John 8:12-20 (Christ, The Light Of The World)

One of the great joys of my life is being able to study and read.

I remember saying in seminary to my wife that if I could just find a hole somewhere with a bunch of books, it would be heaven on earth for me.

So I love it. I love to read. I love to study. I love to come and share with you what

I've learned from the study throughout the week. And it's one of my great joys, being in the

Gospel of John. It's definitely on the top four of my favorite Gospels. Now that agony, there's an agony of preparing sermons as well.

I find that my mental, spiritual, and even emotional life is sometimes all over the place.

It's a roller coaster ride. I'm no more aware of the presence of God than when I'm preparing for a sermon, but I'm also acutely aware of the enemy and of spiritual attacks.

I feel like sometimes my mind, my heart, and my body are a battlefield as I prepare for these messages, and they're struggles at times.

It's a struggle when I'm studying. It's a struggle when I'm writing, when I can't get the words out of my head and onto a page. It's a struggle when

I'm praying, Lord, help me understand this text. And it's a struggle moments before I walk up here still nervous, thinking,

Dear Lord, have I studied this passage faithfully, and have I honored you in my preparation? Today we come to another struggle.

It's a unique struggle. It's a struggle that I knew was going to come because we chose the book of John. And that is the struggle of what do we do with John 7, 53 through 8, 11.

Now this is a famous story. It's perhaps the most famous story in the Gospels. It's probably a favorite story among many in this room.

It's a beautiful story of God's love and forgiveness and grace. And of course, I'm talking about the woman who was caught in adultery.

She was a betrothed woman, which meant that she was engaged. But in this passage, she was caught having a sexual encounter with someone who was not her fiancé.

She was caught by someone. The text doesn't tell us who. And eventually got into the hands of the

Pharisees and eventually was paraded in front of Jesus as they tried to set a trap for him on what he was going to do.

Now, if you remember, in this particular time, it was illegal for the Jews to bring someone up on capital charges.

The Romans exclusively had the power to execute criminals. That is why they dragged

Jesus in front of Pilate so that they could get his permission to sign off on his death because they could not kill people on their own authority.

So the Jews are setting a trap for Jesus in this passage saying, are you going to honor the law of Moses and provoke the

Romans? Or are you going to honor the Romans and provoke

God? That's the trap that they're setting for Jesus in this passage. Now, Jesus, in his wisdom, kneels down and with his finger writes in the sand and it creates these sort of pictures of God on the top of Mount Sinai writing with his own finger the law of God.

And then when the crowd presses him, he says the most famous line in this passage, he who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.

And then all of a sudden, one by one, the people leave this lady there. It's only her and Jesus who remain.

Jesus says, has anyone been left to condemn you? And she says, no, not one. And he says, then

I don't condemn you either. Therefore, go and sin no more. It's a powerful story. It's a story of God's grace and his radical forgiveness of sin.

But the question that I've been wrestling with all week is, is this passage original to the

Gospel of John? What I mean is, did John originally write this story or was it added in later by a well -intentioned

Christian who thought that this story mattered? Now, for almost the entire church age, this has been a debate.

And uniformly, almost all scholars in history have come down on the side that this passage was not written originally by John.

In your Bibles, you will see brackets from chapter 753 to 811.

And those brackets tell you that the translators of your Bible believe that this passage was not original to the text.

If you have a study Bible, in your study Bible, it will tell you in the notes section that this passage was not in the oldest manuscripts of the original text of Scripture.

Now, you may be asking yourself, what evidence is there to make such a claim? Why did this passage end up in the

Bible? Well, let's go through the evidence just for a moment. This is not the sermon proper, but this is a very necessary explanation that I think will help us as we move forward.

Now, there's two kinds of evidence when you're trying to determine if a text is original to the book.

And there's only a couple examples of this. Here in John 8 and in Mark, the end in chapter 16, those are the only two major examples of additions that got added into the

Bible, the only two. You have what's called external evidence, and you have what's called internal evidence.

External evidence is when it's outside of the Bible. It's evidence that doesn't occur in Scripture.

Internal evidence is in the Bible. Now, what external evidence is there that this passage was not originally written by John?

Well, for one, it's not in any of the oldest manuscripts that we have. We have manuscripts going back to the first century.

We have copies of the Gospel of John going back to the 90s that were found several hundred miles away from where John wrote his

Gospel. We have really old manuscripts for the Gospel of John. And this passage, these 12 verses, are not in any of the oldest manuscripts.

We have 25 ,000 total manuscripts of the

New Testament, and it doesn't appear in any of the oldest ones. Now, what we do know is of those 25 ,000, there's this science called textual criticism.

They're not criticizing the text. It's trying to reconstruct the original Bible because we have some that are really old that go all the way back to the first century, and we have some that came around in the 1200s.

So what we want to do is we want to examine all 25 ,000 of these and come to a conclusion, and by the

Holy Spirit's power and grace, we have a very, very accurate Bible. We have a

Bible that is more accurate than any ancient document that was ever written and any document that was written pre -1800 as far as how much we know that that document is exactly what it was meant to be.

And by the Spirit's power overseeing the work of Scripture, we know that we have an accurate text.

But this passage was not in any of the ancient manuscripts. That's the first line of external evidence.

The second, it wasn't quoted by any of the ancient apostolic fathers. The third is that it came in too late to be authentic.

The first time that this text shows up in a biblical manuscript is the fourth century in what's called the

Codex Bizaille. I think I'm pronouncing that right. And it wasn't even quoted in full form there.

It was paraphrased. It doesn't show up in full form until the 12th century, 1 ,200 years after John wrote his

Gospel. Another evidence. We have copies from the 5th century, the 9th century, and the 10th century, and this passage was placed in different locations.

Most of them were placed in John 8, but some of them were actually attributed to the Gospel of Luke, which shows us that the original

Bible scholars who were trying to figure out what to do with this passage didn't even know what to do with this passage.

They didn't know if Luke wrote it. They didn't know if John wrote it. They didn't know if John wrote it in chapter 6 or chapter 8 or chapter 12.

They just didn't know what to do with this passage because it didn't perfectly fit into the narrative.

Now, what we do know is that it is an accurate event. It existed in the oral traditions of the

Jewish and Christian community, so we know that they were talking about this for years, for decades, for centuries.

So we know that this probably did occur. What the argument I'm saying is is we don't think, by good evidence, that John himself wrote it.

It wasn't in the oldest manuscripts. It didn't show up until 1 ,100 years later. It's based off oral tradition.

We don't think that this was original to the Gospel of John. So how did it end up in our Bibles? Well, the

Bible didn't have printing machines back then, so they had to hand copy it. And if you had a copy of Romans and your friend had a copy of Ephesians, you would get together and you would trade off.

You would copy Ephesians. They would copy Romans. And copies and copies and copies and copies of the Bible were made so that all the churches in the greater

Roman Empire would have a completed and full Bible. And as they started copying these texts, eventually certain cities became hubs for translation, almost like Boston is a hub for academia,

New York is a hub for media, or L .A. is a hub for entertainment. And these three cities were

Alexandria, Syria, and generally speaking the Western Roman Empire. We don't know exactly what city it was.

But there were three cities that were hubs of translations. At some point before the fourth century, when it shows up in this particular codex, it was inserted into the

Western family of texts. And because the Western family of texts were some of the most copied, there's a lot of manuscripts that have this in it after the fourth century.

So our Bible translators, to be humble and to be gracious, because they don't 100 % know, they included it in our

Bible with brackets so that you and I could study this, we could learn about this. But it is a story that is consistent with the

Bible. It's consistent with who Christ is. It's consistent with what the Jews would, how they would treat sinners.

All these things are consistent, but it doesn't appear as if it was written by John. That's the external evidence.

There's also internal evidence. I'll share this briefly. Internal evidence is evidence inside of the scriptures.

Now, John has a very specific vocabulary. Just like fingerprint analysis and handwriting analysis is a major science today, we have historians who are grammatical and vocabulary analysis, and they've done studies on this, and this does not match with John's vocabulary to such a high percentage and degree that it would not stand up in a court of law.

Of the 12 verses, 16 words in this passage never occur in any other passage in John.

And actually, they look more like Luke. They look more like the vocabulary of Luke. So that particular part of it doesn't support a

Johannine edition. It also doesn't fit the context of what we're talking about in John 7 through 8.

Because if you remember, John 7 is about the Feast of Tabernacles where Jesus comes in the middle of the week, and he comes and he preaches in the temple, and you've got this beautiful feast that is going on, and on the final day,

Jesus stands up and he says, I am the living water. After the priests had gone down to the

Pool of Siloam and they brought the golden pitcher up and they'd circled around the altar like we said a couple weeks ago, they poured out the water,

Jesus declares, then I am the living water. Later that night, we know from history that everyone danced and sang and waved palm branches into the night, and there was these massive torches that were in the city that that's how they could do this dancing and singing and praising.

They would eventually burn out and everybody would have to go home. But John 7, 53 says everyone went home after the pouring ceremony.

And then he says, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives early in the morning and he came again to the temple. If this passage fits in the chronology of John, then it means that the pouring ceremony ended the festival and the next day,

Jesus comes and says, I'm the light of the world. That just could not have actually been chronologically accurate.

So we know that this passage was put in multiple different locations in Luke and John and John 6 and John 8.

We know that it doesn't fit the chronology. Actually, if you read the passage and you skip

John 7, 53 through 8, 11, it makes perfect sense. And that is what we're going to do today.

Now, I want to say this. It's a beautiful passage. It's a passage filled with the grace of God.

And the Holy Spirit, even though John didn't author it, he allowed it to be in our Bible. So I'm not denigrating this passage.

God allowed this passage to be in our Bible. But this is a series on the gospel of John.

And we are examining the words that John himself originally wrote. So this week I made the decision, because we're examining what

John wrote, we were going to move to John 12, or John 8, 12. So if you will, turn with me there,

John 8, 12 through 20, as we examine these texts together. Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying,

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

So the Pharisees said to him, You are testifying about yourself. Your testimony is not true.

Jesus answered and said to them, Even if I testify about myself, my testimony is true.

For I know where I came from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.

You judge according to the flesh. I am not judging anyone. But even if I do judge, my judgment is true.

For I am not alone in it, but I and the Father who sent me. Even in your law it has been written that the testimony of two men is true.

I am he who testifies about myself, and the Father who sent me testifies about me.

So they were saying to him, Where is your father? Jesus answered, You know neither me nor my father.

If you knew me, then you would also know my father. These words he spoke in the treasury as he taught in the temple, and no one seized him because his hour had not yet come.

Lord, I pray today that as we zoom into the final events of the

Feast of Tabernacles on the seventh day, that we would see all that you're proclaiming.

Lord, I pray that we would see how you are perfectly fulfilling every part of all of this text.

Lord, I pray that we would see how you, because of your radiant glory and beauty, have called us to be like you.

You are the light of the world, and you've called us to be lights in this world. Lord, I pray that we would be so captivated by your beauty that we would worship you.

Lord, I pray that our worship would ascend higher than the Jews on this last day who are grumbling and who are rejecting you and who are hating you and who are plotting to murder you.

Lord, I pray that you would cause us to revel in who you are, to worship you for who you are.

Lord, we ask that in Jesus' name. This is going to be a three -part sermon today.

We're going to look at the setting of the Feast of Tabernacles so that we can remember where we're at. We're going to look at how

Jesus, at the absolute perfect moment during this festival, cried out that he is the light of the world.

Then we're going to conclude by showing how we have been made in the image of Christ through his salvation, and we are made to be lights in this world, just like him.

Let's begin with the setting. The Feast of Tabernacles was a harvest feast.

If you remember, it was in the autumn. The leaves were turning golden, yellow, brown, and red. The people were gathering together to worship

God because of all the provisions that he had given them. They were joyfully celebrating his provision.

Their crops had been harvested, they had been thrown into the barns, and they were now traveling to Jerusalem to celebrate how wonderful and good and gracious their

God was. Every direction that you go to Jerusalem is up because Jerusalem is the highest elevation in the city.

So as they were going up, they were singing psalms of ascent. They were singing psalms of praise to God as they walked towards Jerusalem.

When they got there, they would have built little tents and little booths around the city because they wanted to remember what it was like in the

Exodus generation to live in tents and booths as they followed

God through the wilderness, as they wandered through the wilderness, and as they were en route to the promised land.

And this is a festival, ultimately, not just of God's provision, but of his joy, or of our joy for him.

Because he's provided everything. He not only protected them when they were in the wilderness, living in tents and booths, but he got them safely to the promised land.

He gave them houses, he gave them crops, he gave them lands, he gave them rains, he gave them everything that they had.

So the natural response would be gratitude and joy. That's what this festival is all about.

Now, on the final day, they would have sacrificed seven bulls, signaling to every generation that was to come that these sacrifices were not enough.

They needed a perfect sacrifice to come and to save them from their sins. On the final day, they also would have proceeded down to the pool of Siloam, the priest, and they would have grabbed water out of the pool in a golden pitcher, and they would have carried it up to songs and praise to the altar, and they would have ascended the steps to the altar, and they would have poured that water out onto the sacrifice, signaling to everyone involved that life, water is life, would have to flow out of death in order for them to be made right with God.

Their bodies were as dead as the sacrifices laying on the altar, and they needed living water.

They needed life if they were going to be in relationship with God. So every part of this feast is signaling the hope for future salvation.

Now, right in the middle of all of the singing and shouting and waving of palms and the pouring of water,

Jesus cries out. The word means screams at the top of his lungs. I am the living water.

Right when they're pouring the water out, he screams out, I am the living water, which means that salvation comes through me and me alone.

That's what he's saying. Salvation is in no other name. There's no other name under heaven by which men may be saved because Jesus is the living water.

Now, you can imagine the celebration coming to a halt. Everyone, I think about it like this.

I just come up with this example right now in the moment, so if it doesn't work, it's okay. But I was watching a

Duke game. It was a national championship. And the last shot was shot. And it was going in.

And then all of a sudden, one of my kids runs in front of me and knocks the cord off the TV, and the TV goes out.

By the time I got it plugged back in, I found out that they won. That disappointment that I had in that moment pales in comparison to what they would have felt in Jerusalem, waiting and watching.

The water's being poured. They're ready. They've got their palm branches. They've got their voices ready to worship.

And then all of a sudden, Jesus screams out, breaking through the silence, I am the living water, meaning that the celebration basically just came to a halt.

And all eyes are now on Jesus. Now, the irony of all of this is that Jesus is

God's provision for man. The feast is about God's provision. And here is the one

God provided, and yet they don't worship. The feast is about joy and celebrating

God. God in the flesh is right in front of them, and yet they have no joy. The man to which this entire feast was pointing was standing in their presence, and they were blind.

They were marred in consternation and mired in their frustration and confusion because their after -party had been thwarted.

It usually lasted all the way to sundown. They would sing and they would dance in the courtyard of the women, and they would sing and dance as loud as they possibly could.

And on the seventh day, it was louder than any of the other days. One final time that they got to worship. It was like soul -fest on the final night.

I've never been there. I can't verify what that's like. But it was the final night.

It was the final moment where they could worship. And Jesus had brought it to an end. Now, you think people would have either been frustrated, and they would have said, all right, fine,

I'm going to go get a sandwich. And then they left the temple mount, and they went and did what they wanted to do. Some of them would have just kind of stuck around and watched to see what happened, and some of them actually were learning from Jesus in the temple because it says that he was teaching them, and we learned that in John 8 .20.

It says, these words he spoke in the treasury as he taught in the temple. So from the moment the water got poured out until the moment that Jesus cries out again in John 8 .12,

Jesus is teaching. He's teaching for hours. He's teaching who he is, why he came.

I wonder if he's teaching in this moment how he is the fulfillment of this feast. If you could be a fly on the back of a camel in first century

Israel, this would have been a good Bible study to audit. Now, this had never actually happened before.

No one had ever dared defy the Pharisees in this way. No one had ever dared bring the celebration to an end at its most climactic moment.

So all eyes are on Jesus hating him, plotting against him and wanting to kill him even more fiercely than they were before.

But I want you to notice how Jesus uses this moment to declare to us who he is so that all future generations after this would be able to see and revel in who

Christ is. Now, the first thing I want us to talk about when we're seeing who Christ is is his location.

He's in the treasury. The treasury is a necessary part of the temple because when people came, they wanted you to see that you give money.

And there were 13 receptacles for giving inside of the

Jewish temple. Now, if you remember, the Jewish temple was at the very center of three concentric circles of courtyards.

There was the courtyard of the Gentiles where the Gentiles were to come and worship. There was the courtyard of the women where women and men would come and worship.

And then there was the courtyard of the men where men would, only when they're bringing sacrifices to the temple, they would go into the court of the men, they would hand their sacrifices to the priest, and then they would go join their wives back in the court of the women.

Inside the court of the women were 13 treasury boxes where all of the

Jews would stand around and they would see them, and they had these ornate trumpet -like, horn -like openings.

There were these massive boxes that were built into the wall of the courtyard of the women.

And they had these massive, ornate sort of openings, I guess to encourage you to give big.

It was in this place where the widow gave her two coins, and they looked down on her because of it.

Now, this would have been a natural location for the giving to have happened because this is where everyone gathered.

So, I don't know how each and every family here is structured, but sometimes the man's the one who pays the bills, and sometimes the woman's the one who pays the bills.

Well, they put it to where both men and women would be in the same courtyard so that whoever actually held the money, they could give it together in this place.

Now, what I found so fascinating about this is that these are not just 13 individual giving boxes.

They each represented something. And I'm going to quote from John MacArthur because I think he said this really well.

He said, they, meaning the 13 offering boxes, were very specific as to their connection.

Number one and number two was designed for the half -shekel temple tax that everyone had to pay.

So, you paid your taxes at the temple. Number three and number four were where the women put money to purchase the two pigeons that they needed to offer to purify themselves after childbearing.

Number five was where the money went to purchase wood for the altar. Number six for the incense on the altar.

So, both five and six were there for things related to the sacrifices. Number seven was designated as the receptacle to keep up the golden vessels of the temple.

This is just good old -fashioned bureaucracy at work in the temple. To hire the people to clean them and to have money to replace them.

And then eight through 13 were the ones that were for the general fund, meaning whatever the priest needed to purchase for the ongoing operation of the temple.

Thirteen receptacles. This is where Jesus was at. Now, I want you to imagine the scene.

People from all over the Roman Empire are here. This is the final day of the feast. People from Rome, from Bithynia, from Philippi, and from every other town in the

Roman Empire. People from Judea and Galilee and Samaria maybe even. People were there inside the courtyard ready to worship

God. So, it was packed. You had people shoulder to shoulder with one another. Jesus has brought an interruption to all of that, so people are a little bit frustrated maybe.

Maybe they're trying to dance in place, like a little out of coordination, like I dance every time

I dance. They're ready to sing. They're ready to dance. They're ready to leap for joy until the lights went out.

And that is an important aspect of this passage that we have to understand if we're going to understand why Jesus said

He's the light of the world. Because in this courtyard, the court of the women, where these 13 boxes of offerings were, there was also three massive 75 foot towers that had brass basins at the top of them.

They almost looked like menorahs, those big candelabras. And every morning of this feast, they would light those massive torches so that they would burn all day long.

Now, we probably would not advise this today, but the priest did not actually climb that tower to fill up those basins.

They got the youngest little Levite boys to climb up that 75 foot tall tower and place the oil inside the basins.

And then once the oil was in the basins, then the little boys would light the flame. And then they would scoot down the tower, and all day long that flame would burn brightly.

You could see it from miles away, actually. And at night, it lit every single rooftop in the city of Jerusalem, which is what comes down to us through tradition.

Now, when it burned out, that was when the party ended. You know, now today it's when you run out of refreshments, you run out of snacks, the party ends.

Back then it was when the lights burn out, you're all going home. Because in those days, obviously they didn't have electricity, obviously they didn't have a natural supply of just light.

So these massive lanterns were lighting up the entire square, and people were dancing until they burned out.

And then they would take their personal lanterns, and they would carry them down the hill of Jerusalem, and they would go outside the city trying to find their specific tent, and they would go to sleep each night full of praise and worship.

So on this final night, when the lights burned out, they were ready to go back home and go to sleep and prepare for their long journey back home, however far home was, the next day.

Now, the reason this light was there was for a couple of reasons. The priest obviously loved the fact that all of these people were outside worshiping and praising.

So it was a good thing that these lights were there. But also, it's a great symbolism of how

God is the light of the Jewish people. All throughout the Old Testament, the term light is filled with theological significance.

So these three lights are there to show that God is the light of the

Jewish people. And also, He's the light that reminded them of the Exodus. If you remember, the people were rescued out of slavery, and then they were brought through the

Red Sea. And then as they got into the wilderness, they were led by what?

Smoke by day and fire by night. So in the morning, when the

Israelites would march up the hill, they would see the smoke coming off of these torches, and they would imagine that we are the people who live inside the booths, and we are walking towards the

Promised Land where God dwells. They were reenacting the story of Israel. And at night, when they were dancing and singing and praising under the light of those torches, they were remembering the fact that God the

Holy Spirit lit their way through the darkness by fire at night.

So the symbolism is rich here, that this is the light of God. That He is the one who leads us through our wilderness and leads us to the

Promised Land out of our tents and out of our booths. All of this was intricately wrapped up in the

Feast of Tabernacles. But it also, it showed them that they needed a better light.

Because it only lasted seven days. Even if you remember the Old Testament people of Israel, the light only lasted for a certain amount of time.

When they got into the land of Israel, the fire stopped burning. The smoke stopped smoking.

It was only there to lead them to the Promised Land. So in reenacting this, it was only there for seven days.

And when it burned out on the seventh day and they had no more light, they realized instantly that they were still a people who were shrouded in darkness.

They were still a people who did not fully walk in the light of God, and they were a people who could not fully walk in the light of God.

They needed a better light. You think about the little boys that climbed the tower 75 feet up in order to put this light at the top of their post.

They realized that that wasn't enough, because that light only lit the city of Jerusalem. They would have needed to do what

Jacob had before him, this ladder to heaven. They would have had to climb up into the Holy of Holies inside heaven's gates, and they would have needed to see and live in the light.

But we can't do that. As sinners, we all fall short of the glory of God. So we cannot climb up to heaven, so we need heaven to come down to us.

So this light showcased to them that they needed God's light to come down from heaven to them, to dwell with them, or else they would continue to live in perpetual darkness.

That's the symbolism that they saw in all of this. It's hard for us to imagine, because we're not a very symbolic people, or at least not like this.

Everything mattered to them. Everything meant something to them. And it was in this moment, when the fire burned out, and the people were ready to go back down the hill, walking in darkness,

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

To the people who were watching the lights go out, Jesus said, I'm the light.

To the people who were bumbling around in the darkness, He says, if you walk with me, you'll never walk in darkness.

He is speaking directly to what is happening right in front of Him. And He's saying,

I am the light of the world. You don't have to wait another year for some child to climb up a pole and light this stick.

I'm here with you right now. I'm the light of the world. That's what He's saying. He's saying,

I'm the living light. I'm the light that will never fade. I'm the light that will always shine. I'm the light that will erase your night and erase your darkness.

If you will follow me, every element of the

Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus has fulfilled. He's the provision of God.

He's the presence of God. He's the tabernacling God who comes in their midst. He's the covering that's better, who's going to cover them with His presence.

He's the true and better Sabbath, where they're going to find their rest. He's the true sacrifice that's going to bring them into fellowship with God.

He's the living water from the Holy Spirit that's going to be poured out into our hearts. And He's the light of the world that is going to make us into lights that will go out into the world.

Every element of the Feast is all about Jesus. Right when the lights go out,

He cries out, I am the light of the world. Because He's greater than their candles, and He's greater than their towers, and He's greater than all of the feast and the ceremony, because all of it points to Him.

And it's not just this moment. The entire Old Testament prepared the people of God for this moment that Jesus would come and He would be the light of the world.

This is not a new idea, they just missed it in the Old Testament. For instance,

Isaiah 42 .6 says, this is a conversation between God and Jesus in Isaiah.

I am the Lord and I have called you. You see the capital U? That's the translators letting you know that's

Jesus. I have called you in righteousness. I will also hold you by the hand and watch over you.

And I will appoint you as a covenant to the people and as a light to the nations.

This is one of the most famous sections of the book of Isaiah called the servant of the Lord passages where God Himself is saying that Israel is no longer

My servant. I'm going to raise up the Christ. I'm going to raise up the Messiah who is going to serve

Me and He's going to accomplish My will and My purposes and He's going to come and He is going to be the light of the world.

He's going to be broken for the broken, smitten, stricken, and afflicted. He's going to heal them by being bruised and by being wounded

Himself. He's the one who is called in righteousness to be righteousness for those who could never be righteous.

He is led by the hand of God meaning every second of His incarnation He was being led by, guided by, and driven by God.

He's the head of a new covenant Isaiah 42 .6 tells us because Moses' lamp is burning out.

Moses' torch is gone. Jesus is going to bring a new and a better everlasting covenant that never ends.

God is going to build a new lamp for the people of God and it's not on a 75 foot tall tower.

It's on a hill called Calvary where He crucified His one and only Son and made Him light for all of us for all generations.

A better light. Look at Isaiah 49 .6, same thing.

Is it too small a thing that you should be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel?

I will make you a light to the nations. Think about the symbolism here.

In Israel every year they're gathering around a light to Jerusalem and yet this

Jesus is going to be a light to the nations. It's going to be brighter. It's going to be hotter.

It's going to be better. It's going to be more long -lasting. Jesus' light is better than the candelabras in Jerusalem.

Look at Zechariah 14, 6 -7. This passage, if you research

Zechariah 14, is about the Feast of Tabernacles so it's especially relevant to what we're considering.

And that day there will be no light. The luminaries will dwindle.

For it will be a unique day which is known to the Lord, neither day nor night, but it will come about that at that evening time there will be light.

Zechariah is prophesying about Jesus that on the final tabernacle feast the light is going to burn out but it's going to be a unique day.

It's going to be a day that has never existed before in human history where it's not day, it's not night because a new kind of light has dawned.

It's not just a torch on top of a pole. It is the everlasting night of Jesus Christ. The Old Testament fire is being extinguished and Jesus is bringing about a new covenant and on this day in John 8,

Zechariah 14 was fulfilled in their presence and they didn't even know. They didn't even see it.

When he says, I am the light of the world, he's using the unique name of God. He's saying, I am Yahweh.

When he says the light, he's talking about the unique light of Zechariah. The unique light that Zechariah prophesies so that he can rightly say that he is the light of the world.

Strong enough as God to be light for all eternity. True enough as man to fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah.

Look at Malachi. He doesn't just come to extinguish the darkness, he comes to bring healing in his light.

Just as mold grows in the darkness, just as fungus grows in the darkness and you bring the light of the sun onto the mold and onto the fungus and onto whatever it is, it cannot stand, it cannot live.

Jesus Christ is the one who's going to bring healing in his rays. Malachi 4 .2

says, But for you who fear my name, the son of righteousness, will rise with healing in its wings and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall.

If you've ever seen little calves, I grew up in the South, so I've seen little calves.

You let them out and they leap and they jump and they bounce. Sometimes they fall over because they're so happy.

What you see here is that when Jesus Christ comes, when the day of the Lord comes, he will bring the light of God and his light will be brighter than that gaseous ball that's in the sky called the sun and his light will bring a better healing than the sun could ever bring.

He is the one who is utterly essential for life, not just physical life.

The sun is essential for physical life. If we didn't have the sun, we'd all be dead. But if we don't have

Christ, we may live 70 years here, 80, 90, whatever it is.

Maybe you're really lucky and you live 100. But if you don't have the son of God, you'll be in eternal darkness.

No light. All throughout the Old Testament, we've seen what

John 8 is alluding to, that Jesus Christ really is the light of the world. Prophets said 700 years before in Isaiah.

Prophets said 500 years before by Zechariah. 400 years before by Malachi. Jesus Christ is the light of the world.

Is it any wonder that John begins his gospel after 400 years of biblical silence with in him was life and the life was the light?

That's the fourth verse in the gospel of John. He's simply confirming what Isaiah and Zechariah and Malachi and many other

Old Testament prophets and Old Testament scriptures are saying that Jesus is the light of the world. But John adds a different theme to it.

He says that in this light you will have life. Not just healing, but eternal life.

Jesus even says this himself when he says, I'm here today. Walk with me while I'm here.

I'm the light of the world. But we also realize that when Jesus died and when he rose from the dead, he wasn't coming to just give temporary light to one generation.

He rose so that he could be the light to all generations of Christians. So he is not a temporary light.

He is an eternal light that if you turn to him, then you will have the light of God.

And what does that mean? That you will have the light of God. What does it mean that his light would shine on you?

Well, it means that darkness will be dispelled from your life. Light dispels the darkness.

Darkness cannot exist in the presence of the light. You can have a room that is pitch black dark, but as soon as you turn on the switch, the darkness flees.

In you, if you're a Christian, you were filled with darkness before you knew Jesus Christ.

But when Jesus Christ shined on you, the darkness had to flee from you. You may still sin, and we all do, but the darkness has no place in you because Jesus Christ has extinguished the darkness in you.

And if you are willing to walk with him and learn from him and submit to him, then that light will even grow hotter and brighter and more fiercely inside of you.

It's not just about the dispelling darkness. It's about revealing something. Rays of light reveal things that are hidden.

Have you ever lost your keys? It's really hard to find them in the dark, isn't it? The woman in the

New Testament parable, the woman who lost her coin, is looking around in the darkness for her coin, brushing her hand across the floor, hoping to hear it clang against the stone floor that she's got below her.

When she finds it, she's overjoyed. She was so poor she didn't even have a lamp because light reveals things.

Light shines and it shows things. How much more so the light of Jesus Christ? When his light shines into our heart, it reveals things that are broken still.

And it reveals things that are wrong and disordered within us. We are saved by the grace of God and the grace of God alone, but his light is a ministry to us, not just in salvation but in sanctification, showing us the parts of us that still need to be repented of, that are still broken, that are still disordered.

Maybe the light of Christ this week has been revealing something to you, something that's broken inside of you, something that's been there for a decade or something that's been there for a week, but he's revealing something to you.

Give it over to Christ. Don't let it fester in the darkness. It'll grow in the darkness.

It won't grow when you bring it into the light. Bring it into the light and give it over to Jesus because his light is not just to save us, his light is to sanctify us and to heal us of all of our brokenness.

His light is invisible, but yet it's powerful. That's the third aspect of it. Point to me in this room and show me where you can see a single photon floating around in the air.

You can't. It's invisible, but yet it's powerful. It has totally filled this space full of light so that we can't see it, but we know that it's there.

Think about the Holy Spirit's ministry in our life. We can't see him, but we know that he's there because I'm not the same person that I used to be and I'm hoping and praying that you're not the same person you used to be because the

Spirit's power, while invisible, is powerful just like light. I think about every week at this church.

I come in broken, distracted. My heart's a mess. And by the end of it, my heart is leaping for joy because the

Holy God has been here. We might not see him, but he is here in our midst and he is working on us and moving us.

How many times have we entered church service here and this is not ordinary, but we start clapping just for no reason because God himself has done something to us while we were here.

We feel his presence just like powerful light, invisible, yes, but powerful nonetheless.

His presence is light and it works on us and it changes us. Light is selective.

If I turn on the light in my kitchen, my basement doesn't light up because there's a door, because there's something blocking it.

If Jesus is the light, and we've talked about over and over and over again that he is drawing, that he is choosing, that he is electing, not everybody is in the light.

All of us in our sin, we're down in the basement of depravity. And so God himself brought us and dragged us up the steps into the light and opened our eyes and opened our chest and poured the light of God inside of us.

That is when we were saved because light is selective. It doesn't go everywhere. It goes only where it's intended.

But where it's intended, it fills the space. There's not a person in this room who can say that they have more light than another.

Now, there are people who are under lights that aren't lit, sure. But light doesn't just draw from right here down on top of Manita or from right here down on top of Lana and everyone else is in pitch black darkness.

Light fills the space. The Holy Spirit, in the same way, is not confined to a single believer.

The Holy Spirit can indwell and be powerful and be present in all the believers at all times that have ever existed because if He is just like light, then there's no limits to His power, no limits to how far

He can spread out and indwell and empower. I don't know if you've ever seen a photon of light get tired and take a break.

Light's inexhaustible as well. It doesn't just fill the entire space. It's inexhaustible. So long as electricity is on that switch, we will have light in this room.

How much more so there is in Christ, who will never burn out and who will never grow tired and who will never grow weary and who will always shine

His light on the people of God. It's illuminating. If you're a

Christian, you're not lost, you're not dazed, you're not confused, you're not worried about which path you're going to go because God Himself has shown you what path you're going to go.

Now, you may say, should I take this job or should I not take that job? But ultimately, you know the path that you're supposed to go.

Your call is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. And the light of Jesus Christ has perfectly shown you how to do that.

Not perfectly, but it's shown you that that's the purpose of your life. His light has illuminated the path that you're supposed to go.

His light is colorful. Have you ever looked up in the sky and seen how the light refracts off of the clouds and off of the water droplets and you see these beautiful rainbows?

Well, in the same way, His light has refracted off of your character. His light has refracted off of your personality.

His light has brought you into relationship with Him in such a way that you are, this is a little corny, but you are kind of like the rainbow that the world gets to look at, hung up, refracted through the light of Jesus Christ so they can see the beauty of Christ in you.

Your life is a portrait of the mercy of God. Your life is an anthem of the grace of God.

And because His light is in you, the world should look to you and say, my goodness, who is that God that can take that guy or that woman or that person and light them up?

His light is a warming light and it brings comfort to us when we're confused or when we're broken.

His light is an energizing light. Think about the solar panels on top of houses, how it brings energy into the house.

His light energizes us to go on mission for the gospel. His light is healing in the fact that it heals us of our brokenness.

If you're not a Christian, but you feel God's call on your life and you feel that God is drawing you to Him, run to the light.

Don't stay in your darkness any longer. If you're a Christian, live in the light and no longer go and live in the darkness because His light is better than the darkness of the world.

His light is intimate. The further away you get from a source of light, its intensity has not died.

Your perception of its intensity has dwelt. As Christians, we have the light of God through Jesus Christ.

But when we run after the things of the world and when we live in the darkness and we perpetuate the deeds of the darkness, then the light in our own life dwindles.

It's fully available. But your experience of it is not the same as it once was.

There's so many aspects to light we could talk about. We could talk about the speed of light. We could talk about all types of things.

But what I want you to understand is if Christ is the light of the world, then you have access to God through Jesus Christ and He is your light.

And you know Him because Jesus Christ, on the hill called

Calvary, the light of the world was snuffed out for you.

Just like those 75 -foot towers that burned out on the seventh day of the feast,

Jesus Christ allowed the people in that city to grab Him and to murder Him and to throw

Him away in a tomb, thinking that they had extinguished the light of God. You know

Jesus Christ because He was extinguished for you. And on the third day when

He rose, He rose to make you and I children of the light.

Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5, you are all sons of light and sons of day.

We are not of night nor of darkness anymore. Ephesians 5 .8, based on what

Jesus Christ has done for us, says, for you were formerly darkness, but now you are light, and the

Lord walk His children of the light. And we walk His children of the light so that we can have fellowship with God.

This is what 1 John 1, 6 -7 says. If we say we have fellowship with Him, and yet we walk in darkness, we lie and we do not practice the truth.

But if we walk in the light as He Himself is the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all of our sins.

He died for us so that He could make His children of the light. He indwelled us so that we would have fellowship with Him as citizens of the light.

1 Peter 2, 9 says, You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness and into His marvelous light.

The point is Jesus Christ is the light of the world. And He's resurrected to make you and I into little lights so that we could go out into the world shining forth the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jesus says in Matthew 5, 14 -16, You are the light of the world.

He's talking to you. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.

Let your light so shine among men so that they may see your good works and they may glorify your

Father who is in heaven. How can Jesus call us the light of the world if He Himself is the light of the world?

It is only because we have been grafted into Christ. Through His death, through His burial, and through His resurrection, we have been made in Christ.

And because of His light, we now shine, and we shine until the day that Jesus returns.

I love how the Bible begins with, In the beginning, God said, Let there be light.

And in the end of the Bible, it begins with an eternal night that never ends. This is how the

Bible ends, Revelation 21. And He, John, carried me away in the

Spirit to a great high mountain and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God.

And her brilliance was like a very costly stone, as a stone of clear jasper, now down to verse 22.

And I saw no temple in that place, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.

And the city has no need of a sun or of a moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illuminated it, and its lamp is the

Lamb. The nations will walk by its light. The kings of the earth will bring their glory into it.

In the daytime, for there will be no more night, its gates will never be closed, and they will bring the glory and honor of the nations to it.

What we're seeing in this passage is from the beginning of the end, from the beginning to the end of the Bible, it's about God's light among His people, and that is only possible through Jesus Christ.

He is the light that shines in the darkness. He is the light that reveals our sin. He is the light that is powerful and available to you.

He is the light that has been poured into us by the Holy Spirit of God. He is the light that radiates this church and radiates every other faithful church in the world.

He is the light that is inexhaustible for the elect. He is the light that is available to you at all times and in all moments.

He is the light that will warm you. He is the light that will heal you. He is the light that will beautify you. He is the light that will energize you.

He is the light that will propel you into a darkened world to share the hope that you have in Jesus Christ. He is the light that has made you

His child. He is the light that has made you a citizen. He is the light who has made you a lamp, and one day you will stand in His light forever perfectly.

Amen. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank You that we don't have to live in darkness.

God, thank You that because of Your sacrifice and because of Your gift and because of Your love and because of Your grace,

You did not leave us in our sins and in our darkness and in our death. And Lord, although we had nothing at all to give to You, nothing to provoke

Your grace, by grace and grace alone You have saved us and You have brought us into Your marvelous light.

Lord, let us live like people of light. Let us not dwell in the deeds of darkness, but let us shine forth