All right, well, if you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab them and open them up to John 8. John 8, and as you're doing that, please go ahead and stand with me as we read God's word and pray. John 8, and today we will be looking at verse 12. Verse 12, I originally thought that we would cover more ground than just one single verse, but it's a pretty powerful verse. And I think it'll be good for us to just take our time and sit here and hear what Christ has to say to us through this wonderful word. John chapter eight and verse 12. This is the word of the Lord. 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. Let's pray. God, we thank you that you have sent Jesus Christ to be the light of the world, that you have opened our eyes to heavenly realities, that you have drawn us into your presence and into your marvelous light, not with fear, Lord, but with peace. Lord, that when your light shines upon us, Lord, that we need not be like our old covenant brothers and sisters who are afraid, but that we hear your voice thundering and we see your face shining and we have peace and happiness and strength in you. God, I pray that that would just descend upon us today, that your light would shine through us right now, through your word, through this sermon, Lord, through just your spirit working in the hearts of men. God, I pray you would guide my words. If what I've written on the page today is not right, Lord, give me new words to speak. God, let people hear directly from you and help me not get in the way, Lord. God, I just pray that you would pierce our consciences, that you would speak to our inner man, and that you would revive us again. In Christ's name, amen. You may be seated. The verse that we're looking at today comes immediately on the heels of the account we went through last week. The woman caught in adultery. The Feast of Tabernacles had just ended the day before and all the Jewish pilgrims began to leave Jerusalem and head back to their own homes. But of course, even after all the travelers began their homeward journey, there were still a lot of people left in the city. So after a night of refreshment at the Mount of Olives, Jesus heads back into the temple to continue to teach God's people. His mission of preaching the truth of the kingdom of heaven was not yet complete. He had much work still to accomplish. And John says that all the people gathered around to hear our Lord. Preaching in the open air of the temple court was not something unique to Christ. He did not invent this practice. There were often several preachers out opening up God's word or doing something else that wasn't God's word, but they were expounding something to the people. And especially during great feast times, like what just ended, there were probably a great number of teachers who would come to the temple and teach the crowds all at the same time, just spread out through the temple court. but Jesus was the one who spoke with authority. He was the one preacher who everyone could tell was different in some way, different than all the scribes and the Pharisees, different than their vain doctrines and pretended pomp and show. This man had the words of eternal life. He opened up the scriptures like no one ever had. And so now when he comes to the temple after this feast, after proclaiming the good, wonderful power that the Holy Spirit can bring into people's lives, after opening up the law and forgiving sinners, now he comes to the temple, he's not competing this time with other so-called teachers of the law. Everyone just wants to hear Jesus. Everyone just comes around him. He's the only one opening up the word. Well, the Pharisees take this opportunity, as we found out last Lord's Day, to put Jesus on this makeshift trial, as it were, with this woman caught in the very act of adultery. But Jesus outsmarts these religious elites by simply applying both the letter and the spirit of God's law as God intended. And when Christ exposes their sinfulness, when he lays bare to their hearts and to their minds that they are adulterers too, They just slink away in shame and probably in irritation that He has exposed the darkness in their hearts. Christ tells the adulteress then that He doesn't condemn her and He commands her to go and sin no more. Then the Apostle John gives us verse 12 here, our sermon text for today. I don't see any reason to think that there would be a break of time at all between the account of the woman caught in adultery and this verse here that we're looking at. Jesus came early in the morning to the temple to teach. He was interrupted mid-sermon. by this fiasco that the scribes and Pharisees brought to him. And after the interruption had passed, then Jesus just started speaking again. He never left the pulpit, as it were. He was going to stay there until his job of delivering God's word to God's people was done. And the crowds were still there. And they were probably even more interested, after seeing how he handled the scribes and the Pharisees, in what he had to say than they were before. If I had to guess, it's speculation, but I think after seeing that event where he forgives this adulteress and confounds all the religious rulers, I think they were probably more interested to hear what this great teacher had for them. This man, Jesus Christ, had more scripture knowledge, they knew. He had more grace and he had more authority than a whole delegation of the rulers of the Jews. He had outsmarted a brood of vipers while still remaining just as tender as a lamb. So the crowd who came to hear him preach certainly would not have abandoned him at this point. If anything, I would imagine the crowd grew over this short amount of time. So Jesus is gonna teach them. And what is the message that Christ brings to his eager and interested crowd of people? He says, I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life. So I want us to just dive right into the content of this wonderful proclamation that Christ gives us here in verse 12. We're gonna break our message up into two main parts today. These two parts just flow organically from the text. Part number one, or point number one, the world is dark. The world is dark. And then point number two, Christ is the light of the world. Christ is the light of the world. No one can accuse me of being creative here with our sermon outline. We're just gonna follow the flow of Jesus's message. So first we'll look at point one. The world is dark. Now, Jesus does not explicitly make this point in our text today, but it's assumed. He doesn't say, hey, everyone, in case you're not aware, this is a dark world out there, but it's assumed. That truth is right behind everything Jesus is talking about. Listen to the words of Isaiah chapter nine. This is a popular text to be read at Advent and Christmas time. This is what the Lord said 700 years before Jesus was born. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined. This is a prophecy about Jesus. But before Jesus comes, God tells us through Isaiah that the people are walking in darkness. They're walking in darkness. And then as they're in the midst of this inky black darkness, trying to fumble around and figure out where they need to go, a great light shines upon them. And that light is Jesus Christ. Sadly, even though Jesus has come into the world, it does not take a genius to look around and realize that the world is still in many ways, even today, a dark place. It does not even take the teachings of the Bible for us to know that the world is a dark place. All you have to do is unlock your phone or turn on the TV or walk into downtown or pick up a newspaper, or honestly just sit alone by yourself for an afternoon with your thoughts. And you can easily observe that even 2000 years after Christ, people are still walking in darkness. Whether it's your own wicked desires, or the foul language or inappropriate dress of people you meet when you're out and about, or the wars and rumors of wars that we see on the news, the doctrine of total depravity is so clear that it's something you rarely have to resort to arguing to prove. I have yet to meet someone when I'm doing outreach and evangelism that denies that the world is not right and that they as an individual have sinned. It's rare to meet someone that will deny those things. The world is not what it should be. And I have committed some terrible sins in my life. But even though the natural man, the man apart from Christ, can observe that the world is a dark place, he doesn't understand why. He often gets confused as to why this world is a dark place. And so the natural man will sometimes try to blame other things, try to blame institutions and systems and bad teaching for the sin problem we're in. Or even if he professes not to believe in God, oftentimes the natural man will nevertheless point the finger at God and say, At least he'll question God asking, look, if God is all powerful and all good, then why is this world so messed up? Why would a loving God create such a hostile and harsh world as this? But we know that God did not create the world bad. He created it very good. God created this world without any trace of sin whatsoever, without sickness, without death. But the Bible tells us very clearly that we have disobeyed God and chosen darkness rather than light. How absurd is that? We've chosen the darkness. We've chosen to run away from the good path that God has laid out for us and instead mark our own path through the treacherous, dark, wild of the world. And ever since our first parents disobedience in the Garden of Eden, the Bible is clear that every single person that has ever been conceived with the exception of Jesus Christ is a sinner. And that given the opportunity, every single person will act on this innate sinful nature by choosing to sin over and over and over again. And these individual sins that we commit, they flow out of us like a powerful virus causing harm and pain to others too. It's not just something that happens to us. Our sin affects everyone and everything that we're around. There is no such thing as a victimless sin. Even if you think you have private pet sins that only occur in your mind, that no one could ever know of, and certainly no one could be affected by, trust me, even that thought is a sinful thought. It is a lie that you're choosing to believe, and it is a deadly lie. But not only is this world a dark place because of the individual sins of individual sinners, there's other aspects of how sin has infected our world as well. Even when no one's sins are directly in play, the Bible tells us that God has not only cursed mankind, but he's cursed the whole of creation as a punishment for our original sin in Adam. So we have the land that suffers. the effects of this curse. We have animals that suffer because of the effects of this curse. We have plants that suffer all because of just the pervasive power of the curse, which was brought by sin. This curse spreads just like kudzu in the countryside all throughout every aspect of our lives. And so we have these things like childhood cancer, like aneurysms, like blindness, like miscarriage, all these things that make you cry out to God and ask, why, Lord? Why? Why did my mother or my father or my son or my daughter, why did they get this disease? Why did this tragedy befall them? It's not necessarily because they did anything wrong. It could be, but it doesn't have to. It's just because we live in a dark and cursed world. And even though we all know we live in a dark and cursed world, and even though we don't like many things about this darkness, there are other things about the darkness of this world that in our flesh we love and we long for. The natural man loves, for instance, to pretend that he is the master of his own fate. He doesn't want to submit to God. He loves that rebellious streak that was first in Adam. He loves the natural man feeding his own lusts and indulging in his own wicked dreams. He doesn't want to give that up. He wants to keep it in the dark where no one can find out about it. Keep it to himself. He of course thinks that when other people have wicked desires that are different from his own, well, they're of course in the wrong. Because who would sin in that way? What a monster. But not him. The natural man loves unjust weights and measures. when it allows the scales to tip in his favor. Oh, but he can be very righteous if the unjust weights and measures don't serve his needs. So we look for ways to escape from the types of darkness that we don't like, and at the same time, indulge in the types of darkness we do like. But when we do this, we pretend and we lie to ourselves that the darkness that we like is actually light. Or at least it's not quite so dark as that other darkness that other people enjoy. But this shouldn't surprise us. This is a lie we tell ourselves because this is what the father of lies tells us. Think about it. Satan himself, the Bible says, disguises himself as an angel of light. No darker being has ever existed. And he comes to us in the appearance of light. Or think of some of the godless, pagan, Christ-hating religions and philosophies of the world. Think of Buddhism, for instance. It says that you should seek enlightenment. That's the goal. That's the end goal of the Buddhists, to seek and attain enlightenment, even though the path only leads to greater darkness. or think of the enlightenment as it's come to be called. The era that began just a couple generations really after many of our Puritan forefathers lived and preached. All these things and more are darkness pretending to be light or darkness that we want to think is light. Satan offers us riches and pleasures and knowledge and he offers us light, but it's counterfeit. It only leads to darkness and death. The Enlightenment that we mentioned, that has led to some of the darkest things that our world has ever seen. It should really be called the Great Endarkenment. What did the Enlightenment give us? It gave us evolution. It gave us totalitarianism. It gave us world wars. So many terrible things because in the Enlightenment, Western society abandoned the great faith of our fathers. We abandoned the Bible as our ultimate inerrant authority. We abandoned key doctrines like the Trinity and like the doctrine of original sin. It was a move away from the light into more and more darkness. Darkness is not a good thing. Scripture is clear, there is not a good thing. For our young people, this is a dated expression, especially for young adults. Have you ever heard that nothing good happens after 10 p.m.? I remember my grandma telling me that, and I was like, oh, grandma, just want to go out with my friends and hang out, do whatever. But there is some truth to that old folks wisdom. There is nothing good that happens after 10 p.m. That's because the darkness has always, from time immemorial, been a cover for wickedness. Fornication, drug use, murder, theft, arson, witchcraft, all these things happen in the dark. Crime happens in the dark. Darkness is a killer. If plants remain in darkness, what happens to them? They remain in darkness too long, they die. They wither up and they die. They need the light to live. If people don't get enough sunlight, even just from shorter days in the winter, or from where we are, if we are in a place where the mountain shades us from the sun too much, you get sick. You start to get sad even. There's a, it's called seasonal affective disorder, SAD, sad. You get, you just start to feel depressed because you're not exposed to the light enough. In fact, if you stay in darkness long enough, you go blind and you begin to lose your grip on reality. You start to go insane. That's why prisons have long used light deprivation to torture people. Hell itself in the Bible is described as a place of outer darkness. When Christ died on the cross and he was suffering the pains of hell on our behalf, the Bible says that darkness descended over the world. Jesus himself said that if you keep fooling yourself and thinking that the darkness is light, then even the light within you is darkness. And if that's the case, how great the darkness. We live in a darkened world and we walk in our flesh in dark paths. But our second point is the good news. That's all the bad news. That's what's assumed in John 8 and verse 12, but not stated explicitly. But here's what Christ thunders out in the temple court. He is the light of the world. That's the good news for us. Remember back to a year ago now, we were in John chapter one. John opens up his gospel by saying, in him, in Christ was life and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it or did not comprehend it. Christ was the true light, John goes on to say, which gives light to every man and he was coming in to the world. There's only one antidote to darkness. It's very simple, it's light. Light is the great solution to the awful problem of darkness. Nothing else can drive out darkness. Nothing else can get rid of the darkness except for light. And so nothing else can break the power of hell. Nothing else can undo the curse which sin brought to this world. Nothing else can expose and expunge evil. Nothing else can take what was sickened and deprived and blind and dead and in prison and bring it back to life and health and fullness and sight and freedom. Nothing can do these things except for the light of the world. That's the only solution. Just like when you're in a dark room, the only way to make it not dark is to bring a light into it. The only solution for the darkness of this world is the light of Christ. Christ is our great light, the light of the world. And he brings light, where does he bring it to? The whole world, not just one little corner, not just one little room, but Christ brings light to the whole world. We're gonna look at that concept some. What does that mean? What does that mean that Christ brings light to the world? It sounds maybe abstract. What does it mean? First thing, let's think of the beginning of the Bible. What are the first words that God says? Not the first words of the Bible, that's in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, but the first words that we have recorded that God said at creation. Children, any of y'all wanna know or wanna answer? What's the first thing that God says in his word? He says, let there be light. Let there be light. That's the first particular thing that we read of God creating light. And he saw the light and it was good. and then he divided the light from the darkness. Even from the very beginning, God has been about the work of bringing light into the world and separating the light from the darkness. The two do not want to occupy the same space. The light will push out the darkness. The darkness can't push out the light. It's not possible, but the light will push out the darkness. Or think of the end of the Bible. That was the beginning in Genesis 1. Think of the end of the Bible. Next to last chapter of Scripture, Revelation 21, God's Word tells us that in the new heavens and the new earth, we won't need the sun, moon, and stars anymore because the glory of God, which is the Lamb, will be our light. That's the same light of the world that John is speaking of. Now we might think then, well, if the light of the world is Jesus, and Jesus replaces the sun, moon, and stars, are we really experiencing any of this right now? Are we benefiting from and enjoying the light of the world today? Or do we have to wait only until the resurrection to enjoy this light? And if the light has come into the world, then why is the world still so dark in many ways? These are good questions and things that we have to grapple with. And this is how we're gonna answer them. We do currently enjoy the light of Christ, but not in its most brilliant and visible display. We do currently enjoy the light of Christ though. God has willed, instead of just snapping his fingers and undoing all the evil in one moment, he has willed that he would be patient and slowly overtake the world with light so that all his chosen children from all generations can be brought into his kingdom. We might think to ourselves, well, I just wish Jesus would have come and just made a full end of all the darkness. He would have just done a clean break with the darkness and engulfed this world with light. But if that would have been the case, we never would have existed. There would be many of Christ's sheep that would not have been gathered into the sheepfold. God has willed to grow his kingdom greater and greater and greater over time, and he does that by slowly and surely driving out the darkness, just one little bit at a time, one little bit. So how do we enjoy and benefit from the light of Christ right now then? First, we have salvation in Jesus and in no other name. Hell, remember, is the place of outer darkness. Heaven, though, is a world of light. And our eternal state, when heaven and earth are fully reunited, is when Christ will shine like that wonderful sun. Except this sun will never set. There will be no night, no darkness at all in the new heavens and new earth. It used to be said that the sun never set on the British empire. Now, what that means is that at a certain time, the British empire was so expansive that at some point of her dominion, every point of every day, the sun was shining. There was never a time throughout the day when the sun was not shining on some area that Britain ruled. Now that is an amazing thing to think about. Britain is just a tiny little island in the Atlantic Ocean and it ruled close to a quarter of the world. But this is just a pale and weak shadow of what it means for the sun to never set on the church of Christ. God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we are in Christ, then we are in the light. And that means we have life in him. If we are in the light, that's just another way of saying that we are saved. Saved from darkness, saved from the deceitfulness and death that our sin brings, saved from hell itself. Christ being the light of the world means that Christ brings eternal salvation to the whole world. but he often does it just piece by piece, often at the face of just one single soul at a time. John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. This light was not only for the Jews, it was for the whole world. God so loved the world, all tribes and tongues and nations, all throughout the Old Testament, both in the law and the prophets and the Psalms, we see that God will bring salvation to the world through Christ. Especially in Isaiah, we see the promise of Christ being the light for the Gentiles or the light for the nations. That topic keeps coming up. I'll just quote a couple verses. Isaiah 49, I will also give you as a light to the Gentiles that you should be my salvation to the ends of the earth. Or Isaiah 60, the Gentiles shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of your rising. I mean, clearly God's telling the people through Isaiah, my salvation is for the whole earth, not just your ethnic descendants, Israel. We especially in this room should thank God for fulfilling these wonderful promises in Jesus, because we are all Gentiles according to the flesh. Even though those of us raised and baptized in the church are like natural branches now on the tree of Israel, we still descend from a foreign stock. I do not think that anyone in this room is a descendant of the patriarch Jacob according to the flesh, but salvation has come to us nonetheless, just as it has to the Jews through Jesus Christ and only through Jesus Christ. Secondly, another way that we enjoy the light of Christ, so the first way is the salvation that he brings to us, eternal salvation in life that he brings. The second way that we enjoy the light of Christ is that through Christ, we can understand God and his world truly. Through Christ, we can understand God and his world truly. In Ephesians, Paul tells us that those apart from Christ walk in the futility of their minds, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart. Without Christ, our minds are darkened. Paul says something related in Romans. He testifies to the plain fact. He says that even the natural man, the man still in the bond of iniquity, even the man living on the desert island far away from the influence of Christianity, even he can clearly see certain invisible attributes of God. Think of that, being able to see invisible attributes of God, namely that a personal, powerful, and eternal God exists and demands his obedience. But because those men are apart from Christ, because they knew God in a sense, because they did not glorify Him or give thanks to Him, they became, Paul says, futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools. Because of the suppressing of the truth of God that they have, God gives unbelievers over to foolishness. This is why those apart from Christ sometimes fail to understand very basic facts of life. Like the fact that God exists. That's the most basic fact of the whole universe. And the smartest unbelievers can't figure it out and can't wrap their minds around it. Or the fact that God created the world. Who could look at this world and think, yeah, this came from absolutely nothing? It's absurd. It's just a fact that is so clear that everyone should be able to understand it. But unbelievers, they just can't. They suppress that truth and they're given over to foolishness or moral and ethical truths like it is wrong to kill babies. Every little child knows that. You don't have to tell anyone that that's wrong, but the unbelievers, they have suppressed that truth and they've been given over to foolishness. or that girls are girls and men are men. So simple. I mean, these are just such simple things. None of this is a meat doctrine. This is all milk, the beginnings of milk. Now, these unbelievers don't lose all understanding of these truths, but the farther they get from faith in Christ and from the influence of his people, the more they devolve and degenerate in their ability to understand the world in any meaningful way at all. The key to understanding God and His world is Jesus Christ. Apart from Christ, you are completely, 100% cut off from a true saving relationship with the God who made the heavens and the earth, and your ability to understand the truth of God's world is dimmed and darkened. This of course doesn't mean that unbelievers can't be incredibly smart. They can, in fact. There are some super smart unbelievers. But when the foundation of your knowledge is rotten, the house, no matter how tall or beautiful it is, will also be unstable and will have some surprising weaknesses that pop up at certain points. For those of you who've read Narnia, Think of that scene in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where Eustace is talking with Ramundu about astronomy. Eustace had just discovered that stars were essentially like people in Narnia. I mean, the stars are like people. They're bright, shining people. And he says, this is what Eustace says. He says, in our world, a star is a huge ball of flaming gas. And then Ramundu answers, even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of. Think of that. Even in your world, that is not what a star is. That's only what it is made of. Maybe if that sounds foreign to you, think about this. What if someone just says, well, you're just a bag of cells walking around? We'd say, well, that is what my body's made of, but that's not what I am. I'm not just a bag of cells walking around. Eustace here was a new convert. He had light, but he still had a lot of foundation that needed to be laid and bad foundation that needed to be torn up. He had spent all of his life up to the very recent past conforming himself to the world. And the transformation of his mind and of our minds as the spirit attunes us to true truth takes time. So Eustace could only understand the naturalistic explanations of what he thought a star was. But Remindu told him, oh, no, no, no. A star is so much more than the sum of all its material parts. There's so much more going on that you can't see yet, but you're starting to see. How we need this revival of spiritual thinking about the world today. We need it so badly. Just think of how even we, even Christians talk about our study of the world in the 21st century versus how we spoke of it centuries ago. For instance, now when we look up at the stars, I don't know if you've heard, but there's supposed to be like eight planets aligned right now. And you're supposed to be able to see most of them with the naked eye. So when we go outside at night tonight and we look up at the stars, what's the word we use for that big, big area up there? We call it space, right? but our fathers called it the heavens. Think of the difference in just how that's coming to our thinking. And we think, yeah, that's space. It's not space, it's the heavens. Space reminds us of something bare and empty. The heavens is full and bursting. Cosmology, it's from the same Greek word where we get the word cosmetic, like for makeup, because the Greeks, they were right on this one, they thought that the heavens were decorated by God in a beautiful way. They were full of this type of glory. It's the heavens. Or think about how today we think about studying nature or the natural world. That's not a bad word. Nature is not a bad word. But our fathers used to say they went out to study creation. Just think about that, how we reorient our thinking. We've lost that spiritual undergirding, that spiritual meaning. We're thinking like Eustace, ah, that's just a big flaming ball of gas out there. No, that's not a big flaming ball of gas. That's what it's made of. That's something that God put there to declare his glory and to show us his goodness and his power and his awesomeness and to bring us into a place of worship and happiness when we look at the sky. No little child looks up and think, man, look at that big flaming ball of gas. We've just strayed so far, but we can get back to these things, the spiritual understanding of the world. We will understand the purpose of the things of this world and the ethics that God teaches us through these things much, much better if we have the light of Christ in our hearts and our minds. Christ transforms our minds. He transforms our thinking, helps us attune properly to how God has revealed himself in the world. As the psalmist says, in thy light, we shall see light. The third thing I'll note on what benefit the light of Christ brings us in the here and now is that we can please God because those who follow Christ will not walk in darkness, but have the light of life. When we have the light of Christ within us, we can please God. Now, how do we do that? First and foremost, it's by believing on his son. That's what following means here, following Christ. It means having a living, active faith in Jesus, believing that he is God and man, that he was perfect, that he was obedient, and that he died on the cross for our sins and rose again on the third day for our justification. That's how we please God. But faith in Christ is not something that we just have in our heads. It's not just mental ascent. Faith in Christ is walked out in our lives. So once we're Christians, once we believe in Jesus, how then do we please God further? Well, first of all, we keep believing, of course, but we please God as his sons by continuing in that faith, joyfully walking in fellowship with and obedience to God. Before we have the light of the world within us, we cannot please God. It is impossible for someone who is not born again to do anything pleasing to the Lord. But when we have the light of Jesus renewing our minds and opening our hearts, then we finally have the ability to offer true praise and true obedience to our Father. We are empowered through the light of Christ to obey his commands from a pure heart. This is a promise from God that we can obey him. Christian, no matter what your flesh screams out at you, begging you to do, no matter what lies the devil pours into your ears, no matter what the world or even your friends and family and pastor or even an angel from heaven tell you, you don't have to walk in darkness anymore. You do not have to keep committing those same sins that you hate. You have the light of life within you. If you were in Christ, you're a new creation. The old is gone. Behold, the new has come. You don't have to go back to wallowing in the mud. If you were in Christ, the Bible says that the same spirit that raised Jesus's dead and broken body from the grave lives within you. So you can glorify God. Not perfectly. You will never be totally free from sin in this life. But whereas before the Spirit gave you a new heart, you could do absolutely nothing to please God, now that you have the light of Christ within you, you can please Him. Not to earn His favor, Christ did that for you. Not to maintain your status as a child of God, Christ not only did that on the cross, but is continuing to uphold your faith and your status as a chosen one by His continual prayers for you at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Jesus is praying for you right now. but you can please God in the way that an obedient son brings delight and joy to his father. You can bring God joy as you walk the straight and narrow path and as you grow in holiness. Believe that, believe that. When you are tempted to be bitter or self-righteous or tempted to go back to that same sweet-seeming sin of death that has trapped you hundreds and hundreds of times before, remind yourself that you are a child of God. Tell Satan, the Lord rebuke you. I have another master now. You have been set apart from the world. You have been separated from the darkness. Now live like it. Live like you've been separated. Now you can continue the work of just coming out more and more of that vile blackness and come more and more into the glorious light of Christ. And then one last thing we'll look at this morning. Another way that we enjoy the benefits of Christ's light in this life is that by the light of Jesus shining through us, we can see the darkness being pushed back around us. Through the light of Christ shining through us, we can see the darkness of this world being pushed back. That's because when we have the light of Christ in our hearts, we also, Jesus says, become the light of the world. Jesus says that when we are the light of the world and when we put our light on display and don't hide it, other people will see that light shining within us. They'll see our good works and that will cause them to glorify our Father who is in heaven. So not only do we get saved and enabled to obey Jesus by the light, by his light, but God uses his light shining through us to bring others to salvation and obedience as well. Your salvation isn't just for yourself. And God doesn't need your good works, but you know who needs your good works? Your neighbor needs your good works. So you are saved in part to declare the glory of God to others, to those around you. This isn't just about individual salvation though either. It's not just about getting other people's souls saved. Jesus isn't just the Lord of all the souls in the world. He's the Lord of all the world. So this light affects every aspect of our existence. Jesus is the Lord of all the thrones in the world. He's the Lord of all the institutions of the world. He's the Lord of all the businesses of the world. He's the Lord of everything. He's the King of Kings. And when we let our light so shine among men, it's not only individuals who will change, but corporate and collective realities will change as well. The light really will push back the darkness, not only from our own hearts and our own eternities, but also from our societies, our culture, our government. The light will permeate and purge and purify the dark strongholds of this present age until the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. Now, this is a reality that's taking thousands of years to unfold, but the word of God is certain here. The word of God is certain. Christendom will be built. The light will work and the light will win. And we have to bring Christ's freeing light to bear on every aspect of creation. His light needs to be in the universities. His light needs to be in the hospitals. His light needs to be shown in the military. His light needs to be shed abroad in the courts. And this is done by setting our light on a stand, by being the city set upon a hill that God has called us to be. And as that city set upon the hill, we need to humble ourselves before the word of God and let the fire of God's word ignite us. God's word isn't like a fluorescent light that has an imitation light, but no heat. God's word's like a consuming fire. That's the type of light that we're talking about. When Christ comes into your life, he is like a fire that comes into your bones that has to burst out. So we need to pray, God, ignite us by your spirit. Let the scriptures set us on fire. And if you let God set you on fire, the world will come and watch you burn. It'll just come and watch you ablaze gloriously for Jesus Christ. And what's the thing about fire? Not only does it burn brightly, but it spreads. Just like we talked about that darkness spreading, fire spreads too. Think about the wildfires we hear about every year over on the West Coast. And just no matter what people do, they can't stop them sometimes before it takes thousands and thousands of acres of forest down in its path. But the wonderful thing about the fire of Christ is it's not a destructive fire, it's a purifying fire. It destroys all the bad, but it purifies the good things. It burns off the dross and purifies the gold and the silver. The fire will spread, this is a promise, and the darkness will be squeezed out by the glorious light of Jesus. It may not always look like the light of the world has come. Sometimes we look around us or we look within in our own hearts and we can only see darkness. but we can trust the promises of God's word more than we can any of our other senses or feelings or inclinations. We can trust God and take him at his word. We can live in his light. We can be transformed by his light and we can shine his light far and wide. If you were discouraged by the darkness, don't moan and complain about it. Let your light shine before men. Break out from the darkness. Learn to hate the darkness more and more every day. And pursue the light with everything that is within you. And one day the light of life will cover the earth like the waters cover the seas. May God move among his church to bring this about soon. Let's pray. God, we thank you that you are the light of the world, Jesus Christ. We thank you that you have been shed abroad in our hearts, that you have opened us up to spiritual realities, that you have drawn us into your presence, and you have given us your righteousness. God, I pray that you would just use your word to light a fire within our hearts that cannot be put out. Lord, I think about that great picture in Pilgrim's Progress, Lord, where Satan is like a man throwing buckets and buckets of water on a fireplace, And Jesus, you are like the man hidden behind the fireplace, constantly pouring oil in so that the water only makes it burn brighter and brighter. God, that you have a fire that cannot be extinguished. God, we pray that we see that light spread farther and wider than we could even imagine in this life. Let us see the fruits of your advancing and conquering gospel. Thank you, Lord, in Christ's name, amen.