We’re all familiar with the traditions relating to the Wise Men. For\ninstance, for some reason we’ve decided there were three of them. The Bible\ndoesn’t say that, but it does say there were three kinds of gifts given. Other\ntraditions have developed as to how they found out what was going on, and what\nthe star was that purportedly they saw.<\/p>\n
We can<\/em> say that when those wise men saw the star, they followed it to\nits logical saw the light. You could also say there were far\nmore people who saw the same light and didn’t follow it than those who did see\nit and follow it.<\/p>\n The light that Christ has shown our world has resulted in many people seeing\nand following it, but there are many who have seen the same truth but have\ndeclined to follow through.<\/p>\n The sun shines on everybody. If you want to you can sit in the sun. If you\nprefer, you can sit in a cave. Your choice doesn’t stop the sun from shining.\nIt just means you decline to derive benefit from its heat. <\/p>\n So it is with Christ. His light continues to shine, but not all people\nrespond to it as they ought. <\/p>\n Jesus said, “I have come as a light.” John’s Gospel has several\nthemes that keep cropping up. One of those themes is life. Another one is\nlight.<\/p>\n In chapter 1, he says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was\nwith God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him\nall things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him\nwas life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness,\nbut the darkness has not understood it.”<\/p>\n Notice that at the beginning of his Gospel, John is making a powerful\nstatement concerning life and light, and he links the two. He says, “In the\nbeginning was the Word.” “The Word” is a title for Christ.<\/p>\n John says the Word was continually in a state of existence. Whatever the\nbeginning was, this Word, this Christ, this expression of the invisible God,\nhad been in a state of continuous existence. He was in intimate fellowship with\nGod, and he was God. He was responsible for everything being made. He is the\nsource of all life.<\/p>\n \n Humans have a unique intelligence, moral sensitivity, and spirituality\nbut lack faith, truth, and life.<\/strong>\n <\/p>\n How is this life that emanates from the eternal Word seen in terms of being\nthe light of men? We can see the uniqueness of divine life in human beings in\nterms of intelligence, moral sensitivity, and spirituality. <\/p>\n Humans are the uniquely intelligent part of all the various forms of life.\nCould it be that man’s intelligent capability is related to the light that\ncomes from Christ, that he has given the gift of intelligence? Man has a unique\nmoral sensitivity apart from other created life. Could it be that we’re seeing\nthe uniqueness of Christ operating and creating man with moral sensitivity?\nThat is the light of men.<\/p>\n Edmund Burke said, “Man is by his constitution a religious\nanimal.” Look around the world at the different races, and you will find\nthey are, without exception, incorrigibly religious. There is a spiritual\nsensitivity in humanity that is not in any other segment of life. If we accept\nthat life emanates from him and is uniquely seen in human beings as light, then\nperhaps we begin to understand something about our humanity. Our relationship\nas created beings by Christ means that we were uniquely created in terms of\nintelligence, moral sensitivity, and spirituality.<\/p>\n Every time you read in the Scriptures about light you will also find a\ncorresponding statement about darkness. The light and the darkness are always\nset in obvious contrast to each other. The Bible teaches that human beings were\nintended to live in obedience to and dependence upon God.<\/p>\n Instead, humans chose independence and disobedience. They were told that the\nday they disobeyed would be the day they would die. They traded life for\ndeadness. If the light was the light of men, then when men became independent\nand disobedient, they not only traded life for deadness, they traded light for\ndarkness. The result is that something has happened to our intelligence,\nsomething has happened to our moral sensitivity, something has happened to our\nspirituality. This result is having a phenomenal impact on our individual and\ncollective lives.<\/p>\n We now have, because of spiritual darkness, because of separation from the\nOne who is life and light, intelligence without faith. We have moral\nsensitivity without truth. We have spirituality without life. In other words,\nwe are a shell of what we’re supposed to be.<\/p>\n Diogenes Allen, in his book Christian Belief in a Postmodern World<\/em>,\nstates: “It has been taken for granted in the intellectual world that the\nidea of God is superfluous. ‘We do not need God to account for anything’ is a\ncommon attitude in the intellectual world. But today there are fundamental\ndevelopments in philosophy and cosmology that actually point towards God. It is\nbeyond the capacity of those fields of inquiry to make a positive pronouncement\non this matter. All they can say is the order and existence of the universe\npose real questions they cannot answer, and they recognize God is the sort of\nreality that would answer them.”<\/p>\n In other words, in our postmodern world where it has been cool to ignore\nGod, to decide that we do not need him to account for anything, there is a\ndramatic change taking place in the intellectual climate. Intellectuals are\nbeginning to ask questions about existence. The questions they’re positing,\nthey’re discovering, cannot be answered by their scientific disciplines. They\nare, therefore, having to accept that we have produced a generation who are\nhighly intelligent but abysmally ignorant. They’ve had intelligence without\nfaith. They have had rationalism without an acceptance of the One from whom all\nthings come. That’s our darkness. <\/p>\n There is no question that men and women have moral sensitivity. When we had\nin our society a basic core of Christian truth, it was relatively easy for the\nmoral sensitivity of the nation to agree on certain things. But we have been\nrapidly doing away with the concept of Christian truth. We have not done away\nwith moral sensitivity. We have just done away with a basis of agreement.<\/p>\n For instance, what hope is there of our coming to agreement on the moral\nquestion of abortion? There is not the remotest possibility of our coming to\nagreement on this, because Christian truth majors on the fundamental concept\ncalled the sanctity of life. If you take that out, you don’t talk about the\nsanctity of life anymore; you just talk about the quality of life.<\/p>\n Quality of life is up to each individual to determine. If you take away a\nChristian concept called sanctity of life and put in its place a purely\nsubjective, relative concept called quality of life, there is no possibility of\nagreement. Therefore, we have an illustration of what is happening in our\nsociety. We not only have intelligence without faith; we have moral sensitivity\nwithout truth. <\/p>\n We still have spirituality, but we seem to be at sea as to where we’re\ntrying to get.<\/p>\n In recent decades, there has been a attempt to do away with\nspirituality in the Marxist\/Leninist segments of the world. However, Mikhail\nGorbachev went to see Pope John Paul II, and during his time in the Vatican he\nsaid, “We have changed our attitude on some matters such as religion. The\nmoral values that religion generated and embodied for centuries can help in the\nwork of renewal in our country, too.” Those in the Soviet Union have\ndiscovered that they can do away with spiritual life, but they can’t do away\nwith spirituality.<\/p>\n If you maintain spirituality and lose spiritual life, if you retain moral\nsensitivity and lose truth, if you have an increasing intelligence without\nfaith, you’ve got darkness. You have lost that which is unique about your\nhumanity. Christ said that he came into that darkness. He came to give us\ntruth. He came to give us life. He came to give us the basis of faith. Christ\ncame to shine light into our darkness.<\/p>\n The result is that some people will believe and some will choose not to\nbelieve. The Lord Jesus said in John 8:12 that he was the light of the world,\nand whoever would follow him would never walk in darkness. The alternative is\nthat if they would not follow him, they would wallow without him.<\/p>\n This is a sketch of our world. He has created humanity, and in a unique way\ngiven us light. But we have chosen deadness instead of life; as a result, we’ve\ngot darkness instead of light. We’re now functioning with intelligence without\nfaith, a moral sensitivity without truth, and spirituality without spiritual life.\nBut Christ has come into that situation as the origin of all life and light to\nswitch us on again, to give us truth, to give us life. He asks only that we\nbelieve in him, that we trust him, that we follow him. But some people\nincredibly choose darkness rather than light.<\/p>\n This Christmas you have a simple message for them. “I came to bring\nlight into the world.”<\/p>\n \n Some who meet Jesus will <\/em>not believe, and some can <\/em>not.<\/strong>\n <\/p>\n In John 12, John quoted Isaiah the prophet from Isaiah 53:1: “Lord, who\nhas believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been\nrevealed?” Jesus is picking up these words and applying them to his own\nministry.<\/p>\n First, he is talking about those who have had the opportunity to see the\nlight but would not believe. Notice how they are described in verse 37:\n“Even after Jesus had done all these miraculous signs in their presence,\nthey still would not believe in him.” But then it says in verse 39,\n“For this reason, they could not believe.”<\/p>\n In my Bible I have underlined in verse 37 “would not believe” and\nin verse 39 “could not believe.” I have linked the two. Notice\ncarefully what Jesus is saying. He is saying there are some people who would<\/em>\nnot believe, and as a direct consequence of that there came a time when they could<\/em>\nnot believe.<\/p>\n This leads to one of the most interesting mysteries of the Christian faith.\nOn the one hand, we have this idea of the free will of man; on the other hand,\nwe have the idea of the sovereign will of God. Those who major on the free will\nof man seem to suggest that man is free to do whatever he wants. Those who\nmajor on the sovereign will of God seem to suggest that man is not free to do\nanything. He is simply part of the sovereign will of God, and he is helpless to\ndo anything about it. I believe both extremes are wrong.<\/p>\n We have a great illustration here of the sovereign will of God and the free\nwill of man operating. The free will of man is he has the opportunity to see\nthe signs that Jesus performed, to hear the words that Jesus spoke, to be\nexposed to the truth, to see the light. He has total freedom to see all these\nthings and disbelieve it all.<\/p>\n Jesus would put those people in the category of “despite all the\nevidence presented to them they would not believe.” The free will of man.<\/p>\n Where the sovereign will of God comes in is he has sovereignly chosen to\ngive man free will, but he has also sovereignly chosen that man will live with\nthe consequences of his choices. If man chooses to go on refusing to believe,\ngoes on in the category of would not<\/em>, God has sovereignly decided that\nin the end the would become a .<\/p>\n Here is the serious aspect to the Christmas message: Christ has come as\nlight, but there are those who would not believe. They feel they’re exerting\ntheir totally free human will, and they are. But they’re overlooking that by\nexerting the human free will, God will, in the end, sovereignly say,\n“Enough is enough. I will now ensure that your eyes will not see and your\nheart will be deadened.”<\/p>\n The word translated deadened<\/em> is literally calloused<\/em>. There is\na simple law that says if you go on banging your hand against a piece of wood\nbecause you’re into karate, you will develop calluses. There is another simple\nlaw. If you go on closing your eyes to the truth, you’ll finish blinded. If you\ngo on closing your heart to the truth, it will finish calloused. God says so.\nThe sovereign will of God.<\/p>\n There’s another category of people Jesus talks about. He talks about those\nwho believed but would not confess. Notice John 12:42: “Yet at the same\ntime,” (while there were many people whose eyes now were blinded),\n“many even among the leaders believed in him. But because of the Pharisees\nthey would not confess their faith for fear they would be put out of the\nsynagogue; for they loved praise from men more than praise from God.”<\/p>\n These people have seen the light. They’ve heard the truth. They’ve\nexperienced the life, but they have refused to be unequivocally disciples of\nJesus Christ. They declined to take their stand. They declined to confess with\ntheir mouths that which they believed in their hearts. They regard their\npositions, their power, and their prestige as more significant than the\nprospect of being judged, because they did not act on what they knew.<\/p>\n There is no shortage of people who have heard the Christmas message\nrepeatedly and give a nod to it and say they believe it, but they never confess\nwith their mouths and with their lives unequivocally that which they profess to\nbelieve in their hearts.<\/p>\n Jesus said, “I’m not going to judge them. I won’t need to. The truth\nthey knew and would not respond to will judge them in the last day.”<\/p>\n Finally, what is the relevance to us? The Lord Jesus said, “I am the\nlight of the world.” But he turned to his disciples on one occasion and to\ntheir utter amazement said, “You are the light of the world.”<\/p>\n That does not mean we are little christs running around. It does mean his\ndisciples have the privilege and the responsibility of picking up on his\nministry and perpetuating it. Jesus’ disciples are intended to be people who,\nas he put it, let their lights shine. They live for the Father’s glory.\nWherever they shine there is a confrontation of light and darkness, life and\ndeath.<\/p>\n That is part of the challenge of being a Christian in the modern era. Do we\nhave intelligence without faith? Moral sensitivity without truth? Spirituality\nwithout spiritual life? If light is intended to shine into those areas and you\nare the light of the world (assuming you’re a follower of Jesus Christ), then\nclearly your responsibility and your privilege is to bring the life and the\nlight of Christ to bear in those areas. You and I are the light of the world.<\/p>\n \n <\/em>\n <\/p>\n \n Stuart Briscoe is pastor of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin. He\nis the author of over twenty books, including <\/em>Mastering Contemporary\nPreaching.<\/p>\n\n (c) Stuart Briscoe<\/p>\n Preaching Today Tape #183<\/p>\n