these villages and he brings them the gospel. And we continue to do that.

This summer, or actually not this summer, just in a few weeks, we're going to have a man come here and he's going to give just a short few minute presentation on missions aviation.

These are people who fly missionaries into places. And he's going to come here and tell us about what he does so we can hear about what

God is doing in other places because Jesus is the light of the world. Jesus is the light of the world.

And while we have a church that we have to care for, and while we have a body of Christ here that we want to minister to, let us never forget that there's a world out there that needs

Jesus. And while not all of us are called to go live in a foreign land, all of us can be supporting the gospel going forth in whatever ways, whether it be financially, prayerfully, whatever

God allows us to do. Let us never forget that taking that message to the world is part of what

God calls us to as a church. And what is that message? The message is simple. The gospel message is not hard to understand.

We are all sinners and you are included in that. You're a sinner and you need a savior.

And the Bible says, God has not given the world a thousand saviors. God has not given the world a million saviors. God has not given the world five saviors.

He's given the world one savior and his name is Jesus Christ. And the Bible says that if you will repent of your unbelief and trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ, you will be saved.

And if you've never been saved before and you need to be saved today, I encourage you,

I encourage you to bow your head and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and then come and talk to me or brother

Mike or brother Andy, talk to us so that we can help you begin your walk with Jesus Christ.

We can help you go through the waters of baptism. We can help you understand what it means to be part of the church because that's what we're about.

We're about Jesus Christ saving sinners. And he does that.

The Bible says no one who comes to him will be cast away. So won't you come if you never have?

And if you have, won't you remember today the call on your life to bring that gospel that saved you to others?

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this opportunity. We thank you for the blessing of knowing eternal life.

We thank you, Lord, for everyone's heart who you were touching this morning. And we pray, oh

God, that you were ministered to us now, that you will encourage us now. And Lord, if there are those here who haven't trusted in the

Lord, that you would use this time to draw them to yourself. And we pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake.