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Women's Conference SMBC 1989 Part 4 By E. Ford
What the Light brings in our life

I'm not entirely, but I'm always glad when I get out of lift.
But I remember about ten years ago, I was in Israel with my husband and his brother and wife.
And the four of us decided that we would like to walk through Hezekiah's tunnel.
If you know the Old Testament, you'll know that Hezekiah, King Hezekiah's engineers,
built a most marvellous tunnel to divert the water supply from outside the walls of Jerusalem,
where it was, so that it could come through and come out in the pool of Siloam.
And that was so that when the city was under siege, the water supply wouldn't be cut off.
Anyway, we went down and found out where we could get the key, and we decided to walk through this tunnel.
You can go right through, it's a marvellous experience.
But the thing is, there's no light inside it, it's pitch black.
It took us about a half an hour, and you can't walk through it in the rainy season, of course,
because it's filled with water. So we took our shoes and socks off and rolled up the trousers,
and proceeded to go through with a tiny little torch.
And I remember when we got about halfway through, Dudley had done this before on his own,
when he'd been there. We got about halfway through, and I began to think,
oh, now I just wish I could get out of this.
Every now and again, we'd put the torch, turn the torch off, just in case the battery went.
And we'd walk along just filling the walls. And the water was about up to here on me,
up to my side. It wasn't as far up on the taller one.
And we were going along, and after a while I said, look, how much longer is it?
How do you know we're not lost? And so on.
I thought there might have been some little tunnel going off at the side.
Dudley kept assuring, you know, it's all right, I've done it, you can get out to the other end.
So then in the end we decided we'd all sing hymns for my sake.
And we sang onward Christian soldiers and all sorts of things.
But I never forget the feeling when I saw that tiny little pinpoint of light at the end.
I thought, oh. And eventually we got out, you know,
and the little pinpoint got bigger and bigger, and we got out the other end and came into the Pearl of Siloam.
And I thought this just looked the most marvellous spot in the world,
this dirty little horrible pearl, because it was out in the light.
But you see, light is a marvellous thing, isn't it? Absolutely wonderful.
Think of the difference it makes. Have any of you ever sat through the night with a sick child?
And it's so wonderful, isn't it, when the morning comes.
I've spent a number of nights in hospital quite seriously ill.
And when the light comes in the morning it's wonderful, isn't it?
Light is just the most wonderful thing. It's a source of energy and power, isn't it?
And without the light our gardens wouldn't grow, nothing would be warm and lovely.
And Jesus stood up in the midst of the feast, well really at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles,
and He said, and this is in chapter 8 of John's Gospel,
we're only looking at one verse there and then flipping over to chapter 9.
He stood up and He said, I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows Me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.
I am the light of the world. And if we walk with Him we'll never be in the dark.
That to me is wonderfully reassuring. I do not like the dark. And I love the light.
And one of the marvellous things about heaven is going to be that there's going to be no darkness there,
because the light of the world will be there.
Now it's interesting that Jesus made this claim, of course, against the background too,
of the Feast of Tabernacles, which was an annual feast held.
And one of the things, amongst others, that were commemorated there
was the time when God led His people through the wilderness.
We thought about the manna previously,
but God also led them by a pillar of fire and a pillar of cloud.
And they thought of that pillar of fire and at that feast
there was a magnificent candelabra that used to be lit and it was so huge
that it lit up almost all of Jerusalem when it was the light.
And we know that on the last night of the feast this was not lit.
And in the darkness Jesus stood and said, I am the light of the world.
Now that claim is absolutely stupendous. You see, He didn't say, I have come to bring light.
If I come into your light, I will bring light into it. He said, I am the light.
And when Jesus comes into our life, He doesn't bring light because He is light.
He is the one that lightens us. He is the one that illuminates our mind
and gives us understanding. He is the one that brings Himself
which sheds light on life, the purpose of living.
We understand what it's all about. On death, the darkness of death is dispelled
and we know that it is but the gate to heaven.
On relationships, we see that they're not something to be manipulated for our own ends
but they're to be a reflection, as Joan said, of the relationship within the Trinity.
He brings the light on sin and we see that it's not something to be enjoyed
but it's something which spoils us and mars us and ruins relationships and ourselves.
He brings light and understanding on the world in which we live.
And we have the most marvellous demonstration today as we see those who lead our land
and the fact that they're walking in darkness and they know nothing about the light
and understanding that comes when Jesus comes in. I have a dear friend,
only been a friend about a year, about as long as the other lady I mentioned before.
When I first met her, she was on antidepressants, chain smoking and utterly miserable.
She'd had a rotten life, pardon the term, but that's the only thing that describes it.
A terrible marriage that had failed, two very unsatisfactory de facto relationships,
several children from different fathers. She herself had been a sexually abused child
and as some of us got to know her, she began to see the light of Jesus Christ shining
out of people, out of His Word and the light shone into her life.
And she's had a fresh start and it's just tremendous to see what the light of Christ
does for a person in those circumstances. A new person with an understanding on the purpose of life.
It's wonderful, absolutely wonderful. The most exciting thing that you can ever experience
is to let the light of Jesus Christ shine through you into another person's life
and see their life changed. She asked the de facto to go. I won't go into all the details of it,
but she has now just discovered that he for five years has been sexually abused in one of her daughters.
And in the midst of all that, she came around and talked and sat and prayed together and she cried.
As she prayed, she said, Lord, you can see all these terrible things that have happened in my life
because I didn't know you. That's right, because she had no life. It wasn't her fault.
Nobody had told her. Her parents didn't know anything about light and understanding.
But isn't it wonderful that the light has shone and all that's gone.
Now she can see what life's about. It's terrific. Jesus really is the light of the world.
But you know, light does something else. It doesn't only bring light on all those lovely things,
but it also shows up to darkness, doesn't it? And in fact, light brings death and judgment.
It all depends on whether we let it shine into our lives or whether we reject it.
Now in chapter nine, we're going to turn over to that, we have there the record of Jesus performing another sign or miracle.
And this one is the healing of the man who was born blind. It's a terrific story.
Now Joan talked to us about the motif of judgment which entered in, I think there in chapter five.
And here we see it again. And this thought of Jesus as the great judge comes out here.
But the extraordinary thing is that we find that what in fact happens is that if we reject the light,
we bring that judgment on ourselves. And we're going to look at this story briefly.
And we're going to see how in fact light is always in conflict with darkness.
The two cannot coexist. You can't have darkness and light.
If you go into a dark room and you switch on the light, the darkness is gone.
You could only have one or the other. You cannot have them both together.
And the way that we know that light is there is not by somebody reading us out a great dissertation on light
and its properties and etc, etc. It is simply because light shines, isn't it?
And that's how we know that light is there. That's the effectiveness of light.
Now let's just think very quickly about this man who was born blind.
You all know the story of the man born blind in chapter nine.
It's wonderful. It tells us of course, I mean in a sense it's a picture of us all
and how we come to know Jesus Christ because this man was blind from his birth.
Actually this chapter is so full of things we could spend a whole week
and never really cover it but we've just got to pick a few things out of it.
But this man was blind from birth and Jesus passed along
and the marvellous thing about it is that it was Jesus who took the initiative.
Just like us, you know, we're born in darkness.
We don't have any understanding of spiritual truths and light inside us.
That's the way we are at birth.
And it is always God who takes the initiative and steps into our life
and gives us an opportunity. There's no record here that the man called out.
It was Jesus who in love and in his sovereign grace took the initiative
and stepped into this man's life and he was totally healed.
He regained his sight. And it is a very beautiful picture of the new birth
that there is for us in Christ when Jesus the light of the world steps into our lives
and brings light which is himself and opens our eyes
and helps us to see and understand the truth.
And it's marvellous to contemplate this chapter from that angle
but I want us this morning to specifically look at it
from the angle of comparing this man with the religious leaders.
Now you remember that Jones spoke about these religious leaders, the Pharisees and so on.
And here we have a situation and we have totally different reactions on the part of people.
You see basically it is not what happens to us in life that is really important.
It is the way we react.
You can have two people in identical situations
and the circumstances for life can in one person's life mould them into someone
that is gracious and soft and lovely and beautiful to see
and the other person can become hard and dried up.
It's not the circumstances of life, it's how we react to them.
And the same thing can be said about light, the light of God's love in Christ
as it shines into the world.
And here again we see in this chapter, as we saw in chapter 6,
as we see over and over again through John's Gospel
that Jesus is the great divider of men and we see a division here.
And so what I want us really to think about is the effect of light.
And I want us, and we'll be just referring to different sections of this chapter as we go through,
I want us to see the difference between the blind man and the unbelieving Jews.
Now this man, to start with, knew that he was blind.
And by contrast the Jews thought they could see.
We have Abraham for our father, we've got all the clues,
we've got the oracles of God, we know what we're doing.
And they thought they had complete understanding, why he was just some riff-raff.
But he knew that he couldn't see and that was a vital first step.
Because if we think we have understanding and we know it all,
then we're not open to the light of God's Word or to the light of Jesus Christ
showing up the things that we need to see.
And so what we're going to do is we're going to follow through
the progression in this man's life as he responded to the light of the world, Jesus Christ.
And we're going to see that as the Pharisees rejected the light, then they regressed.
And we'll have to do this pretty quickly.
So, here we go.
First of all, have a look in verse 11.
Now up to this point Jesus had come to this man.
He'd healed him, he was fine, he went home rejoicing and so on.
You remember that Jesus told him to go down and wash in the pool of Siloam.
And he washed and he came back seeing.
Liberated, free, a new person, a fresh start, wonderful.
Now the neighbours, of course they'd seen him begging and they wondered,
is this this man that we, is this really our neighbour?
Fine, thanks, I'll pop that to you.
Right, a bit messy isn't it?
And they said to him, yes I'm the man, and they said, how? Your eyes opened.
And he replied in verse 11, the man they called Jesus made some mud and put it on my eyes.
Now that's all he knew about Jesus to start with, he was a man.
He didn't know much about him obviously, he said he was a man.
And they said, where is he? Now this poor chap, as you go through this chapter you see
that he enters into dialogue with all these people.
He's got the neighbours hounding him and his parents hounding him and the Pharisees hounding him.
But it's interesting, as he follows through, you see he's a very high spirited sort of a person.
I just love it, I think it's, I love it.
And as he goes through he sort of gets more daring as it were and bolder with them.
And so on, he's got a real sense of humour I think.
So he says, he's a man, a man called Jesus, put some mud on my eyes and now I can see.
So he gets a, pardon me, the next day it's probably in verse 13,
he was brought to the Pharisees, the leaders, the religious leaders.
And the day that he'd been healed of course was the Sabbath,
which was of course going to be a terrible thing for the poor man.
Therefore the Pharisees also looked, asked him how he'd received his sight in verse 15.
And he said, he put mud on my eyes and I washed and now I see.
Now that's all he knew but he said it.
And some of the Pharisees said, oh this man can't be from God because he doesn't keep the Sabbath.
And so they were having a little bit of a discussion amongst themselves
and they finally turned to the man and said, what have you got to say about him?
And in verse 17 he says, he's a prophet. Interesting, he's grown one step in his understanding.
He's a prophet. Now they still didn't believe and so the discussion went on.
And then the poor parents get brought into the thing.
Is this your son? Yes it is. What have you got to say about him?
Well ask him, he's of age. Pretty pathetic isn't it? Pretty pathetic.
And they go on and the discussion goes on and he says,
look I don't know, look I don't know all this detail but one thing I do know,
I was blind and out from sea. That's a good way to start your testimony.
If you've been converted to Jesus Christ and you know nothing else,
you can at least tell people, I don't know much but at least I know that he's changed my life.
And I've been born again by God's Spirit.
So then he gets answers and he says, look I've told you already and you didn't listen.
Why do you want to hear again? Do you want to become his disciples too?
Now this is indicating that he considers himself to be a disciple.
You want to become a disciple too? Like me?
So he's somebody to whom he might give allegiance.
Look, he's growing from talking about a man, a prophet, to someone that I can follow
and to whom I can give my allegiance. But the discussion goes on.
And then he says to these Pharisees, what a remarkable thing.
You don't know where he comes from but he opened my eyes. Isn't he lovely this chap?
We know that God doesn't listen to sinners, he listens to the godly man who does his will, they say.
Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind and that's absolutely true.
There's no record in the Old Testament of there ever having been a healing of a person blind.
And this was one thing of course which the Jews were anticipating that when Messiah came
he would open the eyes of the blind, he would unstop the ears of the deaf.
But they couldn't see because they didn't have any light.
And so he goes on and he says, the blind man in verse 33, in dialogue with the Pharisees,
if this man were not from God he could do nothing.
So now he's saying this is somebody who is sent from God. Right?
They got so mad of course that they threw him out, he was excommunicated no doubt from the synagogue.
And at this point when he's rejected by the synagogue, the religious leaders,
his parents hadn't supported him, there he is and Jesus came to him and found him.
And I often wonder if when Jesus came and found him that day
and asked him do you believe in the Son of Man, if he thought about that verse in Psalm 27,
when my mother and father give me up, then the Lord will come and rescue me.
Terrific isn't it? And so he dialogues with Jesus and Jesus said to him,
do you believe in the Son of Man? And the man says, who is he sir?
Tell me so that I might believe. And Jesus said, you've now seen him.
In fact he's the one speaking to you. And the man in verse 38 then reached the pinnacle
and he says, Lord I believe, and he worshipped him.
And so here he is acknowledging that he is God and one to be worshipped.
And so you see as he responded to the light, what happened was he grew in his understanding
of who Jesus was. When we open ourselves, our minds and our hearts to the light of the world,
then he comes in as light and he sheds light and our understanding and our enlightenment grows.
Hasn't that been your experience as you've opened yourself up to the word of God?
God shows you a truth in it and as you respond and obey, you receive more light and more understanding.
Now let's have a look at the Pharisees because Jesus made that claim they would have heard it.
They saw the miracle, they were in the same circumstances. The light was available to them
but they refused to let the light into their lives. And so I've got here their regression.
Now verse, let's go back and follow this through. You remember that the miracle, the sign had been
performed on the Sabbath and so with their preconceived notions and their wrong understanding
which they thought was right, they made this definite statement. Well this man can't be from God
because he doesn't keep the Sabbath. How many times do we make statements based on our preconceived ideas?
He's not from God. How could he be? Why, he's not keeping the laws that we think he should keep.
Do we put people in little boxes and if they don't just fit into our little slots, we think they can't
possibly be Christians. Right, let's go down to verse 18. They've quizzed the man about it,
asked him and he says he's a prophet. And the Jews in verse 18 still didn't believe that he'd been blind
and had received his sight until they sent for the man's parents. So in the face of the miracle
which had occurred, the fact that this man could see, in the face of the facts they refused to believe.
It was a bit of a case of don't confuse me with the facts my mind's already made up.
And once we begin to reject the light of Jesus Christ, we find that our preconceived notions take over
and we, as it were, blind ourselves to the facts and the truth.
You see, what we have to do is open ourselves up and allow the light of the world to come in
and bring his understanding on things. We're very good at this, all of us are good at this, aren't we?
We make our minds up and sometimes we even avoid reading parts of scripture
because we know they're going to say something that we don't like and we made our mind up on that anyway.
And that's what the Pharisees were doing. So they actually even questioned the miracle.
Now let's move down. We have the dialogue between the Jews and the man's parents.
And now in verse 24 they call the man again and they say,
Now come on, give glory to God. We know, we know that this man is a sinner, referring to Jesus.
And so they have come to the point now where they call the blessed Son of God a sinner.
And then they quiz him again. And then let's go down to 28.
And this is a typical thing, isn't it? We see this sort of thing in 28 happening in our parliament every day
when you can't win an argument, what do you do? Shout louder, thump on the table and hurl insults at people.
Then they hurled insults at him and said, You are this fellow's disciples. We're disciples of Moses.
We know that God spoke to Moses. But as for this fellow, we don't even know where he comes from.
And so what they're doing is they're revealing that they're ignorant.
It's a very interesting thing that if you happen to look back in John 7-27, we haven't got time to do that now,
they've actually said to Jesus there in dialogue with him,
We know where you come from, overtones of pointing the finger at him and his illegitimacy.
Now they're saying, We don't know where this chap comes from.
So they're contradicting themselves and showing themselves to be ignorant.
And then if we go right down to the end of the chapter, after they've thrown out the man from the synagogue,
Jesus has come and seen him. And then some of the Pharisees talk to Jesus.
Let's have a look at verse 39. Jesus said, For judgment I have come into this world,
so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.
Some of the Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and said, What? Are we blind too?
We're the ones with all the enlightenment from God. That's just my little bit put in.
And Jesus said, If you were blind, you wouldn't be guilty of sin, because you'd know.
But now that you claim you can see your guilty name,
and so they are pronounced by the Son of God to be blind and sinners.
You see, it is a terrible thing to reject the light of the world,
because rejection of the light brings self condemnation.
We don't need to stand before the Son of God and have him pronounce us a sinner and judge us.
We actually bring that judgment on ourselves by the reaction that we show to the light of the world.
Rejection of light brings judgment, condemnation, death and hell.
Now if this is the case, there are two things that I want you to think about now,
because we're going to get into groups of five or six.
And there are two questions that I want you to think about.
I want you to think about the fact that if you know the light of the world,
then you have a responsibility to shine into the darkness of this world,
to let the light shine through you and to communicate the good news about the light of life to other people.
Are you doing that?
And the other thing I want you to think about is this,
that it is possible, terribly possible for us as Christians,
to refuse to allow the light of God's Word, the light of life, to shine into some areas in our lives.
We just have those little tiny pockets, you know, that are just,
it's just that little tiny room with the door closed.
All the rest you can have, Lord, but not that little bit. Don't shine in there.
Our hidden foibles, our hidden sins, we're nursing bitterness,
and we really don't want the light to shine in there because we'll have to give it up.
And it's rather nice to have that little grievance all the time because, you know,
we're all prone to self-pity, aren't we?
And unless we allow the light of God's Word and the light of the world to shine into our lives,
into every area, then we will find that we'll become hardened.
Jesus said through John, let us walk in the light as He is in the light.
And if we do that, we'll have fellowship one with another.
And when we don't allow the light of God's Word, the light of the Son of God,
to shine into our lives, it ruins fellowship, relationships, effectiveness for the kingdom of God.
When my first baby was born, I nearly died and so did she.
And I was kept for eight days in a room that was darkened with only one little shaded lamp in it.
No visitors except my husband. No sound. Soundproof.
And after eight days, I was kept unconscious.
And gradually I came back into consciousness and the doctor said to me one day,
would you like to go and see your baby? She was two pounds something and up in the premature ward
and not expected to live. And I will never forget when I came out of the room
where I'd been for eight days in darkness and I came out into the light
and I could barely see. My eyes ran and I kept wanting to close my eyes.
Now you see, eyes are made for light and if they're cut off from the light, you gradually lose your sight.
A person who is put into solitary confinement in the dark will not only lose their sight,
but will lose their mind. And if we cut ourselves off from the light of the world,
then our spiritual discernment and understanding and light will be diminished.
And so we do have to ask ourselves these two questions then.
Are there any areas in your life where you're not letting the light shine?
And are you allowing the light to shine through you to people who know nothing of that light?
Are you happy to get into little groups?