Sermon Recap

This Sunday, Pastor Jon continued our "Come to Me" series with a teaching on Jesus' claim that He is the light of the world. Pastor Jon opened by asking: in a world where darkness is evident in our media, our city, and even our own hearts, how do we deal with this darkness? In John 8:12, Jesus makes a radical claim that whoever follows him will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life. He made this claim during the Feast of Tabernacles, when the Jewish community remembered God leading Israel out of Egypt by a pillar of cloud and fire. While the feast was temporary, Jesus offered something eternal.

Jesus' radical claim has both personal and universal implications for us today. Our human tendency may be to impute goodness to ourselves and attribute darkness to others, but the reality is that each of us have darkness in our own hearts that must be dealt with. The world may offer strategies to manage the darkness, but these strategies fail to bring about real, sustained healing. In contrast, Jesus' invitation is to bring our darkness to him. Doing so requires both ruthless honesty and radical acceptance: where we might expect condemnation, there is only radical acceptance by Jesus and purification by His blood.

Finally, Pastor Jon described how Jesus not only claims to be the light, but also invites us to become part of this light ourselves. God can use our greatest points of shame to be our greatest points of ministry. One of the enemy's strategies is to cause us to continue to manage our own darkness out of our own human strength. But Jesus, as the true light in this world, invites each of us to get out of the darkness and join Him in the light. All we have to do is say yes to Jesus' invitation.