After Darkness, Light! - [John 8:12]

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Who invented the light bulb? I see that hand, yes.
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Thomas Edison. Any other guesses? Tesla. Any other guesses?
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As far as I can tell, the first light bulb was invented by the famous Humphrey Davy.
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In 1802, everybody's like, who? Exactly. Humphrey Davy, who knows who he is?
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But, you know, when I first thought about it, I was like, oh, it's got to be Thomas Edison. But I thought, I better look and make sure, because I'd seen a
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TV show that made me think it might be Tesla. And it turned out it was neither one. So why is it that Thomas Edison gets the credit?
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And, you know, I just found this fascinating, so I'm just kind of going on it. Yes? He filed a patent. He filed a patent is an excellent reason, and that is correct.
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But he got the patent because he had a light bulb that actually worked for a long period of time and was commercially viable.
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And I found this fascinating. He and his team discovered that carbonized bamboo, which
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I'm sure most of us have laying around the house, carbonized bamboo, a carbonized bamboo filament could last for over 1 ,200 hours.
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And that's what got him going right there. And we all benefit from that today.
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I mean, I found out that there were literally dozens of people working on different light bulbs and everything, but he won by coming up with the one that was actually viable.
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But we all benefit from the light bulb today, even if technology has changed.
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I mean, imagine living in a world, again, with just candles, oil lamps, that kind of thing, instead of having instant light.
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I mostly just wanted to, oh, I forgot to turn off my phone. See? I'm not going to be asking what that noise is.
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I already know. Well, we all benefit from lights today, electric lights today, but I want to talk about a different light.
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I just wanted to talk about that. I just found it interesting. And I invite you to open your
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Bibles to John 8. We're going to talk about a completely different kind of light, one that has no patent, by the way.
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But it is unique. It's one of a kind. It cannot be copied. There's only one, and that is, of course, the
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Lord Jesus Christ. I'm going to read
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John 8, verses 12 to 20, but I'm really just going to focus in tonight on verse 12.
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Listen as I read. Again, Jesus spoke to them, saying, I am the light of the world.
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Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
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So the Pharisees said to him, You're bearing witness about yourself. Your testimony is not true.
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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.
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But you do not know where I come from or where I am going. You judge according to the flesh.
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I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not
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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.
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I am the one who bears witness about myself. I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the
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Father who sent me bears witness about me. They said to him, therefore, Where is your father?
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Jesus answered, You know neither me nor my father. If you knew me, you would know my father also.
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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.
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Of course, speaking of the hour in which he would be arrested, seized, put on trial, and executed.
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Now let me explain for a few minutes here why I am skipping. For those of you who have been keeping track, maybe some of you have notebooks where you've fastidiously been recording everything in your notebook.
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Well, Cory nodded his head, so I'm not going to call anyone a fibber.
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Why am I skipping 753 through 811? Why? The woman caught in adultery.
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I think it's probably the unbeliever's second favorite passage in the
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New Testament, the first one being Matthew 7 .1. But that one's really big. They love to go, you know, let he who is without sin cast the first stone and all that.
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You know, this woman caught in adultery. Well, why don't I think it's, why am I not preaching it? I'll explain.
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First of all, I don't think it's in the Bible, which is a pretty good reason to not preach it. Let me give you my reasons why.
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First of all, internal inconsistency. That is to say, if you look at the context here in John, that whole passage doesn't really fit in.
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Why do I say that? Well, if you take those verses out, the story makes perfect sense.
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As we'll see tonight, where it says, again, Jesus spoke to them, that's a perfectly consistent way to say this is the third time he's going to the
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Temple Mount, which is what he's doing. Furthermore, the
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Pharisees, if you recall, were out to catch Jesus. They wanted to arrest him. They wanted to seize him.
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In fact, they make a couple of attempts on the Temple Mount while he's preaching. They try to, they send people to arrest him.
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So why, if they know where he is, and he's perfectly available to them, why would they take this woman caught in adultery and drag her before him?
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It says, you know, in the text, to test him. Well, why would they do that when they don't need to test him?
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They want to arrest him. They wanted to kill him because he said he was equal with the
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Father. That's what he said back in Chapter 5. Remember after he healed the man who had been lame for the 38 years.
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And they said, how can you do this on the Sabbath? And he said, I'm working just as my Father is working. And they said, or that angered them all the more, even more convinced them that they wanted to kill him.
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And so from then on, they were trying to put him to death. So that part doesn't really fit.
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There are also external inconsistencies. This pericope, and if you know me, you know
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I love to put that word in a message somewhere. Pericope, it just means a section of Scripture, but it makes you sound like you're really smart.
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Pericope. This pericope is not in the best and oldest manuscripts.
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And when it does appear, here's the amazing thing, it shows up in different places.
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In fact, in a few manuscripts, it's even in the Gospel of Luke. He's really upset that I didn't put it in.
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I'm not preaching that tonight. It appears in different places. Well, what does that make you think?
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If you're reading the Gospel of John, if you're looking at the manuscripts, you think, well, maybe this isn't original.
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There are language problems too, wording issues. But many godly men think it could have been an actual incident in the ministry of Jesus.
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In other words, that this actually happened, and somebody recorded it, and they thought, well, that's pretty good, and then the various scribes tried to fit it in in different places.
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So there are a lot of reasons to think that it probably isn't in the original
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Gospel of John. Now, I did consider teaching it anyway, because it does illustrate one thing, right?
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It illustrates forgiveness, the forgiveness of God. And I thought about going to a few different places, but ultimately
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I just thought it's better to pass it by. So that's what I did. Now, the last time we were in John, we looked at verses 40 to 52.
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And I really said, or the section's really about Jesus presenting his case up on the
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Temple Mount as the Messiah, as the Christ. And the people listening, not just the crowd, but also the religious authorities, really suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.
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They really didn't have an interest in knowing him in that way. Jesus had gone, if you recall.
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He'd not gone at the same time his brothers did to celebrate the Feast of Booths, also known as the
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Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem, where the people would set up these temporary booths,
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I mean, bigger than a phone booth, but a place like a lean -to, a pup tent, something of that nature, just made of sticks and leaves and things like that, so that they would camp out.
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I mean, it's really my worst nightmare when I think about this. I don't know what kind of tick problems Jerusalem has, but when
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I think about camping out for a whole week in the midst of all this stuff, I wouldn't want to do it. But it was a big celebration.
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So Jesus' brothers went. They tried to get him to go, and he knew what was waiting for him, so he didn't go with them.
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Instead, the Scriptures tell us, John 7 tells us that he went privately.
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That is, he didn't go with the big crowd. He went in a separate small group and arrived in Jerusalem unimpeded.
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And then he went and taught twice, thank you, twice in the temple, the first time at the midpoint of the
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Feast of Tabernacles, and the last time, the time that we saw last time at the end of John 7, was really just at the very end, at the pinnacle of the celebration, when everything was, we talked about how they would run the water back from the
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Pool of Siloam, and there was all this fanfare and noise and a great big celebration.
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So now tonight we're going to see this third proclamation of Jesus on this trip to Jerusalem.
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Now I entitled the message, because you have to come up with a title, After Darkness Light. For those of you who know, that's in Latin, it's
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Post Tenebrous Lux, which is Latin for After Darkness Light, and it was the kind of battle cry of the
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Reformation. And what does that mean? It means after hundreds of years of the Gospel being obscured by Roman Catholic dogma and by all these,
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I'm trying to be kind here, all these ridiculous things that they added on to the
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Gospel, the Reformation sought to reclaim the Gospel and bring the focus back to the truth.
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So after darkness, after obscuring the Gospel, after covering up the Gospel, after refusing to let people even read the
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Bible for themselves, in the Reformation the idea was let's let there be light. Let's let the truth shine forth.
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And tonight we will see our Lord make the second of his seven
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I Am statements as he claims to be the light. And only the
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Messiah, only the Christ, only the fulfillment of all the
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Old Testament prophecies, only this singular person, this singular man could make such claims.
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Only Jesus, fully man and fully God, could make such a bold statement. We'll see tonight first of all the proclamation, his proclamation, secondly the premise, and thirdly the promises, the promises to believers.
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So first the proclamation. Look at the beginning of verse 12. Now as I said before, why is the again there?
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Well, that indicates there were previous incidents. In fact, there were two. As I said, one at the midpoint and then one at the end.
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So this would be after the end of the ceremony. But there's still a large crowd there.
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They haven't left Jerusalem. But notice what he says there. Jesus says,
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I am the light of the world. Jesus alone is the light of the world.
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He says, he uses the famous Greek words, ego eimi. This is an implicit claim, not an obvious claim, but one that the hearers would understand, of deity.
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I am. If you remember in John 8 .58, actually we haven't gotten there yet, but if you just, you've read it, when he says that, what do they say when he says, you know,
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I am, before Abraham was, I am. What does the crowd then say to him? Oh, that's fine.
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Say whatever you want. It doesn't really bother us. I remember once I was talking to a Muslim trustee that I had in the jail.
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And he said, Jesus never claimed to be God. And so I read John 8 to him.
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And I said, he says, well, that doesn't say that Jesus claimed to be God. But it's not that. And then in John 10, he does a similar thing.
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It's not the statement itself. It's the response that lets you know how people feel about it. They get mad.
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They don't like it. They understood exactly what he was saying, that he was claiming to be God. And here he is in John 8 saying,
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I am the light. I am the light of the world. This is a reference back to Exodus 3 .14,
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I am who I am, which was underscoring the self -existence of God. Jesus is the only
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God, the ever -existing creator. And he underlines this by referencing that conversation with Moses.
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Now, we know that he's the only true light from John 1, verse 9, where he says, where John, writing about him, says that he's the true light.
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What does that mean, that he's the true light? I'm going to suggest that we can kind of deduce from that that there are false lights.
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If the true light comes into the world and brings true enlightenment, true knowledge, true truth, if we can say that, then false lights, false teachers, false
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Christs, antichrists, they're going to bring false truths. They're going to present them, and that sounds like a contradiction, but they're going to present this as if it's true, but it's not.
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They're going to deceive people. He is the true light. He is the only one upon whom you can rely.
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So Jesus is the only light. He is also the fulfillment of Old Testament imagery concerning the light.
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And there's a lot of it. From one source I found this. The Israelites were trained to sing from Psalm 27 1, the
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Lord is my light and my salvation. The word of God, the law of God is called a light to guide the path of those who cherish instruction.
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God's light is shed abroad in Revelation and Ezekiel and salvation in Habakkuk chapter 3.
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And also we would see the Lord God Yahweh referred to as light in action in Psalm 44.
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So light, and there are many other references, light is a very common theme for the
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Messiah, and we're going to see another one here in a moment. But the Feast of Tabernacles talked about the booze, how they would set those up, talked a little bit about the water and how they would run around with that.
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Well, it was also a festival of lights of sorts. It wasn't like Hanukkah, but it was definitely there was a focus on lights.
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And we need to understand again what it is that the Feast of Booze or the Feast of Tabernacles was.
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It was a celebration of God's faithfulness to Israel as he led them out of Egypt and into the
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Promised Land. And if you recall, what did God do to kind of comfort the people of Israel to let them know that he was with them during this time?
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He set out by day as a pillar of cloud and then a pillar of fire to give them light at night.
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Exodus 13 makes that clear in verse 21. So during this festival, when they're celebrating
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God's faithfulness to Israel, there would also be these great light kind of shows, these displays of light.
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And the temple itself would be so lit up that it would...
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basically the glow, as it were, from the temple would fill a lot of Jerusalem, the city.
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So even though the feast was over, there'd still be this large group.
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And Jesus probably was preaching in... well, I'm certain he was based on verse 20, I think it was, preaching in the court of women, which was an exterior part of the temple, but a very busy part of it and the best lit part of it at night.
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D. A. Carson, just talking about the symbols and the festivities and all the lights and everything that's going on, he says this.
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He says, I don't know what that means exactly.
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A lot of priests making music. He says,
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Now, there are other references in the
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Old Testament to the light of God. We can even talk about the
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Shekinah, and even how Moses, when he comes down from the mountain, how he's shining.
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There's Isaiah 42. In fact, let's just turn there for a moment. Isaiah 42, and I'm going to read verses 1 to 6.
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This is one of the servant songs in Isaiah where it speaks about, in this case,
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Jesus, as we'll see, but specific servants of the
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Lord God, Yahweh. Just listen to it and tell me this doesn't sound like Jesus.
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He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice or make it heard in the street.
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A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench. He will faithfully bring forth justice.
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He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in all the earth.
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And the coastlands wait for his law. Thus says God the Lord, Yahweh, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it.
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I am the Lord. I have called you in righteousness. I will take you by the hand and keep you.
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I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations.
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A light for the nations. Back to John.
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Jesus is also, he represents the light in another sense. He is the end of 400 years of intertestamental darkness, silence, no revelation coming from God.
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If revelation itself, if the Word of God is light, if revelation from God inspired revelation is light, for 400 years there's been no light.
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And now Jesus comes into the world and there is revelation again. When Jesus entered the world, the fullness of God's plan for redeeming men was revealed.
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The great mystery, long shrouded in mystery, was put on full display. Here he was in the flesh.
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The mystery revealed. Again, John 1, 9, the true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
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And ultimately Jesus was also the light in just the sense of being the antithesis, that is, the opponent, the opposite of darkness.
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He's the enemy of Satan, the world system and sin, and ultimately he would prevail over those things.
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What does the light coming into the world, the true light coming into the world mean? Well, it means that he exposes the need of mankind for salvation.
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Think about it this way. How do you know that something is dirty? It needs to be cleaned.
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Well, if there's no light, you can't know. If you want to see something, if you have something in the closet and the back reaches to the closet and you're like,
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I don't know, that thing might be moldy. What do you do? Just kind of go, well, I don't see any mold.
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No, you take a flashlight or you turn on the light and you go back there and you look. So when
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Jesus comes into the world, everything, everyone is compared to this perfect light, this perfect holiness, this perfect being.
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And guess what? We're found wanting. All of our sins and imperfections are revealed.
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Jesus is also the source of spiritual truth, spiritual light or knowledge. And this is not something that we or any person has naturally.
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It must be supernaturally bestowed. We don't understand truth apart from regeneration, apart from the indwelling of the
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Holy Spirit. No person would ever come to a knowledge of the truth without the work of the
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Holy Spirit. And all of this, all of this comes out of his simple statement.
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I am the light. Let's just I mean, I'll summarize it this way, just by reading
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Colossians two verses two and three, all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is
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Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
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All that in this proclamation, he is the source under which or in which are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
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So that's the proclamation. Secondly, we see the premise, the premise or the basis.
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But I wanted the P, the premise or the basis for the promises that follow. There's a condition for the promises that are about to be made.
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And that condition, again, is found in verse 12. Whoever follows me, three simple words.
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And in the Greek, it's two. Follows is a present participle.
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And it seems like I'd like to do a study on this sometime. It seems like every time in John specifically, when he's speaking of believers, he uses a participle to describe them.
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Why is that? Why not just say, just use a regular verb?
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Why a participle? Why a verbal noun? Well, I think in good measure, it's because a participle indicates something that is always true of you.
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This is a present participle. And so it's just, it's so integral to who you are. It's such a vital part of who you are that you can't really describe this person without using that word.
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So if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, it's just endemic. It's just part of you.
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It's just who you are. It's your warp and a woof. There's no way to describe you apart from saying that person follows the
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Lord Jesus Christ. And that's the concept here. It's a consummate following.
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It's a constant devotion. It's a constant undivided loyalty to the
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Lord Jesus Christ. One cannot, as some would really like to do, just make
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Jesus, or as some call him, Yeshua. That's the Jewish way of saying it. Just make him, just put him up on a shelf of good teachers.
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Well, you know, C .S. Lewis is good, and Gandhi's good, and this person's good, and that person's good.
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And so is Jesus. They're all good teachers. Well, know that they're not.
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They're not. Notice it is also not an appeal to follow
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Jesus when he says, you know, he doesn't say, if you want to follow me, these are the things that will be true for you.
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He says, no, these are, this just describes who they are. He's not asking for followers.
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He is describing those who will be his followers. They habitually follow him.
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They are his disciple. It's in their spiritual DNA. Many Christians who claim, who say they follow
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Jesus, have no concept of what it means to be his disciple. In fact, just a few chapters ago, in John 6, if you'll recall, he said these words in John 6, verses 51 to 56,
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I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.
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And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat?
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They took it crassly, literally. So Jesus, verse 53, said to them, truly, truly,
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I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
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Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. And I will raise him up on the last day.
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For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.
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What was he saying to them? Was he saying, consume me? Well, yes, but not literally.
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He meant figuratively. He meant, I must be everything to you.
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You must be fully committed to me. There must be nothing about my teaching, about my person that doesn't enthrall you.
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I must be everything to you. And after he finished this challenging, this challenging teaching, the result was predictable.
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If you recall, verse 66, after this, many of his disciples, they'd been following him. You know, they saw him as he fed the multitudes.
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They were there afterwards with everybody looking for him.
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And they'd followed him for maybe months. But after this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.
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When they understood what the cost was, they wanted nothing to do with him. So first we saw the proclamation.
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Secondly, the premise, you must be a follower. And thirdly, we have promises.
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We have two promises. The first is what followers, believers, are saved from.
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They will not walk in darkness. They will not walk in darkness. Leon Morris said, only those who follow
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Jesus are delivered from darkness and enjoy the light. The implication is that the whole world of itself is in darkness.
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After darkness, light. The whole world lay in darkness until Jesus entered and was the true light.
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And he says, I am the light. I am the only light. You're either in my light, you're either a follower and in the light, or you are in darkness.
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You remain in darkness. In John chapter 3, verses 19 and 20,
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John wrote this. He said, and this is the judgment. The light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.
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For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed.
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This is so true. Did you know the crime rate during the night is just off the charts compared to the day?
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Well, why is that? Because people presume that they can't be seen.
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They presume that they won't be caught. They have a better chance of getting away, of escaping. People who are doing wrong love the darkness.
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It's their ally. And that's not just in a physical sense. That's in a spiritual sense. They hate the light.
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And that's true whether it's the Lord Jesus Christ or his representatives. And we'll talk more about that later.
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Believers are not marked by lives filled with sinfulness.
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They're not like the rest of the world. They will not walk in the darkness. Their lives will not be marked by a pattern of sinful behavior that one would expect of someone who's in the world, someone who's not been saved, someone who is not a follower of the
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Lord Jesus Christ. So that's one promise.
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The second promise, again in verse 12, but we'll have the light of life.
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We'll have first word there, but. We talk about this sometimes. Sometimes it's a subtle contrast.
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There are two words here to explain or to use for but. There's a slight contrast and there's a strong contrast.
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This is a strong contrast. Listen, it's not only just that you're not going to walk in darkness, that your life won't be marked by a pattern of unbroken sin, that you won't love the things of this world, all the things that are associated with darkness.
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But instead, you will have a light of life. What does that mean?
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I would know this, that it is future tense. And this is the
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Lord essentially making a promise. Well, it is a promise. He's predicting, not in some kind of like, you know, the odds are 100 to 1 or 1 to 100 or whatever.
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It's not like that. He is making a sure promise that from that time forward, they're going to have this light of life.
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Now, it won't be perfect and we'll talk more about that, but it's going to change. Your life is going to be transformed.
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This is a sure promise from the Lord Jesus himself that you will walk in light.
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You will have a light of life. Now, what does it mean to have the light? We're Christians, if you're a
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Christian, if you're a follower of Christ, what does it mean that he is the light if we don't also reflect that light?
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How can we, you know, if he's our leader, we're to follow him.
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We're to try to, well, we want to identify with him.
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We want to do as he does. But how can we not be reflections of the light that he himself is?
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Didn't Jesus himself call his disciples the light of the world? How can that be if his disciples walk in darkness?
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The answer is it can't be that way. Our deeds and our words need to reflect the light that is in us.
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We need to reflect the one we say bought us. Leon Morris says this, he said,
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Believers, having kindled their torches at his bright flame, show to the world something of his light.
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We're not going to reflect it perfectly, but that Christ -likeness ought to be present to unbelievers.
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They ought to see that. But it's not just a future light of in the light.
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It's also the present. Believers have the new or have the light of life now. To have the light of life is to have
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Jesus. There is no light apart from a right relationship in him. So being in the light means that you are in Christ and you have all the blessings that that entails.
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Forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with God, and the sure promise of eternal life. And when we think about eternal life, this is just one of my favorite things to read and to think about in all of Scripture, Revelation 21.
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We're going to have this light forever. We're going to enjoy the light forever.
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Let me put it that way. Revelation 21, verses 22 and 23. John the
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Apostle writes, And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God, the
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Almighty, and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the
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Lamb, Jesus Christ, the Lamp of Heaven. So a question comes about, how do you know if you're a follower?
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How do you know if you are in the light? How do you know if you've been transformed?
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Now these are all drawn from 1 John, a series of tests. I kind of modified these from a list from MacArthur.
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Several of these, do you enjoy a relationship with God and Christ? That is to say, do you have a genuine affection for the
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God of the Bible, the triune God of the Bible, Father, Son, and Spirit? How does that manifest in your life?
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Let me put it this way. I thought about this and it kind of made me laugh. Does God know that you love
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Him? Or would He think, I have a secret admirer? Does He know that you love
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Him? Second test, do you have an increasing sensitivity to sin in your life?
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How is it possible for Paul to think of himself as the chief or greatest sinner? Why did he long to be delivered from his body of death?
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Because he still sinned. And he recognized it more and more every single day.
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And he hated it. He longed for the day in heaven when he would be set free from the very presence of sin.
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Delivered from the body of death. What about you? Do you hate your sin? Do you hate the sin that is all around you in the world?
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Do you hate sin? And I'm not talking about sinners. Do you hate sin, the activities like God hates sin?
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Do you have that same mindset? If you're in the light, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, that's how you will think.
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Number three, do you seek to obey scripture before salvation?
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Completely indifferent to what the Bible says about how to live life. If you have unbelievers, unbelieving friends, you know this is true.
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They don't care what the Bible says. After salvation, your desire is to please the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Number four, do you reject the world and its system? As Satan is the
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God of the world, meaning he is orchestrating the demonic oppression of the gospel, he is in charge of the behind -the -scenes world system.
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He is also busy trying to lure the people of God to lose their affections for the things of God.
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To fool, as it were, if it were possible, the very elect of God. He wants to lead you astray.
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You know, won't you trade your inheritance for this nice, whatever, bowl of stew?
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He wants you to do that. Number five, do you look forward to the return of Jesus Christ's second coming?
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Can you honestly say that there is no greater day in your future than the one in which the
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Lord returns? Or if you aren't here, the day when you close your eyes and you'll see him again.
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Every Christian should long for the day when they see Jesus face -to -face. If you love him, you'll love his appearing.
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Number six, do you see a decreasing pattern of sin in your life?
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We will sin, and we know we will, because we're not perfect. Because we're still affected by the fall.
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But we are being conformed into the image of Christ. We are being sanctified.
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We work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We will make progress.
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We'll see victories in some areas. Even if those victories sometimes are painfully slow.
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Because at the foot of the cross, we're all equal. When we get together as brothers and sisters in the Lord, we're all equal.
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And if we lived in that kind of world right now, if everybody was a Christian, what would happen, you suppose, if you turned on the six o 'clock news?
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It would be boring. All anybody would care about is the weather, which some people, that's all they care about anyway.
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But it would be boring, because there would be nothing like what's going on right now. All these things that are happening in the world right now are really just an expression of the hatred that people have for God.
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Number eight, does the Lord answer your prayers? Again, this is not a matter of every prayer that you ever make to the
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Lord being answered. But here's what we know. God loves us. The Father loves each and every one of His children.
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So sometimes you're going to hear, not hear audibly, but you're going to get your prayers answered.
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Sometimes those answers are going to be no. Sometimes they're going to be not yet. And sometimes they're going to be yes.
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And amen for the yeses. And amen for the noes. Number nine, do you experience the ministry of the
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Holy Spirit? And I don't mean rolling around on the floor speaking in tongues, roaring like a lion. Let me put it another way.
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Why does the Holy Spirit testify to your spirit that you were born again? Do you receive joy in serving the body of Christ?
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If you have those things, then you are experiencing the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Number 10, do you have spiritual discernment very closely related?
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Some Christians are easily led astray, and they ought to be concerned. Why? Because we ought not to be children tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.
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We should be sturdy. We should be strong. We should have spiritual discernment.
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We should be able to, by the grace of God, grow in maturity and learn what is good and what is not.
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But if our input is garbage, then our output will be garbage.
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We'll not have spiritual discernment. Here's a good hint, and Pastor Mike, I'll give him credit for this.
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Look, if we don't sell books on our book table or if we don't ever quote these guys, it's probably because we don't think they're too good, and there might be a reason why we don't think they're too good.
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So ask us. We're more than willing to tell you why we might not think somebody's so good. Number 11, have you been persecuted?
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Have you been persecuted? Who wants to be persecuted? It's one that we often overlook, but Jesus said what?
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If the world hates you or hates me, they're going to love you. No. He said, if they hated me, they're going to hate you.
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That's his reality. Why? Because if they fled from the light, if they hated the light because it exposed their darkness, and you are a reflection, even if you're a pale reflection of that light, guess what?
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They're not going to like you either. And if you've never been persecuted for your faith, if you've never experienced anybody bad -mouthing you or saying negative things about you because you're a
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Christian, maybe you've never told anybody. Maybe you've never done anything or said anything that would make them think, well, that guy's a
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Christian. Do this experiment. Try preaching the gospel to an unbeliever and see what the feedback is.
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Thanks, bro. Glad for that. Take a stand against some ungodly practice.
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Say something negative about homosexuality. Just don't do it at work. The smallest thing that you might do can often result in resentment.
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People don't like it. Why? Because, again, even if you're just a pale reflection of that light, they look at their darkness, they look at the darkness they're in, and they don't like it.
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They don't like being compared to the truth. Jesus made an absolute, unconditional claim when he said that I am the light of the world.
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He divided the world into two groups. Those who are in him, those who are followers of him, those who are in the light, those who will be in the light, and those who are not, and those who are in darkness.
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Only the Messiah, only God in the flesh, wields the power to so separate the sheep from the goats.
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After darkness, light. Are you in the light? Let's pray.
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Father, what a blessing it is to consider the Lord Jesus Christ, preaching this, proclaiming this, boldly speaking the truth, but doing it always with a heart that longs to see people believe.
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Think about even the heartbreak of ministering daily to the likes of Judas Iscariot.
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Think about that, and sometimes we think about our own issues and we realize we've not suffered, we've not been asked to suffer, nothing like what our
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Lord went through even before he went to the cross. The things he was called, the insults he underwent, the slights, the scheming behind his back even by those who profess to be his friends.
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Lord, cause us daily to be more in love with the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's in his name we pray.