Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Before some Pharisees, Jesus said, I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life. Those who receive this light are given direction all through life to the eternal life yet to come. Today, more of our look at the light leads us, taken from John chapter 8.
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, the clouds of darkness are gathering as prophesied long ago. I think people desperately need to seek the light of Christ before it's too late. Dave, I really do agree with you.
And I want to say today to all who are listening from my heart to yours, even if you know Jesus Christ as Savior, and I trust that you do, would you seek him anew? Worship him, thank him, share him with others, because as Dave mentioned, the clouds of darkness are gathering. We see it all around. We see it in the wars. We see it in the rise of crime.
So many different ways society seems to be falling apart, but we have a center. We have a safe place. We trust in a Savior who is able to save us from our sins and bring us safely all the way home. Would you be a blessing to God today? You know the Bible does say, bless the Lord, O my soul, through your worship, through your thanksgiving, for the gracious gift of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, the light of the world.
I want to speak to you candidly today. If you cannot pinpoint a time when you received Christ as Savior, almost certainly you are not converted, you have not received God's light. And don't tell me it happened when you were baptized or when you went through some ritual. It must be the receiving of light, as many as received him. Now there are some people who are genuinely saved who can't remember the exact day, but most people can.
I can 50, 55 years ago. I remember it with clarity. And so Jesus is there at the beginning of our journey, at the beginning of our experience. Secondly, Jesus is there also as he leads us during our journey. As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
Those who follow me, Jesus said, will not walk in darkness, but you'll have the light of life. How do we understand that? You know, about 25 years ago, and I can just throw out those numbers without a problem, 25 years ago, 30 years ago, I met with some college students in my study here at the church.
You know, college students, the reason it's so wonderful to be with them is oftentimes they are so idealistic and so committed, but maybe sometimes they're just maybe even over-saved, if I can put it that way. These students felt called of God to do ministry in Chicago, but they wanted to know the leading of the Holy Spirit, the leading of Christ in such a way that they would not need a map. So they deliberately came to Chicago without a map.
Of course, it was long before the days of GPS and all those other things. And they thought that if they're sensitive to the Spirit, the Holy Spirit is going to say, turn left here, turn right here. I would think that the Holy Spirit would always say, stop at red lights. I mean, that would be my assumption. And I told them, you know, you don't have to do that.
Invest a couple of bucks, get a map. Now, on the other hand, maybe the Holy Spirit knew what he was doing. Well, the Holy Spirit always knows what he's doing, of course, but isn't it interesting that they were led to the Moody Church, which is where I think the Spirit should take most people. So when we talk about following Jesus and sensing the leadership of the Spirit, that's not what we're talking about. We are talking about, first of all, Jesus gives light as to who we are.
Jesus, by his Holy Spirit, you know, it says in the book of Romans very clearly, it says that if we are led by the Spirit of God, we are the sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you've received the spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry, have a father. The Spirit himself bears witness within us that we are the children of God. That's what happens when we receive the light. We have the assurance that we belong to God, not only because of his word, but the witness of the Spirit of God within us.
And as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we cry Abba Father because one of the proofs of being born again is you begin to call God Father. And so that's the assurance of the Spirit of God. Jesus also comes along and gives us the light in terms of leadership, moral leadership.
You know, even after we received the light, we sometimes go into darkness, don't we? Haven't we all had the experience of crossing the line? In other words, we know for sure that we are going across the line and we are sinning now.
How do we know that? It's because the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus is the one who tells us through conviction you have crossed the line. So he leads us in many different ways. Spiritually, yes, he also leads us morally. And the Bible says this, thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. I've given you the example before, but when I was out on the farm in Canada as a little boy, we used to go from the, that was before electricity even, we used to go from the house to the barn at night and we had a lantern. The lantern didn't shine very far, but it showed you what you needed to do to take the next sure step.
What amazed me was that if the lantern wasn't working or you're without one, no matter how well you knew the farmyard, in the midst of darkness, you'd go wrong. So the Word of God leads us. It enables us to be able to be led even as we follow Jesus spiritually and morally. So Jesus is with us during the journey.
He's also there at the end of the journey. You know, Jesus says this, now let's look at the text again. I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but notice the phrase now, will have the light of life. The light that leads to life, to leads to life with a capital L. And Jesus said that if you follow me, you'll have the wisdom, you'll have the insight and furthermore, the permanence of the work of the Holy Spirit of God within your heart so that you will be led to life the way in which it should be lived. Everyone wants a life of fulfillment, a life of joy, a life of purpose. And Jesus gives that to us here. And the good news is that beyond that, of course, is to be with him. And so we don't go into the darkness alone.
King George VI, when he was giving a speech, I think in 1939 regarding England needing to go to war said, he quotes this, I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, give me a light that I might tread safely into the unknown. And he replied, go out into the darkness and put your hand in the hand of God that shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way. I would change that just a little bit and say, put your hand into the hand of Jesus and it will be to you better than your own light and safer than a known way. So Jesus is at the beginning of the journey.
He's at the end of the journey. We think, for example, when Stephen was being stoned, he was there and you remember the heavens were opened and Jesus was standing on the right hand of God. What was Jesus doing at the right hand of God? He was welcoming Stephen. Ten times or so in the New Testament, it says that Jesus is seated at the right hand of God. This is the only time when it says that he was standing at the right hand of God because he was there welcoming Stephen and saying, Stephen, you're going through a very difficult journey.
It's a time when you are in great pain because those rocks are hurting you. But when it's all over and when you're dead, I'm here for you. I want to say to you today that nobody should be in the dark after the sun goes down. Jesus is the light who begins here and then takes us all the way and is the light of life.
I find that this passage is transforming for many reasons. First of all, I just want to warn you here that religion can actually block the path to light. Religion can block the path to light. Because if you read the rest of this chapter, and it's rather long, but you ought to read it, what you will discover is that the Pharisees argue with Jesus.
They'll say, who gives you the authority to be able to say these things? Jesus indicates that his own ministry is self-authenticating, that if they really were following God, they would receive him, and on and on the discussion and the argument goes. They had trouble with the divinity of Jesus. But there was something else that troubled them greatly, and that was the grace of Jesus. Accepting grace is very difficult. I mean, you think of the gracious way in which Jesus dealt with the woman that we talked about just a moment ago. You know, no man has condemned thee. I don't condemn thee.
Go and sin no more. I mean, where was Jesus with all of the laws and the rules and all the things that made up the Judaism of that day? It's not as if Jesus was disregarding them. He was fulfilling them. But he was also fulfilling them by pointing to a better way, the way of grace, the way of forgiveness, the way of love.
And that's difficult to accept. When he told that story about the two people going into the temple and one of them began to pray and said, Lord, I thank thee that I am not like other men who are extortioners. I fast twice a week.
I do this and this and this. That's religion. And then Jesus points to the other man who doesn't even look up to heaven, but simply says, God, forgive me. Be gracious to me, a sinner. And Jesus said, he's the one that actually goes home justified. The Pharisees hated that.
Where are your rules? This past week, pastor Bertie and I were in a cab together going downtown and we enlisted the cab driver in what could be called, I think, a spirited discussion regarding religious matters and eternal life. He was absolutely convinced. Now we asked him whether or not he feared dying.
He said, no, I'm not sure. But he was convinced that he could even redeem himself for some pretty evil things if he just did enough things to balance the score. That's religion. Religion is self-righteousness. Religion is ritual.
It is not relationship. And you could be brought up today very religious and religion will do one of two things for you. Either it'll make you feel good because you think that you are better than you really are, or it'll turn you off and you'll be like the friend I began the message about who decided to reject it all and go into sin and to really be deeply in darkness. Religion can be a great stumbling block to the light. You know, Jesus is speaking to these Pharisees.
For example, I'm just picking this out. For example, in verse 24, I told you that you will die in your sins for unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins. What an indictment. They could not bring themselves to believe that Jesus was the light and was offering it freely to anyone who would believe on him. Religion can be a hindrance. Secondly, light and darkness can't coexist. Light and darkness can't coexist. You know, when you go into Ace Hardware and you say, I want to buy a flashlight and I've done that and you probably have too. Nobody goes into Ace Hardware and says, you know, I always buy a flashlight, but today I'm coming to buy a dark light, a dark flash. I want to buy a dark flash so that I can just shoot darkness all over the room whenever I want to.
Nobody does that. There are no dark flashes, only light flashes. It's because darkness has no inherent power. It is the opposite of light. Light has energy. That's why you can buy a flashlight with batteries, but it has energy.
And so you buy that. You know, there's that analogy and that legend about a cave saying to itself, I know only darkness. And if you've ever been in a cave, you know how dark it can possibly be. The cave said, I know only darkness. It said to the sun, I don't believe in light. And the sun said, I don't believe that I've seen any darkness at all. And the cave said, well, come into my cave and you'll see darkness.
Well, you know the rest of the story. The sun came into the cave and there was no darkness at all. Couldn't find any darkness. You see, when you and I received Jesus Christ as savior, light comes into our heart, but that doesn't mean that we cannot again walk in darkness. We can give darkness to our hearts, but once that is exposed to God, forgiven and cleansed, the light dissipates the darkness. That's why it says if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ, God's son cleanses us from all sin. The reason that it's so necessary to believe on Jesus is because Jesus is the only way who can take away our sins so that we can have fellowship with God, because in God there is no darkness at all, the scripture says none. And so we want to have fellowship with God. We come to God through Jesus who cleanses us, who makes us acceptable to the father because of his own sacrifice.
And there we are. And we discovered that no matter how dark our lives are, light will always trump the darkness. I may be speaking to somebody today and this message may be designed especially for you because you look into your life and all that you see is darkness, religious darkness, moral darkness. You have a cave that you have closed the mouth of it and you've said it's all dark. When Jesus comes in, that darkness has to leave.
It is more powerful than the darkness that you bring to him. Light and darkness cannot coexist. There's a final lesson and that is this, that both light and darkness have a destination. Both light and darkness have a destination.
The Bible says very clearly that if you walk in darkness, you end in darkness. As I've already been emphasizing during this series of messages, John plays off of this motif of light and darkness. So in the 13th chapter, Jesus is there with his disciples. He's having the last supper and the Bible says Satan having put into the heart of Judas Iscariot that he should betray him. And then you know the story how Judas was identified finally. And it says Judas went out and it was night.
Wow. John means more than the fact that it just happened to be evening and the sun had set. Judas went out and it was night. What I find interesting is that if we want to find the destination of darkness and light, all that we have to do is to look at two buddies who hung out together with Jesus for three years. On the one hand, there is Judas and on the other hand, there is John the Apostle. And John the Apostle, he and Judas were together for three years. They did miracles together. They served the Lord together. I mean, they were there and they helped distribute the bread that Jesus multiplied. They were there when he was walking on the water.
They saw all of the things that he had done and they hung out together for three years. We could say that they did church together in that environment. I have no doubt that there were times when Judas and John probably when they were sleeping outdoors along with Jesus, they may have shared a blanket.
Two buddies hanging out, but one going out and it is night. And what does the Bible say about those who walk in darkness? Finally, the end is this, that they are in outer darkness.
Wow. It's like the miser who died and said to his daughter before he died, blow out the candle. I can die in the dark.
You live in the dark, you die in the dark, even greater darkness. But here's John and John of course is the one to whom God gave the revelation, the one who was friends with Judas for three years. And John wrote this about the final destiny of all those who follow Jesus, who walk in the light. And I saw no temple in the city for the temple is the Lord God almighty and the lamb. And the city has no need of the sun nor of the moon to shine on it for the glory of God gives its light. Notice this, its lamp is the lamb.
Wow. By its light will the nations walk and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it and its gates will never be shut by day and there will be no night there and they will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations, but nothing unclean will ever enter into it nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the lamb's book of life. Now I need to clarify that there are plenty of people who are going to be in heaven who have done detestable things and false things. It's speaking of those who did those things and they never came to the light. They lived in darkness, they died in darkness, but those who live in light end in glorious light. The bottom line is this, that Jesus is saying there are two classes of people, even you today sitting here, you don't know who you are sitting next to. You may be sitting next to a Judas who's sung all the right songs, said all the right prayers, done all the right things undetectable. The fact is that they are walking in darkness. You also may be sitting next to someone who is walking in light, who will enjoy the light of eternity.
The very last words of Silent Night say this, Silent Night, Holy Night, Son of God loves pure light, radiant beams from thy holy face with the dawn of redeeming grace, Jesus Lord at thy birth. Jesus, light of the world, offered to everyone that it does not come through closed doors. You must receive it and receive it as a gift and receive it by faith and the light will break into your soul. Have you received Christ as Savior? Can you pinpoint a time when you say I savingly believed at this moment? Perhaps you remember your age. You may have remembered where you were when you received Christ.
If not, you may be walking in darkness. Even as I pray, if you want to receive Christ as Savior, in your heart say today, Lord Jesus, I open my life to light. The fact that you died for me to take away my sin, that I might come to know a God in whom there is no darkness at all.
My friend today, the older I get, the more deeply I believe what you have just heard. Light is in Jesus Christ alone, the light of forgiveness, the light of hope, the light of a new beginning and the light of eternity, all wrapped up in Christ. Well, this is the last week we're making a very special devotional available for you. 365 color pages on God's creation. If you were to spend 10 minutes a day reading one of these pages, sharing it with your children, you would have an education in biology, anatomy, astronomy, geology, botany, design.
What a devotional this is, all pointing to the wonder of God's creation. Now, for a gift of any amount, we're making it available for you and I hope that you take advantage of this because the new year is just around the corner. I also hope that you have a pen or pencil handy because I'm going to be giving you some very important contact info. Here is what you do. Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now, because this is the last week we're making this resource available, I'm going to be giving you that contact info one more time and thanking you in advance for helping us get the gospel around the world. Go to rtwoffer.com.
That's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Remember that in creation we see the wonder and grace of God. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. Running to Win comes to you from the Moody Church in Chicago to help you understand God's roadmap for your race of life. Next time, part four in our series on The Light Has Come. We'll turn to Ephesians chapter four and learn how the light defines us. Plan to listen. Thanks for listening today. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
