John 8:12 - Jesus Is The Light Of The World
Main Idea: Jesus wants to provide the new life and clear direction we need.
John 8:12 (CSB) - “I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows Me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.”
“I AM” — Jesus, God the Son - our Creator, the One in charge of everything (including us).
“the light” — The source of warmth and life, the one that gives us food, by whom we have ability to see everything else in the world, the bringer of our joys, and the constant thing in our lives.
“of the world” — The place we all live, where imperfections, dangers, and constant unknowns are regular.
“Anyone” — Jesus does not say that only the best followers, the least-sinful followers, or people from one particular background or ethnicity or tax bracket can experience His light - but anyone that will follow Him will have His life!
“who follows Me” — Jesus does not say that simply those who acknowledge His existence or lordship will have His life - it is His followers. If you would choose to follow Jesus, to desire to know Him and walk in His way, letting Him call the shots in your life as your Master - He will accept anyone! But He will only accept the “any” that follow Him. Has there ever been a time in your life where you started following Jesus by faith, believing in His salvation and the new life He gives?
“will never walk in the darkness” — Jesus gives an alternate way to walk through this life. We all know people who live this life in constant anxiety, fear, or rage, unsure of what they should be doing or who they should be at any given moment. Into that unknown darkness, Jesus promises His light. The child of God, the follower of Jesus, has a definite path, with a definite goal, and definite guardrails as to their beliefs, behaviors, words, and actions. To the world belongs fear and confusion and uncertainty. To the child of God belongs the Holy Spirit’s inner guidance, the Word of God’s external guidance, and the Body of Christ’s companionship.
“but will have the light of life” — Jesus not only gives direction, but He gives a brand new life that’ll outlast this world & our decaying bodies.
SERMON TRANSCRIPT (AUTO-TRANSCRIBED BY APPLE PODCASTS)
I want you to turn over in your Bibles to John 8 and verse number 12. John 8 and verse number 12. Once you have gotten there, and your copy of God's Word, I want you to look on up here.
When I see some faces, I'll know we are in the right spot, we're in the spot together. All right. If you're there this morning, say amen.
Today is going to be unique. Obviously, it's already been unique. But we are going to be picking up beginning next week, back in our study in Genesis.
But as we concluded our week of VBS with this theme that the kids went through of Jesus as the light of the world, this is not just a fun topic or a theme that works for children.
This is something that every man and woman, boy and girl, old and young needs to hear. And so today, we are going to be looking at this incredibly important truth of Jesus as the light of the world.
And what we're going to see today is that Jesus wants to provide the new life and the clear direction that we need. I want you to think of what light does in your life and in mine.
We, today, in 2026, we get the ability to interact with the light regularly in a way that most all of human history didn't get to experience.
200, 400 years ago, you could not simply throw on a switch and receive light in your house, in your church building, at places that you shopped at. Light was something that was very precious. You were mainly reliant on daylight, the light of the sun.
Maybe when it was nighttime, you might light a candle, you might have a lamp, you might try and go by the light of the moon or the stars. But today, our world is filled with light.
And as Jesus talks about himself as the light of the world, it communicates something to us about how God sees this world. I want you to think for just a moment about some of the darkness that we experience in the world around us.
You can't turn on the news without seeing wars, rumors of wars, financial distresses and hardships, atrocious crimes being committed here, there and everywhere.
And as you think about your own life, you know the financial burdens that you have been under. You know the personal, relational difficulties that you have experienced.
And what Jesus offers to every person that will receive it is new life and clear direction. Into your darkness and into my darkness, the light of life wants to shine.
I also love the psalmist David would write, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. And as we think about Jesus, yes, he provides that whole new, if you will, illumination station where we can see things from God's perspective.
We can see things in the light of God's truth, but he also provides the path that you and I need to walk.
And for every single one of us, there will be decisions that you and I need to make this week, next week, next month, that we need not just human wisdom and insight, but that we need the guidance of God.
Even as I mentioned a little bit earlier, we got a members meeting coming up in next Sunday. My brain is melting, guys. Please pray for me.
We got a members meeting coming up next Sunday. My goal is not, how can we see Roger's vision accomplished? How can we see Brian's vision accomplished?
How can we do what Mary wants us to do? The goal is, God, we want to see your direction and your light for our life.
All of us have made mistakes before about choosing what job we were going to work, about a person that we got into a relationship with, about the route that we should take to get somewhere, and turned out there was traffic or a blown water main, and
then we couldn't get where we needed to go. I say that from personal experience recently. As we navigate through life, we need to know the right decisions to make. And so that is what Jesus offers us within these verses.
Not necessarily, here is the perfect route for your life. You're not going to find in there, okay, here's the perfect person that you need to marry. Here's the stocks that you need to invest in.
It's more fundamental than that. It's how you arrive at who you are as a person, and the way that you are going to walk through life. Let's pray together.
Ask for the Lord to speak to us this morning, and we'll dive into John 8 and verse number 12. Dear Lord, we come and help us, please, this morning, to recognize the darkness that we are in.
Lord, confusion about who we truly are, confusion about what we should do. Lord, we are nothing but the creation. We are the creature.
You are the creator. And so, God, we ask that today you would shine a light on the relationship that you want to have with us, Lord, the direction, the purpose that our life needs to have.
And Lord, I pray that today, if there's someone that they have never begun following you, they have never experienced your light in their life personally. God, I pray that today would be the day that they begin that relationship.
Love you, Lord, and I pray all of this in your name. Amen.
6:18
“I Am” Declaration
So the verse says this. Jesus spoke to them again. I am the light of the world.
Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life. This verse comes at the end of a feast, the feast of Tabernacles or booths. It would be pronounced.
It's S-U-K-K-O-T. It's like S-U-K-K-O-T is the pronunciation for it. And this was an annual feast for the Jews where they would remember the fact that God had brought them out of Egypt.
And he had in the Exodus, some of you have seen the movie Prince of Egypt, that kind of in a dramatic fashion tells that story.
And so as they left Egypt, they would remember that they were pilgrims, that God had sustained them and loved them, cared for them. And so every year for about a week, they would live in these makeshift Tabernacles or booths, tents.
I've mentioned before we're Tabernacle Baptist Church. If you will, it's it's Tent Baptist Church is where we are.
And so the people of Israel, as it reached the end of that week, you would have these beautiful large, I'll call it a candelabra, that the lights would be shining all throughout the week of this feast of booths, feast of tents, feast of Tabernacles.
And as it reached the end of the week, you'd have the lights on this candelabra that would light up much of the area around that would go out.
It reminded the Jewish people of the fact that once they had the temple, Solomon's Temple, where the glory of the Lord had lived, but that in Ezekiel's time in the Old Testament, because of Israel's rejection of God as the one that they would follow,
that shining light, that shekinah glory of the Lord had left the temple. And here, Jesus at the conclusion of this feast, of remembering what God had done for the people, of the light that he had provided, think even in the Exodus and as the children
of Israel made their way out. Do you guys remember what guided them at night? Shout it out if you remember. The pillar of fire.
This light. And nowadays, when we think of light, you know, there's these light bulbs and things like that, that it's really safe, it's really tame. Most of the time, if you had a light source in the old days, what was it made up of?
Fire. And so, here this fire of God's presence. Jesus, at the end of this feast, tells the people, I am the light of the world.
It says, anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.
And I just want to walk through piece by piece this verse to draw out some things that you and I need to know and understand today about what it means to follow Jesus. First, he starts off by saying, I am the light of the world.
Can everyone say, I am? I am is the personal name of God. In the Old Testament, this would be the name YHWH, Yahweh or Yehovah.
Some older translations might have it, Jehovah. This was the name of God. I am who I am.
He's the God who simply is. He's not a God that can be made by people. He's not a God that can be sustained or starved by our giving of sacrifices or our lack of giving sacrifices.
He is the God who needs nothing from anyone. He is the self-existent, self-sustaining God. And so, Jesus says, I am.
And Jesus here, this was something that if you fast-forward about, you know, 35 to 40 verses later within the chapter of John 8, the Pharisees know exactly what Jesus is claiming, that he is claiming equality with God the Father by stating these
types of things. You would have in, I believe it's John 8, 58, where Jesus is arguing with them. He says, Abraham was glad to see the day that I would proclaim these things.
And they said, listen, you're not, you know, you're barely 30 years old and you have seen Abraham. And he tells them before Abraham was, I am. So they attempted to kill him, to stone him as a result of this.
They understood what Jesus was claiming. He is the very presence of God. You see, Jesus is not a lesser God.
He is not a created God. As we've been learning even this month, the song, The God We Love, that he is Christ. He is begotten, not made.
That is, the father calls the son his son, but Jesus is not created like sons are created. My dad's here today and he created me. And then I have my son, Brian, and I created him.
That's not the way that it works with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Instead, these three persons of the Trinity, one God, three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, these three have always existed in eternal relationship with each other.
By the way, that influences the way that we ought to think about community. Community relationships with one another is not simply if you are wired a particular way, you should have relationships with other people.
No, my friend, you remember in the Great Commandments of the Lord, that the two greatest commandments are, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.
And so built into everything that God has for you and I is relationship. And so Jesus here, the I Am, Jesus, God the Son, our Creator, the one in charge of everything, he says, I am the light.
12:44
Light: Warmth and Truth
Can everyone say light? Light is a source of warmth and life. You can think my mom really doesn't enjoy some of the winter months where you might have, you know, overcast skies for months on end, and you just kind of feel a little bit dreary.
You can think even over on the western part of the United States by like Portland and Seattle over by where I used to live. Those areas have such higher depression rates than some of the rest of the country because you have a lack of sun.
The sun, the light, the warmth that we receive, even the vitamin D that you are able to receive from being out in the sun, it is so vital and important for human flourishing.
Think without the light and warmth of the sun, none of the plants or very few of the plants that we have that give us food would be able to survive.
And so, when Jesus describes himself as light, we can certainly think of the sun and the warmth and life and comfort that it brings. And Jesus is that ultimate source of our life. He is the one that gives us food.
It's why we would pray in the Lord's Prayer. Give us this day our daily bread, that just as the warmth of the sun makes the wheat and the grain to be able to grow, and that's made into bread.
So, God is the one that makes us able to have all of the food and clothing, the security and the comforts that we have within this life. It is all as a result of God's goodness to you. I want you right now, look at the clothes that you're wearing.
Think about the bed that you woke up in this morning. I want you to think about the food either that you had for breakfast, or that you're going to have as soon as Bryon's done with this message.
Picture all of it as coming from the light of the world. That Jesus, in personal love and care for you, has given you everything that you possess. Jesus, being the light, is also the one by whom we have ability to see everything else in the world.
I love, I can't recall the individual that said it, but he said, I believe in God, not just because I can see his light, but because by his light, I can see everything else.
In recognizing who God is, his character, his nature, how he has made our world, we are able to see how the puzzle is supposed to fit together. A lot of people have questions about their marriage.
They wonder how two broken, imperfect people are supposed to make a good life together.
In the light of Jesus, we are able to see this is a beautiful picture of Christ and his church, of commitment, of loyalty, of love, of sacrifice for one another, of commitment that is undying and unbroken.
We're able to see truth by the light of who God is. I want to encourage you. See every aspect of your life as being reflective of who God is in some way.
If you're at work, you are able, through your work, to show other people how God loves them. Now, some of you are like, listen, I work construction.
That's not really a place where people go to feel the warm fuzzies and the love, but you can show the people through the work that you do in construction, that you did a good job and you cared well for them, just as God cares well for them.
You can show your co-workers what it's like to work hard and to be diligent, not to be lazy, just as God is never lazy, he is never asleep on the job, that you can show some of that.
As you listen to people's stories and you care about them, you pray for them, you can exhibit the love of God through your life to their life.
If you're a parent or a grandparent today, we talked last Sunday about what it means to bring children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord to say, I don't exist so that you will make me not look bad as a parent or as a grandparent.
Our kids or our grandkids don't exist to fulfill our dreams. We are to raise them up so that they know that God loves them because their parent or their grandparent or their guardian has loved them.
Are you viewing the relationships and circumstances of your life as an appointment by God so that you can shine out the light of God to someone else?
I also notice in Jesus being the light, he is the one that is the bringer of our joys and the constant in our lives. As I look around this room, I think of story after story of people that were married for decades and their spouse passed on.
And yet that same God that knew you from before the foundation of the world, he is still with you today. He still loves you. He is watching over you.
He's taking care of you. Many of you in this room, you had kids and then they grew up and they moved out of the house. But your God is still with you.
None of us are still tiny children. I think all the kids left to go to the other class or almost all of them. We're not still tiny children.
We grew up and we aged and we left the home. And yet God is still with us. And what I love is the we change, the we age, the we go through our difficulties.
Jesus is the light, unchanging, constant, fixed. I heard a message earlier this week where the pastor talked about Einstein's famous E equals MC squared. And that C is that constant.
It's that constant speed of light. And that, you know, that general theory of relativity is able to work because of the constancy of light. And I think here, what a beautiful picture, that Jesus is the one that is constant.
Every single morning as the earth turns, the light is always there.
And I want you to know, even if you've been in an incredibly dark time, difficulties in your life, difficulties in the lives of your loved ones, unknown futures, God will always be there for you.
There will never come a moment where you reach out to Him and He shuns you. I love what Jesus said. This is all that the Father has given me will come to me.
And those who come to me, I will never for any reason cast them out. I want you to know that Jesus is that constant light. But notice there as well, He says, I am the light of the world.
Can you say of the world? The world is this place where we all live, where right now there is darkness, where there are imperfections, dangers, and constant unknowns are regular.
When we begin to forget that we need God's light in our life, we will embrace the darkness. We will choose to treat others not how God wants us to treat them. We will treat them based on our emotions.
We will treat them based on our own estimations of justice and right and wrong. When we look at the world through our own light instead of the light of Jesus, we destroy our relationships. We do not do good at our jobs.
We are untrustworthy. We lie. We cheat.
We steal. And so this is what God tells us. He says there is a different way to live, but it's not the way that the world lives.
You are not going to find the ultimate meaning or purpose, value in your life by looking at the news.
You're not going to find your ultimate purpose, value, and worth through listening to a podcast, unless maybe it's like a Bible study podcast or something. Then you can get some good wisdom from the world.
But you're not going to find your ultimate value in what this world has to offer. Hollywood can make some great movies. Nashville can make some great music.
New York can make some great stock exchanges. Any of you doing finance are like, Brian, you don't know what you're talking about. I know.
Our world has its culture and its ways. It will not show you the way you need to go. It will not tell you who you are on the inside, or the way that you are to go about your life.
Jesus is the light of the world. He's the one that shines the light into the darkness.
21:53
Universal Invitation
But then, I love what he says here, anyone who follows me. Jesus does not say that only the best followers, the least sinful followers, or people from one particular background, or ethnicity, or tax bracket, can experience his light.
But anyone that will follow him will have his life. My friends, what a wonderful joy that that is. There is no, there's no form that you have to fill out by which Jesus figures out, okay, is this the kind of person that can follow me?
No, my friend. Young or old? Perfect or imperfect?
Kind or mean? Good family background? Awful family background?
Always been a Christian? Never walked into a church before. God says, anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness.
I want you to think about that even within your own life. There are people that each of us have written off in our heads to say, ah, this person's never coming back. This person's never going to turn their life over to Jesus.
But can I encourage you to keep on reaching out? Because it doesn't matter how dark a room is. You bring in a flashlight.
You bring in your, you know, iPhone with the little flashlight thing, and you can brighten up any spot on earth. It doesn't matter how dark the darkness is. Light will pierce it.
I want to encourage you, don't give up on that family member, that neighbor, that co-worker. God could shine the light, his light, into their darkness.
And I love what Paul tells us in Philippians 2, and what Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount. He says, you are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.
My friend, if you will, the greatest bulletin board for Tabernacle Baptist Church is not something that we could put on the Beltway. It's not maybe a big old TV commercial that we could throw on all the channels. It's not a great social media ad.
The best bulletin for Tabernacle Baptist Church is you. It's Myra. It's Fay.
It's Denise. It's Kitty. You are God's light into all of the dark places in your world and mine.
May we be faithful to keep on shining the light of Jesus. Then he says, Here anyone who follows me. Jesus does not say that simply those who acknowledge his existence or Lordship will have his life.
It is his followers. If you would choose to follow Jesus, to desire to know him and walk in his way, letting him call the shots in your life as your Lord, your master, he will accept anyone. But he will only accept the any that want to follow him.
I want to ask you today, has there ever been a time in your life where you started following Jesus by faith, believing in his salvation and the new life that he gives? In my own life, this looked like when I was nine years old.
It was actually my mom's birthday in 2006. My parents were away for the day celebrating her birthday. I was hanging out with my cousins.
At the end of the day, they started talking about a Christian movie that had just come out, and there were kind of some fantastical elements to it. But the premise of the movie was centered on the return of Jesus.
And though I had grown up in a Christian home, I knew all the verses and the songs.
We were at church four or five days a week for the various Sunday school, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, Friday home school co-op, all of the things I recognized.
Even though I know a lot about Jesus, I have never asked him to be my Savior, to forgive me of my sin, and to be the one in charge. So when I got home that night, I asked my parents if they would pray with me, and I asked Jesus to be my Savior.
In that moment, I became any one of the anyone who follows me. Can I tell you, God is not looking for you to get your act all together. He doesn't say anyone who is perfect will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.
He says, anyone who follows me. Some of you guys that were at our men's retreat last year, you followed me into the darkness. We almost lost Myron.
But they were following, even if not all of them were as close as others, they were still following a desire to go after who Jesus is, to walk his path. Is that a desire that you have within your life? I want to go the Jesus way.
I want to experience his forgiveness. Jesus says, anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life. If you have any questions about that, I would love to talk with you after service today, this week.
I believe on your sermon handout today, my number is on there. I encourage you, use that. And I would love to set up a time to talk with you this week, if you have questions about what it means to follow Jesus personally.
27:40
Path to New Life
Then he says, they will never walk in the darkness. Jesus gives an alternate way to walk through this life.
We all know people who live this life in constant anxiety, fear or rage, unsure of what they should be doing or who they should be at any given moment. And into that unknown darkness, Jesus promises his light.
The child of God, the follower of Jesus, has a definite path with a definite goal and definite guardrails as to their beliefs, their behaviors, their words and their actions. To the world belongs fear and confusion and uncertainty.
To the child of God belongs the Holy Spirit's inner guidance, the word of God's external guidance, and the body of Christ's companionship with them on their journey. Can I ask you today, are you walking in the darkness?
Do you understand the parameters that you have for your life?
One of the things that I love about what God has given us through the Holy Spirit and through His word is that He doesn't line out, okay, Mary, on Tuesday at 9 o'clock, go here, talk to this person, say these magic words, and boom, you will
experience in that moment the will of God for your life. Instead, what He does is here's who you need to be. Here's some ways that you need to avoid as you interact with other people.
If you will, God's more concerned about who you are than a particular vocation, a particular relationship. God's will for your life is, at its core, a call to walk with Him, a call to be like Him as you make the various decisions.
And you get to see the story that God wants to write in your life and in mine. Then as Jesus ends here, He says, Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.
Jesus not only gives us direction, He gives us the light that shines on, here's where you're going, here's the kind of character that you are called to have, the fruit of the Spirit, what God is like.
But Jesus also gives us a brand new life that will outlast this world and our decaying bodies. You see, God did not make this world with the darkness that it currently has.
Instead, what we read in Genesis 1 and 2 is that the very first thing that God does with our world is say, let there be light, and there was light. And then He created us humans.
But with our first ancestors, Adam and Eve, and every one of us since then, we have rejected God's way of light and life, and we have embraced, if you will, anti-life.
We have embraced the darkness going against who God is and the way that He operates.
The Bible says that because of our sin, the things that we think and say and do that break God's law and are against His character, the Bible says that the wages, the earnings of sin, is death.
The Bible says that death is not just the cessation of our existence, but that it is eternal separation from God in a place that scripture calls hell. If you will, it's the anti-heaven.
Everything that is good and great in God, it is everything apart from that. That those that want nothing to do with the light will experience what true darkness, what life without God is like.
But God does not want anyone to experience that existence. And so He came in the person of God the Son. He lived a perfect, sinless life.
He died on the cross for our sins. And He rose again from the dead three days later. So that everyone who asks Him for forgiveness, everyone who asks Him for this new life, this eternal, unending life, will receive it.
For everyone that does call on the name of the Lord, Scripture says they will be saved. And the Bible says that when you ask the Lord to save you, His Holy Spirit, His Presence, moves into your life. That you become a part of God's family.
And you get brothers and sisters, like you can see all around in this room today, fellow Christians, fellow believers, who will be able to help you out on your journey.
And the Bible says that whether we die, or whether Jesus comes back, we will always be with the Lord. It's that hope of heaven that we so often hear about. We don't have time to go into that today.
But we have the hope of heaven and an eternity with God. That is what awaits us. Can I ask you today, have you ever asked Christ to be your Lord and your Savior?
Have you ever started that journey of following Jesus? If not, today can be the day that you choose that. For the Christians that are in the room today, when was the last time that you shared the light with somebody else?
That you told someone that story, the story of God's love and His forgiveness, of His invitation? Share it with someone, even this week. And are you walking in the light of what God has told you in His Word?
So often we go back to the darkness because it's familiar, when God has given us the beauty of His own presence and His instruction.
May we recognize that Jesus, this light of the world, is the one that is deserving of our every step of obedience, of following Him. That He is the one that wants to guide you and I.
If you have felt like you're walking in confusion and uncertainty and darkness, know that He will never throw you away. Reach out to Him. Dive into His word and find this light of life.
And I love the truth that we sang earlier today, because God so loved the world, He gave His one and only Son to save us. And our sins were nailed to the cross. Our forgiveness is settled.
And so every single day, you can walk in the forgiveness and love of God. Will you choose to walk in that, to follow Him today?
