Coffeeville First Baptist Church By Craig Baker, Pastor 6/4
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Our Vacation Bible School started this past Sunday evening. The focus is on illumination and how Jesus is the light shining into the darkness of our lives and our world. To really understand light, we must also understand darkness. If you were to ask people what they are afraid of, one of the most common answers would be the dark.
Like a lot of kids, I had a healthy fear of the dark. When I was around 12 years old my grandfather took me squirrel hunting one evening. He put me in a spot in a deep hardwood hollow then walked out of sight over the ridge. At that age, I was mostly good being in the woods at dark, especially if I was with somebody else, but just as it started getting so dark you could barely make out the silhouettes of the treetops something let loose with the awfullest noise that echoed through the hollow. I froze. You know how you do when you hear something in the dark and do not know what it is. You freeze thinking if you are really still whatever it is may not know you are there. That is exactly what I did, until it let loose a second time. At that, I went running through the woods toward where my grandfather was calling for him. I had not gone very far or called out for him more than a couple times when he shouted back, “What’s wrong with you?” When I realized he was a lot closer than I thought he was, I was good. He came to me and had a good laugh and told me it was just a little screech owl. Well, I had never heard such a thing before, so what was just a little screech owl to him was the cry of death itself to me. You may be thinking that it could not have been that scary. Well, if you have never heard a screech owl or not sure if you have, search YouTube for a video of what they sound like then imagine 12 year old you sitting alone in the woods at dark hearing that sound echo through the trees for the first time.
Fear of the dark, called nyctophobia, affects about 715 million adults and 945 million children worldwide. For so many people to be afraid of the dark, it is interesting that darkness does not actually exist. It is not really anything. Science tells us that darkness is simply the low concentration or total absence of light. Because we fear the dark, we often seek the light. As we enter a room, most of us turn on the light. When we drive at night, we turn on our headlights. When we are outside at night, we use a flashlight. You get the idea. We naturally seek physical light. We need it. Our bodies and minds crave it and must have it.
Unfortunately, there is another form of darkness that many people choose to stay in, to not seek a way out of, or at the very least have become very comfortable with, and that is spiritual darkness. The Bible tells us that we are born in spiritual darkness, so unlike physical darkness, spiritual darkness is natural to us It blinds us our spiritual state, hides our sins, and makes the sins of others acceptable to us. I hear people say all the time how much worse the world is today than it used to be. I do not know that the world is really any worse so much as we have gotten used to the darkness. People no longer try to hide their sins. Things that were once shameful have become acceptable, celebrated, and sought after. Spiritual darkness blinds us to the world around us and the sin within us. It covers our hearts and minds making us unsure of which way to go, who to follow, or what is right and wrong, so we stumble spiritually from one sin to the next. In most cases we are dragging other people along through the darkness with us. Jesus referred to this as the “blind leading the blind.”
Just as we have physical light that overcomes the darkness around us, the Bible tells us that there is a spiritual light that overcomes the darkness within us.
In our VBS theme verse, John 8:12, Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” There are some places in the gospels where we read Jesus’ sayings, and they seem random, like a thought came to Him out of nowhere that really had nothing to do with what was going on at the time. Just before Jesus said He is the light of the world, the beginning verses of John 8 tell us Jesus was confronted by the Pharisees who brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. They were testing Jesus to try to catch Him publicly saying something that was against the Old Testament Law, so they could discredit Him. The encounter had nothing to do with light, but immediately after this encounter was over, we are told Jesus again addressed the crowd saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” Right after that we are told Jesus was confronted by the Pharisees again about showing proof of who He is, so the “I am the light of the world,” statement seems to just come out of nowhere. However, if we go back to chapter 7, we realize the context in which Jesus said those words and how appropriate and profound they truly were. John 7 tells us Jesus was in Jerusalem at the time for the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. This is still observed today and is a weeklong celebration that happens in what we consider the fall season after all the crops are gathered. It was a celebration of the harvest and God’s provisions for His people throughout their history. In biblical times this was one of the three pilgrim feasts that required all Jewish males to journey to Jerusalem to worship at the temple.
A major part of this celebration was the lighting of four giant menorahs which reminded the people of remind of God’s provision and presence in the pillar of fire that guided their ancestors through the night during the Exodus. Menorahs were an ancient form of candelabra that typically had four to seven large lamps fueled by olive oil. The four menorahs were placed near the center of the temple in the Court of Women. The huge lamps put off a lot of light and were set up to reflect off the polished walls of the temple making them appear even brighter. Each person would also light four small candles and set them in bowls around the temple. The light was so bright it would radiate throughout Jerusalem and from a distance make the temple appear to be a great beacon in the night.
The people gathered in the temple, the men danced before the Lord and sang psalms of praise, and the people prayed and hoped because the light of this celebration also reminded them of God’s promise to once again send His light, a Messiah, who would lead them out of their bondage and restore the nation to its glory. Early in the morning as the last night of the Feast of Tabernacles was fading and all the lamps were burning out, Jesus went to the temple. It was there just a few feet from those giant candelabras Jesus proclaimed, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” Having just spent seven days celebrating and praising God for His light and praying for the light of God that would come again, Jesus’ statement about being the light of the world and giving the light of life was a clear and profound statement that He is the Light God had promised, the Messiah, the people had been hoping, praying, watching, and waiting for. This sparked an even greater debate and contention among the people and their religious leaders about who Jesus was. A big reason for the debate and contention among the people and religious leaders about Jesus was that many really did not want the light because they loved the darkness (John 3:18-21).They knew that in the light their sins, their hypocrisy, their fake relationship with God, would be exposed. That is what light does. It drives out the darkness and exposes what is hidden there and given our sinful nature the light is what really scares us.
Have you ever gone to sleep for a while then someone comes in and turns on the light? It hurts doesn’t it? You squint your eyes tight and try to hide from the light because it hurts. But it only hurts because we have become accustomed to the darkness. We are accustomed to our spiritual darkness, so we hide from and reject the light of Jesus. Darkness may be more pervasive, accepted, and comfortable, but light is more powerful. There is no darkness that the Jesus, the Light of the World, cannot drive out.
Jesus proclaimed, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” The question is, “Are you living in the darkness ofdeath or the Light of Life?
