What were the first words God the Creator ever said? Let there be light. Let there be light. And light was, the Bible tells us. And when David looked up into the sky where the sun, moon, and stars were shining, he said, the heavens declare the glory of God. When I look at the starlight and the moonlight and the sun shining, it speaks to me of God's glory and magnificence.
Welcome to Connect with Skip weekend edition. The light we receive from the sun is really a form of electromagnetic radiation. And in fact, the light we see actually makes up only a small portion of the energy the sun puts out. Yet both the visible and the invisible properties of sunlight are necessary for life to flourish here on earth. Skip Heitzig explores how both the seen and unseen properties of a different kind of sunlight, S-O-N light, are also important for our spiritual lives to flourish. But before we get started with that, I want to remind you that if you enjoy listening to these studies by Pastor Skip, you'll find plenty more of them to listen to online when you visit connectwithskip.com.
So what are some of the properties of S-O-N light that we need to thrive in our Christian walk? If you'll open your Bibles to John chapter one, we'll get today's study started as Skip Heitzig tells us which state is really the Sunshine State. The state of New Mexico enjoys 310 days of sunlight every year. Now I know that Florida on the license plate says the Sunshine State. But with all due respect, Floridians need to know that we beat them. In fact, there are five other states that have more sunshine than Florida.
And in order, they are Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and then Florida. So I just want to set the record straight that we are a Sunshine State, except for today where we have a little bit coming out now. But chances are, in our state, almost any day that you go outside, you're going to enjoy sunlight. And sunlight, even though the sun is 93 million miles away from the earth, it provides all that we need.
We absolutely need that sunlight for us to function upon planet earth. Now I heard about three NASA scientists who were getting together and they were trying to figure out, this was at the height of the space program, they wanted to figure out how they were going to spend the 10 billion dollars allocated by the federal government to their program. And so the first guy said, I say we get very ambitious and we put our man on Mars, not the moon, Mars.
Second guy said, well, that's really good. I think we should go further. Venus, put our man on Venus.
I mean, set the bar high. And the third guy said, I think it's good, but go all the way, go for broke. I say we put our man on the sun. And they looked at him like, are you an idiot? And then they said to him, are you an idiot? And he said, no, no, no, I got it all figured out. We'll go at night.
Okay, that won't work. We can't go to the sun, but we can certainly enjoy its effect upon planet earth and what an effect it has. One source that I read stated, sunlight is the fuel of life. Its energy maintains everything upon the earth.
Think about it from the photosynthesis and plant life to the vitamin D that our bodies enjoy because of its rays, to the reflection off of objects that enables visual perception to the enormous gravitational field that keeps earth tethered, so to speak, in its rotation around the sun. But the term sun can be spelled two different ways in our language, S-U-N and S-O-N. And even as sun, S-U-N, light is needed for physical well-being, so sun, S-O-N, John would say, the son of God, his light is absolutely needed for spiritual life. And that becomes the theme of the paragraph we're about to read, beginning in verse six, all the way down to verse 13.
Step into sunlight, John would say. Now, let's see how often he uses that little term. I'm going to begin for context's sake to start in verse four.
Let's look at it together. In him, in Christ, was life, and the life was the light of men. There's the first time it's used. And the light shines in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. This man came for a witness to bear witness of the light that all through him might believe. He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light which gives light to every man coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him.
He came to his own, and his own did not receive him. But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Just by way of reminder, the first 18 verses of the Gospel of John are introductory.
It's a prologue. In those 18 verses, John gives us the entire theme of the entire Gospel. Think of it as a briefing, a briefing before you get into the details of the whole story of the life of Christ.
Here is the briefing of who he is, who we're dealing with, the plan of his life, and then I'll tell you the whole story in detail, and that's what John does. So in verses one through five, the Apostle John considers the deity of Christ. He is the Word. He was with God. He was God.
He created everything. He's the source of light. He's the source of life, and now John shows us the reaction of this world literally and specifically to the light coming into the world. So John the Baptist comes, and he represents or introduces Jesus. That's the first few verses of our paragraph, beginning in verse 6. And then the world, by and large, didn't recognize him. They reject him, but there are some who will receive him. So John represented the light. The world rejected the light, but some received the light.
Those are the three brushes or strokes that the Apostle gives us in this paragraph. Now, something about John you already know. It's a simple book. In fact, isn't this the first book we tell young, brand new believers to read?
Typically it is. We tell them, hey, if you're going to read the Bible, start with John's Gospel. It's the best place to start. You say, hey, you're a brand new Christian. Read the book of Hebrews or Romans or Galatians or, hey, how about Leviticus?
That's your first one. That's the Gospel of John. It's simple, straightforward, Christ exalting. Something else you may not know, in the original Greek language, it's also the simplest. In fact, when you take Greek, the writings of John are the first place to begin because his words are so easy to understand. And so when we graduated from our Greek class, we took the writings of John, in this case, 1 John, and had to translate it all from Greek into English and parse every single word. And that was okay because it was easy, but though his language is simple, easy, straightforward, the concepts are pretty profound, deep. And what John does is paint these vast portraits of Christ using metaphor.
We have it here. He talks about light, he talks about life, and he talks about birth, and he's using them in spiritual terminology. And what John shows us today is that there are basically two responses and two only to Christ. One, you reject him.
Two, you receive him. So here's the question for you. Are you living in sunlight or are you living in shadow land? Are you walking, living in the sunlight of Christ or are you still hiding in the shadows? Look with me at verse six through eight, how the light was represented by John. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. This man came for a witness to bear witness of the light that all through him might believe. He was not that light, but he was sent to bear witness of that light.
Here's one of the first things you notice in just reading through chapter one. In verse six, we have an abrupt change. John has been dealing with everything heavenward, the deity of Christ. This man, the Word, Christ, is God, was with God, but was also God himself, created everything, is the source of all life, and is in fact the light of the world.
Now there's a change. After dealing with all of that, he goes, there was a man. Now he's not dealing with God, he's dealing with a man. He's not dealing with the man, the Son of God, he's dealing with a man sent from God whose name was John. Now he's talking about not himself, but John the Baptist, John the Baptist. John the apostle never mentions himself in this book.
Isn't that interesting? He never says, oh, by the way, I, John, one of the friends of Jesus, he doesn't call himself by name. The only reference we have to him in this whole book is he calls himself, get this, the disciple whom Jesus loved.
And you might say, well, that's kind of arrogant, isn't it? No, I think it's beautiful because Jesus loves everyone, but he personalizes it. Oh, by the way, I'm the guy Jesus loves too. But he is here speaking about John the Baptist. And since John the Baptist was from Judea down south, I guess technically he was a southern Baptist, but nonetheless, this is John the Baptist way before the denomination. He baptized people. And this is what the apostle says about the Baptist. There was a man sent from God.
Boy, if ever there was somebody sent from God, it was this guy. He was predicted twice in the Old Testament, once in Isaiah chapter 40, where he is called a voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. John the Baptist will apply that text to himself in this chapter. Also, the Old Testament closes with the prediction of an Elijah-like forerunner who would come. Behold, the prophet said, God said to the prophet, I send my messenger who will go before me and prepare the way before me.
And this is that guy sent by God. And then the birth of John the Baptist also proved that he was sent by God because he had a miraculous birth, did he not? Remember the story about his mom, Elizabeth, and his dad, Zacharias? They were old. They were way past the ability to have children.
In fact, Elizabeth was barren, could never have a child. Suddenly, she turns up pregnant by natural means, her and her husband, but it was a miraculous pregnancy and a miraculous birth. In fact, Zacharias is standing in the temple one day doing his priestly duty, and an angel of the Lord appears to him and says, Zacharias, your wife, Elizabeth, is pregnant. You guys are going to have a child, and here's what you'll call him, John. And he will be the forerunner of my Messiah, and spills out the whole story to him right there. And so John is born, and John comes, but he's just a man sent by God.
Here's something you ought to know. Even though John was just a man, did you know he was the greatest person who ever lived? Up until his time, up until Christ, he's the greatest person who ever lived.
You say, but on what basis do you say that? On what Jesus said, Matthew 11, 11. Jesus said, I assure you of all who have ever lived, none is greater than John the Baptist.
Isn't that quite a statement? You mean he's greater than Abraham? Yep, he's greater than Abraham. He's greater than Moses? Yep, greater than Moses. Greater than Moses, greater than David, greater than Isaiah, greater than Noah, Jeremiah.
Now why is that? Because he performed the greatest task. Announcing for the first time publicly introducing Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the Savior of the world, which we'll read about in a few weeks. So for God to do the most important task, the greatest task of all, he gets the greatest man who ever lived until his time.
Verse seven is his mission. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the light that all through him might believe. That's why he existed, to point to sunlight, to bring the message of sunlight.
Hey, step out into sunlight. Here is the Son of God, he was a witness. Now that's a technical term, it's a courtroom term, a witness, a witness, a witness, a witness, a witness, is somebody who testifies to the truth, goes to court and tells what he has seen and what he has heard, and John the Baptist was that. He came into the world to testify of the truth of who Jesus really was.
It's sort of like this, it's like John the Apostle puts all of humanity into one large courtroom and he says, now I have a message I want to write to you. This Jesus the Messiah is God in human flesh, he is the creator of all things that exist, he's the source of light and life, and I want to call my first witness to the stand and his name is John the Baptist. He'll tell you, he saw him, he heard him, and John is the first witness, came to bear witness.
Now watch out for that term because John the Baptist is first of eight witnesses in the Gospel of John, John the Baptist is the first, there will be more, but he will call witnesses to the stand and John is the first witness to come. So the whole purpose of John's life is to bear witness of the light. Okay, when he uses the term light to refer to Christ, he's using a metaphor, right? I mean, he doesn't mean that Jesus literally wherever he walked glowed, that he didn't need to light a candle when he came into the room at night, Jesus is here, he's the light.
He's the light, he'll just sort of glow in the dark like the holy cards show him, you know, he's got the halo and he's glowing, don't picture that. It's a metaphor and the Bible uses the term light to speak of a few things. Number one, light physically speaks of the glory of God, the glory of God.
What were the first words God the creator ever said? Let there be light, let there be light, and light was the Bible tells us. And when David looked up into the sky where the sun, moon and stars were shining, he said the heavens declare the glory of God. When I look at the starlight and the moonlight and the sun shining, it speaks to me of God's glory and magnificence.
In fact, in the book of Revelation in the New Jerusalem, we're told there's no sun, there's no moon that shine in it for the glory of God will illuminate it. So physically, light speaks of the glory of God. So for John to say Jesus is the light is to say Jesus embodies the glory of God in human form. Hebrews 1, the author says, Jesus is the brightness of God's glory.
There's a second way it's used. Intellectually, light speaks of the knowledge of God. You know what theologians call God? Omniscient, which means he knows everything. He's the ultimate knower. He never learns it.
He just knows it. Now you history buffs know that there was a time of history called the dark ages, where it was said that people lived without the light of knowledge. And then came the next age, the enlightenment, when suddenly there was a renaissance of learning and knowledge and art. God is the ultimate knower.
To say that Jesus is the light means that he's the ultimately enlightened one. Boy was he. Did you know that it was dangerous to be around Jesus because he would know what you're thinking? Right? Remember when he'd walk up to people and go, why is it that you're thinking evil thoughts right now in your heart?
And they're going, how did you know that? Because he's enlightened, ultimately enlightened. He knew so much that he predicted his own betrayal, his own death, and the future events of the world up to his second coming. There's a third way the term light is used. Morally, it speaks of God's holiness. His holiness. Light is pure and light is brilliant. And to say God is light or Jesus is light speaks of purity and holiness. It says in 1 Timothy chapter six, God alone is immortal and dwells in unapproachable light. Another way to put it is there's no flaw at all in God's character.
He's perfect. No flaw. No indiscretion. You may have heard of a book. In fact, some of you may have read it. It's a book that's been out a long time ago, but it was called When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Rabbi Harold Kushner. And the good rabbi in the book encourages you and I to forgive God. Forgive God. Because he says, you know, God really can't be in control of this thing called the universe. There's a lot of things that happen outside of his control or knowledge.
They just happen. And he'd like to help you, but he can't. So would you please forgive God? Well, I want to tell the good rabbi you don't need to forgive God.
There's nothing to forgive God for. He is absolutely flawless and perfect in his character. And so he is light. And to say Jesus is light is to say he is pure and light. Jesus is light is to say he is pure and holy and he is perfect and there's no flaw in his character. In fact, Jesus will ask the religious leaders this very penetrating question. Which one of you can convict me of sin?
Answer, no one. Now, there's something implied in all this. If Jesus Christ is light, that means that when we follow him, we step out of what?
Darkness. So to say I'm a Christian, I follow Christ means you have stepped out of moral darkness and are walking in the holy light of Christ. Doesn't mean you're perfect because you're not. I'm not perfect.
None of us. But we're growing. We're becoming as we follow him.
He is the light. And that's all the time we have for today. But before we go, let's find out more about this month's Connect with Skip resource offer. Some people find comfort in the status quo. Others just can't wait to challenge it. If this were a recovery meeting, I would begin by saying my name is Skip and I'm a nonconformist.
How about you? Do you go with the flow or swim against the current? The truth is going against the status quo can be difficult, but following Jesus requires it. The Bible's account of Daniel shows how God can transform lives by one person's willingness to defy what's normal.
I like to think of it this way. When the waves of life came crashing down, Daniel decided to go surfing. He thought, I'm going to ride these waves. If these waves are the will of God for my life, I'm going to learn how to master these things and I'm going to get propelled forward. Learn to soar above the status quo with Skip Heitzig's book, Defying Normal. It's our way of saying thanks for your gift of $35 or more to help connect more people to God's word. And when you give, we'll also include the booklet, What on Earth Am I Here For?
by Rick Warren. These two resources will help you stand out from the crowd for God's glory. Visit connectwithskip.com slash offer to give online securely today or call 800-922-1888. And don't forget to ask for a copy of today's study to review again later or share with someone you know.
It's available on CD for just $4 plus shipping. When you contact us at 1-800-922-1888 or when you visit connectwithskip.com or write to us at P.O. Box 95707 Albuquerque, New Mexico 87199. Plus anything you share above that suggested donation will help us better retain our goals to share the good news of God's word. And that's either with a one-time donation or through your monthly support. Learn more about that when you call us at 1-800-922-1888. We'll continue to explore why we all need a little sunlight in our lives. So be sure to join us next time right here in Connect with Skip Weekend Edition, a presentation of Connection Communications. Connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.
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