Good morning. Nice to see you all. Uh, do I have the Yeah. Thanks, Doug. You let a guy have some time off and look, everything goes to pot. We’re going to be talking about light today. We’re in John chapter 8 where Jesus declares one of his I am statements. Thank you, brother. I am the light of the world. And we’re going to spend some time reflecting on what he might have meant by that to say I am the light of the world. Um before we do that, we go up here. Right. I want to just uh have a prayer and then we’ll dive into this. Holy Father, we come before you seeking your divine light to illuminate our paths and dispel the shadow of darkness that surround us in the silent chamber of our souls where our deepest anxieties dwell. May your light dispel the shadows of doubt and bring forth the assurance of your unwavering presence. For in the radiance of your love, we find the strength to endure, the courage to persevere, and the faith to rise above the tumultuous waves that seek to engulf us in the name of our Lord and Savior. Amen. Now I want you to use your imaginations and I want you to imagine that as a youth you grew up in a very rainy dreary kind of place perhaps like Prince Rupert is purported to be and you reach adulthood and you go okay enough enough of this gloom I’m moving I’m getting out of here and very rashly and without any research at all you decide to go to Blackpool England which sadly turns to be a very sun-deprived place in a very sun-deprived country. But you make the me best of it and you buy a house and you live there for about 25 years and you enjoy the meager amounts of sunlight that do filter through your windows occasionally when it’s not cloudy outside. But one day, you’re startled to find that your neighbors houses are all beginning to be demolished, and a sign is posted that two new big apartment towers are being built in your neighborhood. And you go, “Wait a second. Let’s move this up.” Okay. Oh, back. And you go, “Oh, no. Oh, no. I’ve adjusted to this little bit of light. Now I’m going to lose that entirely.” What am I going to do? Well, it turns out you’ve got legal recourse in England. If you have lived in a residence for 20 years or more, you now have the right to light. So that you could go to the local council and say, “Hey, I’ve been living in this place now 25 years. This developer wants to build this tower here. is going to obstruct my windows. I’m not going to get any light. This has got to stop. And you know what? The courts will side with you. Now, I share that little bit of British legal ease with you, not to uh give you the hope that you have the right to light, but it’s one nation’s recognition that humanity as a whole has a need for light. Just like plants, just like animals, people need light. Yes, we can supplement with vitamin D, etc., etc., but there’s nothing like the kiss of the sun upon us to give us a sense of well-being that all is right in the world. We simply need light. And that’s why none of us are in uh I forgot the name of the town in the Arctic. you know that place, at least not in the winter time. Anyway, um it was the nurse, speaking of health and light, it was the nurse Florence Nightingale, and despite her last surname, uh she recognized that her patients under her care benefited from a few hours out in the courtyard on sunny days. And so he she would have them all wheeled out to enjoy the sun to help them recuperate from their wounds and their diseases. We dwell in a world of cloud, a dusky twilight place in which churches, this place are meant to be lighouses. Light scientists tells tell us is a form of energy form of electromagnetic energy. You focus it in a laser beam and it can cut through the steel table on which James Bond is strapped to. You can put it uh through a temperature controlled glass pyramid and you can grow a palm tree in Edmonton. Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us that Albert Einstein’s formula for quantifying energy involved uh squaring the speed of light. Light is energy. If we were to black out all of these windows here, snuff out those candles, and make it completely cavelike black here, you wouldn’t be able to see the organ pipes. You wouldn’t be able to see the cross. You wouldn’t be able to see me, but we’d all still be here. But we wouldn’t have the energy, the medium that allows us to be aware of that outside world. And light is fast, isn’t it? In a vacuum, it travels approximately 300,000 kilometers a second, which is even faster than the speed of our cat when we open up our fridge. It is fast. And did you know that your uh as long as even after your eye can no longer see light, it is still traveling. It travels infinitely. It just keeps going and going and going. It doesn’t die out. And in this way, it’s sort of different than a 60-year-old. It just keeps going. And though slide uh light is the only form of energy that we can see, we can only see a small portion of it, just a sliver. We miss out on things like ultraviolet and infrared waves. This whole spectrum of light. Here’s a chart that shows the range of light from radio waves, which are the biggest ones. They can actually be bigger than a planet. Those waves, did you know that? All the way to gamma waves. Waves, which are really tiny and small and narrow. Now, um you might not know all of these things, but uh radio waves, of course, they’re not sound waves, but they’re the frequency in which uh music can be sent and voices can be sent from which we get our radios. Microwaves, you’re familiar with that. Long before we cooked our food in these little appliances, microwaves existed. It’s a form of energy. That’s why it can heat things up. Uh, infrared light we know from um our spy mo movies where they have these night vision goggles and it allows to see in less than ambient light u other objects around it. Then we have visible light which needs no introduction. Then we go on to ultraviolet or UV which causes us to tan or to to burn. It’s a higher form of radioactive energy emitted from the sun um that we have to protect ourselves from. If we didn’t have an atmosphere around our planet, we’d all be toast. Then the next is X-rays, which are familiar from the doctor’s office. It allows uh light to see right through us uh into our superructure and tells us if we’re cracked or not. And the last form of light are gamma rays, which gamma rays I think is something to do with your mother’s mother’s stink eye or something like that. I I I can’t remember what that’s about. But when the risen Christ declared to John that he’s the alpha and the omega, the A to the Zed, the whole alphabet of Revelation, he could have just as easily expressed it as, I am the radio to the gamma. I’m the whole spectrum of light of lifegiving invisible and visible vigorous light power upon power. So just as we might dare not to try and spell the words wondrous or glorious or excellent or praiseworthy without referencing me alpha and omega which really gives that its content. In the same way, we should maybe not try to understand or perceive or see truth on our own without the radio and the gamma, the light of this world, which is Jesus Christ. Well, we have to be thankful even for the small part of light that is visible to us because without it, we wouldn’t see anything at all. And the blessed sunlight that the poor people in Prince Roert and Blackpool uh see so little of comes from the sun. Do you know how long it takes to get from the sun to Blackpool if the clouds aren’t there? It takes all of 8 minutes for that light to travel that great distance. From the moon, what’s reflected from the moon only takes less than two seconds. friends, that’s far far shorter a time than it is to get a CRA agent on the telephone. You know that. So, if you have your champagne glasses filled, a toast to light. Well, let’s go on with this uh theme. This is um a picture of a cross that uh my daughter Danielle, who’s with us today, and our other kids, we found uh these pieces of old barrel in the woods in Jasper, and we thought we’d haul them out. And after we hauled them out uh with the intention of recycling them, I thought, you know what? I can do something with these. And I made a cross that hung in our church for a number of years. Well, the cross is real. I assure you it is. But it can become less distinct, even obscured until it’s totally lost because of a lack of light. It’s still there, but we can’t see it. We need light to see light. Interestingly, in the same way, uh, an object can get um overexposed and lost from too much light, an abundance of light. Just like if you’re tracking a jet plane through the sky and it crosses to where the sun is and you can’t see it anymore. If you’re driving at night and then a car is coming towards you with its bright headlights and you can’t see the lines on the on your road anymore, your lane, you’re going, “Ah, too much light or too little light and objects reality begin to lose their definition. We know from the Genesis account that light was the foundation and precursor of all of creation. One can maybe speculate then does existence depend on the right kind of light in order to be because it seems that only when the right quality and the right quantity of light is present that objects little pieces of reality can be discerned known and be related to. Now I realize that those who are visually impaired can develop their other senses senses to an extraordinary degree to interact with this world. But light is the energy and the medium through which everything in the universe becomes visually present. We become aware of the other that which is distinct from ourselves and in turn we become apparent to others. we become knowable at least potentially. Light is like an introduction service if you will. It’s the hostess of reality making one thing acquainted with another. In each of us, if each of us here were suddenly separated by a distance of 16 light years, we’re still existing in this vast vast vast space. Each of us in this room, maybe 40, 50 people, but we’re separated by this great amount of light years. We wouldn’t be able to see each other. It’s beyond the power of our eyes to see each other. And light would have nothing within our visual range to communicate to us because light has to reflect off of something and then the eye has to perceive it. So, in a sense, Bob could wonder, is Holly still around? And yes, she is. She’s just 16 light years away. But if he had a powerful enough telescope, he could see her and see her shining like the star that she is in the firmament. Isn’t that lovely? That’s lovely, right? That’s nice. Yes. Thank you. Um, but this is not just idle speculation because over and over again in the Lord’s parables, he talks about this potential consequence of being separated from him, the light of the world forever in a place that he calls outer darkness. Outer darkness. Can you imagine existing in outer darkness where you don’t see anything and nothing sees you? That would be a terrible fate. One that you’d want to avoid at all costs. Well, it seems then that light, maybe like love, only truly becomes the glorious creation of God that it’s meant to be when it has objects to illuminate, to to interact with. Is there something about the nature of light that desires objects, things, people to shine upon? A few weeks ago, our eldest daughter and her fiance returned from Central America where they had opportunity to dive off of uh the island of Roatan and he had the chance to go on a night dive and he was telling us about that. We asked him, “What were some of the highlights of your trip?” And he said, “You know, when I went on this night dive, the bioluminescence was just amazing. Like the little plankton, the little creatures that exude light that you’re not aware of in the daytime, but come nighttime, you stir up that water and it goes all that sort of bluey uh radiant color.” And he said it was just awesome. Well, I thought that’s kind of cool. I wanted to do some research on it. And I learned this week that every thing that is alive has a form of bioluminescence. We have bioluminescence. Each of us in a sense glow. And I’m not just talking about the shine off a bald pastor’s head. We have a certain kind of glow that’s happening. A potential. We’re potentially glowworms. I love you, man. It’s just that what we produce is about a thousand times weaker than what our eyes can detect. But it does have implications, doesn’t it? When the Lord declares that his followers will also be like lights in the world. Well, consider Moses 40 days in the presence of God and his fellow Hebrews have to stick a lampshade on the old guy. Whoa, you’re too shiny. Right? We begin to shine as we get closer to the light. Now, John who wrote this passage, he saw Jesus in two forms on the mount of transfiguration and then on the island of Patmos after his resurrection. And the outstanding quality of the Lord in both of those descriptions was how bright he was. He was radiant light. They had to shield their eyes. light that is real energy, light that is swift, light that is visible yet much more than what we can see. And today we’re coming into um the eighth chapter of John and we’re going to talk about this. And you know, if if naturally we’re created to be bioluminescent on such a very marginal scale, does it make sense then if the life of God, the light of the world comes into us that we might up the amperage a bit? we we might really become those that shine in the firmaments forever because the light of the world is in us. Well, just before we get to that, and I will get to the passage, um I want to tell you about a modern story because I don’t want this just to be just speculation and I don’t want this just to be uh instruction about something that happened 2,000 years ago. I want to tell you about Hamdi. Hamdi man was a Turkish man who immigrated to America and he left his home country to pursue business in the United States. When he decided to do this in the 80s, his Muslim parents back in Turkey said, “Look, you can go with our blessing, but please promise us this. Don’t let our grandchildren lose their Muslim heritage. Don’t let them lose their faith.” and Hamdi promised he would do his best to raise his children in the faith even though his wife wasn’t who was also Turkish. She wasn’t really um of any faith at all. But they did this. They moved to to to the states and they raised their family in in the Muslim way. But when uh his son his eldest child became of college age off he went to another college in another state. And after a while he met other Christians. He met Christians on the campus and they started witnessing to him and they started bringing him to church and eventually horror of horrors uh Hamdi gets a phone call saying that his son has become a Christian. This was very upsetting to Hamdi but his son was now of legal age. He was a man. And though he tried to argue with him, he eventually had to realize he’s made his own decision. I’ve got to I’ve got to just accept this. Well, Ham Hamdi’s son didn’t want to just uh hold on to the light himself. And so, he kept uh sharing this light with his mother and with his sister, his younger sister. And to make matters worse, eventually they became Christians too and started going to church. So, at this point, this poor Turkish gentleman felt very betrayed. He felt very alone and wondered, “What am I going to do? What am I going to tell my mother?” His father had passed away at this time. Uh, my whole family has become Christian. Well, it got even worse. Oops. Here, I’m forgetting to do my slides. Um, the son had graduated from college. He’d got into a a very lucrative, successful business and he decided to give it all up and to go back to Turkey as a Christian missionary. Oh, alhamdulillah was just pulling his hair out. He thought, “This is the worst. My mother’s going to hear about this and um you know, isn’t the point of life to do well to get ahead?” So the father drove from where he lived in Tampa, Florida to Houston, Texas, where his son was to bring a few of his the son’s things that he was going to be taking over to Turkey. When he got to Houston, um he actually agreed to go to uh the son’s church and there a number of people came up to him afterwards and said, “Mr. Man, we’re we’re praying for you.” And that really kind of confused him, but also touched his heart. And then his son in saying goodbye said, “Dad, I’ve got some teaching tapes I would like you to listen to in your car on your way home to Tampa.” Which he did. And it kind of confused him because the Jesus they were talking about and this God of the Christians was a God of love. And he talked about the need for a savior because we’re sinners. And he didn’t quite understand that from his own background. He thought of uh his god as more of a a god of of judgment and and the idea of love wasn’t so present in his faith. And when he got home after a few months, his young his daughter was off at college and his wife went back to Turkey for a business conference and he was all alone one night and what was happening was a conviction of sin. He felt really low about the things that had happened in his life and he hadn’t found any relief in his faith. And so he couldn’t really compare the Bible and the Quran because speaking Turkish he didn’t actually understand Arabic which the Quran is written in. He just had memorized a number of passages but he couldn’t actually compare them. So he just threw up his hands in despair and turned on the TV to watch some sports. And then something very interesting happened. His remote control wasn’t working. He couldn’t get to the channels he wanted. And then suddenly it turned onto a a preacher preaching. And this is where I’ll pick it up in his own words what he says here. All of a sudden, I saw a man talking and he pointed his finger at me through the television screen and said, “There’s a man right now who’s very confused about what’s going on around him. God loves you so much and he is your answer.” Suddenly, in awe of God came over me. I knelt down in my living room and I said, “I don’t know what to do. I’m so overwhelmed. If you are really God talking to me, you have to prove it to me. I was talking to God, asking him to show himself to me as if he was real. I didn’t mention the name of Jesus. I would have been afraid to use that name. And suddenly, a huge bright light filled the room. As I looked up, a man was standing there, but he was so bright, like the brightness of the sun, that it was hard to see. He was very close to my face so that my eyes weren’t able to see anything. I could see his white garment but I couldn’t see his face that was shining so brightly. It was very hard to understand at that time what I was seeing but I know now that it was God’s glory that was shining in the room. Well, he touched my right shoulder and he said with an audible voice, “Hami, just follow me.” Jesus was standing before me. His voice was so soft like velvet. He had heard my prayer and he answered me by coming to my room to prove himself to me. I knew something incredibly special was happening. My heart was pounding. But I was not afraid because I knew he was Jesus. Jesus was standing in my living room with such love. And when he spoke to me, it was such a loving voice. He was inviting me to follow him. He had a very joyful telephone call to his wife and son in Turkey the next day saying, “I’m waiting for you to come home for my water baptism.” Friends, the light shafts of salvation did not cloud over 2,000 years ago. It still shines upon people today. Whatever our form of darkness, whatever false light we might have been employing, the true light that has come into the world is only a prayer away. Let’s hear the words of an old hymn that really captures this. And then let’s look at our text. Immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light inaccessible, hid from our eyes. Most blessed, most glorious, the ancient of days, almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise. Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light, nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might. Thy justice like mountains high soaring above, thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love. To all life thou givest to both great and small. In all life thou livest the true life of all. We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree and wither and perish but not changeth thee. Great father of glory, pure father of light, thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight. All praise we would render. Oh, help us to see. It is only the splendor of light hideth thee. John 8:es 12-30. This is a conversation Jesus had with some religious leaders and some other Jews that were standing by. Some would respond to him, but some would not. Again, Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” So the Pharisees said to him, “You are bearing witness about yourself. Your testimony is not true.” Jesus answered, “Even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true. For I know where I came from and where I’m going, but you do not know where I come from or where I’m going. You judge according to the flesh. I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true. For it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. In your law, it’s written about the testimony that the testimony of two people is true. I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me. They said to him, “Therefore, where’s your father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither me nor my father. If you knew me, you would know my father also. 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. So he said to them again, “I’m going away and you will seek me and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.” He said to them, “You are from below. I am from above. You are of this world. I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins. For unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins. So they said to them, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “Just what I’ve been telling you from the beginning. I have much to say about you and much to judge, but he who sent me is true. And I declare to the world what I’ve heard from him. Well, they didn’t understand that he’d been speaking to them about the father. So Jesus said to them, “When you’ve lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me. And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.” As he was saying these things, many believed in him. Well, friends, we’ve taken a lot of time to get to this place. And I’m not going to spend a lot of time actually in the scriptures because I’ve been trying to emphasize the nature of light so that when we read these words, we have all sorts of associations that we can bring to the text and go, “Aha, this is maybe what Jesus meant.” Because friends, like air, we take light for granted. We just assume every dawn there’s going to be light. But light is a wonder that surrounds you and me every day. What might Jesus have meant when he said that he is the light of the world? It’s a bit curious, isn’t it, that the Pharisees didn’t challenge Jesus on what he meant, but only on the technical point that he needed another witness to verify such a remarkable claim. I think if the enormity of his declaration, I am the light of the world, had really penetrated their dark souls, they would have clamored around him for deeper enlightenment. Really? tell us more. How is this so? But a few things can be uh deduced from this discourse. First, Jesus stands as a contrast to walking in darkness. The darkness that is a foregone conclusion for any of us being absent from God because God is light. If we live aimlessly, if we search for answers without his revelation, we live in darkness. Jesus demonstrated to us a shadowless life. He came to answer the big questions. Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Where are we going? So Jesus as light discloses our darkness which is the sin of normal life living as if God didn’t exist at all. That’s why Jesus says his light is the light of life. If you buy a plant for your garden at the nursery, you’ll find one of those little white tags, right? Telling you whether it needs full sun, part sun, shade, full half shade. Jesus isn’t coming offering to be uh to do that, to give you a little tag. Well, this is what you need. Here’s your diagnosis. He’s comes to be the son himself to shine upon us. He doesn’t just provide counsel and instruction to first century Palestinians. His is not a philosophy. He is the soul’s necessary sunshine. His miracles are rays of sunlight. His teachings like stars in the sky, points of brilliance to navigate by. He not only sheds light on what is true life, he is the way to obtain it. That’s why he emphatically links his statements and mission with that of the father who sent him into the world. He doesn’t pose as a human guru. He is the light of God in a human light shade. Why does he then talk about judgment and that you cannot go with me? I’m going somewhere. You cannot follow me. Why that negative side to things? Well, the infrared or x-ray vision of Jesus, the light of the world, sees through people. It is said in his light we see light. Therefore, it is assuredly true that he the light can detect whether there be any light shining within us. This same war warns that if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness? Jesus looking at the Pharisees saw the darkness of pride and unbelief within them that they continually had the habit of shutting their eyes to the truth. He knows the difference between bioluminescence and bo. That’s why the Lord declared that he had much to say in judgments against these guys who declared his testimony invalid on a technicality, failing to see the wonder of Christ’s statement that he is truly the light of the world. To those religious people in power, Jesus made them squint with his shininess. The unbelieving Pharisees were looking at him with sunglasses on. They deliberately chose only to gaze at a slim sliver of his glorious spectrum as a troublemaker from Galilee rather than the bright and morning star. Earlier Jesus the divine opthalmologist made this telling diagnosis. This is the judgment. Light has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his work should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. The last section, the cross, because we’re coming to the table today to celebrate the cross. What might Jesus have meant when he said, “You have lifted up the son of when you have lifted up the son of man, then you will know that I am he.” I think he must have meant that when they fulfilled their evil plans to crucify him, then his manner of death and his victory over the darkness of the grave would be further evidence that he truly did come from the father as the light of the world and of the underworld. But perhaps there’s also a reference here to the three hours of deep midday darkness that would settle over the land when they had rejected God’s light. Do you remember that? Three hours of darkness in the middle of the day that could not be explained by any natural phenomenon. Notice that their hidden secret plans were exposed to his view. He knew what would happen and he allowed it. Didn’t he say on the sermon on the mount, “People do not light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand and it gives light to all in the house. Put a light up high and its radiance will shine further.” I think Jesus the light would be lifted up on a light stand that we call the cross to give light to all who would form the house of God, his redeemed children. The cross is the stand. Jesus is the light. He is our savior. Like moths, let us flutter to this bright light. Friends, the darkness is still here with us. But the good news is that it needn’t be within us anymore. We don’t need to trust in the pale flicker of our own understanding, nor the faint glow of our own pride. Let us together be caught by the light of the cross, touched by the man that Hamdi was touched by, renouncing the darkness and entering the brilliance of God’s love. In conclusion, hear the words of the great Apostle Paul. For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. For God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That’s the end of the message that I feel like the Lord has given me to share with you today. But there’s a song I want to share with you called Caught in Your Light. And let it speak to you. Particularly if you feel like you’ve been on the fringes of the light in the twilight for far too long. And today you feel like Jesus is inviting you closer.