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“Lightbearers”

Allen Dvorak
07/28/24 - Sun AM

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Scripture reading this morning will be taken from John chapter one verses one through 13.

John chapter one verses one through 13.

And this is the Apostle John's introduction of Jesus to the world.

It's kind of a 163,000 ft view.

Um And it talks about jesus' eternal nature being the word from the beginning.

And that word was the light of men.

And then that through Him, through our belief in Him, we can have the right to be a child of God.

Such a blessing in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

He was in the beginning with God and all things were made through Him.

And without Him was not anything made that was made in Him was life and the life was the light of men.

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through Him.

He was not the light, but he came to bear witness about the light, the true light, which gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

He was in the world and the world was made through him.

Yet the world did not know Him.

He came to his own and his own people did not receive him.

But to all who did receive Him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become Children of God, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

I got a number of people who were gone this last week to camp and various other places and it's good to have those faces back with us before I get started this morning.

I want to make two quick announcements.

One is that the uh song practice that normally takes place at the same time as the Bible drill class is canceled for today.

So if you are accustomed to coming to that, please make that note that it's not going to happen today.

Although the Bible drill class will meet at 4:20 p.m.

Also, uh at the conclusion of the sermon and the invitation song, there'll be a brief announcement by one of our deacons, Steve Renfroe concerning the recent elder re examination uh process.

Many of you probably have been watching or some of you maybe have been watching some of the activities of this week in Paris.

This last week was the beginning of the 212 Paris Olympics summer Olympics and the opening ceremonies took place during this, uh the middle of this last week.

A major part of the opening ceremonies is the lighting of the cauldron by the Olympic torch.

Usually there's some sort of cauldron, although it varies from year to year exactly how it will be done.

But there's a flame that is carried in a torch relay to the location of the Games.

And that torch is then used to light the flame of a cauldron and that cauldron will continue to be lit to burn until the conclusion of the Olympics, which this year I think is August the 236th, the flame of the torch flame I should say begins in Olympia, Greece where the Olympics originated and that torch will be carried has been carried.

It's already been done, obviously has been carried by about 226,217 different runners over the years.

As the Olympics have moved from place to place and continent to continent.

The carrying of the torch has taken a lot of different forms by ship, by diver.

You can believe that and some other things, the Olympic committee has decided that the carrying the torch will just be through the country of Greece and then through the host country which this year of course is France.

The location of the Games is in Paris.

The Olympic torch relay is relatively recent as far as the history of the Olympics is concerned, it is described by some as a symbolic uh manifestation of peace and unity among nations.

Which is kind of ironic because the Olympic torch relay was actually begun in 218 by the Nazis who are not particularly historically known for peace and unity.

But nevertheless, that's when it started.

And that's the uh theoretically the idea behind this torch relay relay.

Now, you can imagine if it's done for weeks before the actual beginning of the Olympics and as it's going from place to place and through countries that the chance of the torch going out is going to be fairly high.

But there are lots of safeguards for that.

In fact, there are backup torches from the same flame in Olympia, Greece.

So that if the torch goes out, you can restart it with the same flame that came from Olympia, Greece.

If you love ceremony, you got to love this and so great caution for the torch not to be put out until it gets to the cauldron and begins the fire there.

Now, usually in the uh in the carrying of this torch, the runners are celebrities.

Uh They are in many cases, previous Olympians who meddled this year, at least from the United States.

Halle Berry carried the torch and the final segue into the final stage into Paris, uh was shared by Snoop Dogg and Farrell Williams, which apparently is the best we can do for the United States.

I don't know if you like rap music, but if you do then, this was your time.

And so they participated in the carrying of this torch relay.

Well, as you're well aware, the concept of light, the theme of light is found throughout the New Testament Scriptures.

And it is our text for this morning Philippians.

The second chapter verses 214 through 113 that suggests this thought that we are also in a sense, light bearers, we're actually described as lights in the world in the midst of a uh crooked and twisted generation.

We shine as lights in the world.

Although we are not the source of that light.

As we'll note a little bit later in our study, John began his gospel as you just heard from Daniel's reading in John chapter one by describing Jesus as the true light, the true light that has come into the world in the servants songs of the prophet Isaiah, the Messiah who is described as the Lord's servant would be a light for the nations.

Now I'm gonna come in in just a moment about the fact that I think those passages talk not just about the Messiah, but that the servant of the Lord was also a description that was used for the nation of Israel, but I believe in these passages in Isaiah 211 212 and Isaiah 12 6, that particularly the Messiah seems to be under consideration.

I am the Lord.

I have called you in righteousness.

I will take you by the hand and keep you, I will give you.

He says, as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations.

And Isaiah 49 6 says something very similar to that God intended for his people.

Israel to be a light to the nations.

It's kind of interesting that when the Apostle Paul was preaching on his first missionary journey at Antioch in acts chapter 13, as the Jews begin to resist his message, Paul announces that he and Barnabas are going to turn to the gentiles.

And he actually then quotes in acts 13 and verse 47 from Isaiah the 123th chapter and verse six, which suggests to me that God intended for that passage to talk not just about the messiah as an individual, but about God's people.

In general.

Paul says, we are going to take the gospel message to the gentiles.

That's what God commanded us to do to be a light for the nations.

Nations is just another way of talking about the gentiles.

Unfortunately, although God intended for his people to be a light to the Nations.

Israel typically failed in that task.

In the second chapter of Romans, the apostle Paul would indicate that while the some of the Jews consider themselves and maybe somewhat of an arrogant way to be a light for the the nations, the fact of the matter is they had failed to do that.

But Jesus Christ was the perfect fulfillment of that prophecy about being a light for the nations, those prophecies of course made also in the early chapters of Luke in chapter one, verse 79 in Luke two and verse 32 Jesus is a light to the nations.

And so it's not surprising that in addition to the text in Philippians two, that we would find throughout the New Testament references to the fact that we as Christians, as God's people ought to be lights in the world.

We'll note just a few of those passages.

Matthew chapter five is a familiar passage from the sermon on the mount as Jesus talks to his disciples.

Here's what he says to them.

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.

Jesus said you his disciples are the light of the world just as Jesus came as light into this world in the 26th chapter.

I'm sorry.

I jumped to reference in John chapter 12 and verse 36 Jesus says, while you have the light, believe in the light that you may become sons of light.

That's a description of Christians.

The Apostle Paul would write to the Colossians as he frequently did in the beginning of his letters, a lengthy prayer.

I'm going to read from part of that prayer beginning in verse nine, Paul says in Colossians, one and so from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

I think the new king James version says the saints in the light.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins.

So Paul is in his prayer talks about the fact that God has delivered the Colossians and in essence, all Christians from the domain of darkness.

We were called out of darkness so that we could be translated or transferred into the kingdom of God's Son.

It is in that kingdom that we have the redemption of our sins in acts the 26th chapter in verses 17 and 18 as the apostle Paul made his defense before a second, Roman Governor Festus, he makes mention of the commission that he received when he was converted to Christ.

God said that he would be delivering Paul from your people and from the gentiles to whom I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.

And so Paul says, that's really the mission that I was given was to turn people from darkness to light from Satan.

That's his domain, darkness to God.

Couple of other passages that just very quickly that describe us as Christians as lights.

Uh Paul would write to the Thessalonians in his first epistle to them for you're all Children of light Children of the day.

We are not of the night or of the darkness.

And to the Ephesians later, he would write during his imprisonment for at one time, you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord walk as Children of light.

And so the scriptures are replete with descriptions of Christians as being sons of light, Children of light, people who have come out of darkness and are now walking in the light if we could borrow the language of first John chapter one.

Well, I want to make five observations this morning very quickly about this business of being a light and the very first one is, as we've already noted, at least briefly that we are not the source of light.

We're just the reflectors of light.

You know, you can go out and in the night and, and a full moon, the moon just looks so bright and you might believe just because of the brightness of it that it is giving off light, but it really has no light of its own.

It's reflecting the light of the sun.

That's about all I remember from high school.

OK. So don't, don't press press me any but the moon's just a reflector.

It's not a source and in the same way or a similar way, we are reflecting the light that has been given to us through Christ, we serve as lights to give glory to God, not to ourselves.

And that's the point that I want you to see about us being reflectors and not source.

It's not that we are such wonderful people that people can then learn from us and see light.

We have been given light and we reflect that light. Others.

The Apostle Peter said that in first Peter two and verse nine, he borrows language incidentally in first Peter two that's taken from the Old Testament as it was used to describe God's people, Israel.

But now he says of Christians, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

We are lights not for our own personal aggrandizement, but to proclaim the excellencies of the one who called us out of darkness.

You remember the exhortations of Jesus in the sermon on the mount in Matthew six, we've already referred to Matthew five verses 14 through 16 where Jesus said, let your light shine so that others may see your good works, not so that they will glorify you, but so that they will glorify God.

And so we need to remember that we are just reflectors.

We're not the source of the light.

And Jesus warned in Matthew chapter six about those who did their good works to be seen a man so that they might be glorified or praised.

We need to be careful that we don't fall into that trap.

Light benefits from contrast, the greater the contrast with its surroundings, the greater the influence of light.

You know, I purposefully used a black background on these charts because I wanted you to see the candle clearly.

If I had to put a white background on these charts, the light would have faded into the background.

And that's the point that I'm making about light benefiting from contrast.

If you were to go into uh a dark cavern and many of you have probably done this, maybe you've gone over to cathedral caverns.

They, as the tour guides are typically uh want to do, they'll take you to the back of the area where you can go in those caverns and then they'll turn all the lights out and it's pitch black dark, there's no light at all.

And then just a little bit of light in that environment stands out in such a great fashion.

And so it is with us as Lights, Paul wrote that the Philippians were to be blameless and innocent Children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation.

That's the background, that's the environment of the world, crooked and twisted perverse is essentially the meaning of twisted and light.

And that kind of darkness is so much more visible, so much more influential in terms of guiding individuals.

Now, Paul was talking about his day, but we live in dark times as well.

And I know that in the history of man, that the general morality of people in various cultures tends to go up and down.

We live in dark times.

But the darkness around us only serves to make our light more visible.

It serves to make our light more influential as people see the difference between us and the world around us.

That is if we're really shining the way we should letting our light shine like benefits from contrast.

And so although we sometimes uh maybe tend to be a little pessimistic about the world around us.

The fact of the matter is the worse it gets, the easier it is to see us as lights.

The third place being a light involves more than just our outward appearance or the trappings of religion for some people, their relationship to Christ is essentially the wearing of a shirt with some sort of religious message on it or maybe a bumper sticker on their car or wearing a cross as jewelry.

There was a policeman who pulled over a female driver and went to the side of the car as they typically do the driver's door and asked her for her identification and her registration for that car.

And as he looked at these documents that she had given him, the woman in a puzzled voice says, I don't understand why you stopped me.

And the policeman's response was well as I was following you, I noticed the, I love Jesus bumper sticker on the back of your car, but I also heard you curse that slow driver who was in front of you.

And I saw you made an obscene gesture to somebody who cut you off after that.

And so I just naturally assumed that you had stolen this car.

Our light is not composed of outer trappings.

Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with wearing a T shirt that has a religious message on it or having verses on the walls of your home.

I do those things as well.

I'm saying that that can't be the full extent of our light if that's the way our light is it's just an outward appearance.

It doesn't affect our behavior.

If we're not showing people the path, by the way that we live by the example of our lives, then we're really not light.

Our behavior has to be in line with our profession in the fourth place.

We must not flicker.

Debbie and I have a, uh, at the top of our bed, there's, there's two lights there that we use sometimes to read.

Uh, if we go to bed and we're just not sleepy or whatever, you turn the light on, she's got a switch and I've got a switch.

Uh, and the switch on my side, the light on my side has recently gone crazy.

And what's happened was it just stopped working all together.

So I climbed up on the bed and took the light apart and jiggled some wires to see if everything was solid and, uh, everything seemed to be fine.

So I replaced the ball, put a new bulb in.

I had already tried a new bulb before and this bolt worked, I thought well, good.

It's fixed.

And so then about two nights later, turn that light on getting ready for bed and it comes right on and then it goes flickers which means something is still wrong.

There's something that's loose in there.

And so I'm gonna have to go back and take it apart and look at it again and find out what the problem is.

Our lights can't flicker fact of the matter is we can't always choose when we're going to be seen by others.

And so sometimes Christians are very good examples when they're around certain people.

Like when we're in an audience like this, in a group like this or maybe around our family, we have a different persona, different example than when we're with other people, maybe people that we work with or people who are part of our sports group or whatever other relationships or organizations that we may be a part of.

And so what happens is, oh, I'm shining brightly as long as I'm with people who will appreciate that.

Then when I get with other people, my light flickers and I start doing and saying things that I shouldn't do that I wouldn't say or do in your company or in the company of others who have some spiritual convictions, our lights must not flicker.

I think obviously as, as individuals, we tend to hide our frail frailties.

But please understand.

We don't always get to choose when people are watching us and sometimes our light is being seen or maybe not seen at times that we least suspect.

Yeah, we will be seen as light or will help spread the darkness but brothers and sisters, we will be seen by others.

And then finally, not everyone appreciates light.

If you're going to be a light in the world, you need to understand that there'll be people who will resent your light.

Jesus in John chapter three.

Actually, this is probably more the comment of the writer John and this is the judgment, the light has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil for everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed.

But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

And Jesus is the perfect example of that Jesus by his teaching and his example exposed the hypocrisy, the wickedness in some cases of the religious leaders of his time.

And they resented him for it.

They envied him and they finally put him to death.

Not everybody appreciates light because the contrast between the light as it represents moral scriptural behavior and their behavior is stark and not everybody wants that some care about that.

And they'll persecute those who are like in Ephesians.

The fifth chapter verses 11 and 12.

The Apostle Paul says, take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

Now, you can do that in a couple of different ways.

You can do it simply by the way that you live, you can do it by the things that you say, the teaching that you do for it is shameful, even to speak of the things that they do in secret, in darkness.

We need to remember the words of Jesus.

In Matthew chapter five.

He said, 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.

We can live good moral lives and yet not be shining before others.

There are ways that we can hide ourselves so that we don't attract attention.

I'm not suggesting that we ought to be ostentatious or obnoxious to other people.

But I'm saying, don't be ashamed of who you are as a disciple of Jesus Christ.

We need to appreciate the serious responsibility.

The privilege that we have as disciples of Jesus to be lights in the world.

Light bearers.

The invitation of the gospel has come out of darkness and into the light.

You recall that the Apostle Paul talked about that in Colossians one verse 13, we'll look at that verse in just a few moments in John chapter one part of that reading that was done before the sermon.

I wanna remind you of some of these verses, the true light beginning in verse nine which gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

He was in the world and the world was made through him.

Yet the world did not know him.

He came to his own and his own people did not receive him but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name.

He gave the right to become Children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but born of God.

He gives them the right the opportunity to become Children of God.

In Colossians.

One Paul said, he has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Are you in the dark?

The dark can be a scary place.

Hard to find your way, hard to get to where you want to go.

The gospel invitation is come out of the dark, the darkness of the world and come into the light of life.

And if you're willing to be born of God, to be born again of water in the spirit this morning, based upon your belief in Jesus Christ, as the Son of God, your repentance of your sins, renouncing the darkness that you've lived in and then confessing the faith of your heart, you can be born again, become a child of light, child of God.

And if we can assist you in that this morning, to become a Christian and then to shine brightly for whatever time God permits us on this earth, then won't you come as we stand to invite you?