Chardon church of Christ

How Do Others See Us?

James 1: 22 – 25

After being away for some time on a business trip, Bill thought it would be nice to bring his wife a small gift.
"How about some perfume?" he asked the cosmetics clerk.  She showed him a bottle which cost $60.00.  "That's a bit much," he said,
so she returned with a smaller bottle for $30.00. "That's still quite a bit," he complained.
Growing annoyed, the clerk brought out a tiny marked $15.00. "You know," he said, "What I mean is I would like to see something really cheap."
So the clerk handed him a mirror.

Why can’t Mirrors lie? Because they always reflect the truth.

Today I would like us to look at who we are. To take a long hard look in the mirror and see what is in the reflection.  Not who we act like, not who others perceive us to be, not what we have been in the past, but "who we really are".

2^nd Corinthians 3:18 speaks to this mirror and to our image. "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as [a]by the Spirit of the Lord."
What is reflected in the mirror?  What do you see in the mirror?

Have you ever been out somewhere and then catch a glimpse of yourself in a mirror which causes you to stop dead in your tracks and think YIKES! Is that REALLY what I look like right now!  The mirror reminds us of EXACTLY how others see us at that particular moment.

The Man in the Mirror Poem

When you get all you want and you struggle for self,
and the world makes you king for a day,
then go to the mirror and look at yourself
and see what that man has to say.

For it isn’t your mother, your father or wife
whose judgment upon you must pass,
but the man, whose verdict counts most in your life
is the one staring back from the glass.

He’s the fellow to please, never mind all the rest.
For he’s with you right to the end,
and you’ve passed your most difficult test
if the man in the glass is your friend.

You may be like Jack Horner and “chisel” a plum,
And think you’re a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

You can fool the whole world, down the highway of years,
and take pats on the back as you pass.
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
if you’ve cheated the man in the glass.

Paul in his first letter to the believers gathered in Corinth
also spoke of looking at our image in a mirror.

1^st Corinthians 13:11-12 tells us " When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known."

Now, Ancient mirrors, which were manufactured in the great city of Corinth, were made of metal and gave a very dim reflection.
Thus Paul's words "Now we see in a mirror, dimly", is an illustration of our imperfect knowledge on this side of eternity.

When we cross over to the other side of eternity when we are in heaven, we will know all things and our knowledge will be full it will be complete.But, on this side of eternity it is dim it is imperfect.

Have you ever seen your reflection in a metal spoon?  I hope I'm not the only one who has ever done that. The reflection in the metal spoon is a strange image isn't it?  It is dim. It is imperfect.

Mirrors in Paul's time were metal and you could not see a very accurate reflection of yourself, it was much like looking into a metal spoon.  But in today's age, we have mirrors that very much display what we really look like. You can clearly see yourself your image AND what you REALLY look like.  But this too is not the mirror we should be looking into.  It is not the mirror Paul is alluding too.

So, if we want to know who we really are, what mirror should we look in?  We need to look into the mirror of God's Word.  The true mirror… God's Mirror which shows us who we really are.

We need to examine ourselves and ask the question: Am I being all that God has called me to be?  Am I allowing the Lord to mold me?  Am I doing my best?  Am I giving my best?

When we look into God's mirror, we may find feelings, thoughts, problems and/or attitudes that we hold on to and have not allowed God to transform us.
We need to… we must… yield to God's Word, to God's will and allow him to mold us into the image into the reflection of His son!

We need to allow Him to impact the way we walk, the way we talk, the way we think AND the way we act.

It is time, time to allow Him to mold us, to transform us.
It is so easy to see the tiny faults of others yet miss the larger faults in ourselves.

Of course Matthew 7:4-5 tells us, "how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? 5 Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye."

I have often found that when I begin to look at others short comings that God is calling me to look at the log in my own eye.

To look at the "Man in the Mirror"

When you get all you want and you struggle for self,
and the world makes you king for a day,
then go to the mirror and look at yourself
and see what that man has to say.

For it isn’t your mother, your father or wife
whose judgment upon you must pass,
but the man, whose verdict counts most in your life
is the one staring back from the glass.

He’s the fellow to please, never mind all the rest.
For he’s with you right to the end,
and you’ve passed your most difficult test
if the man in the glass is your friend.

You may be like Jack Horner and “chisel” a plum,
And think you’re a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

You can fool the whole world, down the highway of years,
and take pats on the back as you pass.
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
if you’ve cheated the man in the glass.

If we begin with "The Person in the Mirror", we will be molded, we will be transformed.
If we look into the True mirror, God's mirror, it will reflect back a true image of who we are.

Each morning as we prepare for the day ahead we generally do not leave without looking into a mirror. The mirror enables us to see if there is anything out of place and gives us an opportunity to correct what is wrong. So often we can get wrapped up in our own ways that we set aside the ways of the One whom we are called to be like.

Jesus has the power to change "The Person in the Mirror"!
Jesus has the power to transform you
He has the desire to infill you with His glory!

Proverbs 27:19 - "As in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man."

If we start with "the Person in the Mirror", then we can begin to impact our world one person at a time!

If we start with "the Person in the Mirror", and let God mold us, we will be transformed!

If we each start with "the Person in the Mirror", then we can begin to make our church a beacon of light to those around us!

Praise God for his mercy and for his provision For what He has done and will continue to do in my life And in yours!

Yet, If we are honest There are times when we are deceived and do not act like the man or woman God has called us to be.

A Fellow was sitting at a stop light. The lady in front of him was going through some papers that were lying on the passenger's seat of her car, and when the light changed to green she did not move.  She did not follow the instruction of the light. You know, Stop on Red, Move on Green, and go real fast on Yellow.

As the light turned to yellow AND then back to red, this gentleman in the car behind her began screaming and beating on the steering wheel of his car.  His expressions of distress were quickly interrupted by a policeman, who with gun drawn and tapping on his window.

To which the man protested to the patrolman "You can't arrest me for hollering in my car!"  The officer ordered him into the back seat of his patrol car.  After about an hour in a holding cell, the officer advised him he was free to go.

As the man was leaving the police station He turned back to the patrolman and boldly stated "I knew you couldn't arrest me for what I was yelling in my own car. You haven't heard the last of this."
The officer quietly replied, "I didn't arrest you for shouting in your car.  As I sat behind you at the light, I saw you screaming and beating your steering wheel.  Then I noticed the PROUD CHRISTIAN ON BOARD sign in your window and the John 3:16 bumper sticker, and because of that I thought you must have stolen that car."

The way we actually live our lives may be the only Bible some folks will ever read. We need to remember who we are and what we look like.

And The Scriptures speak to this in James 1:22-24 - "21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like."

How can that be?

How can someone look in the mirror, see themselves, and then at once immediately walk away and forget what they look like?
"Wait a minute?
Am I balding?
Am I overweight?
Am I short?
Do I have a wrinkled face?
Do I have a scar on my chin?
AND Yet It is possible to look in the mirror and then forget what you looked like.

And, There are two reasons why that can happen.
First You do not believe the mirror is an accurate reflection of who you are.  That is You do not trust the mirror you are looking into.

Have you ever been to a fun house at a carnival or fair and walked through the Hall of mirrors?  They have certain mirrors that are designed to dramatically change your appearance.

* You can stand in front of one mirror and look extremely muscular I kind of like that mirror.

* You can stand in front of another and look extremely short and fat.  Certainly NOT my favorite.

* You can stand in front of yet another and be ten feet tall and as skinny as a rail.

Obviously These mirrors are not an accurate reflection of who you are.  So you walk away from them and quickly forget what you looked like.  So, You do not believe the mirror is an accurate reflection of who you are.

The 2nd reason you may look in a mirror and forget what you saw is because you are being deceived.

The enemy is deceiving you deceiving you into believing that you do not look like what the mirror is reflecting.  This often happens to people with eating disorders or people that are experiencing depression or are being oppressed by the enemy.

The only mirror of eternal significance is the Mirror of God's Word.  Remove the veil that is covering our eyes and look deeply into the truth of the mirror.
God's Word encompasses the real mirror a mirror that we can trust.  God's Word God's mirror will not only transform you but reflecting from the mirror are wonderful truths f who you are in Christ.

Do you trust God's mirror?  Or do you walk away from it believing that you are not worthy?  Do you look into the mirror of God's Word that proclaims you can do all things through Christ Jesus?  And yet walk away believing that you could never be good enough? 

Do you look into the mirror of God's Word that declares greater is he that is in me then he that is in the world?  Yet you walk away thinking that you will fail.  If you do, then there is a reason.

Either you do not trust the mirror you are looking into or, You are being deceived. Do not forget who you are and where you are going.
Do you trust God's Word? Do you trust it's reflection of who you are?
If you do then do not be deceived walk boldly be the salt of the earth be the light of the world. (Matthew 5:13-14)

Be the reflection of Jesus and yield to his transforming love.  For You are a new creation in Christ Jesus.

Sermon Contributor Jeff Smead

The Lords Church is Different

Matthew 18:16

Good to see each of you out this morning. This morning I would like to bring you a sermon that has been titled, The Lord's Church is Different. The Lord's Church is Different.

So while sad, it's very fascinating to know that the workers of Satan if I can use that term, are very hard at work trying to destroy that which God deems to be important and dear. Institutions like marriage, of course we can include the family, I'll mention that, and of course the church. Satan’s workers use various tactics in their efforts to destroy the institutions that God has established, institutions that He deems very important.

One way Satan tries to destroy the effect of the role of these institutions is to lead people to believe that they're no different than the counterfeits that Satan tries to institute. For example, Satan’s workers would try to convince the world that same-sex marriage is no different than the marriage between a man and a woman. If you understand why the Lord limited marriage to or for a man and a woman, you know that there is a difference between same-sex marriage and the marriage between a man and a woman. It makes a difference.

Finally, no surprise, those who serve under Satan want people to accept the same type of message about the church of Christ, the church that Christ established, Matthew 16:18. But there is a difference. The church is different. The Lord's church, first of all, I have to say, is not a denomination. It is un-denominational.

In other words, it is not divided. It is not divided, scripturally speaking. In our society, people are accustomed to thinking of the church as a denomination. Reading the Bible one cannot come to that conclusion.

The church is neither, as we understand it, is not Catholic, nor is it Protestant. What were the first century Christians considered? They were considered just simply Christians. They weren't considered to be Catholic, nor were they considered to be Protestant, meaning congregations or churches, as we understand, like the Lutheran, the Baptist church, which I came out of, the Methodist, the Presbyterian, etc.

Catholicism is not or didn't develop until about the 6th century, around 606 A.D. Protestantism didn't come about until centuries later. Therefore, denominations came hundreds of years after the Lord's church was established.

Denominations came about only, notice this; they only came about because of sin. Therefore, real Christians, in a Biblical sense, cannot be members of the denominations.

I want you to follow with me the Scriptures. Not with what I'm saying, but follow me with the Scriptures. The Lord's church is superior. The church we find in the Bible is superior to denominations. Why? Why is the Lord's church superior to denominations? Because the Lord's church was started by Christ, and it was paid for by His blood. Matthew 16:18, Acts 20:28. It has a divine origin, right? Denominationalism, on the other hand, they were started by men. We will get into this a little further later.

They have human origins. Before any denomination existed, the church of Christ, the church that Christ established, was already established. Acts chapter 2:22 and 47, and then Romans 16:16.

Some Scriptures, I would encourage you to pay close attention to some of these words, or these words, period.

“Now, the parable is this. The seed is the word of God.” (Luke 8:11).

“But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it and bring forth fruit with patience.” (Luke 8:15).

“And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.” (Acts 11:26).

“Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.” (Acts 26:28.)

“Salute one another with a holy kiss. The churches of Christ salute you.” (Romans 16:16).

Notice these Scriptures. These are very important principles here.

“And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth, and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass and herb, yielding seed after his kind. The tree yielded fruit, whose seed was in itself after his kind. And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:11-12).

Last, “but be not deceived, God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”( Galatians 6:7).

Today, if we preach the same gospel, urging people to submit to the same commandments given by the apostles, everybody that obeys will only be Christians. Why? Because the seed of the kingdom is the word of God. Luke 8:11.

The good soil, is the honest and good heart. Luke 8:15.

When the same word of God is preached, it will only produce Christians like those in the first century. The law of reproduction is consistent. A seed only produced after his kind.
You reap what you sow. A corn seed only produces corn. An apple seed only produces apples. Watermelon seeds only produce watermelon seeds. The seed of humans, the man and the woman, they only produce other humans.

The seed of the kingdom, the seeds of the citizens of the kingdom only produce Christians, not members of denominations, neither Catholic nor Protestant. In the New Testament, you cannot find a seed, or the word, that produce a variety of churches. Notice that, a variety of churches that's contrary to the law of reproduction. You cannot find it in nature, nor can you find it in the spiritual realm.

There is one church.

Notice these scriptures. Matthew 16:18, I already mentioned that. There we find that Jesus said, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Then Acts 2:38, says, “Then Peter said unto them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sin. And you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, or the Holy Spirit.”
“Then they that gladly received his word were baptized, and the same day there were added unto them about 3,000 souls,” (Acts 2:41).

Verse 47 says, “Praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily, such as should be saved.”

Then, “but we are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren, beloved Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to be used to salvation through sanctification of the spirit and belief of the truth, whereunto he called you by our gospel to obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ,” (2nd Thessalonians 2:13-14).

In Colossians 1:13, “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son,”

“Then tidings of these things came unto the ear of the church, which was in Jerusalem, and they sent from fourth Barnabas that he should go as far as Antioch” (Acts 11:22).

Just a couple more, 1st Corinthians 1:2, “Unto the church of God, which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ call to be saints with all that in every place called upon the name of Jesus our Lord, both theirs and ours.”

Finally, 1st Thessalonians 1:1. There we can read what was written unto the church by; “Paul and Silvanus and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians, which is in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be unto you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

What we want to know about the church, the New Testament must be our standard.

The New Testament must be our standard. It's not the church manuals, not the statement of faith like I had when I was in the Baptist church. They had a statement of faith right behind the pulpit. You could read what the church stood for. They did not have the Bible there. They had a statement of faith.

The term church basically means a gathering of citizens called out from their homes into some public place according to then. What about the church of the New Testament? The church of the New Testament is composed of people, people that were called out of the world, people that were called out of darkness, people that were called out of the dark sinful world. How are they called out? They are called out by the gospel.

They are called out by the gospel of Christ, by the teachings of Christ himself. Where did the called out or the church begin? The church began in Jerusalem. When Peter preached the gospel on the day of Pentecost, God called those Jews out of the world. Those who gladly received the word were added to the church. From Jerusalem, the church developed wherever the gospel was preached and accepted. Hence the churches in Thessalonica, the church at Corinth, the churches of Galatia, or the church in Rome, “salute one another with a holy kiss. The churches of Christ salute you,” Romans 16:16.

At times when the word church is used, it refers to a congregation in a given area, but when the word churches is used, it refers to the number of churches that maybe Paul or Peter or some other holy writer was communicating with. They were not talking or communicating with denominations, okay? Therefore, the number of congregations in a given area would be referred to as the churches of Christ, like the churches of Christ in Geauga County or the churches of Christ in Stark County or Cuyahoga County. They would be considered the churches of Christ.

One congregation in one area would be called a church of Christ, like this church of Christ in Chardon, Ohio. Chardon Church of Christ. It's local, in a local area. All the saved around the world would be considered the church of Christ universal.

More scriptures: “Unto the church of God, which is Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus. Called to be saints with all that, with all that in every place called upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.” (1st Corinthians 1:2). And then Hebrews 12:23. “To the general assembly and church of the firstborn.”

I will skip and go down now to Romans 16 again. “The churches of Christ salute you”.

Then Colossians 1:24, “Who now rejoice in the suffering for you and fill up that which is behind of the affliction of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church.”

Next Revelations 21:2 says, “And I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”

And then finally, “But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou ought to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God.” You can read that in 1 Timothy 3:15.

What about these various names referring to the churches in the New Testament? Can they be referring to denominations? The answer would be no, not at all. Different names given to the church express the relationship of the church to Christ and to the Father. Okay, the church of God. The church which belongs to God, 1st Corinthians 1:2, and then you have the church of Christ. Of course, the church that belongs to Christ, Matthew 16:18. As we read, “For I will build my church and the gates of hell, should not prevail against it.”

It is the body of Christ, and “He is the head of the body, the church…”. (Colossians 1:18.) “For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. He is the savior of the body.” (Ephesians 5:23). Christ is the head of the body. The body is the church. Therefore, the church is Christ's body.

Then, how about the bride of Christ? We can read in 2nd Corinthians 11:2, I think verse two, “For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy, for I have espoused you to one husband.”

He goes on, And then we can read in Ephesians 5:25-27, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify clans with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish.” Before a wedding, a bride prepares herself to meet her husband to be. I think we understand that in our society. Weddings are a big deal. And like manner, the church is preparing herself to meet Christ Jesus. The church today is preparing herself to meet Christ Jesus, her husband at the second coming.

How about the house of God? Well, scripture says, “but as many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in His name,” (John 1:12). “But he answered and said unto him that told him, who is my mother? Who is my brother? And he stretched forth his hand towards his disciples and said, behold, my mother, my brethren, for whosoever shall do the will of my father, which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:48-50).

“Therefore, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizen with the saints and of the household of God,” (Ephesians 2:19).

“As we have, therefore, opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith,” (Galatians 6:10). The house of God simply refers to those who are God's children, refers to those who are God's children, those who do the will of the father, those who obey the faith, those who obey the father.

Therefore, the variety of names given to the church in the New Testament refers to different aspects of the church’s relationship with Christ and with the father. What about denominations? Let's notice these scriptures, Matthew 15:7-9. It says, “ye hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, this people draw nigh unto me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, notice that, but in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrine the commandment of men.”

What about these words? Verses 13 through 14. “But he answered and said, every plant, which my heavenly father, hath not planted shall be rooted up, let them alone. They be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.” Matthew 15:13-14.

The church of Christ has a relationship with Christ and a relationship with the father. However, what about the Roman Catholic Church, for example? It doesn't have a relationship with Christ or with the father in the scriptures. We do not find that. According to history, the Roman Catholic Church was founded by Boniface III and others who created their teachings, which started around 606 AD.

I believe those people truly worship God. But they worship God, I would argue, in vain because they worship according to the teachings, the doctrine of men. The Father didn't plant the seed or the words that started the Catholic Church. Therefore, the Bible teaches us that such shall be uprooted.

How about the Greek Orthodox Church? It has no relationship with Christ nor with the Father. In the scriptures, you cannot find that name. You cannot find it at all. According to history, its relationships are found with a group that started it around 1053 AD or 54. It was split between, I guess, Pope Leo IX and a patriarch named Michael Cerularius because they excommunicated one another. You have these two different churches. I believe they worship God, but they worship God in vain because their worship was according to the teachings of men. The Father did not plant that church. Therefore, it shall be uprooted.

What about the Lutheran Church? It doesn't have a relationship, with Christ or the Father. We do not find it in the scriptures. You cannot find it there. Its relationship started after, I believe, Martin Luther himself died, by his followers in Augsburg, Germany around 1530 AD. And again, that church shall be uprooted.

What about the Baptist Church that I came out of? The Baptist Church has many branches, if I may say. It has no relationship with Christ or with the father. In the scriptures, you cannot find it in the scriptures. Matter of fact, it does not even have a relationship with John the Baptist himself. It was started about 1607 after, of course, John the Baptist died. Its relationship started with a John but his last name was Smith in London, England. Therefore, the father did not plant it and it shall be uprooted.

The same thing applies to the Seventh-day Adventist Church started by William Miller, 1830, thereabout, in Low Hampton, New York. The Congregational Church, Robert Brown, 1550, in England. The Christian Science Church, Mary Baker Eddy, 1866, thereabout, in America. The Methodist Church, John Wesley, 1739, thereabout, in England. The Presbyterian Church, John Calvin, 1530, in Switzerland. All the other churches we can name. There's hundreds and hundreds of congregations or churches or so-called churches started by men. None of them have a relationship with Christ and the Father and they shall be uprooted.

The Lord's Church is different. Denominationalist churches may look like it, they may sound like it, they may act like it, but they are not it. Chevy, Ford, Chrysler, and other makes, Hondas, Toyotas, you can name it. They may look like Rolls Royces, and they may sound like Rolls Royces. They may perform like a Rolls Royce, but they are not a Rolls Royce. A Rolls Royce is different. If you were to take your Chevy or your Ford, your Chrysler, your Honda, your Civic to a Rolls Royce dealership for repair, you probably would get laughed out of the dealership. Why? Because Rolls Royce does not make Chevys. They do not make Fords. They do not make Chryslers and others. Just because GM, Ford, and Chrysler cars have steering wheels, engines, and tires, and other similar parts, doesn't mean that Rolls Royce will honor the warranties from GM and Chrysler and others.

The same principles apply to the Lord's church. Just because other churches may resemble the Lord's church, doesn't mean that they will be recognized in the judgment by the Lord himself. Or just because some people look like or act like Christians does not mean that Christ will accept them as Christian or his own.

Notice these scriptures. Don't take my word for it. Notice these scriptures.

The Bible says, “Not everyone that says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. But he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? And in thy name cast out devils. And in thy name done many wonderful works. And then I will profess unto them, says the Lord, I never knew you. Depart from me ye that worketh iniquity.” You can find this for yourself in Matthew 7:21-23.

What can we say about this group of people? They sound like Christians. They call Christ Lord. Lord, Lord, they said. Just therefore like many today, they probably have the Christian vernacular down. They sound like Christians. Not only do they sound like Christians, but they also act like Christians. Notice they did many good works. They probably fed the poor. They probably clothed the naked. They probably visited the sick and did much, much more. Then people saw them, they probably said, there's a Christian, but Christ thought differently.

Man probably saw acts of obedience, but God saw partial obedience. Partial obedience does not cut it in the kingdom of God. God deserves and demands complete obedience. What about us? What about you? Have you fully obeyed Christ? If you haven't obeyed the pure gospel of Christ, you cannot be a Christian.

Christ promised to build his church, Matthew 16:18-19. The church was built or was established, Acts 2. Philip preached the gospel as we can find in Acts 8, and Philip preached faith in Christ, no doubt. I'm sure he preached repentance like we find in Acts 17:30. I'm sure he preached confession like we find in Romans 10:9. And I'm sure, and we can see that he preached baptism just like we find in Acts 2:38. In preaching the gospel, Philip preached the kingdom of God.

That is the kingdom of God's dear son. The kingdom believers are translated into, and out of the kingdom of darkness. In other words, the church of Christ, the church that Christ died for. The church believers were added to on the day of Pentecost as in the book of Acts. Acts chapter 2:48, I believe. On Pentecost, they weren't added to the Catholic church. Neither were they added to any of the Protestant churches that we can find today or any church that was started by man.

Therefore, if we obeyed what they called the gospel, you didn't obey the gospel of Christ. They preached a different Jesus. They preached a different church. Notice these scriptures if you don't believe me. For if they come as preaching another Jesus, notice there's more than one Jesus being preached, whom you have not preached. For if they receive another spirit, notice there's another spirit out there, not just the Holy Spirit, which you have not received, or another gospel.

Notice there are other gospels out there which you have not accepted. You might bear with them well. That's 2nd Corinthians 11:4. Read it for yourself. Notice men do preach another Jesus. Notice they preach other gospels. That being true, they also preach another kingdom or another church. Therefore, there is a true Jesus and there is a false Jesus. There is a true gospel and there is a false gospel. There is a true church and there are false churches.

If you obey the true gospel, the question is, have you continued in obedience? If not, you need to consider your ways, repent, obviously confess. So if you're here this morning and you stand and need to respond to the true gospel or to renew your relationship with the Father and Christ, we encourage you to do so as we stand to sing this song of invitation. Thank you.

Don't Blame Me!

James 1:12-15

This morning’s sermon is entitled; DON’T BLAME ME.  I came across this story which tells about the manager of a minor league baseball team who was so disgusted with the center fielder's performance he ordered him to the dugout and assume the position himself.

The first ball that came into center field took a bad hop and hit the manager in the mouth! Now, Remember he's trying to show the player how to do it correctly.The next one was a high fly ball which he lost in the glare of the sun until it bounced off his forehead.

And the third was a hard line drive that he charged with his outstretched arms. Unfortunately, it flew right between his arms and smacked him right in the eye.Furious he ran back to the dugout grabbed the center fielder by the uniform and shouted, “See what you have done. You've got centerfield so messed up that even I can't do a thing with it.”

This attitude is all too often seen in the world around us which is what I believe the reason is that there are so many posters.

When we look around we can often see posters that remind us of the following three ways to fail.

One… complain about everything.

Two… blame others for your problems.

Three… never be grateful

You can spend your entire life blaming the world but your success or your failures are entirely your own responsibility. Or when you blame and criticize others you are in essence avoiding some truth about yourself.

Picture Adam one day out hunting with his two boys and they come up to the Garden of Eden where he and Eve had been kicked out for eating the forbidden fruit.

I can picture Adam staring at the garden and one of his boys saying HEY DAD? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU WHY ARE YOU CRYING.
Adam wipes a tear and says boys that is the Garden of Eden right there. That's where we used to live until your mother ate us out of house and home.

To cover the subject of right and wrong, of good and evil we must go way back to creation, back before the beginning of time. The first two verses of Genesis tells us that in the beginning our road was formless it was empty. It was dark.
Then God stepped in and gave it shape. He gave shape to that formlessness. He filled the emptiness with life and brought light into the darkness.

In other words God took the chaos and created order out of it. We know that the Bible records the days of creation. It tells us that God looked upon everything he had made and what did he say.

It is good.  BUT not everybody was happy. The Bible also tells us about Satan the angel of God who rebelled and because of that he was evicted from heaven and banished to Earth.

Satan learned that he could not overcome God so Satan focused his attack on his next target mankind to whom God had given authority over the earth. Satan's goal is to put chaos back into our world.

It doesn't take a very acute observer to realize that he has been successful in MANY AREAS of our world today. You look around and you can see how confused we have become.

For instance there is confusion about the roles of men and women husband and wife, mother and father. We seem no longer sure what these roles should be. Young people are confused about their place in the family and are often in various stages of rebellion against the authority of their parents.

The rise of homosexuality and transgenders have even ADDED more CONFUSION TO THE SEXUAL ROLES GOD HAD CREATED. There is so much confusion today that We are sometimes asked our biological sex at BIRTH. Abortion tells us that life is not really all that valuable and that euthanasia may become the next big issue that we will probably have to face in this country because we are no longer sure about the value of life.

Satan is bringing chaos into our lives. When we think about what Satan got for a few bites of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. You realize that he really got a lot. It ruined the lives of Adam and Eve and got control of the world just for a couple bites of a forbidden fruit.

Sounds ridiculous doesn't it. Long after the flavor of that fruit was forgotten Adam and Eve are still paying that price for the stupid decision they made. Satan depends upon us making unwise decisions also.

HE depends upon us having a distorted sense of value. He never really offers us very much and in exchange he wants everything from us.

I would like to read from Joshua 7:19-20 - " Then Joshua said to Achan, “My son, give glory to the Lord, the God of Israel, and honor him. Tell me what you have done; do not hide it from me.” Achan replied, “It is true! I have sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel. This is what I have done:"

Achan traded his life for a wedge of gold, and a Babylonian garment. We know that Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of soup to satisfy his temporary hunger.

For one sensual moment with Bathsheba we know David NOT ONLY opened himself up BUT ALSO his family TO GENERATIONS OF MISERY.

Satan is always doing things like this… never offering much.We think we're getting a great deal, a moment of pleasure, a little economic gain, or the applause of the crowd. In reaching for it we discover that we have given up everything. That is how Satan works and when that happens we try to find someone else to blame.

In the third chapter of Genesis we see God coming back into the Garden of Eden following the temptation following the sin of Adam and Eve. Versus 8-13 tell us that the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day and they hid from the Lord among the trees in the garden.

But the Lord called to them. Where are you? Adam answers, I heard you in the garden. I was afraid because I was naked. GOD asked, who told you that you were naked. Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from? What does the man say? The woman you put here with me she gave me some of that fruit and I ate it.

Then the Lord God said to the woman what is it that you have done? The woman said the serpent deceived me and I ate. If we listen closely, don't blame me says Adam. It wasn't my fault. It was the woman you gave me she enticed me to eat of the forbidden fruit.

Eve says don’t blame me. It was a serpent who turned from you he deceived me and I ate.

Most of us when our sins are found out look for a scapegoat, don’t we? It wasn't my fault. It was someone or something else that caused me to become involved in this sin.

Let's look this morning at some ways that we may use to blame someone else for our sins. That's just the way I am. That's how God made me. Have you ever heard someone say that?

A man might have a violent temper. He says I can't help it that's just the way I am, but his whole family ends up suffering from the verbal abuse and maybe even the physical abuse. He says it's not my fault. He has a hurt wife. He has children who run for cover every time he loses his temper, There's nothing that I can do about it.

BUT God constantly reminds us that we are responsible for our own words. We are responsible for our own actions and we will be held accountable for that. We can't pass the buck by saying that's just the way I am. Sometimes we even use that excuse to justify being quiet about things.Maybe we don't want to get involved. That's somebody else's problem. As long as they leave me alone, I'm fine with it. When you finally do break the silence and someone to ask why you acted that way.You answer I can’t help it. I was born that way. That's just the way I am. In other words don't blame me… blame God. God gave me this personality. You just have to accept the fact that this is the way I am.

We oftentimes see in society and don't get me wrong I do feel sorry for individuals that have grown up maybe not knowing what a real family situation would look like not knowing the love their mother or father could give them yet too often we look and try to blame society.

We blame somebody else. Many try to blame some dark family past as an excuse for their own weaknesses and bad decisions. The Bible doesn't allow us to give that kind of excuse, does it? It always says be responsible for yourself.

When Bad events happen in our society we often are told that the one doing the offense can hardly be blamed for his actions since he was only doing what he was compelled to do by outside forces over which he had no influence. The devil or something made him do it. So, the man cannot really be blamed.

I want you to notice that the Bible never teaches that sin comes from GOD.

1John 3:5
You know that He appeared [in visible form as a man] in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin

1Peter 2:22-23
22 Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth:
23 Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:

We are told that the Devil is the father of lies. He lies to us. He deceives us. He manipulates us and he tempts us. But why? Why does he deceive? Why does he tempt? Why does he manipulate. The answer is because he can't force. If he could force you to sin there wouldn’t be any temptation that we could avoid. He would just force you to do it.

But he cannot force us to sin. We must choose. It must be a choice of ourselves. We know in James it talks about where this sin comes from. It comes from our own personal desires. You see nobody tied Eve down and forced to eat the forbidden fruit. Nobody forced you to take that first drink. Nobody forced us to be tempted by whatever temptation we have in our life. That temptation that forces us to sin. It's our choice. WAIT! WHAT?If it's our choice then we are responsible for our actions.

When we find that we can't blame the devil Many then try to place the blame on God.  After all God is responsible for everything, isn't he? He is the one who gave me the awful family that I have. He's the one who surrounded me with friends who have led me astray. He's the one who made it impossible for me to have the willpower to say no therefore all too often people say it is God's fault.

What does James say? God never tempts us. It's entirely up to us.

James 1:12-15 tells us "12 Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.13 Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed.15 Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death."

2^nd Corinthians 5:9-10 Paul says "9 Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him.10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."

In other words God says I hold you accountable for your sins. Don't blame someone or something else You… yourself… personally are accountable. That is the bad news.
We also have good news. The Bible clearly teaches that Jesus Christ loved me that Jesus died for me and that his blood can cover my sin.

If I make the right choices the first step is being covered by the blood of Jesus. It is to accept responsibility for my own actions.

As long as I try to find someone or something else to blame then I'll never come to grips with the fact that I am a sinner. I have to come to the place where I will pray God be merciful to me a sinner Jesus taught this in the example of the two that went down to pray

Luke 18:13-14 "
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”"

A man tells of a time when a prairie fire swept across his father's land and burned everything the house… the buildings… the crops… everything.  Later on his dad was walking across the burned ground kicking this object and that. Finally came to a charred piece of something that looked like a stump from a tree. He kicked at it. When he did little baby chicks started running in all directions. He bent over to look and discovered that the charred lump was the old hen, Mama, who had covered her chickens to protect them from the fire. The chicks were still alive, but in the process Mama had given her life for them.

IN A WAY BROADER SENSE That is what Jesus did for each one of us. Jesus tells us in Matthew 23:37 - "37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chicks but you would not come!"

He looked at the masses and said they are like sheep without a shepherd. If only they would come, but Jesus will never force us to come. He is always available.

We know Jesus said come to me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

We know that we are always welcome to come unto him. He will not turn anyone away. The song most everyone has learned when they were younger
Jesus Loves Me This I know.
Why?
For the Bible Tells Me So
little ones to him belong
they are weak but He is strong.

He is always available and right now he waits for you to open the door to invite him to come in.

If there is anyone in need of the invitation this evening will you not come forward as together we stand and sing.

The Light

John 1:9-13

INTRO: Good morning church. Making decisions in the dark can lead to some regrettable consequences. Back in the days before electricity, a tightfisted old farmer was taking his hired man to task for carrying a lighted lantern when he went to call on his girl. "Why," the old farmer exclaimed, "when I when a courtin’ I never carried one of them things. I always went in the dark." "Aye," the hired man replied," and look what you got!"

Previously we saw Jesus described as the eternal Word, the very message of God. In Jesus is life and that life is the light for all people. John came as a witness to the light and we noted the shocking nature of needing someone to witness to the light. The only people who need a witness to the light are the blind, those who cannot see. We observed in our last lesson the shame that people would need someone to point out that there is light. There must be something terribly wrong for someone to have to come and say; there is the light. This suggests our condition of spiritual blindness.

Yet, that was John's very purpose, sent by God as a witness to the light. The world cannot see and John was appointed by God to be a witness to the light. John was not the light, but came as a witness, so that all could believe in Jesus through John’s testimony.

Our text today is John 1:9-13. Please turn there and read with me starting in verse 8, - “8. He (this is speaking of John the Witness) was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. 9. That was the true Light which gives light to every man who comes into the world. 10. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. 11. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. 12. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name: 13. who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

I. The True Light: Jesus is the true light. Jesus was already called the light back in verse 5. However, the author wants to emphasize that Jesus is the genuine light. The word translated “true” (alēthinos) a-lay-thee-nos', refers to what is real and genuine. It is the opposite of what is fictitious, imaginary, simulated or pretended and contrasts realities with their semblances.

A. What John is implying is a contrast between the true light and what is falsely described or falsely offered as the light. John is going to spend a lot of time teaching us about how Jesus is authentic, genuine, the real deal. One of the popular texts that you may know starts in John 15:1f where Jesus states He is the true or genuine vine.

1. Jesus is the true light and we have this implicit thought that He stands in contrast to anything that is held up as light. Consider there are many things that are portrayed to the world as light, that is, something that will bring enlightenment, deliverance, freedom, or release.
2. Philosophy has been touted to be the light as the enlightenment, as your true light. If you would just know this, then you would have understanding. You would have freedom. You would have true knowledge.
3. Various religions and teachings are used to say this is the true light. If you just had enough spirituality, if you could just seek your inner light then you would have this true enlightenment. You could be set free and delivered.
4. No teaching. No opinion. No philosophy. Nothing from man is truly light. Opinions are not the light. Our thoughts are not the light. Our words are not the light. There is only one light and that's what is being set up for us as John pens this gospel.
5. There have been many false prophets and teachers through the centuries claiming to be the light. A fair number in the past millennia, so many claims to “special knowledge” giving light to the soul, but Jesus is the true light.

B. He is the one who gives light to the soul, who gives light to the eyes. Who breathes life into all humanity. That is the picture being given to us. John continues in verse 9, “the true light which enlightens everyone.”

1. Everyone has opportunity to be enlightened by the light. The light did not shine to just a few. The light shines to the whole world. We understand this about light. It is not possible to turn on the light in this room just for me and it not shine for you also.
2. John is saying that this light, this offering that Jesus gives of being set free, of being delivered, of bringing life to the soul,-- was offered to all people. This was an offering to the whole world. It was offered to every single person regardless of race and gender and background. This is a light that shone in the whole of the universe.

C. This was the offering given by God. In Isaiah 49:5 Isaiah records; “And now the Lord says, who formed Me from the womb to be His Servant, to bring Jacob back to Him, so that Israel is gathered to Him (for I shall be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and My God shall be My strength),” The true believers, are referred to here as "Israel," and the wicked and rebellious majority, are called Jacob. In verse 6; “Indeed He says, `It is 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 also give You as a light to the Gentiles, that You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth.' ''”[NKJV] He is saying, “it's easy enough for me to bring you back a remnant of Israel, to bring back the tribes of Jacob. So let's go beyond that. I will make you a light to the Gentiles and you will bring salvation to the ends of the earth.”

1. Jesus is this light. He is the true light to restore Israel and act as a beacon to the nations so that the salvation of the Lord may reach the everyehere. Jesus is the fulfillment of the Messianic expectation of “the coming one.” He is the one who was coming into the world. Jesus is the true light and in Him is life.
2. Well, what happened?

II. Rejection of the Light: John 1:10-11 are probably the most sad, sorrowful and ironic words we read in this gospel. It is a staggering statement that John gives with such simple words here. In verse 10, speaking of Jesus, “He was in the world…”. So here is Jesus.

A. Here's a picture of the incarnation. Jesus comes into the world “…and the world was made through Him…”. Remember we already saw that back in verse 3. Remember what John declared? All things were made through Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. Everything that exists in the world was made through Jesus. There is nothing excluded. He is God. He is divine. He is the eternal word who made all things.

1. Then v. 10 says; “…and the world did not know Him.” What irony! What sorrow! How could this be? His creation should have known Him. He made everything. He created every person, created everything. Now He comes into His world, comes to His own creation.
2. The words are even a little bit sharper in v. 11; “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.” I think the implication is He came to His own people, and His own people did not receive Him. He came to the very people that God had adopted as His own possession. He came to Israel.
3. He came to His very own people, His own nation who He had established in the days of Abraham, making a promise that it would be through Abraham, through His descendants, through that lineage, that all the nations of the earth would be blessed. God kept that covenant and continued that promise all the way down.
4. Now here we are in the first century as John writes these words. John says, Jesus has arrived, He is the Messiah. He is the light and He comes to this nation. He comes to His own people and His own, the very people that were adopted by God as Israel; do not even know who He is.

B. This was the message of the apostles throughout their ministry, as seen in the very first recorded sermon. Acts 2:22-23 – “"Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know. Him, being delivered by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death;” Israel rejected its Messiah. Israel rejected the light. Israel rejected its Maker. He came to His own and His own did not receive Him.

1. I thought about Stephen’s message. What message did he give? How Israel has been stubborn for all of its history, always rejecting the prophets, always rejecting God's messengers. Then the Son is sent and what do the people do but reject Him as well. How does that story end? Stephen, one of the messengers of God, is killed for proclaiming the message of how they were killing the messengers of God.
2. He came to His own people, His own nation, His own world, His own creation, and His own creation killed Him. His own creation rejected Him and refused to accept Him. There is nothing sadder then the willfully blind.
3. How can we read words like this and not wonder; why would God continue a plan like this? God, when you knew things were going to go like this, knew from before the foundations of the world, why would you continue this plan?

C. As we read in Acts, this is by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God. This isn't an accident. God didn't stop and say, I can't believe they killed Him. He knew that was going to happen.

1. Yet, God goes through with His plan anyway and I think we might rightly be stunned by that. How could you possibly do that? Who would show that kind of love? Who would show that much sacrifice? I submit to you that perhaps, verse 12 contains at least a partial answer as to why God would continue to do this.

III. Receiving the Light: John 1:12 begins, “But as many as received Him…,” In the midst of this sorrowful, condemning statement in verses 10 and 11, There is this small glimmer of hope. Not everyone would reject Him. Not everybody would turn their back on the light. When the light came into the world, not everybody would turn Him down.

A. There would be some who would receive Him; some would go against the trend. There were some, there were a few, who did receive Him. There were a few who saw Him as who He was, as the light, as the life, and they chose to receive Him.

1. Even in the midst of the world's hatred toward God, and even in the midst of His own people and His own creation rejecting Him, God's plan to save people would not be thwarted.
2. He would still send His Son to be the perfect, sinless, sacrifice. God with foreknowledge knew that through Jesus death would come salvation for those who would receive Him.
3. When we think about it, that the very Creator of the world should cast aside the glory of His eternal existence and choose to enter earth life as a man subject to all the inconveniences and limitations of the flesh — is a fact of awesome wonder. Now add to that the obstinate and rebellious refusal of the Lord's creation to acknowledge Him when He came! God was not taken by surprise by man's refusal to know the Lord, for His prophets had faithfully foretold it. The repetition of "world" in these lines dramatizes the marvel of humanity's not knowing Jesus when He came.
4. The words of the apostle in this passage reveal his own grief that Israel, in its major aspect, had rejected the Lord — but not all of them. These words strongly remind one of Paul's words in Romans 9:1-5 where he laments the failure of the people.

B. John, having registered the unbelief of many of the chosen people, next turned to a consideration of those who had received him. In John 1:12 John explains what it means to receive Him. “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name,…”[ESV]

1. Belief is what it means to receive him. As you study John’s gospel it will become apparent that believing does not mean only an intellectual acknowledgement.  He's looking for something far deeper than that. When it describes receiving Him, we are talking about people who accepted Him as the Messiah, as the Son of God, as the Savior, in whom they would put their trust, their full reliance upon Him, and would do as He says.
2. Receiving Jesus means understanding He is the ground of our salvation, the foundation of our hope. It is His righteousness, His perfection, and His love that is credited toward us before the Father. It is the knowing that Jesus is the access to the Father.
3. Even the demons acknowledged Jesus, as pointed out in Matthew 8:28-29. We're talking about people who were ready to give their lives for Him. People who were ready to sacrifice all that they had to be able to be with this One, because He's the Son of God. People who would put their complete life, trust and foundation on Him. That's the picture of receiving Him.

C. Consider John’s implication here. What did it mean for the people to reject Him? It says that He came to His own and His own did not receive Him. What were they doing? It wasn't that they were just saying we don't like Him. What were they doing? They were rejecting everything that He stood for. They were rejecting His very plan. They were saying, you are not sent from God. You're not the Son of God. You're not divine. In you, there is no salvation or deliverance. We will not follow you. We will not believe. Instead, we will resist you.
D. To receive Him is the contrast of that. To receive Jesus, is to believe in Him, then to understand that we will follow Him, that we will accept His message, that we will obey Him and we will go wherever He goes. This is the ground that John is getting at what it means for us to receive the Lord. Sadly, even though some people change their ways when they see the light, others only when they feel the heat.

IV. The Result: Now notice the promise that is being given here in the beautiful text of verse 12— “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name:” That is a very powerful statement to those who did receive Him.

A. He gave something phenomenal. He gave the right to be become children of God. That is a fascinating sentence to me. John says what happens is that you are given the right to become children of God. Jesus being rejected, and dying on the cross is not the end of the story. Not a tragic ending, but a glorious beginning of what God has planned.

1. Here is the grace that is being offered. This word for right, to say that we were given the right to become children of God, can also be understood as the freedom or the authority. This is important with what John is saying. What happened is that for those who did receive Him, there was divine authorization that took place. We were dead in our sins, had no hope of washing them away. But God did what we could not do, and gave us a change of status, a way forward, the opportunity to become Children of God.
2. That's what's really neat about the phrasing of become children of God. There's an imagery here of moving from one status to another status. We have moved out of being slaves to sin. We have moved away from being enemies of the cross or enemies of God, as Romans chapter 5 would describe. Now the authority, the freedom, the right has been given to us that now we can become children. And I think it is so important for us to consider what John is driving at with this.
3. We don't have the right to be children of God. In and of ourselves, by our own actions, we have no right, no authority, no freedom whatsoever to become His children. This is something that only God can do.
4. The privilege of being a child of God is the greatest privilege afforded by life on earth; but even when people have complied with the conditions antecedent to the gift, no one can ever be considered as deserving or meriting so marvelous a gift. Conditions there certainly are, else salvation would have to be universal; but when all conditions are complied with, the sinner is still saved by God’s grace.

B. We are full of sin. We have no rights. We have no freedom, for we are enslaved to sin. We have no authority for anything before God. We are like the prodigal son, in that we have gone astray and we should be just like the prodigal son who says, I have no right to be a child, I should just be a slave. That is where we stand before Him.

1. We have nothing to stand on before God. But God says I will give access, I will give authorization I will give the right to become children of God, to those who receive the Son, to those who accepted Him, to those who put their full faith in Him and obedience to Him. There is a change of status that occurs. That is why John says “the right to become” not “the right to be.” We are moving from darkness to light.
2. The author of this gospel will describe this change as passing from death to life (John 5:24). We have been given the privilege to become the covenant people of God. Jesus has granted the authority to belong as His children.

C. John 1:13 starts out with “who were born…”. Then John describes how we become children of God and in doing so he first eliminates some things.

1. First he says “who were born, not of blood,…”. That's not the way you are given this right, you are not part of this by blood. I believe this clearly drives at the way the Jews perceived their state before God. This idea that we are the chosen people, we are the Israel, and therefore because of our physical status of being born through Abraham and tracing it back to Abraham, we are the children of God. John the baptizer's words were so forceful when he said “…For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.” (Matthew 3:9, Luke 3:8). This is not a promise given to physical Israel alone, nor was it a promise that even physical Israel would receive alone. It has nothing to do with blood-line. It has nothing to do with lineage. Being a physical descendant of Abraham did not provide the authority or the right to be children of God.
2. Next John says, “… nor of the will of the flesh…” I suggest John means there is not any external thing that we can do to authorize us to be children of God. No action on our part. What great merit will we stand on before God and say, I'm so good that you have to make me a child of God? Nope, our wickedness and our violations before God leave no room for that.
We are outside the covenant that God has made because we have broken that covenant. That is a point that Paul so accurately drives up in those first two chapters of Romans, condemning all people, reminding them of their condition before God, and that the wrath of God has been revealed against all ungodliness and all unrighteousness. There is nowhere that we can point to on the ledger and say, here's the thing that authorizes me to be a child of God.
3. Third John says, “…nor of the will of man…” It does not matter how much we want to be in a relationship with Jesus. Every one of us still have a problem. All of us have a sin problem. All of us stand condemned. No matter how much we desire God, no matter how much we want to have a relationship with Him, our condition before God does not change. That's why Paul's words are so powerful in Ephesians 2 when he says we are dead in our sins. There's no changing of that condition without those first two words in Ephesians 2:4, “But God…”. Here John says, “who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

D. We need God to change our condition. We need to be authorized to be able to have this relationship. Bloodline will not authorize us or give us the right to be children of God. Doing certain works will not authorize us to be children of God. We could have desired it with all our heart.
If God had not sent His son to die on the cross, it would not matter. We needed Him to act first to be able to give us the hope to be able to have the access to God. It's a critical picture. We needed God to act first. 1^st John 4:19 “We love Him because He first loved us.”

CONCLUSION: We are born of God. This is God’s doing. God has done through Jesus what no one could do. We needed help and that is why the Light was sent into the world. Only the blood of Jesus is able to move us from the status of dead in our sins to children of God. Our heritage does not move us from death to life. Our desire does not move us from being dead in our sins to being children of God. No system of works can change our state before God.
The concept of being “born of God” is an important theme in John’s writings. In this gospel, John will explore the idea of being born of God more thoroughly in chapter 3 when Jesus speaks with Nicodemus. Being born of God is the way to transition from darkness to light, from death to life, from dead in sins to children of God. Receiving Jesus is the only way to become children of God. Jesus is the true light. By His will and His life it is possible for us to become children of God. But we must receive Him, which means that we surrender our lives to follow Him because He is the foundation of our faith, our hope, and our very lives. Since we are born of God, notice what John says in his letters about how such people live.

“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.” (1^st John 5:1 ESV)

“No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.” (1^st John 3:9 ESV)

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.” (1^st John 4:7)

Knowing what God has done for us through His Son leads us to no longer practice sin, love each other, and to strive to live up to the great privilege of being His children.

We are about to sing the song of invitation. The invitation is a call open to everyone to make themselves right with God. As a Christian if you need to change, ask God’s forgiveness. If you need our prayers, we would be glad to pray with you and for you. If you need to be baptized into Christ, don’t continue to hide in the darkness of this life without the light of the Lord, for there will come a point, as Mark taught us last week, when Time Runs Out.

Whatever you need we invite you to come as we stand together and sing.

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Reference Sermon: Brent Kercherville

Before Time Runs Out

Ephesians 5: 15–16

Did you realize all the things we do with time?
We “MAKE” time,
and we TAKE time, for things that are important to us.
We “SAVE” time with all kinds of gadgets and doodads.
We “MARK” time,
we “KILL” time,
we “RACE AGAINST” time.
AND (someone noted) that the worst thing you can do with time,
is “WASTE” time.

One little girl complained to her mother after her first WEEK at school
“I’m wasting my time. I can’t read,
I can’t write—
and they won’t let me talk!”

Our text for today is Ephesians 5:15–16
"See then that you walk circumspectly,
not as fools but as wise,
redeeming the time,
because the days are evil."

We may think that Paul was SIMPLY saying
don’t waste your time. But it’s more than that.
The Greek word Paul uses here is “exagorazo”
which means to “REDEEM” the time.
It’s the same word Paul used in Galatians 3:13
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law,
having become a curse for us--for it is written,
"CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO HANGS ON A TREE--"

To REDEEM means - to purchase, to buy,
to obtain by making a payment.
Paul is telling us that our time is so crucial,
so critical, that we must treat it like
a valuable and precious commodity that
MUST NOT be squandered and wasted.

We must redeem the time (he says) - but why?
What’s so critical about time that it must be redeemed?
Most of us would think the reason time is valuable
Is because we only have so much of it.
Sooner or later, we’re all gonna die.
Now, if you’re blessed you may live 80 or 90 or100 years,
but sooner or later your time is gonna run out.
So don’t waste your time!!!

But that is not really what Paul says here.
“Redeem the time... because the days are evil.”
What does that mean?
Well, think about it this way.
Do you have a bucket list?
A bucket list is a list of things
you want to do before you “kick the bucket.”
And what people have on their bucket list
tells you a lot about their priorities.

They may want to go to Europe,
or make a “Hole In One”,
swim with dolphins,
go deep sea fishing,
meet a famous person
or jump out of a plane.

There’s all kinds of things you could put on your “bucket list” –
and there’s nothing wrong with those things
(except maybe jumping out of an airplane).

God has some BUCKET LIST items for Christians
to add to their list:
1. Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father through him (Colossians 3:17).

2. Pray without ceasing (1^st Thessalonians 5:17).

3. In everything give thanks (1^st Thessalonians 5:18).

4. Lay hold on eternal life (1^st Timothy 6:12).

5. Be not ashamed of the testimony of our Lord (2^nd Timothy 1:8).

6. Hold fast to your profession of faith without wavering (Hebrews 10:23).

7. The just shall live by faith (Hebrews 10:38).

8. Forsake not the assembling together each Sunday (Hebrews 10:25).

9. Despise not the correction of the Lord, for whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives (Hebrews 12:5–6).

This is just to mention a FEW
BUT what is that ONE THING
we must not leave off our bucket list?

Ephesians 5:17
“Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”

This parallels with what one of the WISEST MEN ever in history
(King Solomon) concluded in Ecclesiastes 12:13
"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. Fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man".

Paul continues in Ephesians 5:18
“ do not get drunk with wine, for that is sin,…
but be filled with the Spirit”
What? What’s he talking about here?
Well, he’s saying that in order for us
to fully understand God’s will,
we must be totally controlled by God’s Spirit.
And then he makes an odd comparison:
“don’t get drunk on wine” he says.
That seems illogical until you understand what he’s trying to say.

Have you ever seen someone who’s been drunk?
How can you tell if they’re drunk
if you never saw them take a drink?
Well, you can tell they’re drunk by how they walk,
by how they talk, by how they think
and by how they act.

Everything about their drunkenness
is obvious by their behavior.
They are FILLED with alcohol... and it controls them.
By contrast Paul says,
don’t be filled with alcohol (don’t get drunk)
but be FILLED with the Spirit.
In other words, the Spirit should so fill you
that it controls how you walk and talk
and how you think and act.

That is crucial for Christians –
we need to be so filled with the Spirit of God
that people know it when they see our behavior!
So, how do we get FILLED with the Holy Spirit?
Well, first we need to understand
that we already have the Spirit inside of us.

Acts 2:38 promises us "Repent and be baptized every one of you
in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins,
and you will receive THE GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.”

Ephesians 1:14 tells us –
God’s Spirit “is THE GUARANTEE of our inheritance
until we acquire possession of it,
to the praise of his glory.”

You can’t be a Christian without
God’s Spirit inside of you.
So, first we need to realize
we already have the Spirit inside of us.
But here in Ephesians it says
we need to be “refilled” with Spirit.
What’s that all about?

Well, first let’s examine what Paul tells us to do,
and then I’ll try to explain WHY this is so important.
First, Paul says that in order for us to be filled with God’s Spirit
we need to... SING.
We should be “addressing one another
in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart” Ephesians 5:19

One group that I particularly enjoyed listening to
was a trendy folk group called “Simon and Garfunkel.”
As I listened to their music more critically,
I discovered that one of their songs went this way:
“I have no need of friendship,
friendship causes pain,
it's laughter and it's loving I disdain...
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb,
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock - I am an island.” (I Am A Rock).

It’s a Great song... but really depressing.
Another song declared: “Hello darkness my old friend .....
I’ve come to talk to you again!”
The Bible teaches us that music has
a spiritual power over the Spirit world!
One of the greatest singers in the Bible
was a little shepherd boy named David.
The book of Psalms is a collection of 150 songs
(or Psalms) that the Jews sang,
and David wrote half of them.

He was so good at singing
that people began to pay attention
long before David ever confronted Goliath.
In the meantime, King Saul (the King of Israel)
had decided to stop listening to God
and run his kingdom his own way.

So, God withdrew His Spirit from him
and the King became plagued with an evil Spirit.
He plunged into depression,
and that EVIL SPIRIT tormented King Saul so much
that (on the advice of one of his friends)
he sent for David to sing for him.

Music has power over evil.
And it has the power to bring peace to my heart and soul.
So, when you’re depressed or struggling –
find a song that glorifies God and sing it.

One song we could sing
in most any situation in life is
“This World Is Not My Home.”
“This world is not my home, I'm just a passing through.
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue;
The angels beckon me from heaven's open door.
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore.”
The chorus “O Lord, you know I have no friend like you,
if heaven's not my home, dear Lord what will I do?
The angels beckon me from heaven's open door,
and I can't feel at home in this world anymore.”

Now, it doesn’t matter if you can sing well
Or with much power. The point is:
find a song that glorifies God... and sing it.
Use the power of GOD’S music to lift your soul
out of despair and sadness.

Secondly - Paul tells us,
that in order to be filled with God’s Spirit,
we need to be “giving thanks always
and for everything to God the Father
in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” Ephesians 5:20

Now, quiz time: HOW OFTEN do should give thanks? (ALWAYS)
and FOR WHAT should we give thanks? (EVERTHING).
There’s a lot of people who have a hard time doing that.

Rudyard Kipling was a great writer and poet
who made a lot of money for his writings.
One day a newspaper reporter came up to him and said,
“Mr. Kipling, I just read that
somebody calculated that the money you make from your writings
amounts to over a hundred dollars a word;
Mr. Kipling raised his eyebrows and said,
“Really, I certainly wasn’t aware of that.”

The reporter cynically reached down into his pocket
and pulled out a one hundred dollar bill
and gave it to Kipling and said,
“Here’s a hundred dollar bill, Mr. Kipling.
Now, you give me one of your hundred dollar words.”
Mr. Kipling looked at that hundred dollar bill for a moment,
took it, folded it up, and put it in his pocket
and then smiled and said, “Thanks.”

He’s right! The word ‘thanks’
is certainly more than a hundred dollar word.
I would say it is more like a million dollar word.
Thank you is one word that is too seldom heard,
too rarely spoken, and too often forgotten.
If we would all adopt an attitude of thanksgiving into our lives –
our lives would be changed. We would cherish each day.

Studies have been done over the years
where people have been asked to
write down 10 things they’re thankful for
and after an extended period of time
the list is sadly too often still incomplete.

Many people become so negative
they struggle to think of 10 things they’re thankful for.
BUT, when given a tablet of paper
and asked to write down things they were unhappy about,
or disappointed with,
or frustrated about,
they could fill out an entire tablet of paper... and ask for another.

Why?
Why are they so unhappy?
Well, because most folks aren’t used to
being thankful for what they have.
For example, they don’t express thankfulness
for the fact that they have 2 hands.
Why should they? They’ve ALWAYS had those two hands.

And they’ve always had the ability to run
and laugh and hear and see and sing.
Why be grateful for those things?
By contrast, these folks tend to focus instead
on what they DON’T HAVE.
They dwell on the wanting of a better job,
or a better car, or a better spouse,
or a better ... whatever.
And that’s why they’re so depressed –

there is ALWAYS going to be stuff that they don’t have,
or that they can’t possess!
So they end up being miserable/unhappy people.

Philippians 4:4-7 says “Rejoice in the Lord always;
again I will say, rejoice...
do not be anxious about anything,
but in everything by prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
And the peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding,
will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Learn to be grateful for what you have
(and quit focusing on what you don’t have)
and you’ll be so filled with God’s Spirit
that it will change how you think and how you behave.
And the world around you will notice.

This was the key to Tom’s lesson last week:
Jesus is the Light,
We are to reflect that light,
AND let our light so shine before men
THAT they may see our good works…
And GLORIFY our Father who is in Heaven.

CLOSE: I want to close by explaining
WHY it’s so important to be “Filled” with Holy Spirit.
The Bible tells us that Spirit is a very powerful force.
He teaches us, He comforts us,
He helps us in our prayers
when we don’t know what to say.

Romans 8:11 tells us that We have the same power living in us...
that raised Jesus from the dead!!!!
“If the Spirit of Him who
raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead
will also give life to your mortal bodies
through his Spirit who dwells in you.”

Being “filled with the Spirit” is all about
laying hold of the full power of the Spirit
God has given us.
You see, for the Spirit to operate fully in our lives,
we’ve got to make our hearts decent places for Him to reside.
For example, let’s say I invite you to come to my house.
But when you come in the door,
the first thing you see is my clothes scattered everywhere,
dishes are piled high in the sink
and papers are covering the counters.
I have cats all over the place... 3 or 4 of them...
and I have not cleaned up after them for weeks.

Now, how comfortable are you going to be?
How willing will you be to spend time with me?
Not very.
The same is true for having the Spirit FILLING our lives.
If we don’t clean up our lives
by filling our hearts with singing
and praise and such,
God’s Spirit is NOT going to feel
real comfortable with you.
But when we learn to sing songs
about God’s glory,
train our hearts to be grateful
and filled with thanks
THEN God’s Spirit can be COMFORTABLE inside us,
and be able to work His POWER
fully in our lives.
But that’s only if you’re a Christian.

If you don’t belong to Jesus,
His Spirit isn’t going to be inside you.
That’s why we need to respond to His free gift of salvation
as Acts 2:38 tells us
"Repent and be baptized every one of you
in the name of Jesus Christ
for the forgiveness of your sins,
and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Sermon Contributor : David Dykes

The Witness

John 1:6-8

INTRO: Good morning church. In our first lesson from John’s gospel we noticed in the prologue where he introduces Jesus; that Jesus is the Word, He is the eternal God who reveals the message and character of God. Jesus is the creator of all things and nothing was created without him. Further, in Jesus is life. If we are not in Jesus, we are dead. We are dead in our sins, separated from God, and have nothing. In Jesus is life and also, Jesus is light. Through Jesus we have light in the darkness of this world to know the way to the Father. John introduces his gospel with these great themes in the first 5 verses.

I. John The Witness: In recap, the first five verses have revealed the eternal Word of God. The prologue is all about the eternal Word who is the eternal life and eternal light. Now we continue in John 1:6-8 – “6. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. 8. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.” John sets about telling us about a man named John.

A. This sudden change has caused a lot of writers to try to figure out why John put verses 6 through 8 at this point because it really feels out of place. If one was to skip these verses and read from verse 5 to verse 9 it would read this way; “5. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. 9. That was the true Light which gives light to every man who comes into the world.” We might wonder; “Why did you put this about John in this location?” I strongly suspect that it is intentional by the writer.

1. The first 5 verses are about the eternal nature of Jesus, calling Him the Word. He is the very message of God. He is light and life. He is equal to God in every way, fully divine, fully God. Everything that was made, He made. There was not anything made that wasn’t made by Him.
2. In verse 6 – “There was a man…” We've gone from Jesus as the word, the eternal God, the revealer of God, the revealer of light and life, to now… here's a man. He's an important man, but he's just a man.
3. The synoptic gospels describe him as “John the Baptist”, for he baptized people and preached repentance. That is our common way of understanding him. But in this gospel the author does not call John - “the Baptist.” I think that is interesting. In this gospel John is called - “the Witness” and that is his primary importance, not as the baptist but as the witness.

B. As we begin this part of the text we notice a key word describing this man in verse 6, that word is “sent”. Verse 6 tells us of the commission of John. John did not come about his task on his own accord. John was “sent from God”. John was divinely commissioned to be a spokesperson.
C. We find the next key word in verse 7, the word, “witness”. John is a human witness sent from God. He came to give his witness or testimony concerning the light. Keep this in mind: John’s purpose is “… to bear witness of the Light…” This is very important to the theme of John’s gospel. Bearing witness only occurs a few times in all three synoptic gospels combined. However, bearing witness occurs 33 times in John’s gospel.

1. You will recall what we read last time in John 20:30-31 where we are told of the objective that the author has in this gospel. “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.” This gospel is the testimony, the witness, to prove Jesus is the Son of God.
2. John is the Witness with the purpose to testify of Him. It is his job to testify that Jesus is the light. He is going to be the witness of that. Jesus is the Son of God, and John is making that declaration.
3. John has a very specific role. When the true light comes, it is his job to recognize the true light and then go about pointing everybody to the light and say, He's the light, He's the true one, He is the word, He's the lamb.

D. The purpose is clearly stated in verse 7. “This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, (and now here is the reason) that all through him might believe.” John came as a witness so that all might believe through him. His job is to point everybody to the light so that everybody will believe in Jesus through the testimony John gives. The work that John is going to do is to bring about faith and belief in the people who listen to him so that their faith is in Jesus.

1. The author is not saying that all would believe through Jesus. Jesus is the object of our faith. Jesus is who we believe in. John would function as a witness to the light so that people would believe that Jesus is the Son of God.
2. Through John’s witness people were to recognize that Jesus is the light and therefore believe in Him.
3. John’s role as the witness was to recognize the true Light when it appeared and call attention to it. This belief is not merely acknowledgement, which we will notice throughout this gospel. Believing in Jesus means to recognize who Jesus is, to put one’s trust fully in Him for deliverance, and commit one’s self completely to the Light.
4. If you will, John as a witness is a recruiter for the light. His testimony is to bring people to recognize the light. That's an important purpose. When we get to verses 19-34 we're going to see John at work. We will read about what he does and we should ask; is he fulfilling his obligation, fulfilling his divinely commissioned charge as pointing people to the light? This is what our apostle John, the writer of this gospel, is describing for us as an important role.

E. Before we leave verse 7, I want us to consider a few things. First, I want to talk about belief. One of the things that we will notice in John's gospel is he's going to spend a lot of time talking about belief. We saw that is the purpose of John’s gospel as we found in John 20:30-31.

1. The goal of John the apostle in writing this gospel is that all will believe that Jesus is the Son of God. And as we read in verse 7 the purpose of John the witness is to cause belief so that all will believe that Jesus is the light.
2. Let’s go to our most famous passage that everybody knows. John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Belief is everything in this gospel.
3. John’s goal is for people to recognize who Jesus is, to recognize Him as the light, to recognize Him as the true and living God, recognize that they are to commit to Him. That is calling for a dramatic life change.
4. To know Jesus is the eternal word, the true and living God, light and life, such that people will not only believe Him, but obey Him, serve Him and surrender their lives to Him. This is what the apostle here is describing as belief.

II. Witness to the Light: A witness to the light. Do we recognize the irony of this statement? It is truly shocking. Why would someone have to bear witness to the light?

A. If we were to turn out all the lights in the room at night so that it was pitch black, and someone were to turn on a light, no one would have to testify and tell people that over there is the light. If I turned on a light, would I have to tell you that there is a light? You would know that there is a light that is on. You would be able to see the light.

1. Nobody in the morning runs around the Earth and says, “Hey, by the way, folks, there's the light.” No kidding. We see the light. There it is.
2. Who would need someone to testify, to give witness to the light? — Only people who can't see… This is at the heart of what this gospel is about. Only people who cannot see, people who are spiritually blind, need somebody to point and say, “There's the light.”

B. People who cannot see, people who have been in the darkness for so long, that they cannot recognize light or comprehend what light is. Remember in John 1:5 we noted the dual nature of John’s declaration: “And the darkness did not overcome it” also means “the darkness did not comprehend it.” Jesus is the light shining in the darkness.

1. The word we translate as “overcome” or “comprehend” we can look at both ways. One aspect of this is that Jesus is the light and the darkness does not win. Darkness will not overcome light. Light always overcomes darkness.
2. Another aspect is the darkness doesn't understand. There is this spiritual blindness that is at work. As we go through this gospel, we're going to observe a number of places where John seems to intentionally use ambiguous, dual meaning words, because he wants to capture both ideas. I think this is a spot where the idea of light not being comprehended works. Why would you need John to be a witness to the light? Because the darkness doesn't comprehend it.
3. The light is shining in this world and people don't get it. John is the witness telling the blind people who live in the darkness that the light is shining and to go to the light. It is John's purpose to grab people by the hand and show them the light and say, “Here is the light so that you can see.”
4. John has come as a witness to tell the spiritually blind, “Here is the light that is shining” and to try to direct people to that light. It's such an amazing statement. To me it is such a curious but implied thing that John, the author here, wants us to understand about the role that is being played. To recognize the spiritual darkness that we are in and the need for someone to point us to the light.

C. Well, John the witness, lives and his job is to point to Jesus saying, “He's the light.” Then the apostle Paul comes along and says… “Do you know what?” As apostles, that's our job, too.

1. Notice what Paul says about the Apostles in 2^nd Corinthians 4:3-6 – “3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. 6 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.”[ESV] The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
2. Paul says, we’ve got a world full of blindness. People are in the dark. They can't see and Satan is at work in this, blinding their hearts, blinding their minds, so that they cannot see the true light.
3. Paul then speaks of the Holy Spirit of which Jesus says in John 14:16 – “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.”
4. Paul says in 2^nd Corinthians 4:6, “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.” There is the who, what and why as people might say.

D. We are blind and in need of someone to give testimony to the light. John was the first witness to the light shining in the darkness. After John, then the apostles were witnesses to the light shining in the darkness. The apostles received the light and gave the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ to the world.

1. Paul is saying, the light of Christ has shone in us so that we may give light of the knowledge of the glory of God. So that we can now give testimony of the light to the world, because the world is in darkness.
2. He is writing of apostolic authority here the Corinthians. Paul says, we have been given something special. We have received that light. We are witnesses to the light. We are bearing witness about the light of Christ so that the world now can come out of that darkness, and they can now come to the light, and they can comprehend and leave that darkness and no longer be spiritually blind—spiritually lost in darkness.
3. We can come to the light through what the apostles’ show us, through their teaching. They were witnesses to this light as well.

E. This problem has not changed even today. People are still blind and lost in the spiritual darkness. They cannot see the light and they need people to point them to the light. The apostle Paul taught that the Jewish nation was to be a nation who brought people from the darkness to the light and were to be a guide to the blind… but failed. (Romans 2:17f) Paul tells them there in verse 19, You were to be a guide…to whom? The blind, and a light…to whom? The world, the nations, yet what Paul said—is they failed.

1. After condemning the Gentiles in chapter one of Romans, he turns to the Jews in chapter 2 and says, you were to be a guide to the blind. You were supposed to lead them to the light of God. You were supposed to show them the way.
2. You were supposed to live your lives in Holiness and Godliness and purity so that people would see the light of God, and they would come and understand Him and learn of Him and come out of that darkness. Paul's charge to them is—you have failed.
3. That's why Paul says in Romans 3, all have sinned. “… For we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. As it is written: "There is none righteous, no, not one;”

F. Listen to the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:14-16 – “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”[ESV] Jesus uses this same imagery and says “You are the light of the world”.

1. As we study scripture we will find this is more than just simply holy conduct. Often when we talk about being a light, what we mean is what we want to do is keep our nose clean, keep pure, don't sin, do what's right. Yes, that's absolutely part of walking in the light. A critical part. If we are not obedient to God and we are not doing as He says, we're not shining lights at all. We're in darkness.
2. There is more to being lights in the world though. It is not only that you will be pure so you can go to heaven, but that your purity will cause others to see the light of Christ and that they will follow him. When we do this we are reflecting the light of God.
3. Our mission is to be lights in the world, showing people the glory of God. The world is in darkness. The world is spiritually blind. They do not see, they do not understand, they do not comprehend. That is why we function as illumination, as we reflect the light of Jesus.
4. I love how Jesus says it in Matthew 5:16, “let your light shine before others…” Why? “so that they may see your good works…” You're going to be doing what is right. You're going to be showing that you are truly living faithfully to God. Why? Still in verse 16, “… so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
5. Paul uses this same idea in Philippians 2:14-15 – “Do all things without murmuring and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world,” The way we live in this world, reflects God’s light, illuminating the wrongs.

III. The Position of the Witness: Finally, notice John 1:8. John was not that light.

A. The author of this gospel wants to make this point abundantly clear so that we do not make a mistake in our understanding of who John is. John is the witness. John is not the light. John came to bear witness to the light. The author wants to emphasize John’s subordination to the light.

1. This first chapter will make this point a number of times. John is not the light and he is in submission to the light. John was sent by God to be a witness. The Apostles were witnesses. They were able to shine as lights because they physically observed, and could witness. They saw and heard Jesus.
2. For us, we are able to say, we are experiencing the light. We are walking in the light. Though we have not seen Him personally like they did, we are able to be lights in the world and show them; here is the way of God. Try to break people free from the grasp that Satan has over their minds and hearts as they dwell in darkness.
3. Successful servants of Jesus understand their proper role: to point to the light. We do not point to ourselves. We do not glorify ourselves. We do not point people to the church. Successful servants of Jesus point to the light. We glorify Jesus. We point people to Jesus. We show people Jesus. As we live, we simply point to the One greater than us. Our teaching must always point to Jesus. Our lives always show glory to Jesus. We must continue to point people to the light. We cannot walk in the light of Jesus and then put that light under a basket, hiding it from others. We must shine.

CONCLUSION: John is not the light and he said as much when he was questioned later in this chapter. He is subordinate to the light. I think that is what John was intending in verse 6. Five verses of; who is Jesus? He's the eternal word. He's the eternal God. He's light. He's life.

Who's John? He's a man. He's sent by God, but he's a man. This is a staggering idea, considering what Jesus will say in the other Gospels. He says there was no one born of woman greater than John. John the Witness, John the Baptizer, Jesus says that there was nobody greater than him. Yet, the writer shows he's subordinate to the light.
He's not the light. As great as he is, he's not the light.

What's John doing? What's he saying? The one who's coming is greater than me. I'm not even worthy to get on my knees, and to use our language, to untie his shoes, to untie his sandals. The greatest one that ever lived, that was born of woman, and he's not worthy. He understood his role… point to the light. That's what his job was all about.

Everything we do needs to point to Jesus. Everything about our lives is about pointing to the light. John, the witness, understood his role. He understood what it was all about. Our job is not to point the world to other Christians. Our job is not to point people to the church. Our job is to point people to the light, to point people to Jesus, because this is not about us. This is all about Him. This is all about Jesus Christ. That's what is critical about our mission.

This isn't about, “Hey, we've got a great group here. We have a great time together. We got a good family here.” Although true that's not what we're here for. We are here to point to the light. When we lose sight of that, we can become insular and forget what our mission and our job is all about. We turn within ourselves. We look at this world and think, “They’re full of darkness, and we don't want to be around them. They're awful, wicked people. We'll just come here, and hunker down, get away.” If we turn inward we've lost sight of our job to be lights in the world.

They're not going to find the light unless we take them by the hand and show it to them because they are blind. They are blinded and will not see it on their own. We must show it to them, grab them by the hand and say, this is Jesus. He's the light you need to see. Open your eyes and look at the great thing that we have before us. Its critical then, as Jesus would say, we don't hide the light.

The darkness doesn't comprehend. John had to be a testifier, a witness, to the light in the darkest of worlds. I know that sounds crazy. The people were looking for the messiah. It should have just been obvious, it should have been like the sun rising. When Jesus came, that should have just been like, “ta-da!” What you will read in the next few verses is they didn't receive it. They didn't get it.

The same is true today. Do not lose hope. Do not give up. Do not tire in doing good and shining your light in this world through your holy conduct, continuously reflecting the glory of God and always pointing to the light.

Pick up your song books for the song of invitation. The invitation is a call open to everyone to make themselves right with God. As a Christian if you need to change, ask God’s forgiveness. If you need our prayers, we would be glad to pray with you and for you. If you need to be baptized into Christ, don’t continue to hide in the darkness of this life without the light of the Lord, for there will come a time when it is too late.

Whatever you need we invite you to come as we stand together and sing.

# 600—Jesus Is Calling
Reference Sermon: Brent Kercherville

DANGER-Don't Try This at Home

2 Timothy 4: 3 – 4

Intro: A rat looked through a crack in the wall
to see the farmer and his wife opening a package.
What food might it contain?
He was aghast to discover that it was a rat trap.
Retreating to the farmyard the rat proclaimed the warning; "There is a rat trap in the house, a rat trap in the house!"

The chicken clucked and scratched,
raised her head and said,
"Excuse me, Mr. Rat, I can tell this is a grave concern to you,
but it is of no consequence to me.
I cannot be bothered by it."

The rat turned to the pig and told him,
"There is a rat trap in the house, a rat trap in the house!"
"I am so very sorry Mr. Rat," sympathized the pig,
"but there is nothing I can do about it but pray.
Be assured that you are in my prayers."

The rat turned to the cow.
She said, "Like wow, Mr. Rat. A rat trap.
BUT…I am in no grave danger."

So the rat returned to the house,
head down and dejected,
to face the farmer's rat trap alone.

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house,
like the sound of a rat trap catching its prey.
The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught.
In the darkness, she did not see
that it was a venomous snake
whose tail the trap had caught.
The snake bit the farmer's wife.
The farmer rushed her to the hospital.
She returned home with a fever.
Now everyone knows you treat a fever
with fresh chicken soup,
so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard
for the soup's main ingredient.

His wife's sickness continued
so friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock.
To feed them the farmer butchered the pig.

The farmer's wife did not get well.
She died, and so many people came for her funeral
so the farmer had the cow slaughtered
to provide meat for all of them to eat.

So the next time you hear
that someone is facing a problem
and you think that it does not concern you,
remember that when
there is a rat trap in the house,
the whole farmyard is at risk.

Back in the Old Testament,
in the book of Jeremiah,
we read an intriguing story of a Jewish King
who didn’t like something God had to say.

The King’s name was Jehoiakim
and God had the prophet Jeremiah write down a prophecy
which condemned the King and his kingdom
because of the evil that King Jehoiakim had allowed to take place. God sent a warning to Jehoiakim and the nation of Judah to repent... or else.

But instead of repenting of his sin
Jehoiakim decided to show his contempt for God’s prophecy.
He ordered a scribe to come into his chambers
and read the prophecy in his presence.
And after the reading of 3 or 4 columns of the scroll
(roughly equivalent to 3 or 4 pages from a book)
the King took a knife and cut off that section from the scroll,
and he crumpled it up and threw it into a fire.

And Jehoiakim did that with the entire scroll
until the whole of the prophecy
had been completely destroyed.
Jehoiakim cut out the sections of the prophecy
he didn’t like... which... was pretty much all of it.

And over the centuries, people have –
to one degree or another –
done exactly the same thing to God’s Word
with their own knives.

For example, Thomas Jefferson created his own
personalized Bible using a similar technique.
Jefferson titled the finished product:
“The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.”
And what he did was,
he took several copies of the Bible
and literally went through the Gospels,
taking a penknife and cutting out
the sections of Gospels that he LIKED.

Then he’d paste those sections he liked
into a journal – and that became his Bible.
The parts he left out …
the parts he rejected were because
he felt those sections were “contrary to reason.”

You see Jefferson was offended by the idea
that God would reach down into this world
and “interfere” with the affairs of men.

So, anything that was mentioned a miracle
was ‘contrary to reason.”
He left out anything that spoke of God’s miraculous power.
Things like:
• the feeding of the 5000
• the various healings Jesus did
• and (of course) the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

More recently … in the 1990s,
about 150 religious scholars
did pretty much the same thing.
They got together in something they called
the “Jesus Seminar” and voted on verses
in the Gospels as to whether certain verses
actually spoke of true events
(as opposed to stories they felt
the Gospel writers had made up).

They voted by the means of “colored beads”:
Red meant - yes, Jesus said or did that.
Pink: The passage sounded like it could have been Jesus.
Gray: Maybe.
Black: Definitely did not happen.
They rejected many parts of the Gospels
they felt were ‘over the top.

For example, they rejected things like
• the passage where Jesus said:
"I am the way, and I am the truth, and I am life
No man cometh to the FATHER, EXCEPT THROUGH ME!
They felt it was “too exclusive”.

The very idea that Jesus would say
that there was no way unto the Father
except by Him was offensive to them.
• And they rejected Jesus’ parable about the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 as being too judgmental.
• And, of course, they rejected
the resurrection of Jesus from the dead
as being too outlandish to be believed.

Now, why would they do that?
Why would these scholars (and Jefferson)
cut away so much of the Bible?
Very simple: they did not believe
ALL SCRIPTURE was God breathed.
TOM’s last 2 lessons from John have dealt with
The extreme importance of the WORD OF GOD!

They believed the Bible was a man-made document
filled with errors and made-up stories.
A “SO-CALLED” religious scholar stated
“if you press a skeptic to name
just 5 errors in the Bible... they can’t.

The Bible is an extremely accurate book.
And in spite of the constant attacks of skeptics
down thru the ages,
it remains the best-selling book in the world.
And the Bible has lasted as long as it has
because it is a GOD BREATHED document.

God literally wrote the WHOLE thing.
Or actually... you could say
He “ghost wrote” the Bible.

Do you know what ghost writing is?
That’s when a celebrity pays a good writer
to write a book in their name.
The book is named for the celebrity,
but their book was actually written
by the ghost writer.
James Patterson does a lot of this.

And that is just what happened with Scripture.
The KJV version of 2^nd Peter 1:21 says:
“... prophecy came not in old time by the will of man:
but holy men of God spake
as they were inspired by the Holy GHOST.”
Did you catch that?

The Holy Ghost (Spirit) was a “ghost writer” of the Scriptures.
• Isaiah may have had his name on the book,
but it was the Spirit that carried him along.
• Matthew may have written the Gospel,
but it was the Spirit that ghost-wrote his book.
• Paul may have written letters to the churches,
but it was the Spirit that dictated the words.

And in 1^st Corinthians 2:13
that’s actually what Paul claimed happened
even when he spoke: “This is what we speak,
not in words taught us by human wisdom
but in words taught by the Spirit,
expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.”

But Paul told Timothy in 2^nd Timothy 3:16-17
the proof of the pudding
is in what Scripture is capable of doing
in the lives of those who read
and are instructed by it:

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
so that the man of God may be
THOROUGHLY EQUIPPED for every good work.”

The Bible has the power to transform us
and remake us even better than before.
David put it this way: IN Psalm 119:98-99

“Your commands make me wiser than my enemies,
for they are ever with me.
I have more insight than all my teachers,
for I meditate on your statutes”

The Bible can make me wiser than my enemies
and smarter than my teachers?
How can it do that?
A philosopher by the name of Vishal Mangalwadi
recently wrote a book called
“The Book That Made Your World”.
He noted that whether you talk about politics or science, education or technology,
the Bible was the key that unlocked the Western mind.

He found that it was the biblical notion
of human dignity that formed the
social structure of western nations like the U.S.

It was the Bible that created a fertile ground
for women to find social and economic empowerment.
It was Scripture that uniquely equipped
Western culture to cultivate compassion,
human rights, prosperity, and strong families.

And that it shaped our very concept
of education and science.
Take Isaac Newton for example.
He made major contributions to mathematics,
optics, physics, & astronomy.
He discovered the law of gravitation,
formulated the basic laws of motion.
He developed calculus,
and he analyzed the nature of white light.
I can’t even understand half the things that he discovered.

But behind all of his science was the conviction
he learned from the Bible.
The key to Newton’s knowledge was understanding that
God had made the universe and that He
made it according to a mathematical structure.
And that God had gifted human beings
with ability to understand that structure

Then there was Robert Boyle –
the father of modern chemistry.
He agreed with Newton.
Because of what Boyle had read in the Bible
he looked at that the universe as being filled
with an extreme degree of order.

He saw this was true because
God ordained laws that guided
everything in our world.
And Boyle believed it was the scientist's duty
to discover what laws God had established.

Then there was Johann Kepler.
His 3 laws for planetary motion
are the basis for our understanding
of the solar system today
and they have shaped how astronomers –
even to this day - view the heavens.

Kepler also believed that there was a
mathematical precision and orderliness in the universe;
and that the scientist's duty
was to discover what mathematical formula God had used.

Because of what he’d learned from the Bible,
Kepler believed that God had created the world
according to an intelligent plan and that
that plan could be understood thru observation and reason.
In fact, he’d read in Scripture that God
encouraged the heathen to look carefully at creation
so that they might come to know God.
So, Kepler strove to prove
the greatness and majesty of creation,
so that mankind could have a deeper
& more powerful worship of their creator.

My Point Is This:
These men didn’t just become wiser than their teachers.
They BECAME our teachers.
Their research formed the foundation
of much of what we call science.

And they formed that foundation
because of their belief in the God of the Bible.
These men believed this because
they believed that ALL Scripture was
God-breathed was useful for teaching,
rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
so that the man of God
may be thoroughly equipped
for every good work.

Scripture changes people.
And it even changes civilizations –
because God has given it the power to do that.

When the Bible is taken seriously… nations change,
cultures change, and people change.
The Bible is the Good News
that transforms all of this.

In fact, that’s what the word “Gospel” means: “good news.”
The Gospel message is full of God’s grace
and God’s forgiveness.
But if the Bible is “good news”
why would anyone want to cut out parts of it?
Well, folks cut away things from the Bible because
the Bible isn’t ALL good news.
Some of the Bible is BAD NEWS for many people.

Just like the judgment on Jehoiakim
(which we talked about at the beginning of the sermon)
the Bible has words of condemnation
and words of warning of God’s impending judgment.
God tells people “you can’t always do what you want to do, because certain things are NOT acceptable.

And if you do those things... there will be consequences.”
For example: 1^st Corinthians says in Chapter 6:9-10
“Do you not know that the wicked
will not inherit the kingdom of God?
Do not be deceived:
Neither the sexually immoral
nor idolaters nor adulterers
nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders,
nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards
nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

People who live these kinds of lives
squirm when they words like that.
This is NOT good news to them.
That’s not what they want to hear.
So they’ll either avoid God’s word
(by NOT reading it/ or NOT going to church)
or they’ll try to find a church
that will tickle their ears.

Or they’ll even cut out the Scriptures
that make them uncomfortable.
These theologians rejected any authority in the Bible
except the things Jesus said
(and even some of that they doubted).
But everything else – things in the Old Testament
and most of the New – were optional.
Even letters written by Paul or Peter or John...
didn’t make the cut.
And I use that term “cut” deliberately,
because these Red Letter “Christians”
are essentially heretics who have
gotten out their penknives
to cut away at God’s word– just like Jehoiakim did.

Now, that’s a VERY dangerous thing to do.
Peter warned the Christians of his day
about messing with Paul’s writings
2^nd Peter 3:14 – 18 14 So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. 15 Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16 He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
17 Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position. 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.

Peter was warning the Christians of his day
(and he was warning us)
• stay away from these men with penknives.
• don’t listen to these folks because
they’ll drag you away from Jesus.

Peter described them as ignorant, unstable people...
lawless men who will be destroyed.
And that’s exactly what happened to Jehoiakim.
God destroyed him.

God told Jeremiah in Jeremiah 36:30-31that
Jehoiakim’s “...body will be thrown out
and exposed to the heat by day
and the frost by night.
I will punish him and his children
and his attendants for their wickedness;
I will bring on them
and those living in Jerusalem
and the people of Judah
every disaster I pronounced against them,
because they have not listened.”

That’s NOT good news.
When men like Jehoiakim
bring penknives to a fight with the Bible
(which is the Sword of the Spirit)
they’re bound to lose.
And that makes sense if you think about it.
If you had a choice of fighting with a penknife or a sword... which weapon would you chose?

And these folks have already lost.
God says they will be destroyed.
But even worse –
the people who listen to them will suffer.
And that’s bad news.
But notice WHY God brought judgment on
Jehoiakim and all Judah –
they “have not listened.”
They refused to love the truth
and so be saved.
That’s why we need to be committed
to standing firm with the Bible.
We do nobody any favors
by trying to water down the warnings
and judgments of Scripture.

ILLUS: There was once a fiery preacher
who often spoke on the subject of sin.
He minced no words, but defined sin as
"that abominable thing that God hates."

Some of the members of his congregation
came to him and urged him to tone down his sermons.
They said: "We wish you would not speak so plainly about sin. Call it something else.
Call it an 'inhibition,' or 'an error' or a 'mistake,'
or even 'a twist in our nature.'"

"Oh," replied the preacher, "I think I know what you mean.
Come with me."
He took them down to the church kitchen,
reached under the sink and
drew out a bottle of cleaning liquid
which had a skull and cross bones on it.

"What you are asking me do is put another label on this bottle. You’d want me to not call it poison,
but something more pleasant... like lemonade.
But that’s not going to happen.
When God calls something sin,
evil, depraved or an abomination,
I will call it by no other name."

The Bible is “Good News”
But there is poison in this world
that many want to pretend won’t hurt us.
God can not give us the good news
of Christ’s love and salvation
if we ignore the dangers of those poisons.

But if we LISTEN to God –
if we realize that God saved us to avoid sin –
then the good news is that He will change our lives.

Remember we read 1^st Corinthians earlier:
“Do you not know that the wicked
will not inherit the kingdom of God?
Do not be deceived:
Neither the sexually immoral,
nor idolaters, nor adulterers,
nor thieves nor the greedy,
nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers
will inherit the kingdom of God.”
1^st Corinthians 6:9-10

That’s bad news.

But in the next verse Paul tells us the GOOD NEWS:

“And that is what some of you were.
But you were washed,
you were sanctified,
you were justified in
the name of the Lord Jesus Christ
and by the Spirit of our God.”
1^st Corinthians 6:11

Based on a sermon given
By Jeff Strite

The Word

John 1:1-5

INTRO: Good morning church. Today we will continue our look at the prologue to John’s gospel. In our last lesson on we noticed John’s foundational teaching that Jesus is God. John proves Jesus is God by showing that Jesus created all things and that in Him is the light and the life. Paul puts it this way in Colossians 1:13-23 – “13. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, 14. in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. 15. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. 18. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. 19. For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, 20. and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross. 21. And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled 22. in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and irreproachable in His sight 23. if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard…”

First I’ll quickly mention some of the background I gave last week. In our lesson we said that this gospel is filled with signs and symbols. John uses these in talking about spiritual life. As we read and study this gospel, it is important to ask ourselves why John is using the sign we read about. It is just as important to consider the distinctiveness of this gospel. John omits many things that are in the other gospel records. Perhaps the most notable of missing elements in this gospel is that there are no parables. While Matthew and Luke are filled with parables, the Gospel of John is not.

John’s gospel records events that the other gospels do not record. Only John records the miracle of changing water to wine. Only John records Jesus’ discussion with Nicodemus. Only John records the woman at the well in Samaria. Consider that only John records the raising of Lazarus from the dead. While the other gospels focus mainly on the teachings and movements of Jesus outside of Jerusalem, John’s gospel keeps its focus on Jesus primarily, in Jerusalem.

John’s gospel contains seven signs, most of which are unique to his gospel. Those seven signs are the water turned to wine, the healing of the official’s son, the healing at the pool, the feeding of the 5000, walking on water, healing a blind man, and raising Lazarus from the dead. The ultimate and final sign is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. There are also seven “I AM” statements made by Jesus that John records. This gospel reflects a great deal of symmetry in its unique way of bringing about faith in those who read it.

The prologue to John’s gospel sets the tone for what John is presenting. We are going to read so much about life and light in this gospel. John’s effort is to prove that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, by showing that Jesus does what God the Father does. This will be a theme throughout the gospel. In these first five verses we see that Jesus is God because He did what God can do: create, give life, and give light. These are activities reserved only for the power of God. Since Jesus did these things, then He is also God.

This theme becomes the lens by which we must study John’s gospel. We should ask ourselves how Jesus’ teachings or actions parallel what we see God doing in the Old Testament; therefore proving that Jesus is God. D.A. Carson makes the same point: “John intends that the whole of his gospel shall be read in light of this verse. The deeds and words of Jesus are the deeds and words of God” (Pillar New Testament Commentary, 117).

As I said, there is great symmetry here, there's clearly an intention behind this writing. I really want to place weight on that. When you approach John's gospel, you are intended to ask why. Why is that story there? What are you trying to tell me with that event or that teaching or that saying?

I. Jesus Is The Word: Let’s begin by examining this – Jesus is called “The Word.” Consider that there are many descriptive terms that the Holy Spirit could have used through John to describe Jesus. He could have been called the light, the life, or some other term. But the term given to the Son of God is the “Word”. What is being communicated by calling Jesus the Word? Last time we mentioned that the term “word” is defined as the basic unit of speech that communicates… has meaning.

A. In keeping with the theme of this gospel, God’s word is what brings things into existence… and brought the world into being. To call the Son of God by the term “the Word” denotes that creative power of God that must have been there in the beginning. The Word must have been there before creation because it is through the Word that the whole universe was spoken into existence.
B. The other important aspect of the Son of God being called the Word is that the Word reflects the one who speaks.

1. A person’s words are the means by which people reveal what they are thinking. You do not know what is in my mind unless I communicate my thoughts to you. What we say and how we say it reveals things about us. Therefore, “The Word” is the revelation of the mind of God. The Word reveals the very nature of God.
2. Jesus is God’s Word for us. Because Jesus is the eternal Word of God, and because that Word became flesh and dwelt among us, we are able to know God. When you see Jesus you know who God is. God is not a “far away”, “we don’t know what he wants”, kind of deity.
3. This is the point the writer of Hebrews makes as he begins his letter. Hebrews 1:1-3 – “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power…”[ESV]

C. I notice the parallels in the beginning of John’s gospel. God has spoken by His Son. The Son is the revelation of God. Through the Son the world was created. Through the Son we are able to see God. He is the radiance of God’s glory. He is the exact imprint of God’s nature. He upholds the whole world by His powerful word. Jesus is the Word because He is the revelation of the mind of God.

1. We can know God because we have the life and teachings of Jesus. This is why Jesus could say, “…Whoever has seen me has seen the Father…” (John 14:9). Could Jesus have stated the fact of His deity any more clearly than here? That is what is being presented in the first 3 verses of John… the Word is God.
2. If we want to know God and know what God is like, then we need to know Jesus. One writer stated it this way, “What Jesus did was to open a window in time that we might see the eternal and unchanging love of God.” Jesus is God’s message to the world. Jesus is God’s teaching, commands, and direction to the world. You can not separate knowledge of Jesus and knowledge of God.
3. You can't see God, but when you see Jesus and get to know Him, only then have you seen the invisible God and know Him. To put it another way, to call Him “The Word”, is to say that Jesus is God's message to the world. It's the revelation of His will, it is the representation of who God is, it is a declaration to all people for all time—this is the very nature, character and will of God Himself. It's a very important beginning point.

II. Jesus Creator, Not Created: The first part of our text has come under great scrutiny, especially by those who claim that Jesus is not the eternal God.

A. The Muslims claim Jesus was not God but a created human being like a prophet. The Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that all of our Bibles are mistranslated.

1. They claim the text should say that “the Word was a god.” In fact, their translation, the New World Translation, has this rendering.
2. The point they make is that there is no definite article in the Greek in front of the word “God.” In the English, "the" is the only definite article; meaning there is only one word used to indicate a specific noun already known. Nouns in English are preceded by the definite article when the speaker believes that the listener already knows what is being referred to.
3. Greek scholars will tell you that there being no definite article is an unacceptable argument because the Greek does not work like the English language. In Romans people try make a difference between “law” and “the law” by looking for the definite articles. That is not a valid approach.
4. By way of reference, John 1:6,12,13, and 18 also do not have a definite article in front of the word “God” but no one renders those verses as “a god.” No one reads, “There was a man sent from a god, whose name was John.” No one argues that John the Baptizer was sent from “a god”. He was sent from God the Father. The argument from Greek is invalid. Rather than take us down the road of Greek, we can defeat this false teaching just by using the text itself because John is making an emphatic argument.

B. John writes in verse 3, “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” If the Word was made or created, as some groups contend, then He had to create Himself. All things were made through Him. This is an important argument that John makes to cinch this up because there was a Gnostic issue in John's day that wanted to try to make this separation.

1. If Jesus, the Word, is a created being, then He must have created himself. If you do not exist, you cannot bring yourself into being. This is a pretty simple idea. How can you make yourself if you do not exist to make yourself? Therefore, if He made everything that was made, then He cannot be made. If He made everything, then He cannot fall into the “made” category. He must be the maker.
2. If He created everything, then He does not fall into the “created” group. He is the creator. It does not matter what Greek you know or what Greek arguments a person may want to present. To say that the Word was created is a direct contradiction of the clear words of this verse. Everything that was made was made by the Word. Therefore, the Word was not made.
3. The typical argument goes something like this; “He was created by God the Father, and then He in turn created everything else.” That is absolutely not what John is saying. John is making an absolute statement, “and without Him nothing was made that was made”.

III. Life, Light, and Darkness: To call Jesus “the light” and “the life” is another way to declare that Jesus is God. These terms were used in the scriptures to describe what God does. The concept of light and life in the Old Testament is extremely important in how it ties to the very nature and character of God.

A. In Psalm 36:7-9 we read, “How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.”[ESV]

1. God alone possesses the fountain of life. We are only able to see because of the light of God. Light and darkness are contrasted in a number of symbolic ways in the scriptures.
2. Light refers to truth (Psalm 119:105) and darkness refers to falsehood (Romans 2:19).
3. Light symbolizes holiness (1^st John 1:7; Romans 13:12; 2^nd Corinthians 6:14) and darkness symbolizes sin (Isaiah 5:20; Acts 26:18). Satan’s kingdom is called the domain of darkness (Colossians 1:13) but Christ dwells in unapproachable light (1^st Timothy 6:16). Darkness stands for death while light stands for life (2^nd Timothy 1:10; Ephesians 5:13).

B. The word of God is often pictured as the light.

1. Proverbs 6:23 – “For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light, and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life,”
2. In Psalm 18:28 it says, “For it is you who light my lamp; the LORD my God lightens my darkness.”[ESV] God's lighting His lamp is a reference to the constant enlightenment available to the faithful in God's Word.
3. You probably recall Psalm 119:105 – “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

C. Until the arrival of Jesus, the light had been put out. Not only was the world full of sin, but the nation of Israel had lost its way and no longer represented the light to the nations as it had been instructed to be. For more than 400 years God did not send a prophet. No one was speaking the inspired word of the Lord. The Jewish nation had been left in darkness because they had turned away from the Lord. Jewish writers of the first century understood themselves to be lacking the light of God.

1. In the Babylonian Talmud, Yomah 9b: “After the latter prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi had died, the Holy Spirit departed from Israel…”
2. Josephus wrote, Against Apion: “It is true, our history hath been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time;”
3. The Jews returned to Jerusalem after the Temple altar had been defiled and we can read of their actions in 1^st Maccabees 4:45-46 “… So they tore down the altar and stored the stones in a convenient place on the temple hill until there should come a prophet to tell what to do with them.”

D. In John 1:5 there is a change. Up to this point the author has used past tenses (imperfects or aorists); now he switches to a present tense. “And the light shines in the darkness,”. The light continually shines and even as John writes, it is shining. It expresses the timeless truth that the “light of the world” never ceases to shine.

1. John 8:12 – “Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.””
2. John 9:5 – “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
3. John 12:46 – “"I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness.”

E. We stand in a great time in human history, along with everyone who has lived once Christ came to the earth. The eternal message of God has been revealed through the life and teachings of Jesus. Further, Christ sent the Holy Spirit to guide His apostles into the full revelation of God’s truth, and they wrote that message down for us.

1. We must not look at the scriptures that we hold in our hands as words on a page. As Peter would confess, “You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). You are holding God’s light in your hands. You are holding life in your hands. The light continues to shine in the darkness. The eyes of your heart can be enlightened and you can comprehend the will of the Lord. Give your full devotion to the word of God. It is the light you need in this dark world. It will restore your soul and give you life if you will let the Spirit’s words reach your heart.
2. This imagery should capture our hearts in understanding when Jesus, who called Himself light, then calls His disciples “lights in the world.” Not only did Jesus preach that we are “the light of the world” in the Sermon on the Mount, but listen to the words of His apostle, Paul.

a. “Do all things without murmuring and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.”[NKJV] Philippians 2:14–16.
b. We have a great charge to be kept. Shine as lights in the darkness of this world by holding fast to the word of life. Live in a way that shows you are lights. Do not let your light be made dim by sin and by the weights of the world that hold us back from shining bright.

CONCLUSION:
In the text we start to see what John wants us to take away from this Gospel. The intention of John right from the very first words is that we will be struck by the recognition that Jesus is God. He is the eternal God. He created everything. That means we are responsible to Him because He is our creator.

Jesus Christ is life. Not only the Giver of life, but He is life. If we are not in Him, if our relationship is not with Him, if we are not pursuing Him, we do not have life. We are pursuing death. We are wasting our time in the things of the world when we do not pursue the ways of God.

He is the light. The Scriptures so often remind us that we were in darkness. We were lost in our sins. We didn't know which way to go. With Jesus, we now can receive light and life. We can now know the way to God. Jesus reveals everything about where we stand before God and what we need to do to be in a relationship with God. I think the biggest point about light throughout the scriptures is that it is the word of God that's light. Again, there is a play on words here; John wants us to understand that by seeing Jesus as the “word”, rather than calling Him some other name or title, is because it is the word of God that is light.

One final thought. With this symbolism of light, we need to consider Paul’s words in Philippians 2:14-16, “Do all things without murmuring and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.”[NKJV]

Jesus in His sermon on the mount says, “You are the light of the world.” Paul connects that to us saying “…you shine as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life …”.

This tells us that we are to be the image bearers of Christ. We are to reflect the glory of God. We are shining lights in this world, not because of who we are, not because of anything innately within us. We shine as lights in this world because we are reflecting the light of God.

We are reflecting the light of Jesus, the word of God who brings life. We are reflections of His light into darkness. God, through His word, tells us how to do that. You notice Paul says, “Holding fast to the word of life”. We do that when we hold on to the word of God tenaciously. When we recognize that our light only comes from the light, the true light, that light is not about us.

Light is not derived from us. We can't come up with what God says. We can't come up with God's rules. We can't come up with, “This is how I want to worship or how I want to do things.” The true light we are going to reflect is the very message and very word of God. We are told at the start of verse 14, “Do all things without murmuring and disputing”. We are to be blameless and innocent.

We are to live out life in a way that we are not obscuring the light of Christ. Through sin, through our various weights and issues that we endure in this life, it is so easy for us to block the light, so easy it is for us to obscure that light.

The light still shines, and we are to be mirrors of that light, reflecting it in every aspect of this world, in every aspect that we reach out, in every area and sphere of influence that we have, we are to be the resounding light that this world needs to come out of darkness.

Pull your songbooks out, and in a moment we'll sing the invitation song. We invite you to come to the light. We invite you to see Jesus is the light of life. He's everything that we need. We are to reflect Him. We are to obey Him and serve Him.
John, in such simple words, with such magnificent imagery, shows us how great a savior we serve, what He has done to draw us out of the darkness and into the light, so that we then in turn shine as lights in the world.
We beg you to come to the light, to turn away from your sins and be immersed in water for the forgiveness of your sins, and then serve Him with all of your heart. Serve Him fully, thinking about how we reflect Him as children of light in this world. That is our focus, and that must be our eternal goal until we are with Him.

Anyway you respond to that invitation to come to Jesus, to obey him and serve him, the opportunity is given to you. Would you come while we stand and sing?

# 642 - I Am Resolved
Reference Sermon: Brent Kercherville

The Incomparable Christ

John 1:1-5

INTRO: Good morning church. Today we will start taking a look at the Gospel of John which is a gospel unlike the other three. This gospel is not a narrative, even though there are narrative stories within it. None of the gospel writers had the intention to write a complete description of the life of Christ according to human principles. Yet, the three first Gospel-writers describe in brief outlines, the coming and actions of Christ from His baptism at the Jordan till His resurrection and ascension - and this is why they are called synoptic gospels.

John’s Gospel is highly symbolic and highly spiritual. As one reads the Gospel of John it becomes quickly apparent that this is not a simple gospel. John’s purpose for this gospel is stated toward the end of his writing in John 20:30-31 – “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”[ESV]

Of the thirty miracles listed in the synoptic Gospels John mentions some, but John also describes other miracles which are not mentioned anywhere else. This adds up to seven miracles however John does not call them miracles, but signs. This purpose statement in John 20 is extremely important to our study.

It is not our job nor should we desire to try to turn this gospel into a synoptic gospel. John is not telling a narration of Jesus’ life. We must appreciate the distinctiveness of the four gospels and especially consider how different John’s gospel is from the other three. John does not give any account of the birth of Jesus. There is no mention of Jesus’ baptism. There is no record of the temptation of Jesus, nor His transfiguration. The appointment of His apostles is not mentioned. The institution of the Lord’s Supper is not found in this gospel. The ascension of Jesus is not recorded. Neither is there a great commission declared in this gospel. Perhaps the most notable of missing elements in this gospel, is that there are no parables.

Further, John’s gospel records events that the other gospels do not record, which must catch our attention. Only John records the miracle of changing water to wine. Only John records Jesus’ discussion with Nicodemus. Only John records the woman at the well in Samaria. Consider that only John, records the raising of Lazarus from the dead. While the other gospels focus mainly on the teachings and movements of Jesus outside of Jerusalem, John’s gospel keeps its focus on Jesus, primarily, though not entirely, in Jerusalem.

As we progress through John’s writing we must recognize that he is not recording everything that Jesus did. He did many other signs in the presence of His disciples. Therefore, as we come to the various signs and stories in this gospel, we need to ask this important question: “Why did John include this sign?” We need to consider what John is trying to teach his audience through the sign he records.

Now just because John is writing so that we believe, should not cause us to draw the conclusion that we do not need to study this gospel because we already believe. I strongly suggest to you that this gospel will deepen and strengthen your faith in incalculable ways when we grasp what John is trying to get us to see about Jesus. John is not looking for mere mental assent about Jesus. The belief that John is looking for…is a life-changing faith. The gospel is intended to cause us to fall on our faces and cry out, “My Lord and my God!”

I. Jesus Is God: Let’s read John 1:1-5 – “1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2. He was in the beginning with God. 3. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.”[NKJV]

A. The first few words of John’s gospel are simply staggering: “In the beginning was the Word.” This is an astounding statement that is made about Jesus. We know that “The Word” is a reference to Jesus because of John 14:1 - “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Also Revelation 19:11-13 – “Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God.”
B. The holy scriptures begin with the words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” John begins his gospel with, “In the beginning was the Word.”

1. An important word in this sentence is “was”. The scripture does not say that the Word became God or came to God. The Word was in the beginning with God. Therefore, just as at the beginning of the creation of the world, God existed, so also the Son, the Christ, existed.
2. John does not wait to get to the heart of the matter. We see no genealogy, like in the other gospel accounts. The reason is clear. John was to start with a very controversial point: Jesus is God. Jesus is not just a man. Jesus is not a mere prophet. Jesus is not a created being. Jesus, the Son of God, the Word, existed in the beginning, before the world began. There is no genealogy recorded because He is the eternal God. He has no beginning. He has no end. At the beginning of creation the Word already existed.
3. Further, to say that the Word was with God is not a statement of mere coexistence. This is a description of intimate fellowship with the Father. It describes a picture of equality as deity in that there is nothing lesser and nothing lacking in the Word in terms of His Godhood. The Word has the very same nature as God the Father. Verse 1 concludes; “And the Word was God …” We might have deduced this truth from either of the two preceding clauses, but the apostle left nothing to chance, categorically affirming in this third clause, that the Word was indeed God. As one commentator put it; “A word, in the primary meaning of the term, is a vessel for the conveyance of an idea; and Christ was the vessel which conveyed the true idea of God to humanity.” Jesus explained it this way in John 14:9 – “… He who has seen Me has seen the Father;…”.
4. Now verse 2 concludes the thought that the Word was in the beginning with God. Where God exists, the Word exists. There is not a time or place when the Word did not exist or when the Word was not God. There are three proofs that John offers in these first five verses to prove that Jesus, the Word, the Son of God, is in fact the fully divine God.

II. All Things Created Through Him: Verse 3 says, “All things were made through Him,…”

A. The Word is equal in nature to God in every way, and John declares all things were made through the Word.

1. When we read that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, John wants us to know that the Word was just as involved in the creation process as the Father.
2. The apostle Paul taught this very point to the Colossians 1:16-17 – “For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.”
3. We are so assured of this truth that John continues, “… and without Him nothing was made that was made.”
4. In the beginning was nothing. Genesis records that it was simply void and darkness. Nothing was made without Him. Jesus is God because He created all things. Consider that this means that He created you. This is a point that will be more fully expressed in verse 11. We are His creation. Therefore, since He is God and He made us, then we bear an enormous responsibility to Him.
5. We find this again in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews 1:1-2 – “God, who at various times and in different ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;” Also in Hebrews 1:10 – “And: "You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands;”

III. Jesus Is Life: The apostle John makes the next stunning statement in John 1:4 – “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”
A. We noted at the beginning of the lesson that this gospel is a highly spiritual and symbolic gospel. When the scripture says that in Jesus was life, is John referring to our physical, earthly breath of life or rather our spiritual life? I suggest John could be referring to both the physical and the spiritual.

1. As the agent of creation, Christ contained all life of every kind. All life came through Christ, is sustained by Him, and that life is responsible to Him. He gave life to the world because He created the world. But He did much more than that.
2. The use of the past tense shows that true spiritual life was in Christ before the incarnation, emphasizing the truth that all of the hopes of worshipers under Israel's law were actually in the Lord Jesus Christ, just as it is with all who ever lived. Physical life came from Him and in Christ there is eternal life.
3. Notice that John did not say that He gave life, but that life was in Him. Jesus is God because only God can give life. No one else can give life. The second reason that John uses to affirm that Jesus is God is because only God can give life and life is in the Word, Jesus. Jesus is not simply the bringer of life. Jesus is the life.

B. For Jesus to be the life means that we must rely upon Him for everything. Nothing else is life. To pursue anything else but Jesus is to pursue our death. Jesus as the life—describes our necessity to rely upon Him or else we are dead.

1. We need to be screaming to the world that they are pursuing their death, not life, when they follow the ways of the world. The world is looking for this life.  Yet they are looking for life in every place—but in Christ. Jesus has been discounted as not being the source of life.
2. The world declares that life is found in giving back to the world, being charitable, leaving the world better than when we found it, making a mark, living your own way, or any of the many other mantras for life. In seeking these things we are pursuing death because life is not there.
3. To use the image of the scriptures, Jesus is the fountain of living waters giving life to all. We are as foolish as the person who sees a fountain of water in the desert, then passes by the water, and continues to walk looking for something else. By passing the fountain in the midst of the desert, you are sealing your death. When we pass by Jesus as the giver of life, we are sealing our death. In Jesus alone is life. We must rely upon Him completely for our life or else we are dead in our sins.

IV. Jesus Is Light: Next John says, “… and the life was the light of men.” Jesus is God because He is light. When we read the Genesis account we read of a realm of darkness. But God spoke light into existence. The Word was in the beginning with God and brought light into the world.

A. In the physical realm we define “light” as electromagnetic radiation that can be detected by the human eye. For us to “see” things it is necessary for there to be light. We call the light provided for us to “see”—illumination. The act of illuminating something is the act of making that something visible.

1. Yes, at the creation “light” was created and it provides for our ability to see in the physical. However, just as John was not speaking about physical life, he is not speaking about physical light. John plays again on the creation imagery to show us that Jesus is the spiritual light. Spiritual awakening and understanding are in Jesus. Jesus as the light brings to this dark world true knowledge and moral purity.
2. Light represents holiness and purity. As light, Jesus gives guidance and direction for our lives. Jesus illuminates the heart for spiritual perception and knowledge. God is pictured as light often in the scriptures. Psalm 27:1 says, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear?...” The psalmist wrote in Psalm 36:9 – “For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light.” John wrote in his letter that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all.
3. In similar manner, the world is described throughout the scriptures as living in darkness. Listen again to the apostle Paul; “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,”[ESV] Colossians 1:13.

B. Jesus will say later in John’s gospel, John 8:12 – “Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, "I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.''”[NKJV]

1. Without Jesus, we are lost in the darkness of this world. We are lost in our own wisdom, our own futility of life, and our own foolish thinking. We are so lost in our minds and hearts that we think we have life right now. We are so deluded by Satan that we think we have all that we need while we are sitting in this darkness.
2. Listen to how Paul described this condition—first in Romans 1:21 – “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”[ESV]   And then in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians where he says, Ephesians 4:18 – “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.”
3. Paul describes this again in his second letter to the Corinthians, 2^nd Corinthians 4:3-6 - “3. But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, 4. whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. 5. For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. 6. For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
4. Satan, through the ways and schemes of this world, blinds us from seeing the light of Jesus. We are left sitting in the darkness, thinking that we have all the answers, not recognizing that we are in the dark!

C. Have you ever sat in a room reading or watching television or something like that in the late afternoon and you did not need the lights on because the light from outside was strong enough. As the afternoon wanes the darkness grows you do not notice it. Your eyes simply continue to adjust to the darkness, not recognizing how the darkness is encompassing you.

1. Suddenly someone turns on the light and you recognize how dark it truly was in the room. But up to that point you did not perceive the amount darkness you were in. You had no motivation to seek the light because you thought you could see fine, even though you were encompassed by the darkness.
2. That is what it is like to live in this world. We think we have light. We think that we have the wisdom and knowledge we need - even though the darkness is slowly closing in around us. Jesus is the light. Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness so that we can see. Only in Jesus can we have direction and can our hearts be enlightened. Only in Jesus can our hearts have spiritual perception and understanding. Otherwise, we are sitting in the dark room not realizing that we cannot see clearly. Light is crucial. Without this spiritual light we are dead and cannot see the way. Jesus came to shine in the darkness. He exposes the works of darkness.
3. Where there is no light, there is no vision, no view of reality, no direction, and no guidance. The world of darkness does not understand Jesus, and does not overcome Him. Light always overpowers darkness. There is never a time when you turn on the light and the darkness is not vanquished. Light always overpowers the darkness.

a. John is describing this world with people who cannot see in front of their faces. It is like a cave trip where to show you complete darkness they turn out the lights.
b. Without light, there's no vision. There's no view of reality. If you've ever done one of those trips where the light is turned out, there's no concept of reality anymore. Where are the people? Where's the walls? Where's anything?
c. You can't even see what's around you. There's no direction, no guidance, no concept of what may be.

4. Christ overcomes the powers of darkness through His life, and death on the cross. The darkness would not be victorious over Christ. The light and the darkness came into bitter and decisive conflict and the darkness could not prevail. Jesus always overcomes. Jesus is always victorious.

CONCLUSION:
In the text this morning we start to see what John wants us to take away from this Gospel. Not just simply a warm, fuzzy Jesus that so often gets presented before us as just a good old boy. The intention of John, right from the very first words, is that we be struck by the recognition, that He is God.

He is the eternal God. He created everything. That means we are responsible to Him because He is God.

He is life. Not only the giver of life, but He is life. If we are not in Him, if our relationship is not with Him, if we are not pursuing Him, we do not have life. We are pursuing death. We are wasting our time in the things of the world when we do not pursue the ways of God.

And He is the light. The Scriptures so often try to remind us that we were in darkness. We were lost in our sins. We didn't know which way to go. But with Jesus, we now can receive light and life. Now we know the way to God. Jesus reveals everything about where we stand before God and what we need to do to be in a relationship with God.

Otherwise, we are walking blindly and falling into sin, and condemnation is assured. He lights the path so that we can be with Him, removing the obstacles that stand in our way so that we can have life with Him.
What a great picture. What staggering, profound words. It's something I hope this afternoon you will go think about and we'll come back to these verses again because there is more to be found here.

Have you found your life in Him? He is the light… and we should ask ourselves if we are walking on the path that He is lighting? Or perhaps are we going our own way? There are many forces in the world that insist we follow our own way. Do not be deceived.
Don't go your own path. Don't go your own direction. It leads to death. Turn this very morning to Jesus. Turn away from your sins. Realize that He is where life is found and only through obeying Him and serving Him can you have that eternal life.

As we sing the song of invitation, if you’ve been clinging to the darkness of this world let us urge you to repent, and make whatever changes need to be made. As a Christian if you need to change, ask God’s forgiveness. If you need our prayers, we would be glad to pray with you. If you need to be baptized into Christ, don’t continue to hide in the darkness of this life without the Lord, for there will come a time when it is too late.

Whatever you need we invite you to come as we stand together and sing.

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Reference Sermon: Brent Kercherville

For The Birds

FOR THE BIRDS
GENESIS 8:1 – 17

OPEN: I am told that an Indiana cemetery has a tombstone that is over 100 years old which bears the following epitaph:
"Pause, stranger, when you pass me by. As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, so you will be. So prepare for death and follow me."
An unknown passerby read those words and underneath scratched this reply: "To follow you I'm not content, until I know which way you went!"

An old Aztec legend tells of a man named Tapi who was a very pious man. The legend says that the creator told Tapi to build a boat that he would live in. He was told that he should take his wife, a pair of every animal that was alive into this boat.

Naturally everyone thought he was crazy.  But then the rain started and the flood came.  Men and animals tried to climb the mountains but the mountains became flooded as well.
Finally the rain ended. And Tapi decided that the water had dried up when he let a DOVE loose that did not return.

In China there’s an ancient temple, and on one wall there’s a painting shows boat owned by a man named Fuhi (the Chinese version of Noah) out upon raging waters.
Dolphins are swimming around the boat and a DOVE with an olive branch in its beak is flying toward it.

In an ancient Babylonian Epic the hero Gilgamesh gives his story about a flood:
“When the seventh day dawned I loosed a DOVE and let her go. She flew away, but finding no resting-place she returned. Then I loosed a swallow, and she flew away but finding no resting-place she returned. I loosed a RAVEN, she saw that the waters had retreated, she ate, she flew around, she cawed, and she did not come back.
Then I threw everything open to the four winds, I made a sacrifice on the mountain top.

YOU can visit the internet and explore different flood stories from such diverse nations as
• East Africa
• Argentina
• Australia
• Bolivia
• Cuba
AND…
• Fiji
• Egypt
• Iceland
• India
• Mexico
• New Zealand
• Russia
• Vietnam

And of those 35 flood stories that were examined
ALL of them talk of humans being spared in the flood.
32 of them include a boat.
24 include an account of animals being spared.
At least 6 of them include references to a dove.
Two of those included references to a raven (one to a hawk).

Whenever archeologists encounter such similar stories like these from so many diverse peoples they tend to believe SOMETHING happened.
And of course... we know something DID happen.
It was a flood for global proportions that destroyed all of mankind because of their wickedness.
In the midst of the Biblical account of the flood we read an intriguing story for the birds.
Two birds actually: A Raven and a Dove.

In Genesis, the Raven actually plays a fairly minor role in this play because all we’re told about it is found in verses 6 and 7:

“After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth.”

Noah released the raven 40 days after these mountaintops had appeared. And the bird never came back INTO the ark itself... it just kept flying around.
Maybe it rested on the ark itself, maybe on the mountaintops in the distance.
But the raven never returned to the safety of the ark again.

Now the Dove gets a little more press.
It’s sent out from the ark 3 different times.
1. The first time, the bird finds no place to rest its feet ... and so it returns to Noah and Ark.

2. The 2nd time, the dove returns with an olive branch in its beak (indicating something is growing).

3. And the 3rd time – it flies away and doesn’t return at all.
Now, the question that came into my mind as I read this story was this:
• Why are we even being told about these birds?
• Why waste the ink?
• Why would God care?

Now remember that we should begin every study of Scripture with one basic concept.
II Timothy 3:16-17 tells us
"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work."

ALL Scripture – not just the parts I like.
Not just the parts I agree with.
Not just the parts that “speak to me.”
ALL Scripture... including this story.
Thus, if God put these two birds in the story it would seem that there would be a reason
So, allow me – this morning – to give you my understanding of the message from the birds.

1st – These two birds are distinctly different.
The Raven, for example was an unclean bird
Leviticus 11 tells us: "’These are the birds you are to detest and not eat because they are detestable: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture... any kind of raven”. Leviticus 11:13 & 15

There were certain animals and birds that God’s people in the Old Testament were not allowed to eat and they were not allowed to offer as part of a sacrifice to God.
And every Raven was unclean.  These birds quite literally feed on death.  They eat the flesh of dead animals.  Ravens are scavengers...
They look for death.

By contrast, the dove was a clean animal.
Doves were birds the Israelites could not only eat - they could offer them in sacrifices to their God.
In Genesis 15 – when God cut His covenant with Abraham - Abraham was commanded to bring animals for sacrifice... one of which was dove.

Leviticus 1 says that doves could be offered as burnt offerings.
And Leviticus 12 says doves were to be offered for certain kinds of sin offerings.
So doves were clean animals.

But beyond that... God seems to have a very special place in His heart for these birds.

Jesus regarded them as symbolic of purity and innocence.
Jesus told His disciples they should be as “innocent as doves.” Matthew 10:16

But perhaps the most powerful image of doves in scripture happened after Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan. Mark 1:9-10 tells us that 9) it came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan.
10 And immediately, coming up [a]from the water, He saw the heavens [b]parting and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove.

God made the dove the image that represented His Holy Spirit.

SO, Why would Noah release an unclean bird (the Raven) AND THEN a clean bird (the Dove) from the Ark to “see if the waters had dried up from the earth?”
I think there’s a very simple answer to that.
I believe God told him to.

If I’m right, I can think of at least three things God wanted us to know.
1st God wanted to remind us of something – the flood brought death.
As I said before, Ravens literally feed on death.
They eat the flesh of dead animals.
They’re scavengers.
They look for death.
And after the flood, there was plenty of death.

Genesis 7:20-23 says that when the flood did its work: 20 The waters prevailed fifteen cubits upward, and the mountains were covered. 21 And all flesh died that moved on [a]the earth: birds and cattle and beasts and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, and every man. 22 All in whose nostrils was the breath [b]of the spirit of life, all that was on the dry land, died. 23 So He destroyed all living things which were on the face of the ground: both man and cattle, creeping thing and bird of the air. They were destroyed from the earth. Only Noah and those who were with him in the ark remained alive.

The flood brought death... because the flood brought God’s judgment upon mankind.

In Genesis 6:5-7 we’re told
5 Then [a]the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent[b] of the thoughts of his heart was only evil [c]continually. 6 And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
7 So the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”
The flood brought death.

Everything with the breath of life in its nostrils... died.
There was plenty of food now for the raven... because the Raven fed on death.
God tells us “The wages of sin is death...” Romans 6:23
* You can ignore it if you like but it’s still going to be true.
* The world would like to brush it aside if they could but they can’t
* Hollywood can laugh at it but it doesn’t change the reality.

How many of you have ever been to Niagara Falls?
I’ve visited Niagara Falls a few times and every time I’ve visited I’ve been struck by the fact that they don’t want you to get too close to THAT water. They’ve got fences up/ and they’ve got signs up - to WARN people... to keep people away

Why? Because, if I get too close to the waters of the Niagara, I could be dragged to my death.
Now, I can ignore those fences.
I can laugh at the signs that warn me not to get too close.
But if ignorant enough to get into those waters... I will die!

God wanted His people to remember: Sin brings death.

And God wanted to remind His people that the waters of the Flood were about judgment/ Death
So, first – the message of the birds is about death and judgment.
But the 2nd message is different.
The 2nd message of the birds is all about hope.
The Raven looked for death
But the Dove looked for life.

Do you remember what the Dove brought back to the Ark? (olive branch)
I’ve been told that the olive tree is one of the hardiest of plants. A cutting from such a tree can take root in good ground and grow quickly.
It became a symbol of life for Israel... and it was a symbol of hope for those in the Ark.
Things were growing now from the ground!
For almost an entire year, Noah and his family had been confined to their boat.
For almost an entire year, the world around them has been covered with water.
For almost an entire year... they’ve been the only living things on earth.
But with that olive branch - God gave them a sign that said – things are turning around.
Things are going to get better now.

The Bible is filled with stories about Godly men and women who faced difficulties in their lives. They faced trials and hardships even death. But the repeated message in Scripture was that God always stood beside them.
Daniel, David, Shadrach/ Meshach and Abednego, Moses, Joshua, Esther.

Each of their stories gives the same message:
Isaiah 40:31 “... But those who wait on the Lord
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint."

Or as Psalm 30:5 tells us: "For His anger is but for a moment,
His favor is for life;
Weeping may endure for a night,
But [a]joy comes in the morning."

Our trials and tribulation won’t last forever.
We will not going to be confined to our Ark of troubles indefinitely.

There’s will come a time, when God will open the door and we will walk out on a new world of hope and encouragement.
But we have to wait for God’s timing.
The flood didn’t abate until God was ready for it to.
But when that time came... God sent His people a sign of hope.
So, the first message of the birds was that of death.

The 2nd message was that of hope.

And the 3rd message of life.
God doesn’t like death... He never has.
When the raven flew away from the ark, did it ever return?
No.

Genesis 8:7 says "7 Then he sent out a raven, which kept going to and fro until the waters had dried up from the earth"
By contrast, when the dove was released VERSES 8 & 9
. "8 He also sent out from himself a dove, to see if the waters had receded from the face of the ground. 9 But the dove found no resting place for the sole of her foot, and she returned into the ark to him, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took her, and drew her into the ark to himself."

The Dove returned to Noah and the safety of the Ark.
The Raven (the symbol of death) never did.
Why not?
Because Death is not welcome with God.
God did not create His people to die.
He created us to live forever. (PAUSE)

And that is why Jesus came and died on the cross in our place.
The wages of sin is death... but Jesus took our place
He paid the price for our sins.

Hebrews 2:14 tells us that "14 Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,"
Jesus came to conquer death.
And when He comes again, I Corinthians 15: 54 – 58 says:
"54 So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
55 “O[n] Death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord."

The story of the birds... and that of the flood itself was all about life in the midst of death.
I Peter 3:20-22 tells us:
“...God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also— not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand— with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.”

You can have that life from Jesus today.
INVITATION