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| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) Note from Rev. Keith Davis: This sermon was preached at a funeral recently, but I removed (or tried to) any reference to that in this sermon. The person who passed away wanted me to preach a simple Gospel message for her children and grandchildren based on John 1, so that is what this is. This sermons does not have a ton of application beyond the simple call of the Gospel "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved."
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The Light Shines in the Darkness
John 1:1-9
Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the imagery and symbolism of light and darkness is something that can be easily seen and understood by almost everyone. It is so powerful that it can be felt and experienced. This symbolism has been employed in every movie we watch, in almost every book that has been written, and in many pieces of artwork that have been created.
If we’re reading a book or watching a movie, we know by instinct that it’s dangerous thing to walk down a dark alley; we know that a dark, cloudy day can be a harbinger of something bad; whereas a bright sunny day lightens the mood and brings hope; and often in paintings, light portrays life and goodness, whereas darkness and shadows represents death, or something sinister or evil lurking in the shadows.
For thousands of years, authors and artists alike have communicated messages like these using the symbolism of light and darkness – and the Bible is no different. The symbolism of light and darkness runs throughout the entire Bible. But the difference is this -- the Bible is the original source of that symbolism. Light and darkness, good and evil, these opposite and opposing forces – where do these ideas come from? Where does this imagery originate? Here in God’s Word.
In the opening verses of the Bible, in Genesis 1: 2 we read that the earth was formless and void, and darkness covered the face of the deep. Then verse 3 reads: “And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness… the light he called Day and the darkness he called Night.
But in the beginning the darkness was not evil. The world and everything in it were good, just as God had created it. Before the beginning, the darkness was literally nothing more than the absence of light. There was nothing to fear in the darkness because there was nothing evil or sinister lurking there. There was no sin, no evil, no death, no sickness, no ALS, nothing to fear.
But all that changed in Genesis 3 -- that’s when Adam and Eve gave into temptation and fell into sin. That was the moment when the darkness became a symbol of evil. The darkness and blackness of sin spread over the earth like a disease – like a deadly plague for which there was no earthly cure. All of humanity became infected with sin.
That’s also when Satan, who was created as an angel of light became the prince of darkness, and the fallen angels who rebelled with him became a legion of demons, spiritual enemies of God whose sole purpose is to turn the hearts and souls of mankind against God, man’s Creator.
Romans 1 tells us that this is also when the heart of man became darkened by foolishness, his mind became twisted and perverted. Man became totally depraved, morally bankrupt, sold as a slave to sin -- so much so that man loved the darkness instead of the light.
And it was at this point where God had every right to destroy mankind and the world and start over. I suppose God could have also turned his back on sinful mankind and said “Alright. Have it your way. If this is how you want to live -- in a world without Light, in a world without God-- then here it is.”
But that would be a world without hope, a world steeped in the darkness of sin without the hope of salvation, without the Light of God breaking through and delivering us from this world of pain and suffering, of death and destruction, of injustice, immorality and wickedness.
But Thanks be to God, He did not leave us to perish in the darkness. As we read a moment ago, God sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, into this world, into the darkness – so that we who are living in darkness might see the Light -- and put our faith and hope in Him and be saved. As Isaiah 9:2 says, The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.
John 1 declares that Jesus Christ is the Light of the world – the Savior came to save us from our darkness. Today, I preach the Gospel to you from these opening verses in John 1.
1) Who is Jesus
2) Why did He Come
3) What does that have to do with you/me?
1) Who is Jesus
The opening verses of John 1:1-2 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Just a word about the author: John was one of the 12 disciples who was called by Jesus to follow him. John’s account of the life of Jesus was unique from that of Matthew, Mark and Luke because John didn’t begin with the birth of Jesus. John began his account with the pre-existence of Jesus.
From the opening verses to the very end of his Gospel account, John wants to impress upon us who Jesus was – that He was the eternal Son of God, the Word of God, the divine LOGOS whom God sent into the world in order to save fallen and sinful humanity.
When John wrote that Jesus was the Word of God – the LOGOS of God, what exactly did he mean? John was revealing to us that in the birth of Jesus Christ something amazing and unthinkable happened. In Jesus, the eternal God took on flesh and bone; God came to earth to dwell among us.
In referring to Jesus as the Word of God, John is actually saying that God’s Son, Jesus Christ is “God’s Good-News letter” of hope and light to a fallen, sinful, broken, and hurting world! That is what made that first Christmas such an amazing, glorious and surreal event!
In the birth of Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah had finally come. Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s promise made to Adam and Eve and all mankind after the Fall into sin: that God would send the seed of the woman to crush the head of the serpent, and in doing so, God would redeem mankind from the tyranny of sin and from the darkness of Satan.
This is why the Christmas angels sang, and why the wise men came brought gifts and worshipped Jesus – because in the baby Jesus, born to the virgin Mary, the Light of God had dawned on their darkness.
In John 1: 4-5 we read: in him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. Vs 9: The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.
So that’s who Jesus is: He is the Bright and Morning star. God of God and Light of Light. He is the holy, glorious and radiant Son of God who humbled himself, took on flesh and blood and bone, who became like us in every way except for sin, and Jesus came to dwell among us in this world of darkness.
2) Why did He Come
But why? Why did Jesus come? Why would Jesus come? Why would the almighty eternal God send His divine Son into this world – a world that is so dark and evil, and so full of pain and misery and suffering?
That is the great mystery and glory of God’s love. This is why we sing and say that God’s grace is amazing! Yes, God is holy and just and He cannot stand to look upon our sin or let our sin go unpunished. But God is also gracious, and merciful and kind.
Psalm 103 says: God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay s according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth so great is his steadfast love for those who fear him – and as far as east from west is distant, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
As Ezekiel 33: 11 says, God does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked but that the wicked would turn from their ways and live.
So, the reason Jesus came was really very simple: Jesus came into the world to pay the price for our sins, in order that God could forgive us and save us from the penalty of sin – namely the condemnation of hell. And let’s be clear on that as well. Hell is what every sinner deserves – it’s what each of us of deserve because we have earned it.
Sometimes we human beings think and say some very ignorant and stupid things – when things don’t go well for us, or when tragedy or sickness strikes, when our plans do not turn out like we had hoped, we sometimes raise our fist to God in anger and say, “Life isn’t fair”. We ask why God can’t give us a break. Why won’t God give us what we deserve – what we’ve worked so hard to accomplish.
Yet how easy it is to forget that God owes us nothing – and if God was ever ‘fair’ to us, if God ever did give to us what we deserved, it wouldn’t be a better job, or more money or that mansion that we always dreamed about. No. It would be eternal damnation in hell -- where there would be no hope of salvation, no possibility of forgiveness, no grace, no mercy – just God’s eternal wrath poured out upon us relentlessly.
But again – that’s why Jesus came. So that God would NOT treat us as our sins deserved.
So, what did God do instead? God sent His Son Jesus to die in our place. God sent His Son Jesus Christ to come in our own human nature, to come in our own flesh, so that by His suffering and death on the cross, God might pour out upon Him -- His eternal beloved Son, his full wrath and fury against all our sins – so that we could be forgiven.
I mentioned earlier about that powerful imagery and symbolism of light and darkness – well it was especially evident on the cross, where the Bible tells us that from noon until 3 in the afternoon, the sun’s light failed to shine, and a deep darkness covered the face of the earth.
Do you know what happened in those three hours of darkness? God’s Son, Jesus Christ, the Bight and Morning Star, the Light of the world, suffered alone in the darkness. He experienced the full wrath of God being poured out upon Him. That is when Jesus, the Light of the world, suffered the agony and torment hell on the cross all for our sake – for sinner’s sake – and it was during that time that He cried out, My GO, My God why hast thou forsaken me?
Why? So that God would not forsake us. So that God would not punish us for our sins. So that God would not cast us into outer darkness of hell and suffer His wrath for all eternity. In 2 Corinthians 5:21 the Apostle Paul explains this in one verse. He writes: God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
That means that God, in His love, by a miracle of his grace, took all our sin and all our guilt (past present and future), and he placed it all upon Jesus Christ. So that by Christ’s suffering and death for our sins, all is forgiven. The debt is paid – our sins are no more. And then God took the perfect righteousness and satisfaction of Christ, and he imputed that to our account.
So that on the cross, this amazing exchange occurred when Jesus took on himself all our sin, and he gave to us all his righteousness – so that now when God looks upon us, sinful though we are, far from perfect, God sees us as we are in Christ! Forgiven. Righteous and holy, without sin.
That’s why Jesus had to come – because no one else could do that for us. No one else could save us. No one else could remove our sin and make us righteous before God except God Himself!
3) What does that have to do with me?
So then finally we ask, what does any of this have to do with me? If you are a believer, then you already know the answer to this question. You see, when a believer hears the Gospel, their hearts melt in gratitude, and their voices sing forth praises to the God of their salvation. That should be the natural response for any child of God.
But for an unbeliever, as much as you might like to think that the Gospel, (or “Jesus” or “God”), has nothing to do with you, because you want nothing to do with it – you are sorely mistaken. God exists, and whether we choose to acknowledge that fact or not, it does not change that reality.
And, every single one of us will have to stand before our Maker some day and give an accounting for the way we lived out lives, and for what we did with Jesus – for the way we responded to the Gospel. Did we repent and believe and put our faith, hope and trust in Jesus, or did we reject Jesus and tell God to ‘go kick rocks.’
Here’s the downfall, the fatal error, of that approach: if what the Bible says is true, and God poured out His infinite wrath upon his Only begotten Son for the sins of humanity – then you can be certain that he is going to do the same to us, if we reject His Son, Jesus Christ, the only Mediator between God and man.
I go back to those familiar words of Jesus from John 3. 16-18: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
But do you know what Jesus said next? He said: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
I leave you with these questions and thoughts: Do you believe in Jesus? Have you put your faith and trust and hope in Him? Do you believe that Jesus died for all your sins and that you have been made forever right with God?
If you do, if you have this comfort and assurance, then you are walking in the Light. Then you have been set free from the terror and fear of the darkness. Then when you face trials and difficulties of this life – even when you come to the end of your life, for example, and you have to walk though the valley of the shadow of death, you will fear no evil! For God is with you!
His light shines in the darkness, and therefore we need not be afraid of death or the grave. They have no victory over us – for we have been given the victory of everlasting life in Jesus Christ.
I will close with these words from Ephesians 5:8-13. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Amen.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Pastor Keith Davis, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
(c) Copyright, Pastor Keith Davis
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