Northside Church - Sydney
Dark | Light
You're listening to another great message from Northside Community Church. You may remember the scenes. I hope you do because it was only about this time last year. There was utter chaos on the surface in this small South American town as people had come to realize that 33 men are trapped, some two and a half thousand feet, that's 700 meters for anyone in generation Y, 700 meters below the surface. And as the chaos unfolded for a total duration of 69 days, these guys were trapped in the darkness, a trapped until that one point in which just the tiniest little speck of that investigative probe broke through the wall of their little dark caves that they had down there and the 69 days until that light broke in to the darkness. After winching the last strapped minor up to the surface, they had the paramedics. They had the best available people from all around the country. They had television stations from around the world. Once he was up, the last man, someone there went and held a makeshift sign in front of it saying, "Mission Completa," which you didn't know that I knew Spanish, but that means mission complete. And they were cheers, cheers amongst the rescuers, they were tears of joy. What's this got to do with this passage? Okay, I want you to imagine if you were trapped underground for 69 days. How would you react if light finally broke into the darkness? You see, what is really fascinating about this passage is that what is true of these minors in the physical sense, John the author of this passage says it's true for the entire human race in the spiritual sense. That we're trapped, we're in darkness, and unexpectedly light has broken in, we're moving up to Christmas with 36 days, as Mikey said, and we're looking, the most important question anyone can ever ask themselves, and that is, who is Jesus Christ? People that have answered that question one way or another, it has affected the way they live for the rest of their lives. And when we look at the author of this, he was Jesus's best friend, the apostle John. When we see the story as to who Jesus is, he says in verse 4 of this passage, in him his life, and that life was the light, he's saying simply Jesus Christ is the one true light of the world. And so hopefully we'll see that there are three teachings here that even a kid could grasp. What I want to say this morning is that the world is like a mine shaft, it's dark. We're also going to see that light has yet light has broken into the darkness in the most unexpected of ways. You see the world is like a mine shaft, it's dark, and I hear you saying, what? Have you seen the shops? Have you been to Maya and DJs? We've got the decorations and the reindeer and the lights, and this is such a nice time of year. Why do you have to go so pessimistic with everything? And I think it's funny, isn't it funny the way that people relate differently to Christmas, don't they? And the way they relate to Easter, when we think of Christmas, it's a rather affirming message, right? It's love, and it's joy, and it's peace, and it's reindeer. But the irony of this passage today is that it's saying that the story of Christmas is actually very confronting, why? Because it's a passage of saying to us that the world understands its problems and analyzes them to death, but it can't find a solution to them, and that's why the world's a dark place. It's logic is pretty simple here. He's saying Jesus is the light because the world is dark, and we go, that's an affront to what I think, love, joy, peace, Christmas lights, cows, come on Sam, don't be a downer. But see what John says of Jesus in verse 5, "The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not understood it." You see, people are constantly looking for answers in all the wrong places. Wouldn't you agree? The world is always looking for information when it should be searching for revelation. Light breaking into the darkness, is it really that different today? I don't know about you, if you're a Channel 7 fan, I am, I love Channel 7. They've got a new show out of you, see that it's called The One. And so in this program, it's sort of like a reality TV show now, where they're voting to go and find Australia's best psychic. And so these psychics come in and they set up all these sorts of challenges, it's like psychics meet survivor, and they set up all these challenges in there, and here are all these people from the audience, and they have to shed a little bit of light on these people's lives. The whole television show, the world is looking for answers in all the wrong sorts of places. The world is a dark place, what hope is there, and now some of you might be thinking, "Sam, that's pretty pessimistic," and that's just your biblical perspective. That's just the Bible putting a wet blanket over with everything here, but it's not just the Bible. Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest philosophers, greatest historians, greatest mathematicians of the world, in his manifesto, "Why I am not a Christian," said this in his conclusion. He said, "We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world. It's good facts, and it's bad facts, it's beauties, and it's ugliness." See the world as it is, and being not afraid of it, conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face, we ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it's not as good as we wish, after all, it'll still be better than these others that have made of it in all these ages. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence, it needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time towards a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create. He says, "The world in all it's ugliness," a non-Christian says the world's ugly, a non-Christian says the world's dark, and yet in the midst of that he says, "We still need hope," and the message of Christmas is, "You can't save yourself, there's no way out. You're trapped in the mineshaft, enveloped in a spiritual darkness and you know it, and I'll put it to you, you can feel it." Probably why the songwriter James Taylor in his song, "Shed a Little Light," says there's a feeling like the clenching of a fist. There is a hunger in the center of the chest, there is a passage through the darkness and the mist and where the body sleeps, the heart will never rest. There's a little light, oh Lord, oh, so that we can see. Now the good news is the world is dark, but God will not leave the world to itself. The God of the universe provides light. Although the world's dark, the God of the universe provides light. The world is dark, yet as we see in his passage, light has broken into the darkness. Verse 4, "In him was life, and that life was a light of humanity," light of men. What it's saying here is the message of Christmas is, "The whole world's a dark place, and yet God has broken into the darkness." C.S. Lewis puts it like this, "If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning. Just as if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never have known if it was dark, dark would be without meaning." See, what he's saying, just the contrast between dark and light is the very proof of God's existence in the world. He's saying, "Whether you believe in God or not, the mere fact that we talk about him, the mere fact that we have this book, the mere fact that we have the contrast between good and bad and dark and light is the evidence that he exists." And so what it means is that one of the greatest sources of hope for your life is that God has revealed himself to the world, that there's something other than us. And look, think about the Chilean miners, they were trapped in the darkness. They were helpless. They were hopeless, there was no sense of a future for them until light broke into the darkness. See, when did those guys know there was hope of a new life? When the light broke in, it was John really off the mark in this concept, verse 4, "In You see, here's the other thing, light is not developed, it's discovered. Light is not the sort of thing that we engineer ourselves and put it together, unless you're of course Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb. But I think what John is getting at in this passage is that the light in that sense, it can't be developed, it can't be construed by human means. And so in that sense, it's God beyond us, God intervening, God interrupting into our situation to bring life in from the outside into our worlds. And so it says to us, "There is a light beyond." And so if there is a light beyond the darkness, then it means for the Christian that our hope is not in our circumstances. If your hope is in the house and the house goes, then where's the hope? The hope is in your health and the health goes, then where's the hope? The hope is in your career and the career goes, where's your hope? For some people this morning, the notion that God is outside of ourselves may be the only thing that keeps you going for this next week. God has broken in. And for these miners down there, the light bought the hope, but here's the thing I realized. The light in itself didn't bring the rescue, right? They still have to sit there while they drill down through the substrata and the various minerals, 700 meters down underneath. The light just didn't bring the rescue. It's more than that. That's why verse 4, it says that Jesus was the light. But it's more than that. Verse 9 in John's Gospel, he says, "The true light that gives light to every person was coming into the world, light broke in, but people could hear the drill bits of God starting to mash through the rock and a gap in that distance between him and us. And so God brings the light in the most unexpected ways." I don't know about you, but it ever received a present where you've got great aspirations for this thing. And then you ask, "What is this?" For some of you it might have been when we went from tape to CD. And when we went from tape to CD, and so I used to love to get the tapes out, but then we get this shiny little disc, this revolutionary thing in the music world that we heard so much about. We go, "Is this it?" Music comes in the most unexpected ways. But here is what we see. Verse 5, "Look at this, light shines in the darkness, but the darkness is not understood at all, why, look, the world looks at Jesus and says, 'Is this it?' A crying little baby, God brings light through a small child, a little kid. And the message of Christmas, what I love about it is it takes the most abstract concepts and brings it down into a little person crying and wiggling and pooping. It takes the loftive sort of statements that we could just write off and call it some nice spiritual fluffy metaphor and makes it real. In baby Jesus light enters the world in most unexpected ways and look at how it all happens because it flew in the face of the world's expectation. It's got God in a manger, is this it? Look, imagine if this was your life goal and you're saying, "Look, hey, in 2000 years time, I want three quarters of the world to believe in me. I want at least the majority of the entire human race to center their lives around me. I want one quarter of the human race to center their lives around me." How? If that was your life goal, how would you go about it? You'd hire consultants. You'd get experts in. You'd get advice. You'd do that. And look, they were telling none of the things that God came up with. They wouldn't say, "Why don't you get yourself born in a stable amongst the manure in the dung and a little hic-town in the middle of nowhere out there in a carriant park somewhere?" They wouldn't say that. You'd say, "You need to roll out a marketing plan. You need to get yourself on the Twitter sphere. You need to get yourself a Facebook profile. You need to do all this stuff." They wouldn't say, "Spend your entire life outside of the political networks and the power networks and then telegents your networks and grow up and do that your entire life on the outside and then at the height of your career, go and get yourself crucified on the top of the hill with a couple of your rag-tan band followers watching you." It would be an absolute disgrace. God brings his light in the most unexpected ways. Is this it? And God not only brings his life through this small child, but he brings his light through the followers of that small child. Now, look, I'm not saying we follow a symbolic baby, you know, we're just worshipping a little baby. He's up to be big Jesus and teach and do many wonderful miracles as John said in his gospel. So we're following that guy. And John says all throughout his gospel that this child is Jesus, you know, Jesus the man said, "I am the light of the world." He made that distinction himself. And here's the thing. Then from Matthew's perspective, this Jesus goes and he grabs his rag-tag band of followers and he takes them up a hill, which wasn't that much of a hill, and he sits them down there amongst all the sheep and the noise and the dirt. And after all this saying, "I am the light of the world," he looks at this rag-tan bag of followers and he says, "You, you are the light of the world." So he takes this absolute rag-tag bunch and gives them a brand new identity. You see, as Christians, not only are we following the light, but we're the kids of the light. Jesus broke into the world to give it light. But he came so that we might possess some of that light of God. And so the good news is that God won't leave the world to itself. He turns up in the most unexpected of ways. And so to our surprise, he turns up in Jesus, this little child crying, pooping, turned into a man crucified, and then to our even greater surprise. He turns to us and says, "I'm going to turn up in you, you, the light of the world." God brings light in the most unexpected of ways. Jesus is the one true light, and the world's like a mine shaft. It's dark. He had the lights broken into the darkness, and unexpectedly, he says, "You're a part of it." Let me finish this morning with a couple of bits of application we can take away for us. First one is, what does it mean to be a Christian? To be a Christian means simply that light has broken into your life. It means to be a Christian is to make that realization that darkness is not how life is meant to be. The way you're living and bumping into the walls around the place in your life is not how it was meant to be. You know what this means? It means, first of all, if you don't know God personally, you don't have that relationship with him. If you think that Christmas is just a nice idea, but you don't really believe that it happened, that God sent his son into the world to live and to die for us, and if you don't know that and you don't understand that, then it doesn't give you any reason to talk about Christmas the way people do, chirpy, happy, fun. Because it's what we're hearing this morning is that, you know, every other type of non-Christian philosophy tries to console you and say, "Come on, it ain't that bad, chin up." But Christianity is far more realistic than any other non-Christian philosophy. It says, "The things of the world are just as bad as every other pessimistic person says, the world is a dark place, but light has broken in." You see, unless you realize that that light in Jesus Christ is broken in, then you've got no reason to be chirpy, but here's where the comfort is. If God has actually done what Christmas says, he's always done, that he has broken in. You see, he has rescued us, and apart from that, every smart person knows, come on, every smart, even Bertrand Russell knows, great philosopher and mathematician, that in a world without God breaking in, there is no hope. It's dark. Don't you see, unless Christmas is true, then there's no light at all. So stop being so chirpy. Christianity is to have a new light break into your life. Can I ask, it might be one of you here this morning, is that true of your life? Have you come to that realization, has light broken in? You don't have to intellectualize it, you don't have to get it all together. I love the way that C.S. Lewis says it again, that I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun, the S.U.N., has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. To be a Christian is to realize that darkness is not all there is. There is a great light to guide your life. Secondly, it means today we can take away from this, for those that understand that the light of the world is that you are to illuminate your world. I want to get a little bit personal with you, we're all friends here, but a couple of years back I went to a Robbie Williams concert, and me and my little brother about the only two blokes in the entire Sydney football stadium. During that concert Robbie did an amazing thing. He got everyone to go and take the little pocket cameras, you're not supposed to have photography, but he's an artist that keeps it real, understood that everyone in the stadium had their little pocket cameras, and he got them to hold up these little cameras and to charge up their flashes, and back in the 80s when you do that they'd make a little weird sound going, it's sort of battery would charge up, and he got everyone at the same time to set their camera flashes off. I'll tell you when that happened that stadium lit up like a Christmas tree. There was a light in that place, it looked brighter than the noon sun for that split second. And often we think how is it possible that my small little light of the world, yes I get what you're saying Jesus, can do anything in the world around me. And yet we have a great hero and now it's not Robbie Williams, it's Jesus Christ and he says to his followers if you would just charge up in me for that little second, if all of you will just combine and unite in your various aspects of the great stadium that is the world, and if you would push that button we will make the darkness of this world brighter than the noon day sun. It is your all to illuminate, you are the presence of light in your world, either way you illuminate by your presence the dishonest practice in business, the loose talk and the loose of morals, the gossip at the secretarial death, the racial prejudice, the greed that's around you, you are to illuminate it. Also you need to guide, light guides, light illuminates, light guides, Amy Grant wrote once, didn't she thy word is a lamp until my feet and a light into my path? I think it's in the Bible too somewhere but look we have been placed in our sectors of life to guide people into that truth, is there someone in your life that you are guiding into all truth, is something about the way that we work and treat other people and speak that is to lead them out of the darkness and finally light, light illuminates it guides and it pushes back the darkness in the world, the light pushes back the darkness, it's powerful and one of your most crucial roles is to push back the darkness, the lies that keep people in bondage, the illusions that are causing despair and hopelessness in people's lives by announcing that God has broken in. You're the light of the world and that's a hugely audacious claim to make and yet the smallest camera flash can light up the Sydney football stadium if we just combine, the gospel and nutshell is this, John is saying that we are like the Chilean miners, the God had to break into the darkness and you had no way out and you've been trapped in a mine shaft two and a half thousand feet underground, you've been enveloped in a spiritual darkness but not only did a pin-prick of light burst through the wall of that, that cold and dark and wet tight space but God himself in the form of Jesus Christ and you know the greatest rescue, not in South America but in the entire universe, the greatest rescue didn't take place without its casualties. Matthew's gospel it says in the later hours of the afternoon, a darkness came over all the land and Jesus cried out it is finished and what's happening there, it's saying that the great rescue as he lifted the last human being out of that hole into the relationship with God doesn't get in the capsule himself and come back up to the surface it says the great rescue of the universe cries out from the very depths of the darkness and with arms outstretched and not with a little made-up sign for the television and if you said it in Spanish you'd say Mission Completer, it is finished, mission accomplished, the greatest rescue in the world stayed in the darkness so you can move up into the line, the rescue wasn't without its casualties and so I, there is just one choice to make this morning folks dark or light, it's not my call, it's Jesus's call, he says in John chapter 12 verse 46, "I've come into the world as a light so that no one who believes in me should stay in the darkness, no one should stay in the mind shaft." So I'm talking to three types of people this morning, I'm talking to the person who's in the mind shaft and you don't even know that you're trapped this morning, I'm talking to those that recognize that the pinprick of light has come through the wall in the darkness of your life and still yet you refuse to get into the capsule. And then I talk to those that have come back up to the surface of their spiritual life to hear the joys and the cries and the celebrations of the great cloud of witnesses who have seen them come and be rescued and who should now be out sharing their stories fervently on television programs around the world and talk back TV and hey even write a, run a couple of marathons there and be moved to stardom, they celebrate their rescue. So they're the questions, is the world a dark place? Is Jesus the one true light? How you answer that question will change the way you live, not just for the next couple of years but for the rest of your life, let's pray. Only Father thank you for your church, I thank you for the way that this message has continued to be passed down the ages that there is something other, something other than the life that we have here. Lord I pray this morning that if there has been anyone stirred by your word this morning, someone that is in a place of darkness this morning that Father they might just come and ask some questions about this great rescuer and the message they've heard of him. Father I pray for those this morning that need a hope, a hope that is outside of their circumstances. Father I pray for those this morning that their circumstances provide absolutely no reason for joy, that Lord through the supernatural power of your Holy Spirit you might bring a perseverance and a steadfastness in the midst of whatever they're facing this morning. Knowing that you are a God who rescues, knowing that you are a God through your word who is realistic about the challenges that we face in this world but knowing that you are a God a light who has broken into the darkness. Father for those of us who are in the right spot will you help us rejoice, for those of us that are living on the surface will you help us move out into our worlds this week to illuminate, to guide, to share the great news that there is something other, something other, far above us that has broken into be so nearest. We pray this now in Jesus' name, amen.