Audio Worship, 4/27/2025, "Walking In The Light" John 8.12-20

Princeton Presbyterian Church (EPC) Sermon # 1683

April 27, 2025

John 8.12-20          Click here for audio worship.

Dr. Ed Pettus

(This is an extended outline, not a verbatim transcript.)

 

“Walking in the Light”

 

 Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” So the Pharisees said to him, “You are bearing witness about yourself; your testimony is not true.” Jesus answered, “Even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. In your Law it is written that the testimony of two people is true. I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.” They said to him therefore, “Where is your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” These words he spoke in the treasury, as he taught in the temple; but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.

 

  • The Light

 

Jesus is the Light of the world. The promise we have is that His disciples, all who follow Jesus, all of us, will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. That means that we are a people who can see. The light of God has shown upon us in such a way that opens our eyes and our hearts to understand the things of the Spirit, things of the spiritual realm, the things of the kingdom of God. We know deep within our hearts that all the Scripture is true, infallible, and inerrant, God breathed and given to us to reveal all that God desires for us to know. But as we will see in Matthew the light is not just for our vision, but for us to help others see the truth.

In John 8 the Pharisees, who could not see, confront Jesus about His witness. “You are bearing witness about yourself; your testimony is not true.” They argue that Jesus us just talking about Himself, lifting up Himself in the sense of what we might think of today like any preacher or leader of any kind who is full of himself and has no regard for the Word of God. Jesus knows where He came from and where He is going because He walks in light. The Pharisees are walking in darkness, blinded by their religiosity, traditions, and overarching rules that ironically prevented them from living in obedience to the law and walking in the light and joy of God.

Jesus seeks to show them the light in that the Father bears witness about Him as He also bears witness about Himself. He bears witness that He is the Son of God and yet they would not receive that. We might ask, how does the Father bear witness? I think that witness comes through the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms, that is, through the Old Testament witness at that time. It was the witness that the religious leaders should have known well enough to know the possibility that the Christ would have come as He did, the suffering servant, the One of whom Moses and all the Old Testament gives testimony.

As I mentioned there is another aspect to Jesus being the Light that shines in and through us because this also means that we are the light of the world according to Matthew 5.14-16, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. We are light because Jesus Christ is the light and we are in Christ and Christ in us by the Holy Spirit. And what Jesus stresses in Matthew’s gospel is that the light shines, not for our sake, not for people to see us, but for the sake of giving glory to God the Father.

Let us also consider the “history” of light in the Bible. When God created all that is, the first day, the first Word of creation was light. 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. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. John’s gospel begins in the same place as Genesis, “In the beginning…”

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1.1-5). Then John the Baptist came to bear witness to the light. Jesus is the light from the beginning and He is the Light of the world today and will be the light forevermore.

Jesus is the light shining through our darkness of sin. Jesus is the light to our darkened world. Jesus is the light that lights our way in this world and give us hope for our future. Everyone must come to see that we are all walking in blindness, blinded by our sin. Everyone must come to see that the whole world is in darkness and needs the light, the only light that can truly shine in the darkness. Anything and anyone else in the world that claims to be a light is a lie. The true light is seen through the Word of God, through the presence of His Spirit, and through His body – the church.

 

  • To Follow

 

The second thing Jesus gives witness to is discipleship, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” To follow Jesus is to walk in light, to see the truth, to see the evil of the world, to see with the eyes of faith and light and life. To follow Jesus is to live in the light of life, in the light of God. It is the light that leads us to repentance, forgiveness, fellowship, worship, discipleship, obedience, and so forth.

 

1 John 1:5-7 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

When we are in the light we have fellowship, we share everything we have in Christ. One of the things we share together is the forgiveness of Christ. With forgiveness we thus share in having once walked in darkness and now we see the light. We share in God’s love, covenant, grace, mercy, hope, and truth. The light can be challenging for us because the deeper we go into the light the more that gets exposed in us. Our sin, our darkness is exposed by the light of Christ. But that light exposes that of which we repent and confess so that we might walk anew in the light of life and not walk in the darkness of death. We also know that when we do walk in the valley of the shadow of death, we shall not fear, for the One who is light walks with us.

We have here a great promise of discipleship. All who follow Jesus are no longer subject to walk in darkness. The promise is for no darkness, no sinful lifestyle, no non-discernment, no hopelessness, no glass is half empty. It is the life of light and the light of life. John Calvin speaks of following Jesus as allowing ourselves to be “governed by Christ”. When that is our life, living with Christ as our Lord and Savior, the promise includes all that we discover throughout the gospels and the whole of the Bible – the promise of presence, of love, of grace, of spiritual wisdom. Discipleship is not a dark place, but a place of light.

 

  • The Light of Life

 

What does Jesus mean by that phrase, “the light of life”? John’s gospel in particular lifts this term of life in places like John 10.10, that Jesus came to give us life and life in abundance. Or the well known John 14.6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” The Light gives life. The Light shows the way. The Light opens the truth. Jesus is the Light. The Light that has shown upon us reveals the Messiah, Isaiah 9:2, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.” Like the sun rising each day, like the early dawn of the empty tomb, like the Holy Spirit giving witness in our hearts (Romans 8.16), so it is that the Light of Life has shown us the way to life with God, reconciled at the cross and in the resurrection.

Jesus came so that we might have this life, “I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness” (John 12.46). The problem in the world, the problem in every generation from the very beginning is that people love darkness rather than the light because their works were evil, says the Bible. People still love darkness today. Those who love the darkness do not want light because it exposes their evil. All that has come to light in the federal government of late is a testimony to walking in darkness. Waste, fraud, corruption, we have always known it was there, but only now is the light shining on it and those who are most angry may be those who are the most guilty.

The Light of Life is the light that exposes sin and moves us to repentance. The Light of Life is the forgiveness wrought in Jesus Christ that cleanses us for new life. The Light of Life is the gift of Jesus Christ who leads us to see anew, to hope and peace, to contentment and an attitude and disposition of holiness. The Light is Jesus who gives us life.

 

  • Walking in the Light

 

Walking in the light is a way of life. Today we talk a lot about lifestyle. Is someone living a lifestyle of sin or of righteousness? To walk in the light is to walk in God’s Word and to walk in the Holy Spirit and to walk in praise and prayer and service and all that the Scriptures calls us to do and be. It is to live a certain way.

 

Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

 

Proverbs 4:18 But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.

 

The Psalmist speaks of obedience in keeping vows and giving thank offerings for what God has done so that he might walk in the light… “I must perform my vows to you, O God; I will render thank offerings to you. For you have delivered my soul from death, yes, my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of life (Psalm 56.12-13).

This is genuinely the call of God in the whole of the Bible: to turn to God in faith and obedience, in confession and repentance, in commitment and discipleship in order that we might walk before God in the light of life. To love God with all our being and to love others. To worship God in Spirit and Truth. To set our hope in God. To hold fast to the Word of God. To walk in the Light that is Jesus Christ, the light of the world. Let us go forth in the light, walking, living, and giving thanks to the One who gives us life. Amen.