The Parable of the Revealed Light

Today on Renewing Your Mind. We are not to take the Word of God as we understand it and it takes root in our hearts and put it under a bushel, hide it under the bed. But we are to put it in a place of prominence where it can be made manifest and where it can be seen clearly by all who are present. It's a familiar parable. Jesus makes the obvious point that no one lights a lamp and then immediately covers it up. It's easy to nod our heads in agreement, but that's not where the parable ends. The second half of the story puts a very personal twist on the analogy of light. Let's join Dr. R.C.

Sproul. We continue this morning with our study of the gospel according to St. Luke. We're still in chapter 8, and I'll be reading today from verse 16 through verse 21. No one, when he has lit a lamp, covers it with a vessel or puts it under a bed, but sets it on a lampstand that those who enter may see the light. For nothing is secret that will not be revealed, nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light. Therefore take heed how you hear, for whoever has, to him more will be given, and whoever does not have, even what he seems to have, will be taken from him. And then his mother and brothers came to him and could not approach him because of the crowd, and it was told him by some who said, Your mother and your brothers are standing outside desiring to see you. But he answered and said to them, My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it. This brief parable is one added to the larger parable of the sower that we considered a couple of weeks ago. And Jesus further elucidates on the significance of that larger parable. And so what you have heard this morning comes to us from the lips of our Lord. It is His wisdom, it is His truth that comes with the full measure of His authority.

Please receive it as such. Let us pray. Again, our Father, when we hear parables, at times they seem almost incomprehensible. And without the illumination of Your Spirit, we cannot grasp them fully. But we ask that in this hour Your Spirit may stoop to our weakness and grant to us clarity of understanding. For we ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen. If you recall, when we looked at the parable of the sower, which is sometimes called the parable of the soil, Jesus explained that in that parable that the seed was the word of God that was being sown in various places. And He explained how some of that seed fell on rocky soil, some upon the hard path next to the field, some among thorns, and finally that which fell upon the good soil that took root and did not die out quickly, but rather came to fruition, bearing fruit in abundance.

And of course, Jesus was saying that those who hear the Word and that Word takes root in their souls will bring forth fruit. And now to further amplify that point that our Lord was making, He gives this smaller parable of the lamp where He says no one, when he's lit a lamp, covers it with a vessel or puts it under a bed, but rather puts it on a lampstand so that it can illumine the dark place of the house. I brought with me this morning an artifact to use as a brief object lesson.

I have it here in my hand, and probably only those in the first few rows of the sanctuary can even see it. It is so small, but this object that I'm holding before you is actually over 2,000 years old. It is an authentic lamp from ancient Israel. And if you can see the shape of it, it is like a simple piece of pottery, like a saucer that has the front of it pinched together. And in that saucer was oil, and in the front of the lamp where it's pinched together, a wick was inserted that basically floated on the oil. And that wick was then ignited with flame, and so this tiny little thing was what was used to illumine a dark room. Now, I don't know how much light is created by a little lamp like this, but this is not the kind of thing that would intimidate Thomas Alva Edison. It's not the kind of thing that we use to bring light into the darkness of our homes at night. It had very, very few power of illumination, very little power of illumination. And as little as it is, Jesus said, you don't think that anybody in their right mind, once they've put the flame to the wick in this lamp, would then take it and put something over it like a bushel, or else put it under the bed, because that would indeed quench all of the light that came from such a lamp.

But anybody in their right mind, if they want to have any usefulness from such a lamp, would put it on a stand where it would be elevated, where the maximum amount of light would be given to the darkness of the room. Now, this does not require rocket science to understand the simplicity of the point that Jesus is making here. But what He is saying is that the light that comes from the Word of God, that He has just explained in the parable of the sower, if it takes root in your soul, is truth, truth that must never be hid.

We are not to take the Word of God as we understand it, and if it takes root in our hearts, and put it under a bushel, hide it under the bed, but we are to put it in a place of prominence where it can be made manifest, and where it can be seen clearly by all who are present. And He goes on to say that nothing is secret that will not be revealed, nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light. Here Jesus is referring to the day of judgment, which will be the day of great epiphany. It will be the day when all of truth will be made clear and may be revealed.

And this has two sides to it, a positive side and a negative side. The positive side is this, that our Lord is saying on that day, the Word of God will be manifested clearly and finally as the truth. On the day of judgment, every mouth will be stopped, and no one will be able to gainsay the truth claims of Christ. That Christ is the Son of God, that Christ is our Savior, will be so clear and so plain that everybody who repudiates that claim, everybody who rejects that truth, will be put to utter shame. So in the first instance, the good news is that in that grand epiphany, the truth will be demonstrated to be the truth once and for all, and every lie and every falsehood will be destroyed. But the downside of it is the secrets of men's hearts, the things that we do in darkness, the things that we seek to hide from the world will all come into open view.

That's a scary thought, isn't it? It's been said that there are skeletons in everybody's closet and that there are things about ourselves that we would not want the whole world to know. I might just take a second here and let you think about that and think for a moment of those things in your life that you would most like to keep secret forever and know that that is impossible because not only the truths about the gospel will be made clearly known, but also the truth about me and the truth about you, the whole truth will be made known. Nothing that is hidden will remain hidden.

Everything that is concealed now will be revealed then. This is not good news to sinful people because we are by nature, the Word of God tells us, not the children of light but the children of darkness. And John tells us in his gospel that by nature we prefer the darkness to the light because, I'm going to say it right, our deeds are evil. That's why we choose the darkness rather than the light.

Now this problem is not something new. It begins in the Garden of Eden that I like to refer to as Eden Gate because after the very first act of transgression, the initial response of Adam and Eve to their sin was an experience of shame and awareness of their nakedness and their first action was to do what? The Bible says they hid themselves. What were they hiding from? Or I should really say who were they hiding from?

And the answer is obvious. They were hiding from God where previously they were delighted when God walked in the coolness of the garden. They rushed to enjoy His fellowship but now after sin comes in and God comes. They don't want God to see them so they hide. They search for the darkness. They want a place where they can be concealed, hidden from the view of God. Now dear friends, we might think that there's nothing more silly than to take a lamp and after we light it put a bushel basket over it or hide it under the bed. Well beloved, there is something sillier than that, and that is thinking that we can find a place in this universe where we can hide from Almighty God.

No such hidey hole exists. We could go into the darkest hole in the universe and still not escape the gaze of God. The psalmist says, oh Lord, search me and know me. See if there'll be any wicked way within me.

And he says, oh Lord, you know every word that I say and before a word is even formed on my lips you know it all together. Where shall I flee from your Spirit? If I ascend into heaven, thou art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.

Thou knowest me all together. Fast forward to the New Testament. That's what Jesus says of that last judgment, that every idle word that we have ever spoken will be brought into the judgment. Think about that. Every casual, cavalier, off-the-cuff remark that we've ever made we're going to have to own up to. Not to mention the carefully devised lies and angry statements that we have made injudiciously. All of those will come into the judgment because our Lord said there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.

And Lucy, that neats is neat and Kleiner eats. That nothing is not a little something. Nothing that is hidden now will remain hidden.

So these are sobering words. Jesus is saying to us and to His disciples, live in the light. Let the truth be in the light. Don't hide the Word of God. Don't hide yourself from the Word of God.

But we are called to be people of the light, people who have received the truth of God, who have been commissioned to proclaim the truth of God, to let it be known. Does everybody who knows you know that you're a Christian? I hope if they do, it's not because you're obnoxious about it. But I hope that they know it because there can be no such thing as a secret service Christian. You know, they used to talk about Clairol Christians.

Only their hairdresser knows for sure. But anybody who knows you should know and appreciate that you're a follower of Christ. If they don't know you, maybe it's because the light you have received has gone under the couch or under the bushel.

We just can't do that. The truth of God is the light of the world, and we are called to be people of that light. Finally, as Jesus finishes this little teaching, somebody interrupts Him and says, Master, we're sorry to interrupt you, but you have some people outside that are waiting to see you. Your mother and your brothers would like to see you.

They desire to spend some time with you. Jesus kind of rebukes them and makes this strange statement. Who are my brothers and sisters?

Who is my mother? Not that He was disowning His mother or His earthly brothers and sisters, but He says my brothers and sisters are those who hear my Word and do it. I hate to pass over this so quickly, but this is a brilliant statement of one of the most important doctrines set forth in the New Testament, the doctrine of adoption by which through the grace of God everyone who puts their faith in Christ is adopted into the family of God, and Jesus calls us His brothers and His sisters, and we are adopted then by the heavenly Father. What a beautiful picture of what it means to be justified and redeemed. We've been adopted into the family of God.

Dr. R.C. Sproul has helped us understand Jesus' parable today here on Renewing Your Mind as we continue our verse-by-verse journey through the Gospel of Luke. We return to this study each Sunday, digging into the context and historical background of each verse. And when you contact us today with a donation of any amount, we'd like to provide you with a digital download of Dr. Sproul's nearly 600-page commentary on Luke. In it, he traces the record of Jesus' life. You'll learn that this Gospel is for believers and skeptics alike, written so that we may have certainty about the Son of Man.

Because today is the Lord's Day, no one is here in the office, but you can give your gift and request this resource at renewingyourmind.org. As our study of Luke has progressed, we've learned that Jesus used parables to make His message clear to some, but unclear to others. Why did He do that?

We pose that question to Ligonier Teaching Fellow, Dr. Sinclair Ferguson. Well, he actually answers that question himself, or gives one answer to it. Remember when he tells the parable of the sower and the soils, and his disciples don't get it, they come to him and say, what was that all about? And he explains it to them, I'm giving these explanations to you because you're my disciples. But one of the reasons I tell these parables is because when I tell the parables, it actually makes clear whether people really grasp the meaning of the kingdom or not. So, I don't know if it's said so often these days, but there was a time when people constantly said to ministers, you should tell more stories like Jesus so that we can understand. But Jesus didn't tell these parables so much so that people would understand. They were really test cases of whether they understood the gospel that He preached in other words.

And when you think about it, that's the case. I mean, think about the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. And now, you know, we all know what the answer to the question is, which man went down justified? But that's only because we don't actually really grasp the parable.

Nobody listening to Jesus thought it would be the tax collector who went away from the temple justified. And I sometimes say to people, well, just think about these two men. You're an evangelical Christian, an evangelical Christian, which of these two men are you more like? Don't you say to God, I thank you that I'm not like other men? God, I thank you that you've helped me to discipline my life.

I thank you that you've helped me to give away money rather than hoard money. And when you begin to think of those things, you know, actually you sound more like the Pharisee. And that's very, very uncomfortable to discover that even though you trust in Christ, you know there's a Pharisee deep down inside you. And so Jesus tells these parables to probe inside us to see whether we really understand the gospel and whether the gospel is really beginning to transform our lives. They're not just stories. They're weapons in the spiritual warfare. Well, next week as we return to our study in Luke, we'll learn about an astonishing miracle. It was something that should have made the disciples grateful and relieved. In reality, it terrified them. I hope you'll join us next Sunday for Renewing Your Mind. .