The Healing Power Of The Light Part 1

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. The light, it cuts the darkness like a knife.

It reveals our hearts the way they really are, full of self-deception, even if we're not criminals. Today, let the light of God's Word cut through your illusions and show you what God sees when He peers into your soul. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, we're heading into the book of 1 John today. Give us a preview of the journey.

Well, Dave, I have to say that the intro that you have just given is really a summary of everything. Light really does reveal who we are. It also gives us direction as to where we should go, and it also heals us. That's why the darkness-light motif in the Bible is so critical. And today, we're going to be exposed to the light, and all of us will be shown to be sinners, but also, we will point toward hope.

I want to thank the many of you who support the ministry of Running to Win. Let me ask you a question. Are you embarrassed by your emotions?

Do you wish that you didn't have any? Well, oftentimes people don't understand the role of emotions in the Christian life. I've written a book entitled Managing Your Emotions, God's Good Gifts Gone Wrong. It comes with discussion questions at the end of every chapter, deals with all kinds of emotions such as depression, love, rejection, loneliness, fear, disappointment, regret, bitterness. For a gift of any amount, this book can be yours. Here's what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com.

That's rtwoffer.com, or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now let's open our Bibles to 1 John and let us see what it means when it talks about walking in the light. There is a story about a woman whose husband, she suspected, was having an affair with a woman at work. But he was the kind of a man who never admitted to anything. He was always defensive, always right, one of those controllers that we spoke about in the last message in this series. And so she knew that it was not going to be a happy experience. He was not just going to quickly say, yes, I'm guilty. So she set up a series of opportunities for him to confess to the truth. First of all, she said to him, I want you to know that I suspect you in this regard. And he became defensive and angry. Why don't you trust me?

You're always too suspicious, etc. Plan number two was she took a member of the church who had seen him downtown with this woman. And the church member confronted him. And he gave some very convincing alibi. And so he didn't admit. Number three was she confronted him with the ex-husband of the woman with whom he was suspected to be and who said that he saw them in the apartment together. But this man stared him down, told him he was a liar. And that was the end of that. Finally, plan number four was videotapes.

She had hired an investigator who videotaped some experiences and scenes which nailed it. Now, here's what I want you to understand. His response was this. Okay, I'm having an affair. But what's the big deal?

The human heart revealed for what it is. First of all, we deny our sin. That's step number one. And after we have been found out and have to confess, step number two is minimize it.

What's the big deal? Why is it that truth has to be extracted from us sometimes, like one might use tweezers to extract a splinter? Why is it that we aren't more open and more truthful? Well, you know, the human heart, the Bible says, is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

Who can know it? One time I had the unhappy responsibility of confronting a man with what we suspected was an adulterous relationship. And he said, if I am lying, may God strike me down dead.

Mercifully, God did not strike him down dead. But God did eventually reveal that the man had been lying to me. Yesterday, I looked at the book The Day Americans Told the Truth, and I read it years ago, or parts of it, and frankly, I couldn't take too much of it because it is so depressing. You look into the human heart and you realize that, what is it, 92% of people say that they lie at least every week, and then you get beneath that and you discover that there are those who are willing to turn away from their families and abandon them forever for $10 million, and you're scratching your head and saying, are we really that evil? Are we really that bad?

And the answer unfortunately is, yes, we are. There are so many different kinds of lies, aren't there? There's the lie that people sometimes tell to protect others. Sometimes they're little innocuous lies.

We say to somebody, you know, you're really looking good in that suit. And it's the kind of lie they love to hear, by the way, and yet in our hearts we're saying, you look good in that suit, but I want to know, you know, what street corner did you find it on? You know, in our hearts we're, sometimes we lie though to protect ourselves. We may shape the truth and then we may even lie about others, as we talked about evil in the last message. Sometimes there are people who live a lie.

They don't say a word, they just live a lie. Many years ago a woman came to me with a very interesting story. She was at work and she decided to go home in the middle of the day to pick something up, and she discovered her husband in ladies' clothes prancing around the living room. I often thought to myself it would have been interesting to have a tape recorder there to tape the discussion that took place at that particular incident. She did not know that she had been married to this man.

She really did not know him, though they had been married together for 15 years. This is a series of messages titled Why Good People Do Bad Things, and what we're discovering is that there are really two parts of it, and we'll see this again in the next message. There seem to be two parts. There's that part of us that wants to be noble and good and helpful and then there's that other part that is very deceitful and can be very, very difficult to pin down. This message is not going to be an easy one to hear. It's not an easy one to preach because today we're really going to probe right down and shine the light of God's word deeply into our souls, and for some of you it is going to be painful, but I want you to know that the purpose for pain is healing. In no sense is it my intention to simply increase your guilt.

Sometimes people complain. They say, you know, we go to church and all that we do is come back guilty. That's not my intention at all. My intention is to take a good look at what is in the human heart, and I don't want you to leave with guilt.

I want you to leave with God. That's the intention. That's where we're going in this message. What you find in the Bible is that the motif of darkness and light is used throughout. The darkness representing sin and the light representing God, his word and truth and honesty. And there are going to be two passages we're going to look at.

The first is in John chapter 3 where Jesus is talking actually to Nicodemus, and then the second passage will be in 1 John chapter 1. I'm picking up the text for lack of time right smack in the middle of the discussion at verse 19 of John chapter 3 where Jesus said, this is the verdict. Light has come into the world, but men love darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by truth comes into the light so that it may be plainly seen that what he has been done has been done through God. Let's talk first about some of the characteristics of those who walk in darkness.

Let's talk about those characteristics. Jesus said that this is the verdict. Light has come. Men love the darkness rather than light. Left to ourselves without the intervention of God's grace, without the intrusion of his light, we are lovers of darkness. And the reason we love the darkness is that the darkness is more consistent with our desires.

We do what we want to do and darkness enables us to do that. And then we learn to manage any guilt. And of course in today's society what you have is people who believe that guilt is simply a feeling that has to be unlearned. And so they think of ways to unlearn it, to lessen the pain of the guilt and then you have the opportunity of doing what you want to do. And the way in which we rationalize is first of all we find someone who's worse than we are.

You know in talking with people I seldom meet any person who doesn't say, well you know of course I've made some mistakes but I'm not a bad person. And so we put the best face on ourselves because there are people who are worse than we are. And so that makes us feel pretty good. And then the other thing that we do is we do good deeds so that we can point to good things we've done.

I remember a friend of mine said that as a teenager one day he came home from school and he mowed the lawn without being told he had to and his mother said well what have you been up to now, you know. So what we do is we use good deeds to cover and balance off some of the not so good deeds. So men love the darkness the Bible says. And secondly I want you to notice that they hate the light.

That's what the text says here expressly. Everyone who does evil hates the light. Verse 20. We don't like to be exposed. We don't like God coming and showing us our sin. We don't like the Bible. By nature we want to turn from it if we are lovers of darkness. Now those of us who are lovers of light of course we love the word but what you find today is that people disparage the Bible so that it gives them the freedom to do what they want to do and there is hatred toward that book. Men hate the light. I remember on a farm we had a musty old basement and we didn't have electricity in my early years.

I guess that dates me a little bit but then we're talking about Canada where they were not quite up on all the modern things like here. And we used to go downstairs either with a lantern or a candle or a lamp and it was it was incredible just to see all those bugs scurry. I mean all these little furry things we're hitting for somewhere.

And that's the way we are. That's the imagery of the light coming to shine. It is a painful light. It is a painful experience to finally reach an objective standard that is holiness.

It's very painful. So the Bible says that men who love the darkness hate the light. Third experience is, and this gets more tricky now, they think that they are walking in light.

They confuse light with darkness. Now I'm going to invite you to turn to 1 John chapter 1 and we're going to be in there for the rest of this message. 1 John chapter 1 where we have this amazing motif of light darkness continuing with all kinds of insights. John says in 1 John chapter 1 verse 5, this is the message we have heard from him and declare to you God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. Wow, just uninterrupted beautiful holy light. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness we lie and we do not live by the truth. Now that's verse 6. The first thing that we do and he is writing to people who are Gnostics.

Maybe you're not acquainted with that word. Gnosticism believed in enlightenment. That there was a feeling of enlightenment that one could have. So Gnostics were into light too. The problem is their light was actually darkness. The Bible says woe to those who call light darkness and darkness light and good evil and evil good. These Gnostics were the new agers of the day.

In fact books have been written to show that the modern new age movement is nothing but a revival of ancient Gnosticism. So you had people say okay I've got all this sin in my life. I'm walking in what is disobedient to the scriptures but I'm having fellowship with God too.

My God is accepting me. Now notice what the text says. First of all we lie to others. We lie to others. That's in verse 6. But then we lie to ourselves. Let's glance down to verse 8. If we claim to be without sin and many Gnostics said that just like there are people today who say well I haven't sinned.

You meet people like that. Well you know I may be not as good as I could be but I haven't sinned. Notice if we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves. First of all we lie to others then we deceive ourselves.

You'll never understand the true nature of evil unless you understand the deception. People who walk in darkness call it light. They are the enlightened ones.

They're the modern ones. We who believe in the Bible I mean that's going backwards not forwards you understand. And then as if that isn't enough they eventually make God a liar. Verse 10. If we claim we have not sinned we make him out to be a liar and his word is no place in us.

So notice the progression. We lie to others. We deceive ourselves. We lie to ourselves and at the end of the day because the Bible says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Now we actually are lying to God too. So the deception has come full circle. It is very complete. You know there are some animals whose means of defense is to emit an odor that is so strong that all who are near that particular animal must flee.

There's one that comes immediately to mind and it's black with some white stripes. Some of you who are city dwellers perhaps you have never encountered that particular aroma. I want you to know it's powerful and quite debilitating. But you know so far as the animal is concerned. So far as the skunk is concerned we have no evidence that he's troubled by it.

To him it might smell like Chanel number five. Right? And there are some people who are destroying their families. They're really doing evil. They have become so selfishly focused.

They are crude. They cannot see beyond their own immediate needs and you try to get through to them and and I've had wives say for example well doesn't he get it? Can't he see it?

Well the answer is no dearie. I'm sorry he doesn't see it. And there are two kinds of deceptions. One is a moral kind of deception.

The other is a deception regarding teachings like the Gnostics who actually believe that they are walking in light that they are okay. You know the reason that some of you find a real struggle you say what's all this bit about Jesus dying on the cross? You know why have that in Christianity?

Why drag that in? It's because you don't see your sin. Because you see if you saw your sin you'd say oh how marvelous that Jesus died.

But if you if you don't see yourself as a sinner you don't need any redemption do you? And the text says you deceive yourself. Martin Buber says the uncanny game of hide-and-seek in the obscurity of the soul in which it the single human soul evades itself avoids itself and hides from itself.

Now I think we've gotten to the bottom of how deceptive we can be. The scripture says in the book of Proverbs but the way of the wicked is like deep darkness. I love this how how vividly described it says they do not know what makes them stumble.

You just look at people you know going from pillar to post they have no idea what makes them stumble. They're walking in darkness and they think that they're walking in the light and they can't understand why they're tripping all over themselves every time they turn a corner. Well that's the characteristics of those who walk in darkness. Well thankfully we also have the characteristics of those who love the light and who walk in the light. What does light do? First of all light reveals who we are.

Light reveals who we are. The scripture says verse 7 of 1 John chapter 1 but if we walk in the light as God is in the light. Remember now God is the one who is light and if we walk in the light as God is in the light we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ his son purifies us from all sin. Paul says in the book of Ephesians he says now you were darkness he says that was in your past but now you are light in the Lord. Walk he says as children of light.

Now our self-image as we learned in a previous message is first of all made up by every comment that people make what our parents think of us what our teachers think of us what our coaches think of us what our peers think of us and so forth but it's a very confusing mixture and if you if you don't really know who you are and you have no standard by which to judge yourself no wonder people are so desperately confused. But Calvin was absolutely right when he says we can never know who we are unless we first know who God is because in the presence of God we see the depths of our sin oh but God does not leave us there and be assured I do not want to leave you there. There is forgiveness there is cleansing there is healing it is there in the presence of God you see that finally finally we know who we are with that solid reality of the light and it is there that we find healing and our sins become big that God might cleanse us and forgive us. You've heard the story about the man who was doubled over over his over his desk and called a pastor friend of mine and said come over and he came over and here's the man lying flat across the desk and the pastor thinks for sure that the man has discovered that his wife died or a child died or something and the man said I was thinking here about the business dealings that I have and how I have padded my expense accounts and God has showed me how sinful it is and I am looking into hell. And that's by the way what hell is it is the white light of God's holiness with no remedy with no relief.

You say well you know the guy's exaggerating most businessmen many businessmen have had their expense accounts it's done all the time it's a little infraction but it's little until you see God and when God begins to shine his light on it suddenly it's a mighty big deal because now finally you have a standard by which it can be judged. Light reveals who we are but God doesn't leave us there he pours grace and cleansing into our hearts as we shall see. Secondly light reveals where we are going it reveals where we are going the scripture is very clear that thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. Look at the text that I just read a moment ago but if we walk in the light as God is in the light we have fellowship one with another. Notice the imagery of walking and you're not stumbling sometimes you're stubbing your toe but you're not stumbling because you're walking in the light as God is in the light.

Finally reality finally wholeness. We have fellowship one with another that can mean that we have fellowship with God which is most assuredly true but we have fellowship with fellow travelers. I have fellowship with you you have fellowship with me it's that common bond because because we know what the light is and we know where we are going and sometimes we blow it to be sure but but we we at least know where the light is it's in God's word and so it tells us where we are going and we end up having fellowship with one another. Light also reveals our destination it reveals our destination. You know it's interesting that the bible talks about those who do not know Christ as savior who are trying to save themselves as walking in darkness okay because they don't have a savior they don't see their sins clearly and they keep stumbling and not knowing why they're tripping over themselves. But it's interesting that when they die what happens the scripture says they are in outer darkness. I'm reminded of the man who was dying the miser who would not respond to the gospel and he said to his daughter blow out the candle he said I can die in the dark. So here's a man who lives in the dark he dies in the dark and he ends up in the dark. My dear friend it's very sobering isn't it? I can't help but think that possibly I'm speaking today to someone who is still walking in darkness but is deceived and thinks he or she is actually walking in light.

It's so critical that we understand the light darkness motif. Now I need to say that there are many people who live their lives crucified between two thieves the regrets of yesterday and the anxieties of tomorrow. I've written a book entitled managing your emotions God's good gifts gone wrong. God is the one who gave us emotions he wants us to be able to control those emotions not deny them but on the other hand not be controlled by them either. I think that this book will be of great help you know for a gift of any amount and by the way this is one of the last times we'll be offering this resource.

For a gift of any amount go to rtwoffer.com that's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337 ask for the book managing your emotions God's good gifts gone wrong. Each chapter ends with questions great for group study. You can write to us at running to win 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard Chicago Illinois 60614. Exposing ourselves to the light of God's truth can be painful it's not a pretty sight to see ourselves for who we really are coming clean before God has infinite rewards. Next time on running to win we'll turn to the book of first John and learn what's involved in coming to the light. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer this is Dave McAllister. Running to win is sponsored by the Moody Church.