God's Light

When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." (John 8: 12.)

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God. (John 3: 19 - 21.)

Jesus is the light of the world. Light has come into the world. Vernon McGee grew up on a farm in the 1900s. He is now dead but his sermons are kept on audio tape. He describes how at four o' clock in the morning he would go to milk the cows. With him he would carry a lamp. The birds would see the light of the lamp and they would think it was daybreak, so they would start singing. The rats would see the light and they would run away. Which are you? Are you a bird or a rat?

Light makes things visible. Light reveals things that are hidden in the darkness. Coming into God's light can be a frightening experience. A woman died on an operating table and she could see a bright light. As she moved towards it, she became aware of wrong things that she had done in her life. It became painful. Oh, I'm an evil person, I'm a selfish person, I do this, I do that, I think this, I think that, I say this, I say that, I can't stand in this beautiful light. I'm not pure enough. I'm unclean. She moved away from the light into the darkness. Going into that darkness was the most terrifying thing she had ever experienced. That's also what Vernon McGee believed about Hell. He said that the bus driver came into Heaven to take people away to Hell and said, 'You can stay if you want, you know.' But they came with him. They said, 'We would rather be in Hell than be in Heaven with sin.' Vernon McGee saw Hell as a kindness. God allowed people to leave the light of his presence and to go into the outer darkness, because to be in the light while you were still in your sins would be torture. I'm not sure if I could prove that from the Bible, although there are some texts in the Bible that seem to support it. Jesus did say that some people would come to the feast in the Kingdom of Heaven and would cry and grind their teeth because they couldn't go in. If you come to God while you're still around here on the ground, you won't have to worry about what happens to you when you die. If you come to God now, while there is still time, God will forgive your sins.

"But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from every sin." (1John 1:7.)

Coming into God's light can be a frightening experience. God's light exposes all your faults. Some people say, 'Open the door and let Jesus make his home in your heart by the power of the Holy Spirit,' as if it was so easy. It is true that Jesus will come into your heart and live there in the form of the Holy Spirit, but to the person who is coming to Christ for the first time this is often very painful. They are still in their sins. The Bible says that the first thing the Holy Spirit does is to convict you of sin. He brings your sin to light. You begin to see how selfish you are, all the evil attitudes you have in your heart, all the wrong things that you ever said, all the unkind things that you did to other people. You may have tried to hide them, but in the presence of God, all of these things are brought to light. We used to sing, 'If you want joy, real joy, wonderful joy, let Jesus come into your heart.' You will have joy eventually, as the next line of that song goes, 'Your sin he'll take away, your night he'll turn today,' but we don't tell people about the night. We don't tell people that sorrow may endure for an evening and joy cometh in the morning. We don't tell people, hey, when you meet the Holy Spirit for the first time it is actually going to hurt. You'll see right into your heart. You'll see the kind of person that you really are. Duncan Campbell was a preacher on the island of Lewis, which is off the coast of Scotland about two hundred miles from where we live, and he often had to stop preaching because the people listening to him were becoming so distressed. Thousands of people became Christians under Duncan Campell's preaching, and they stayed Christians. Most of the people who become Christians at our evangelistic events disappear. In Duncan Campbell's book he mentions the shaking of people who heard John Wesley preach in England in the eighteenth century. He says that he cannot explain the shaking. I can explain it. Sheer terror. As I came under the conviction of the Holy Spirit for the first time, I shook. For the first time a preacher was telling me that I was a sinner. All those bad things I had ever done. All those bad thoughts I had in my head. God knew about that. I felt as if I was standing before a magistrate in a court and I had nothing to say. I was guilty. There was nothing I could say in my defence. Then he told me that God could forgive me. I had never heard that before either.

The terror and the shaking don't last long. If we walk in the light, the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. To become a Christian we must come into the light. We must come into the light and we must let it expose our sin. We must not be content and happy to go on living in it. Some research was done in London as to why some housing estates there had such a high crime rate. The researcher decided that the main reason was that there were lots of places to hide. Lots of dark corners where people could hide, waiting to attack someone, waiting to do something evil. Do you have lots of dark corners in your life? Corners where you hide things that you don't want God to know about? You must not keep them there. Will you allow God's light to shine into those corners? Will you allow God's light to expose all the things you do wrong, all your evil thoughts, all the unkind things you say to other people? The Bible promises not only that your sins will be forgiven but that they will be taken away. John the baptist said,

"I baptise you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering wheat into his barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire." (Matthew 3: 11 - 12.)

The baptism of the Holy Spirit is being compared here to a farmer who gathers up the wheat in his barn and uses fire to cleanse it from all its impurities and make it fit for eating. This also reminds me of the way that lazer treatment is used in cancer. A woman could have cancer of the cervix and have no idea that she had it. In the end the cancer would become very severe, so severe that it would kill her, but for many years she would have no idea that the cancer was actually there. Cancer of the cervix is a common illness in Britain, so common that I actually know two women who have had it. Doctors give women smear tests to see if they have cells in their cervix that are going to become cancerous. If they do, they are taken to hospital and given an operation with a lazer that will burn the cells away. The woman will not die if the disease is treated in plenty of time. Sin is like cancer of the cervix. You don't know you've got it. One day it will kill you. If you come to Christ while there is still time God's light will burn it away, just like the light of a surgeon's lazer will burn away cancer cells. This is what the Psalms say about a righteous man,

"He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not whither. Whatever he does prospers." (Psalm 1:3.)

You will be like a tree planted by streams of water. You will be healthy, you will be able to grow in the grace of God and to keep growing. Everything you do will prosper. That doesn't mean that you will have no problems, it doesn't mean you will never be unsuccessful in anything, but whatever happens, spiritually you will prosper, God will always use it to bring you closer to him. I know that over the past twenty years I've had tremendous problems, I've been unemployed for long periods of time and had work for short periods of time. It has been a struggle but I've never had to go without anything. I've always somehow managed to get the things that I needed. I've also grown very much spiritually over those years. The Bible says that the tree will bear fruit. As a Christian, you bear all sorts of lovely fruit. This is what the Bible says about the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self - control. Against such things there is no law." (Galatians 5: 22, 23.)

Some people, once they get into a life of crime, or into drugs, or into anything else that's illegal, it's hard for them to get out of it. There are people who just keep going to prison again and again. One American doctor said that six out of ten people came off heroin when they were in his clinic, but by the end of the year they would nearly all be back on it again. One thing Nicky Cruz said about the heroin addicts he helped in New York was that the only way for some of them to come off heroin was to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Here's one sure way to avoid breaking the law. Whatever help a counsellor or a psychologist could give you, it's absolutely nothing compared to having your life full of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Against such things there is no law. Jesus promises to make you good, the way that he is good. Growing fruit takes a long time. We used to have some apple trees in the back garden. First, a little bit of blossom would appear. Then tiny little apples would appear, and if the wind blew them off the tree at that stage they would fall onto the ground as tiny little apples. In the end, great big apples would appear, and we would have a great big outhouse full of cardboard crates of apples. The full power of the Holy Spirit will not be felt in your life straight away. It takes a long time for fruit to grow. It takes even longer to grow a tree. It is something we are always heading towards, never quite reaching, we will reach it completely in Heaven. Year by year, the tree grows a little more, it bears a little more fruit and it becomes a little more fruitful. So does the Christian grow a little more year by year, bear a little more fruit year by year, become a little bit more like Jesus and experience a little more of that peace that is far more powerful than any psychiatrist or any kind of medication and that can give a person with cancer peace in their hour of death.