The Lord is my light and salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27.) God is the light of his people. The Jews understood that. To symbolize it, all the while a lamp was kept burning in the temple. Now remember, that the events which we are looking at today, took place at the feast of tabernacles when the people of God remembered their wandering in the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land. During that journey, God had led them in a pillar of cloud by day, and in a pillar of fire by night.

To remind the people of this at the feast of tabernacles, 4 brilliant golden candlesticks were lit at night in the temple courts. And this is where Jesus claims ‘I am the light of the world.’ The Jewish people had been chosen by God to be a light to the nations. The temple was the place where people came from across the world to worship and to learn the ways of God. Jesus, the light who lightens everyone had to be there in Jerusalem, and in the temple to proclaim God’s truth.

And now for a second time in one day, the religious leaders turn the temple where Jesus was teaching into a sort of courtroom. They had done it first when they had brought in a woman guilty of adultery and asked Jesus to proclaim judgement. Now they interrupt Jesus, denying his teaching and challenging his claims. Now although we might say ‘what a wrong thing to do’, yet the account that we have here of the controversy between Jesus and the Pharisees helps us to understand and answer those who still argue with the claims of Jesus today.

The authorities felt threatened. Jesus had evidence of God’s approval; he had healed the sick and taught with authority. They were getting to the point where they would resort to anything to get rid of Jesus. Dishonesty, lies and vested interest still abound in our world. The world is still cynical today. ‘Don’t believe anything that you hear, and only a quarter of what you see’, somebody told me once. And you certainly can’t believe everything you hear. But yet we have to learn to discern what we can believe. We have to trust people for the world to function. One of the functions of a court is to bring matters into the light. To expose the truth and show up lies and deceit for what it is.

As you read John 8, it is not immediately evident that the theme of light runs through the chapter, but it does. We see:
1. The truth about Jesus is brought into the light.
2. The truth about his opponents is exposed to the light.
3. The light reveals the truth about real freedom, and the thing that enslave people.

1. Jesus the light.
Jesus’ claim to be the light is challenged. The Pharisees raise what is usually a very valid point. They point out that Jesus is making claims on his own behalf. What we might call ‘blowing his own trumpet’. There is always a tendency with people to exaggerate their own importance. We accept that it is far better, if you want to get a true picture of an individual to get the view of someone else about that person. Get what we call an independent opinion. In court, the view of an independent witness will always carry more weight than the evidence given by someone about himself or even evidence given about him by a friend or relative. In Old Testament Jewish law for deciding important matters the evidence of one witness was not enough (One witness is not enough to convict a man accused of any crime or offence he may have committed. A matter must be established by the evidence of 2 or 3 witnesses. Deut 19 v15).

So how does Jesus answer this accusation that his claim to be the Son of God and to have come from God is false? The first part of his answer is this: ‘Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going.’ Jesus has personal knowledge of the matter on which he speaks. We all have certain areas of personal knowledge, certain things we know without a doubt. The vast majority of us here are quite sure of such matters as our date of birth, where we were born, what our mother’s maiden name is.

Nowadays, when you phone the bank, to make sure they are not talking to an impostor who is trying to get his hands on your money, they ask you about things of which you will have personal knowledge like that. And when you give the true answer they know that you are who you say you are. Of course Jesus knew God, of course he knew he had come from heaven, he had spent a good proportion of eternity there, how could he not know?

The second part of Jesus answer addresses the matter of needing to have two witnesses to prove a matter. Now there was a real problem in this matter. Jesus was the only person who had come down from heaven. He was the only one who could give evidence. But in his grace and mercy, God the father had acted as the second witness to confirm the truths concerning Jesus. There had had been God’s voice from heaven at the baptism of Jesus ‘This is my beloved son.’ There had been the miracles that thousands had seen Jesus perform. The father would give further evidence yet. ‘When you have lifted up the son of man, then you will know that I am the one I claim to be.’ When God raises Jesus from the dead, there would be the evidence for all to see.

And there is yet a third part to Jesus answer. He tells his listeners that if they really want to know the truth about him, they must begin to trust and obey me. ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth.’ In the end, the way that people come to know that Jesus is real is when they are willing to follow him. Jesus calls people first to follow him, to obey what we know about him, and as we do that he comes to us personally and reveals himself to us. We come to know the truth. For most of us, isn’t that the reality that we’ve found. As we have begun to trust and follow, the truth about Jesus has become real to us.

Secondly, we see the truth about Jesus opponents exposed to the light. There was already a very deep hatred and resentment towards Jesus by the religious establishment of his day. We saw that as early as chapter 5 that the leaders wanted to kill Jesus. In chapter seven there were 2 attempts to arrest him and here in chapter 8 when you get to v 59 there is an attempt to stone Jesus. In chapter 8 Jesus says some hard things about those who oppose him. Some people accuse Jesus of simply returning the same vindictiveness to his opponents that they had shown him. Our Lord would not do that. When preaching it is tempting to just avoid these hard sayings of Jesus, but honesty really compels us to ask what was Jesus saying in these statements that he makes. The answer is not that he was being vindictive; he was simply telling it like it is. He was exposing their attitudes to the light of truth. He was not gloating over their failures; he was grieved by their refusal to recognise and believe the truth.

We will look at three of the statements that Jesus makes to his opponents:

1. ‘You do not know me or my father’ Jesus says to them. There are people today who study theology or even teach it in our universities who know neither Jesus nor the Father. It’s a sad state to be in. There are people in churches today who don’t know the Lord. It is a sad state of affairs when that is true of a person. Jesus says behold I stand at the door and knock. Some don’t want to hear that knock.

2. ‘If you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.’ There were those who met Jesus who wanted to discard him. They were unwilling to change their priorities. One thing that the religious people of Jesus day were very proud of was their race. ‘We are Abraham’s descendants’ they claim. Jesus reveals the truth that they need to put their trust not in Abraham, but in him. God has only given one way for people’s sins to be for given. There is no other way. Our consumer society likes to pick and choose every bit as much as the people of Jesus day. But if we want our sins forgiven, there is only one person we can go to. That is Jesus.

3. ‘You belong to your father the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire.’
It is not the sort of thing that we would say to anyone. But Jesus said it. He said it because it was true. When faced with his claims, the Jewish leaders chose to have him killed rather than believe in him. In our modern world, many think that we can opt out of the challenge of Jesus into some neutral mode. Neither on God’s side, but not on the devil’s side either.

The reality is that there is no such option. If we reject Jesus we choose the way of darkness; we choose the devil’s way. And we are sometimes closer to that than we might imagine; remember that Jesus even had to say on one occasion to his disciple Peter ‘ Get behind me Satan.’ Which brings us onto our final point. The light reveals the truth about real freedom. Jesus says, ‘You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’ This statement perplexed Jesus hearers. They had never been slaves to anyone. How can Jesus possibly make them free?

Jesus is speaking of a universal bondage under which mankind labours. ‘Everyone who sins is a slave to sin.’ By nature we are not free. We are enslaved to habits. We are enslaved to pride. We are enslaved to things like bad temper or laziness. We could go on with the list. There is a need to go on in the Christian faith. To hold to Christ’s teaching. So many of us get to the point that these folk did who had believed in Jesus here in v 31. But there is a point that we can come to in our Christian lives where we can experience something of what Jesus says about the truth making us free. It is to do with coming to the point where we let go of the old securities that we still trusted in, and have our trust fully in Christ. It’s when we love other things more than Christ that we are slaves. Yet all these other things are transient; they will pass, they will disappoint.

But when we love Jesus first, that is true freedom. May his light reveal the truth to us that will set us truly free.

Amen
 

Acknowledgement.

I lay no claim to originality in my sermons. They are an attempt to pass on the gospel message in a contemporary way and depend on the bible as well as others who have studied and written on the passages in question. In preaching from John’s Gospel, I acknowledge my debt to Roy Clements for his book Introducing Jesus and I have also used material from Readings in John’s Gospel by William Temple. PN Jan 04

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