Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: John 8:12 “I Am the Light of the World”
**Pastor Dennis Tuuri**
**February 12, 2012 – The Sixth Sunday After Epiphany**

—

Sermon text for today is John 8:12 as it was two weeks ago. And I’m just going to read verse 12. We read more context last time and I’ll be returning back to this section as a whole. But for now, I just want us to read verse 12. Please stand. This is really the summary verse at the heading of a whole section that proceeds on through chapter 12. And this is kind of the summary statement and what follows begins to unpack the meaning of it for us.

And it’s all right here then in verse 12. Then Jesus spoke to them again saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness but have the light of life.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for the tremendous promise contained in this verse, the gospel, the good news that those who follow the Lord Jesus Christ have him who declares himself to be the light of the world and having him they have life and in that life they see light.

Bless us Lord God then today as the people who desire and recommit ourselves, some for the first time, some in a progression of sanctification, to be disciples and followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, to walk away from darkness into the brightness of the light that is life, in whose light we see light. Bless us, Lord God, more than this, that we might be those lightbringers of yours to a nation that seems increasingly dark. Bless us to this end by your holy spirit. Without that spirit, Lord God, this prayer is in vain. But we thank you for that indwelling spirit in each of us individually and in this church and in your extended church of Jesus Christ. May that spirit do his work. Transform us father that we may go from light to light. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Darkness and light are of course major themes in the world around us. I was listening to the Wall Street Journal weekend report yesterday which I try to do most every Saturday now. It’s about an hour comes down the audible stream and they were reviewing a new movie called In Darkness and it’s set in World War II. It’s another Nazi movie but it’s about a group of people who are hiding from the Nazis in the sewers of the city. And so overhead the Nazis are walking around. They are darkness incarnate, right? But in this subterranean sewer system, these—and I haven’t seen the movie, I’ve just heard the review—but these people are living and their lives aren’t that bright either. So you have the typical kind of carping and fighting and sexual sin and stealing and stuff going on in the subterranean cave even while the darkness is on top. And so it seems to be sort of a picture of darkness from top to bottom.

Darkness is a common theme in movies. Just start to look for it a little bit. You’ll see it everywhere in so many movies. And of course, movies are about light and darkness. It’s about contrast is the visual image, right? Plato had a famous analogy that I remembered since I was a boy when I first heard it about a cave. In this particular cave, there are men chained and they’re chained in such a way that their heads are also chained. Their backs are to an opening in the cave where light comes through. Outside of that opening, there are people walking around and so they cast shadows. The light casts shadows into the cave wall and these people are chained there in this cave and they can’t see anything but these shadows and they live and die.

So the dialogue goes between Plato and Socrates or whoever it is. The idea is that what if we had these people living in such a way and their whole lives they thought reality was shadow, that shadows were the reality. And then imagine that one of these men was then unchained and brought into the light. It would take him a while to believe that reality was the figures who were walking around in the light that he could see rather than their shadows cast on the cave, right? Because that’s all the reality he’s known. And then imagine again Plato says if that man was brought back to the cave and he tried to tell the others there that they could be free from the cave, and that reality was outside.

Now, the man’s been in the light for a while and he’s no good anymore at cave conversation. You know, they would sit there and watch these images and they would know what the images were and have identifications with them and stuff and they would talk about them. But this guy comes back from the light and he’s not very good about talking about shadows anymore because he’s seen reality. So they think he’s stupid. They think he doesn’t know what reality is. And as he tries to convince them, Plato says that they should move into the light, they might actually just kill him because they don’t like him so much and he’s such a braggart and all this sort of stuff.

Well, in a way that cave analogy is kind of what’s going on in our text today. Now, we can read that first verse that I just read and we can take it for our day and age and for the average person and for any culture and we can say it’s true in all times, right? So what does it say? It’s got a declaration of something to believe: “I’m the light of the world.” That’s reality. That’s the declaration of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what we’re to believe. If we believe it, we will follow him. “He who follows me,” Jesus says, our response to the light, and believe me, this entire section of scripture is all about response. You know, the rest of chapter 8, there’s no more mention of light. He opens this topic of light and the topic in terms of directly relating to it goes away and the topic becomes all about authority. And that’s not really a diversion. That’s central to what Jesus is declaring. We’ve talked about that. That light’s that fourth day event and has authority. But particularly here in the context of these Jews who have grown up chained in a cave and seeing things in a particular way that’s out of sort with reality, that are so focused on what’s gone before in God’s history rather than what’s preceding into the future, they reject the light of Jesus Christ.

Well, to them, particularly the declaration that “I am the light of the world” is a declaration that calls for a response one way or the other. You’re either going to follow that light or you’re not. So that’s the action that’s required. Anybody that reads this text, I speak to you today. I speak to myself and I can tell you in our situation that Jesus is the light of the world. And you need to respond to that. You will respond to that today somehow some way. And you’ll either make a renewed commitment to follow him or you won’t but response is inevitable when the gospel is proclaimed and this is the gospel: Jesus is the light of the world.

So the second section of that verse is about the required response. Then it says if you respond by following him you won’t walk in darkness. Now the obvious implication is that if you don’t follow Jesus you’re going to walk in darkness. There is a judgment upon us if we don’t respond to this text by following Jesus in a fuller sense than we did when we came into this place today. If you don’t do that, then you’re going to increasingly walk in darkness. And Jesus fleshes this out later in the text. And he says that if you don’t follow me, you can’t go where I go. Where is he going? He’s going to be with the father, going to heaven, we can say. And if you don’t follow Jesus, if you respond incorrectly to his declaration, to the great news that the light of the world is standing there in front of you, if you refuse to follow that light and instead reject that following, you’re going to end up walking in darkness. And where Jesus is, you can’t go. You’re going to go another direction when you die.

And Jesus tells him explicitly, you’ll die in your sins. And I don’t know, maybe there’s somebody here today that’s never really committed—not just to believe this Christian stuff and go to church and tithe and all that stuff, but maybe you’ve never really decided that you should be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ to follow him. Well, you better, because this is gospel. And if you refuse to follow Jesus, if you refuse to have your life a life of following him, and if you continue to walk in darkness, Jesus says, “Where I am, you may not go. You can’t go to be with the father when you die. Instead, you’re going to go to hell. You’re going to die in your sins, Jesus says, unless you follow me.”

And that’s precisely what some of these people do. Now, we’re told later in the text that a good many have an argument here about who he is and the father and all that stuff. And we’re told later a good many believed in him as a result of this dialogue about Jesus being light and the only way to the father is through him. This is a good message for any period of history, but our period particularly. Yeah, everybody wants to believe in God, but there’s lots of ways to get there. Jesus says, “No, if you don’t follow me, and if you follow instead Muhammad or Buddha or whatever else there is, then you’re going to die in your sins and you’re going to end up in hell. That’s the way it’s going to be.”

So it’s an important message for us. It has eternalness to it. This statement and the required response—and then the psychology of response: either you’re going to walk in darkness and die in your sins or the great promise then at the end of the text is Jesus says at the end of verse 12: “but you’ll have the light of life.” You won’t walk in darkness and actually you will have the light of life now. Light and life are bound up. Life is required to see light and light brings us life. Jesus says he is the light, he is the way, the truth and the life as well. He’s the life. He’s the light.

And the tremendous blessing to us today as we hear these words of John 8:12 is if we believe the statement and if we demonstrate that belief by following Jesus, we have relationship with him. We have Jesus. We’re united to him, right? We’re part of his body. We have the light of life. Praise God. Praise God. Tremendous blessings. So this is a text that we can take and this is kind of what I did two weeks ago and talk about it in a general sense, but there’s a context for this.

Now, two weeks ago, I talked a little bit about the context being this fourth section of this seven-day pattern. You know, John is filled with sevens. For instance, in the rest of chapter 8, seven times Jesus refers to the father. Immediately when he says he’s the light of the world, start talking about authority. See, now that’s because that fourth day thing is authority. It’s light shining rulers. It’s the lampstand and the temple imagery as he moves through it. It has to do with authority. But that’s what they challenge him with. And seven times Jesus points to the father. John is filled with these kind of sevens. And it’s important for us to see the father as the basis for what Jesus is saying. He’s not acting on his own authority. If he did, he said, “Then my witness wouldn’t be true. But I come to reveal the father,” and that’s the message of John’s gospel—a revelation of the father that we see through Jesus.

So part of this discussion goes on and it makes sense. But there’s important—and on your outlines today, second and third page I think have a diagram of the tabernacle. It’s upside down. Sorry about that. I’m blind. What can I say? I should pay more attention. That’s what I should say, shouldn’t plead the excuse. But in any event, it shows this kind of movement through the tabernacle that I described last week when I was out there traipsing around this movement. And that’s the way John’s gospel moves. And I’ve given you some of the section breaks. As you read John’s gospel, the next time you read it, think about it that way. And I think it makes some sense that’s what he’s doing. And then it also, the other chart shows the relationship, the structure of John’s gospel to the seven days of creation and that whole fourth day thing and I give you some detail there about the following chapters.

In chapter 9, he heals a blind man. He gives light to eyes that didn’t perceive light. And very significantly, that blind man is healed. You remember where he’s healed at? At the pool of Siloam. And Siloam means “sent one.” So in this text, if we talk about following Jesus, he gives us sight. “I saw the light,” right? No more darkness, light. But we are brought into that condition to be sent ones from the pool of Siloam. And immediately in chapter 9, that’s just what the blind guy has to do. He’s called up before the Sanhedrin and he becomes a sent one for Jesus to testify of Jesus before people. That’s us. That’s lightbearing, right? And that’s in this whole middle section of John’s gospel having to do with the sun and the moon reflected light of God. Jesus is the image of the father. Hebrews says the bright shining refulgence of the father’s glory, the express image of his person. Hebrews 1 says the same thing that Jesus is saying here.

“I am the light because I’m bringing you the light of the father because of my relationship with the father. This is why I’m light.” And Hebrews 1, I think verse 3, says the same thing: that Jesus whom God now speaks through is the bright shining refulgence—the brilliant shining forth of the glory of God the Father and the express image of his person.

Now, now, now, you know, imagine what’s happening here. You know, we read the Bible and it kind of just becomes sort of a set of ideas to us. But this is a real dialogue that’s going on. You got people, Pharisees, who are kind of the leaders of the church. It’s like the bishops and the deacons and all those guys get together with Jesus and he tells them, “I’m the light of the world.” Now, Jesus, let’s remember who he is. He is the light of the world. He’s that bright shining refulgence of the beauty and majesty reflecting the glory of the father. That’s who’s standing in front of them, right? And that’s who’s speaking to you today through his word, the bright shining refulgence of the father, the beautiful glorious streaming forth of the beauty of the father. And are you going to say, “Well, I don’t know. Who are you anyway? Give us a little testimony. Are you just speaking on your own authority?”

They’re going to quibble with words about Jesus who is standing before them as the bright shining glory of the father. That’s how blind they are. That’s how blind they are. May the Lord God grant today that as Jesus speaks to you, bringing the glory of the father and God to you, that you don’t quibble with words about him. You say, “Yes, praise God. He’s revealed himself to me and I get to follow him and I can have life and light because I’ve got Jesus.” May that be our response. Not so the Pharisees though.

We’re sent ones just like the man healed. Chapter 10, Jesus is the good shepherd. It’s what he says. There’s a bunch of stuff about the sheep. And as I said before, David is that great shepherd of the Old Testament and he’s the lamp of Israel. It’s told us that several times in the Bible. So again, it’s related to light. Shepherds aren’t, you know, handholders in the Bible. I mean, they are that at one level. But we have this view of shepherds, you know, that’s kind of funny. I think that’s kind of 21st century sort of stuff, 20th century stuff. When you go back to the Old Testament and you do a word study on shepherds, they’re kings. The shepherds are the kings. Now, you got some actual shepherding going on too in Psalm 23. But the kings are referred to as shepherds. They’re rulers.

Even the shepherd in the great shepherd in Psalm 23 is a ruler over the sheep, right? And we tend to forget this. We think the guy’s just come along and we get a little discouraged. He’s supposed to tickle us under the chin or something. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” No, there is that. There is encouragement. That’s part of rule. But part of rule is the exercise of authority. And so when Jesus tells these people that he’s the good shepherd, he means he’s the good ruler. The ruler is going to do that and then call us to follow him, right? He’s going to die for his people. That’s how he leads us into battle. But he is a battle king. He is a shepherd in that sense. And so chapter 10 is all about that.

Got the raising of Lazarus then that happens in this section as well. Death to life. Dead eyes that can’t perceive light anymore. All of a sudden they’re brought back to life. A picture of who we are, right? So this whole section is about that. We talked about that two weeks ago. So that’s the center section and that’s part of the context. But there’s a bigger context that’s important to bring in to understand in its first interpretation of these texts what’s going on. And you know, we just sang about it.

Where is that? We just sang this song, the processional song. “Arise and shine in splendor. Let night surrender.” Let night surrender. That’s the bigger context in which to place this statement where Jesus says, “I’m the light of the world.” You remember how John’s gospel starts, right? In chapter 1, it’s all about creation, right? It’s a restatement of creation because in Jesus Christ, the new creation has come, right?

Look at chapter 1. Turn there in your scriptures if you will. This is important for understanding what’s being said in John 8:12. And more than just the general sense that we’ve talked about it so far, there’s a specific historical development going on here that’s important to recognize, guys, and to see why these conflicts with the Pharisees happen as they stay chained in a cave by way of analogy.

So John chapter 1, what does it say? “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God.” So we’ve got creation language. “In the beginning,” just like Genesis 1. And as I said, John’s gospel is filled with sevens. There’s seven days in the first few chapters of John’s gospel. You know, you read it and you know, the details are important. And then “the next day” and then “two days later.” It wants you to focus on a sequence of days there in which Jesus is accumulating disciples and doing things. And there’s seven of them if you’re carefully constructing the data that’s given to us, because this is the seven days of the new creation. That’s the imagery. That’s the metaphor. That’s the analogy that God wants you to see as John’s gospel opens up.

“He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him nothing was made that was made.” Creation is what’s being talked about. “In him was life and the life was the light of man and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.” Now we immediately make the jump, you know, to the Pharisees or a broader jump to witnessing of Jesus to men who are dead and who are in the darkness, right? And we can—that’s okay to make that analogy—and the darkness won’t comprehend it, can’t overcome it. In fact, the light’s going to drive back the darkness, and that’s the whole point.

In verse 4: “In him was life was the light of men.” In verse 5, rather: “The light shines in the darkness.” Now, we’re talking about the creation here, right? That’s what’s being set up. The whole thing’s about creation. And what happens in creation? There’s darkness and then there’s light. Day one, he makes the light. Day two, he does this stuff and there’s darkness and light. Day three, darkness, light. What’s happening? The light is shining forth into the darkness day after day and new and beautiful things are developing and happening.

Now, that means darkness, which is a metaphor for bad things happening, right? But darkness originally isn’t bad. It’s not good. God doesn’t declare the darkness good, but it’s a condition that the light is going to act upon and it precedes the fall of man, right? It precedes the fall of man. There’s darkness and then light. But significantly, it’s not going to stay that way forever. What happens by the time we get to the end of the Bible?

The movement is just like we sang today in that processional song. What is it? You know, I can’t find it here again. “Let night surrender.” That’s what’s going to happen through time. And by the end of the book of Revelation, what’s going on? There’s no night there. There’s no night there, right? That’s what it says. There’s no need for the sun. Jesus is the light. There’s no night anymore. “Let night surrender.”

The movement of the Bible is from night and light coming into the darkness and then eventually the darkness is completely banished. Night surrenders to light. And that’s the big movement. And in that movement, Jesus says, “Hey, guess what? Here it is. I’m the light of the world. I’m going to start that light going that will progressively illuminate the world in eternity. And I’m driving back darkness.”

Now, before Jesus comes, right, the Old Testament, there’s a lot of darkness. There’s lunar festivals, stuff happening driven not by some of it’s by the sun, but some of it by darkness. And the idea is that’s okay because night and day is what God originally set up. But night and day is sort of a picture of old covenant, new covenant. The old covenant, which has great things happening for people—they’re saved and all that stuff—but the brightness of the coming of Jesus Christ is what the progression of history is all about. It’s Jesus coming affecting the salvation of his people and ushering in the future when there’s no night there. See, that’s the big context. Chapter 1 sets us up for all of that.

And when we come to chapter 8, we can’t forget what we’ve remembered already if we’ve read the Gospel of John, right? Or if we make allusion back to it. And part of what’s happening here is the Pharisees are clinging to the old covenant instead of being moved into the newness of the new covenant.

Now, as a church, you know, when we first started up, we were reacting against dispensationalism. Broke up everything and he wanted to see continuity in the Bible and there’s plenty of continuity and that’s good. But we must never forget that there’s historical progression in the scriptures and Jesus is the center of all that. You know, it’s the same way in the beginning of the Bible. What do you got? You got a garden. And we were talking about this in Sunday school class today, which was really a fun class. By the way, listening to Peter Leithart talk about Solomon and the postmoderns. I mean, excellent stuff. I encourage you to attend it. But we were talking about how, you know, people want to return to the garden.

Joanie Mitchell wrote that song about Woodstock. “We got to get back to the garden.” But that’s not biblical. We don’t go back. We go forward. And it isn’t a garden anymore. By the time we get to the end of Revelation, it’s a garden city. Things have changed. We’re moving forward.

I saw this cover of a book once when I was doing some of my original studies on Lord’s Day and Sabbath. I got in my library. I think my old pastoral library written by, I think, a seventh-day Adventist. It’s such a funny book. Had a lot of good stuff in it, but he was arguing against any kind of relationship of Sabbath and Lord’s Day. And the cover of the book was really funny because it had in big solid block letters “Sabbath,” and then it cast a shadow that said “Lord’s day.” And I thought, “Hey, that’s reverse. Okay, the Lord’s day is the reality that the Sabbath was a shadow of in the Old Testament.”

The Old Testament was shadow time. Now, shadows are okay. We’re moving from night to day. God set it up that way even before the fall. But it’s the shadow and the reality comes to bear now in Jesus Christ. And see, the Sabbath—that’s a big deal because that’s where in the law, we see in the Ten Commandments the idea of historical progression and change. And that’s where many of these battles between Jesus and these same Pharisees happen. They happen over the Sabbath. They happen about time. And are we going to cling to the past, the Sabbath, or are we going to move ahead into the Lord’s Day, the Christian Sabbath, the Westminster Confession calls it, and I’m fine with that?

You see that? There’s a distinction there. And the Pharisees, they want to cling to the cave. They want to stay in the darkness. They want to be content with it. Now, the shadows are great. If that’s where you got to live for a while, that’s where you live. And God provided and it was great. And it’s okay. Now, I’m not putting down the Old Testament, but they were shadow times. The night would surrender today. And that’s what’s going on in John 8:12.

That’s—I mean, so the gospel that Jesus is light to you and brings you personal salvation, all that’s great. But man, if you understand what’s really happening in in John’s gospel and what Jesus is really alluding to, he’s saying the new creation has arrived. I’m the light of the world. We are moving closer to the time when there’s no night there. That’s what Jesus was saying. And that’s why they react against that. “No, no, no. We’re in the past. We’re conservatives. We don’t want to move ahead. We just want to conserve the past.” Christianity isn’t conservative in a strict sense. It’s radical. It gets to the root of the problem.

And the root of the problem for the Pharisees was they wanted to cling to a religiosity and a set of activities they did that was unconnected from the father really. And the proof of that is it’s unconnected. The sun is shining right there. The bright shining refulgence of the father right in front of them. God’s there. And they say, “Well, we don’t like the way you’re talking about yourself.” They quibble with him.

So that’s what’s happening here. And actually in John’s gospel, darkness is associated not just with, you know, old covenant times which are giving way to new covenant times, but actually there’s a sense in which the moral darkness of the Pharisees particularly is being talked about, right? “You men cling to the darkness for their deeds are evil.” Nothing evil about God’s darkness of the Old Testament. But there is something evil about the Pharisees who don’t want their sins revealed to them. And so they stay in darkness for that reason.

And so darkness also means here that Jesus is going to rescue people out of the darkness of what God’s people had horribly, incredibly, tragically become. By the time he comes, they’re people who are chaining people in the cave. And now it’s not just the cave of the old covenant. It’s the cave of their belief in their own self-righteousness, their own distinguishment from the world. “We don’t like others. We like ourselves.” And they were chaining people in that cave. And so Jesus comes to release people out of that darkness to bring them into the light of life.

And so that’s what’s additionally what’s happening in this text. And I would be remiss if we moved on from this text in a couple of weeks and go into Lent season and didn’t talk about, you know, in the first application of these verses, what’s really going on in the overall context. Now, perfectly fine to use all of this as an illustration of light and darkness. Perfectly acceptable, in fact required that we understand that when Jesus comes and when God’s people work into the world, the light is driving back darkness. Okay, that’s perfectly legitimate inference from this text.

And I want to talk about that a little bit next. I want to talk about darkness growing in our country and the need as part of our response corporately, I think, if not individually. Part of our response to this has to be to get active and to shine forth a little bit. And I’m talking here about the recent decision by the Obama administration, the controversy that’s broken out over the last week or two—a decision, by a Catholic woman, by the way, Kathleen Sebelius, who is Catholic, that says that Obamacare, you know, what you’re going to have to do if you’re an employer is you got to provide health plans.

And those health plans have to include contraception, the morning-after pill, which is an abortion-inducing medical device, and sterilization. You got to provide those things at no cost because preventive stuff we’re going to have covered at no cost. And you know, you’re going to—we want to prevent disease from happening and it makes a lot of sense. So we can get, you know, breast cancer screenings and prostate screenings. You know, preventive stuff is real important, right? We want to prevent disease. But I guess that means they think that pregnancy is a disease because they want to cover things to prevent pregnancy as preventive care of disease.

That in and of itself, that right there should cause us to realize there is a great darkness starting to move over this land. And it’s been going on for a number of years, long before Obama. There’s darkness—abortion, etc. And it’s important for us to see. Jesus says in this light section, if you—he’ll free you and he’ll you’ll be free indeed. And when we see the removal of Christian liberty and the pushing back of light by these kind of policies, we see something very germane to our text and that I think is important to point out to us.

The response to this of course has been the Roman Catholic Church has gotten quite animated about it. A number of people have, but particularly the Roman Catholic Church because they are the big group that don’t believe in contraception. And so that’s why them, plus they’re very involved in church-run hospitals, schools, benevolence deals. Protestants not so much anymore. Shame on us. And so Obama will have an exemption for the church, but he doesn’t have an exemption for the schools or the medical clinics or whatever it is that Christians are running or that the church is actually running.

And so now the reason for the controversy is the Catholic Church is saying, “Hey, you’re going to make us pay for something that we think is abhorrent, sinful, evil. We’re not going to pay, you know, for contraception ’cause in our minds it’s immoral. We’re not going to pay for abortions because to us it’s immoral. Okay?” And they’ve said this.

Now I want to read you a letter that is going to be read today actually in Chicago. Now a similar letter was read across the country last week and this letter is going to be read today. Maybe it’s already been read in Chicago in the parish worship services in the Chicago archdiocese, and it comes from the guy who’s the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Chicago. And now, now think about this. This is a letter that’s not just, you know, the bishops are putting out a press release. They’re having this letter and others like it read across this country in worship services like the one we’re holding right now. That’s what. And let me read the letter to you.

“Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I write to you concerning a most serious matter that negatively impacts the church in the United States directly and that strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith. The United States Department of Health and Human Services announced on January 20th that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include these ‘services’ in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.”

See, we’re having national policies. We got to put in what we want to have put in. And one of the things that Obama wants put in is contraception and an abortion—at least day-after pill, morning-after pill. Back to the letter.

“In so ruling, the administration has seemingly ignored the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our nation’s first and most fundamental freedom: that of religious liberty. As a result, unless this rule is overturned, we Catholics must be prepared either to violate our consciences or to drop health coverage for our employees and suffer the penalties for doing so—because, you know, if you got employees you’re going to be mandated to provide coverage.”

So what they’re talking about here is civil disobedience, not doing what the government commands them to do. Okay.

“The administration’s sole concession was”—and now this is being read today after supposed concessions last week by the Obama administration, and this letter is still being read because they say that didn’t work. That didn’t take care of our problem. “The administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply. We cannot, we will not comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens because of their religious beliefs.”

Well, if you watch the television, you know that statement is untrue. You know that people of faith have already been subjugated to second-class status in this country in the entertainment media of our day. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, turn on your TV this evening, watch a couple of shows or sitcoms, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. We’re already there.

“We are already joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of goodwill in this important effort to regain our religious freedom”—because it’s already been lost, is what they’re saying. We need to regain it. “Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure, and institutions, its enterprise and culture only to have their posterity stripped of their God-given rights. All that has been built up over so many years in our Catholic institutions should not be taken away by the stroke of an administrator’s pen.

“This order reduces the church to a private club, destroying her public mission in society. In generations past, the church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same.

“Therefore, I would ask of you two things. First, as a community of faith, we must commit ourselves to prayer and fasting that wisdom and justice may prevail and religious liberty may be restored. Without God, we can do nothing. With God, nothing is impossible. Second, I would also recommend visiting http://www.usccb.org/conscience—that’s the Catholic Bishops Organization—to learn more about this severe assault on religious liberty and how to contact Congress in support of legislation that would reverse the administration’s decision.

“A letter similar to this is being sent to their people by diocesan bishops and dioceses around the country. I thank you for your consideration of this unprecedented challenge to religious liberty. You and your families are in my prayers. Please keep me in yours. Sincerely yours in Christ, Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago.”

Now, you know, I’m reading a biography of Bonhoeffer, Christine and I are listening to it. And I know that you’re going to say I’m being overly reactive here, but you know what happened in Germany didn’t just sort of happen overnight. I mean, there are some things that did. Darkness is moving in our land and the light of Christ is being pushed back.

You know, I’m sure that a lot of people on the left—I listen to progressive radio some, and I know a lot of people on the left—would be just fine with the Catholics and any other Christians being driven out of providing schools, private schools, Catholic hospitals, Protestant hospitals, out of the healthcare industry. What they want to do is push you back into the walls of the church. You and your rubber ducky here in church. They think you’re just fine out there. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Don’t tell us you’re some kind of Christian when you go about doing your work. Keep that in your church.

Now, that’s what’s happening. Jesus didn’t call us to be the light of the world here in church. I mean, he does, but he says you’re supposed to be the light of the world shining out into your city. “I’m the light of the world,” Jesus said, not “the light of when you meet only. I’m the light of the world.” You’re to be the light of the world. You’re to take your light and create Christian businesses, Christian schools, Christian hospitals, Christian care ministries, Christian pregnancy resource centers. You’re supposed to do all that stuff.

And the impact of what’s going on with a stroke of an administrator’s pen is the pushing back, the attempt to push you back into the walls of the church. We had this same thing in Oregon four or six years ago about LGBT rights and discrimination. And I remember a meeting with the pastors five or six years ago, major pastors in Portland. “Should we fight this thing or not?” And they said, “No, we can’t fight this.”

And the thing they were talking about was there’s a law that says if you have a business—we don’t care if you’re a Christian or not a Christian. If you got a business that’s not directly related to the ministry of the church, they drew an exemption for schools and that sort of stuff, religious organizations doing work out there. But for the average Christian businessman or Christian owner of a home, whatever it is, you can’t discriminate against somebody who is gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. You got to rent them your house. You got to give them the job. If you have any discrimination, you’re in violation of the law. You can go to jail. Okay? And so we had this discussion: “Well, what should we do? This isn’t good. You’re supposed to be free, right? You shouldn’t have to, you know, provide a job to somebody that you think is in rebellion against Christ.”

Now, whether or not you should provide the job is not what I’m talking about. But you should certainly have the freedom over your house, your business to hire and fire who you want, right? Particularly when it comes to an area where we’re talking about sin, active proponents of sinful activities. And I told these pastors, I said, “You know, okay, I’ll go along. We don’t fight it. But only if we understand that all we’ve done so far is we’re sandbagging. We’re putting bags around the Christian church and, fortunately, in that issue, Christian ministries, schools, and hospitals and stuff, and we’re letting everybody else be flooded where the light’s going out in businesses and homes and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, I’m okay with that if we understand that’s what’s happening here.”

And we need to somehow get back and push back the waters, push back the darkness. We just had a congressional district election over here on the west side of the area and Flynn A. and I were at a political coalition meeting this week and, you know, the liberal one there was a guy running, a Mormon, a Republican lost. We would have had much more luck in pushing back the darkness with the Republican candidate than with the Democratic candidate. Less than 50% of the registered Republicans in that district voted. Less than 50% voted.

I don’t know what the numbers are for Christians. I don’t know if you lived in that district or not and whether you voted or not. We just did our political action tax credit raising at the end of the year. We did not do good with Oregon Family Council, and I know that Oregon Family Council was down as well. And maybe that’s just the economy, or maybe it’s just an increasing apathy to what’s happening, right? I don’t know.

And if you pay taxes, state taxes in Oregon, and you didn’t use your political action tax credit this year, I got a problem with that. I don’t care if you sent it to a PAC or Right to Life or Oregon Family Council or directly to a candidate, but if you didn’t divert 50 bucks away or a hundred bucks if you’re a married couple from having the status progressive people in Salem have that money to do things with, and if you didn’t take advantage of the freedom that God gives you to bring light by directing those tax dollars to a political action group, I got a problem with that.

I have a problem because your inactivity of not getting involved politically, whether it’s the tax credit, not voting, whatever it is, there is judgment coming upon this land. And in part, it’s coming because we’re not bringing light in the process. Do we not believe that Jesus said the light will conquer the darkness? I believe it. That’s why I do this stuff that I do. Do you believe it? I don’t mean to make you fearful. The scriptures make very clear—you know, Jesus is our light and we don’t have to fear what men will do to us. I don’t want you to be fearful, but I want you to understand that this text, that Jesus is the light of the world, and if you follow him, you’ll have the light of life—that life has a required response from you to get involved.

The Catholics, you know, are shaming us by doing this kind of thing that they’re doing correctly and properly, and we’re just sitting around—the Protestants. Now, there’s some work being done. Charles Colson has a video out website, The Manhattan Declaration. I’ve signed it several years ago. We told the government there’s three things here: you know, abortion, homosexuality, religious liberty—red lines. You cross those things or force us to cross them, we’re going to engage in civil disobedience. So Colson’s pushing that. Even Dennis Rainey, the marriage guy, has put out a thing calling for Christians to get involved. So we’re starting to make some motion. But, you know, praise God for this action of the Roman Catholic Church, the bishops who, you know, just they never get united for anything and particularly something conservative. And yet they’ve united on this and produced these letters.

We are called to be the light of the world. We have a required response to follow Jesus. And that following Jesus doesn’t mean following into church and not coming back out as lightbringers. If we’re going to follow Jesus, we’re going to be lightbearers for him. We’re going to not goof around in our lives. We’re going to get recommitted, focused, and directed to be disciples, people who are followers of Jesus, not tag along a couple hours a week, but who have our lives dictated by this bright shining glory of the father that we have now and we’re called to bring into this world. That’s our response. And that response isn’t mostly political, but it has that aspect to it. And when the battle against the light, when the darkness is hammering away at a particular area, we should be there with the full light of the Lord Jesus Christ, combating darkness, believing that Jesus indeed has produced this historical movement where the light now is conquering, driving back the darkness.

That’s what the church of Jesus Christ is called to do. And that’s what you’re called to do as an individual. You’re called to follow Jesus, to bring light—yeah, to your life, to the life of your family, to the life of this church, but to the light of the world as well. Jesus said, “You are that light of the world.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for today. We thank you, Father, for the bright shining glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and his word to us. We bless and praise your holy name for the gospel, that Jesus is indeed the light of the world and that we have him. We have light and we have life because we’re in relationship with you through Jesus our Savior. Lord God, cause us this week to come to grips, cause us today, right now, to come to grips with that truth, to commit ourselves afresh to follow him—not occasionally, not tagging along, not playing at this thing, but to be disciples of Jesus in all that we say and do. And bless us with power and strength from on high that we might bring light to this world. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.