Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Welcome back to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.
Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovich, and we're so glad that you're back with us today. Jesus said in John 8 12 that those who follow him will not walk in darkness. So what does that mean then? It means that our lives will actually radiate with his light. Today, Pastor J.D. continues to share how we look to the light of Jesus to be saved and then how we live in a way that glows with the knowledge that we belong to Jesus, and Jesus belongs to us.
As always, if you miss any of these brand new programs, or if you're in search of our featured monthly resource, you can find it all online at jdgreer.com. Now let's rejoin Pastor J.D. as he teaches from John 8. Jesus not only claims to be the great I am in the Gospel of John, he attaches that name to our greatest areas of brokenness and need. So what is the need? What are the needs met by this claim?
How does Jesus as the light of the world benefit me personally and you? John answers that question by sandwiching this claim between two stories. We had a miracle sandwich last week.
We got another one this week. The first piece of bread on this sandwich is John 8, 1-11, the forgiving of the woman caught in the act of adultery. Now I've got to add, many scholars say this story was most likely not in the original manuscripts, it was added in later. But there is no question that this story was passed around in the early church and the story is so incredibly consistent with how John talks about Jesus being the light of the world in his first letter to the church, 1 John, that even if this story wasn't in the original manuscript, I think you can still use it here illustratively. The story goes like this.
You've probably heard this story. A woman is brought to Jesus who had been caught in the very act of adultery. Strangely, there is no mention of the man in order to be caught in the very act of adultery.
It took two, but he seems to have been just let go. Bottom line, there she stands guilty, ashamed, and in Israel this is a capital offense. You would die by stoning. So the Pharisees asked Jesus what they should do. It was not a sincere question as you probably know. They just wanted to get Jesus on record either ordering a woman's death or denying the law.
It was a trap. So instead of answering them, Jesus kneels down and starts to draw on the dirt. We don't know exactly what he drew. Some suggest that it was probably an emblem of the Ten Commandments, maybe the numbers of the Ten Commandments based on what Jesus said next.
Because after he was done drawing on whatever he drew, he stood up and he said, here's my answer. Let him who was without sin among you cast the first stone. Realizing that is not a boast they wanted to make with the numbers of the commandments written out on the ground there. Each of the Pharisees dropped his rocks.
One by one, they all went home until all that was left was just him and her. Then he looks at her and says, ma'am, where are your accusers? She says, none remain Lord. To which he responds with those beautiful words, and neither do I condemn you.
Go and sin no more. Here's the thing about light. It exposes. Like this woman was exposed in her sin.
Like Jesus had just exposed the Pharisees. Y'all listen, when something isn't pretty, you prefer to keep it in the dark. I've told you before that the older I get, the less I like looking into well-lit mirrors. My face actually looks like that. I told you at Christmas that a problem in our marriage is that my wife is aging like a fine wine and I'm aging more like a gallon of milk, right? Every year I get chunkier and whiter.
That's kind of how I think of that. Tim Keller tells the story of how when he was a teenager, he said I had terrible acne and I could only stand looking at my face in a mirror with a soft dim light. He said my dad, however, worked in a department store. Tim said he hated going there to that department store because it had bright lights and pillars with mirrors on all four sides.
He said I couldn't avoid seeing what I actually looked like and I hated it. When we see ourselves in the true light of God's glory, can you imagine morally what we look like? So here you've got a woman representative of you and me, caught in the very act of adultery, standing with the most morally pure being in the universe, completely exposed in all of her ugly shame. The story presents a very important question about divine light. What is it like to stand completely exposed in all of your sin in the presence of Jesus, the light of the world?
And the surprising answer is it's safe. In fact, it is the safest place in all the universe and that's because Jesus' light is not just a revealing light, you see, it's also a healing light. In the book of 1 John, John would explain it this way. He would say if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. It doesn't say if we walk in the light as he is in the light, oh, then we'll see all of our sin and just be ashamed. He says no, no, he'll cleanse us, see if we confess our sins.
He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. In other words, if we will bring our sin and our shame to light in Jesus like this woman did, he will forgive and cleanse us. The irony of the gospel is that if you expose and confess your sins to Jesus, he will cover them in grace. But if you cover them from him, Jesus will one day expose and judge them.
I know that you're afraid, I know that you feel afraid to bring your guilt and your weakness and your failure and your shame to Jesus, but friend, I've got good news for you, it's safe. There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel's veins and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stain. So see, that's on the front side of Jesus' claim, forgiving the adulterous woman, then the meat of the sandwich, right?
The claim. On the other side, the last piece of bread there is Jesus' healing of a man born blind. And to make sure that you connect this miracle to Jesus' claim to be the light of the world, Jesus repeats the claim, right? It's like a, you know, story cue to say, hey, this is what I'm about to show you, I am the light of the world, John 9, 5, he repeats it. And then he heals a man in the city whom everybody knew had been blind from birth.
There's irony here too. Typically, you see, if you're in the presence of an intensely bright light, that light won't help you. A really bright light will blind you. In July of 2010, a scientist at the University of Sheffield in England discovered a star, they say, get this, is 10 million times brighter than the sun.
Can you even get your mind around that? 10 million times brighter than our sun? They gave this star the really creative name of R13A61. We cannot even look directly at our sun without it doing damage to our eyes. Can you imagine looking at something 10 million times brighter than our sun?
You would go blind even if you didn't look directly at it. And all of those stars, Paul says, all of them were created as dim reflections of God's true glory. God's glory, Paul says, that's the truly unapproachable light. So slow down, friends, slow down. Don't miss this.
Get this. Here in John 9, we got the brightest of all lights, brighter even than R136A1. But instead of causing blindness, he heals it. Instead of judging and shaming sin, he forgives and covers it. I know you may feel like you're dirty. You may feel like you're too dirty, too damaged, too deceptive, too disqualified for Jesus.
But listen to me, friend. His light is sight-giving, not blinding. His light is cleansing, not debilitating. Over the years, I have sat with countless people who found the healing and delivering power of exposing their sin to Jesus. Cover your sin, and one day he will expose it in judgment.
Expose it to him now, and he will forgive and cleanse it with grace. And he will create in you a new heart. He will replace blind eyes with seeing ones. He will change your passions. He will give you a new heart. If any man is in Christ, he's a new creation. The oldest past, the new has come. Oh, the irony of the most brilliant light in the universe is that it not only reveals defilement, it heals it.
It doesn't cause blindness, it cures it. And that's because, you see, at the center of this light is a cross, a point of great darkness. Remember I told you how Ezekiel 10, Ezekiel saw the light of God's presence, leave the temple, hesitate at the threshold, depart from Jerusalem by way of the East Gate, and then ascend up the Mount of Olives and into heaven seemingly forever? Well, when Jesus makes his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, if you're paying attention to what's going on, you will notice he takes the most unusual route.
Definitely, he's going around his elbow to get to his thumb kind of thing. Matthew tells us Jesus first ascends the Mount of Olives, then rides a donkey down the mountain into Jerusalem where he enters by the East Gate. And guess where the first place he goes is?
Straight to the temple. The light had returned. But that week did not end with the light of the world enthroned in the Holy of Holies. That week ended with the light of the world hung in shame and darkness on a cross. The gospel writers tell us that when Jesus died on the cross, an unusual darkness settled over the land. In the middle of the day, the curse of our sin and death had seemingly extinguished the light of the world. And then the light of the world was placed into the cold, dark confines of a grave and sealed up, they thought, forever.
But you know what we've seen. Death could not hold him. Darkness could not overcome him. And so it dawned on the third day just as the sun began to illuminate the day the light of the world walked out of the grave.
And that is why it is a healing light and a forgiving light because the light of the world first absorbed your darkness. The gospel message is simply, look to Jesus, look to Jesus, look to the light of the world and be saved. This is Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. In just a moment, Pastor JD will continue today's teaching. But first, I want to tell you a little bit more about this ministry.
Summit Life exists to take people deeper into their faith and then with that knowledge and conviction help advance the gospel wider into the world. Every week through radio programs, podcasts, devotionals, and practical blog posts, we provide gospel-centered resources to help people grow in their personal relationship with God. But the truth is, none of this is possible without the prayers and financial support of our monthly gospel partners and other faithful givers. With your help, we are able to share the hope of Jesus Christ with a lost and hurting world. Will you join more than 500 gospel partners already making a difference? Your regular partnership allows us to bring the teaching on this program, as well as accessible gospel-driven resources to individuals and families everywhere. Start your monthly gift today and commit to praying for this ministry and mission regularly.
Visit jdgreer.com now and learn how you can be a part of the team. Now let's get back to today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor JD. Charles Spurgeon, the great British pastor of the 19th century, described his own conversion in these terms. I love this story. It's one of my all-time favorites. Let me just read Spurgeon's account of it.
It's better than me telling you about it. Spurgeon said to his congregation one day, I sometimes think I might still be in darkness today had it not been for the goodness of God and sitting in a snowstorm one Sunday morning when I was a teenager trying to get to a certain place of worship. I was walking through the streets of London trying to get to this church he'd heard about, but the snow came fast and hard. And so I couldn't get to that respectable church I was trying to get to. So instead I just turned down a little side street and I came to a little primitive Methodist chapel. In that chapel, there were no more than a dozen or 15 people. I'd heard of the primitive Methodist he said, how they sang so loudly that they made people's heads ache. But that did not matter to me.
I wanted to know how I might be saved. And if those primitive Methodists could tell me that I did not care how much they made my head ache. But the minister wasn't even there that morning. The pastor wasn't there.
He'd been snowed in, I suppose. And so in his place, a very thin looking man, not well dressed, a shoemaker or a tailor got up into the pulpit to preach. Now it is well that preachers should be instructed, but this man was really stupid.
It's literally what he says. He stuck really closely to his texts that morning for the simple reason that he had little else to say. The text he preached from was, look unto me and be ye saved.
All the ends of the earth. He did not even pronounce the words correctly. But that didn't matter to me because there was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in that text. And so after reading the text, the simple preacher began to us, my dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, look, a man needing to go to college to learn to look. Anybody can look, even a child can look. But the text also says, look unto me. I said he in a broad Essex accent, which I guess that's the English version of a redneck accent.
Think Keely from Ted Lasso or Ron from Harry Potter. I think that's what we're looking at. Many of you are looking to yourselves, but it's no use looking there.
You'll never find any comfort in yourselves. The text says, look unto me. Then the good man got on a roll. Spurgeon said, look unto me. I am sweating great drops of blood. Look unto me. I'm hanging on the cross. Look unto me.
I'm dead and buried. Look unto me. I rise again. Look unto me. I ascend to heaven. Look unto me.
I'm sitting at the father's right hand. Oh, poor sinner. Look unto me.
Look unto me. Then the preacher spied me under the balcony. He must have recognized that I was new to the church. He suddenly said, young man, you look very miserable. Well, it was true.
I did, but I was not accustomed to having remarks made from the pulpit about my personal appearance. However, it struck a good blow. It struck me very deeply.
He continued, and you always will be miserable young man, miserable in life and miserable in death. If you don't look to Jesus, obey now and this moment you will be saved. Y'all, this story always gets me. The greatest preacher in the English speaking world is brought to Christ by an uneducated layman asked to fill the pulpit at the last minute. Then lifting up his hands, he shouted as only a primitive Methodist could do, young man, look to Jesus Christ. Look, look, look, you have nothing to do but to look and live. And I saw it once the way of salvation, Spurgeon said.
I know not what else he said. I was so possessed with that one thought, like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, the people only looked and were healed. So it was with me. Oh, I looked and I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away. There and then the cloud was gone.
The darkness had rolled away. And at that moment I finally saw the sun. I could have risen that instant and sung with the most enthusiastic of the primitive Methodist, of the precious blood of Christ and the simple faith, which looks alone to him. There since by faith, I saw the stream by flowing wound supply. Redeeming love has been my theme and shall be till I die.
Oh, that somebody had just told me this before. Look to Christ and you shall be saved. Look to Jesus and be you saved.
All ye ends of the earth. So let me end with a question for you who are not yet Christians and then a challenge for those of you who are. For the not yet convinced, for those of you that are not yet Christians, maybe, maybe you've been visiting this church with a friend. Maybe you've been coming to a small group. Maybe you're just listening right now. You couldn't even work up your courage to come here.
You're just listening right now at home. The whole experience has been a bit uncomfortable for you. I want you to consider whether that discomfort might come from being exposed to light.
Being exposed to light can be uncomfortable, especially at first. The way I get my kids up in the morning sometimes is that's to open their blinds. They're not always excited about that. They don't sit up and say, oh, thank you, Father. This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it.
No, they cover their heads with their pillow and they're like, get out, dad, get out. See, when Jesus begins illuminating you, you might start to feel uncomfortable or scared or even mad. Maybe this idea that Jesus is God and that he demands absolute lordship over your life, maybe that angers you. You're like, how dare he? How dare he try to suggest who I can sleep with or who I can't? How dare he tell me who he thinks I am is more important than I think who I am?
Who is he to demand absolute authority over my life? I actually feel like that anger is a good thing because it means the light is coming in and it's hurting your eyes. Or maybe you're scared.
The idea that he knows all about you, that he sees all that you've ever done. You don't know whether you want to run away from him or run toward him. That fear is a good sign. The light's hurting your eyes. You're starting to realize what a mess your life is.
The light reveals, then it heals, to his grace that taught my heart to fear, then grace my fears relieved. Honestly, it's when you're unmoved by Jesus that I'm most worried about you because that means you're totally asleep. You're not in a coma. Your eyes are shut. You haven't even begun to open your eyes. My admonition for you, if you're uncomfortable with this, is press through that discomfort. Press through.
Keep coming. The light you're encountering is not just a revealing light. See, it's a healing one. And to those of you who are Christians, here's my challenge to you. Jesus said that those who follow him will not walk in darkness, which means that our lives will radiate with his light. Again, you might ask, what does it mean to live with the light of Jesus? You mean putting a fish on my car, WWJD bracelet on my wrist, bumper sticker that says, in case of rapture, this car will be unmanned?
No. No, it means you live in a way that you glow with the knowledge that you belong to Jesus and Jesus belongs to you. Tim Keller said that means a handful of things.
I thought it was a really good little list. He said it means you live with integrity because you know that one day you'll answer to God and on that day, everything's going to be exposed. Every financial transaction, every text message, every convo, all of it's going to be brought to light. And that leads you to a second thing and that's courage. When you do what's right, when nobody's looking, that'll put you out of rhythm with most everybody around you and that'll make them resent you. Think of the clerk who's hard work because she does it as unto the Lord and not unto men and not just when the boss is watching. That exposes that a lot of her coworkers are lazy.
So they resent her or a waiter who declares his tips to the IRS and makes his coworkers look like cheats or a white Christian couple who welcomes a black couple into their neighborhood and infuriates some of their white neighbors in the process. To live in the light means to live with courage. Thirdly, it means living with grace because your life was defined by an extraordinary act of grace. It means life for you is no longer about getting all you can but loving others like you've been loved, giving yourselves away for others like Jesus gave himself away for you. The prophet Daniel said that those who live that way shine like the stars forever and ever. Lastly, he said you live with hope.
You got a joy and a constancy that confuses people. When you're in pain, when the health diagnosis is not good, when the pregnancy test is negative again, when money is tight, your life still glows with the knowledge that you belong to Jesus and he belongs to you and that's something that not even death can take away. The Psalms say those who look to God are radiant. They glow with hope. As believers, we're supposed to live in the light of her believers described like the moon. The moon has no light in itself but when the sun's hidden from our view on the other side of the world, the moon reflects its light and serves as a promise that you're going to see the sun again. Jesus, the light of the world is no longer physically here right now but our lives glow with the constant assurance that the sun is returning again.
Why don't you bow your heads if you would at all of our campuses. God, be merciful to us and bless us and cause your face to shine upon us that your way might be known in all the earth and your salvation among all nations. God, may the peoples praise you. May this people praise you and may we glow with the light of salvation and healing. We pray in Jesus' name.
Amen. Maybe today the spirit is nudging you to let go of the shadows you've been clinging to and fully embrace the light of Christ. You are listening to Pastor JD Greer on Summit Life.
If you joined us late, you can always catch up by visiting us at jdgreer.com. Pastor JD, our mission is to take people deeper into the gospel and then take that growth and help advance the gospel wider into the world. What exactly do we mean by that? Yeah, Molly, this is what we are all about at Summit Life, taking people deeper into the gospel and advancing the gospel wider into the world. You see, when the gospel goes deeper into somebody, when they truly understand it, the deeper they go, the wider they go in mission. And so that's why we here at Summit Life work so hard to create resources that enables you to do that daily broadcasts, TV programs, podcasts, devotionals, Bible studies, these resources, the messages, they're all designed to help you not just hear the gospel, but to internalize it, to go deep in it and to let it shape every part of your life.
But don't let it stop there. What Paul says is it goes deep in you so that it can go wider into the world. Jesus didn't want us just to believe.
He wanted us to go. That's why our mission is what it is. We honestly believe the greatest thing that you can invest in is the Word of God getting to people. So if you have been impacted by this ministry, I'd love for you to consider joining our ministry team. Together, we can take the life changing hope of Jesus deep into the hearts of others. And then here's the great thing.
It multiplies wider through them into the world. Trust me, that's an investment that will echo in eternity. For more information about this ministry, visit us online at jdgrier.com. We've just started studying the seven I am statements of Jesus.
What do they really mean? That's the topic of our brand new featured resource called I am seven weeks in the Gospel of John. It focuses on each of the seven statements Jesus made along with commentary and reflection questions for each. It's easy to donate when you give us a call at 866-335-5220. That number again is 866-335-5220.
Or you can give online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to join us again Thursday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.
