Episode Transcript
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Josh.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: And I'm Gabriel.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: And today on reading the Gospel, we are studying the event, the light in you. This is found in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 33 through 36. Follow along with us in your Bible as we read.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: No one, after lighting a lamp, puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light.
Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light. But when it is bad, your body is full of darkness.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Therefore, be careful, lest the light in you be darkness.
If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.
So this is a brief event, but a powerful event. Have you ever been in a cave underground with zero light? Or in a dark room with no light? Many times where you hold your hand up to your nose and you cannot see it at all.
It's fun for maybe the first minute or two, but then I desire light.
I desire something to be turned on. And I remember going to Mammoth Cave and doing the tour there. And they took us down into a big chamber and they turned out all the lights and we sat there in darkness. And then the tour guide lit a match and that one little match lit up the whole massive chamber because our eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The power of light is phenomenal.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: It's amazing.
We are born for light. We are created for light, not for darkness.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
Today we have light everywhere. I have self lights on my house that come on at different times. I have lights on my phone when I need it. I've got even my watch. I have a special button on the side of my watch. I press it and it becomes a flashlight I can see around. So in today's society, we're blessed with light. Maybe too much light.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Maybe cursed with too much light. Light is a source of pollution.
[00:02:55] Speaker A: It is. I went out to see the northern lights. Supposedly, we were able to see it from our town. And I live out in the country. It's a small town, so I went north of town. But there was so much light pollution, we couldn't see anything. When you're out in Wyoming and there really is no light pollution, you're just in the darkness of night. It's not dark.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: You have the stars.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Even if the moon is not out, the stars are enough to brighten up.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: And the stars are brighter when the night is darker.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Yeah. And you can see the Milky Way galaxy and just the beauty of creation. It's those nights when it's heavy cloud cover and no moon. That's when you have that deep darkness. And that's when you want the light.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: And this is how our Christian character can shine better in moments of darkness, in moments of trial and tribulation, confusion, conflict. That is when we can stand out as the light of God, when we.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Go against the grain, when everyone is being loving and kind and patient, when everyone is doing what is right, it is hard to stand out. But when everyone is doing what is wrong, to stand up and be the one that stands for right. You stick out like a lighthouse or.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: Like a bright beacon, providing you have that light in you that Jesus Christ talks about here.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: Exactly.
And so our light can be a witness to others. We've talked about this in the past, that part of our daily responsibility as our Christian three main areas is to come to God in daily communion with Him through His Word, to spend time with Him through prayer, but also to witness to others.
And that's where this light comes. We don't want to hide it.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: There are some spiritual disciplines that connect us with a source of light, like study and prayer, and now we have to reflect that light. We are, as we discussed before, a link in this chain of God's grace. We receive in order to give, and we receive the light in order to give it to those who are still in the darkness.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: This saying in 35 therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. Is it possible that we can think we have the light, but we're really in darkness?
[00:05:39] Speaker B: Yes, it is possible.
And I don't know about you, but I have grown to learn that nobody in this world is absolutely perfect and nobody is absolutely bad or corrupted. There is this inner conflict, inner struggle in us between the light and darkness. This is good and evil. And I like to connect the verse you mentioned with the next verse 36 that says having no part dark, right? The whole body is full of light. Having no part dark.
So we are exposed to the presence of God. We are exposed to the knowledge about God because the word of God is a light. It's like a lamp on the way to heaven. And that light comes in and takes over every chamber, every corner. When light takes over, it pushes out the darkness. It's like the piston in a combustion engine.
In the same way, some people might have had light for a while, but if they then have a fresh light, if they do not maintain it, if they join the wrong crowd, if they decide to rebel against God and go against the conscience and against God's moral principles, darkness takes over.
So it is this battle line that moves up and down between the fronts warfront between the darkness and light. And we are in the middle of this battle. And Jesus Christ talks about this light that is in ourselves, that cannot be overtaken by darkness, that has to grow and has to shine outside to give rays of light to other people.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: I look at verse 35 therefore be careful, lest the light in you be darkness, as also how what we perceive as light.
If you listen to Hollywood and Disney, what they think is light, light is follow your heart. Your heart can't send you wrong if you're true to yourself.
So the light that they share says, look deep inside you and if you feel like it's good, then you're in a good place. But the Bible tells us the exact opposite. Our heart is deceitfully, wicked. We can't trust our feelings.
We need to test these things.
When our eye is bad, the previous verse, when we're getting bad information, what we perceive to be light in us can be darkness.
And I think we need to be very careful about where we go and what our guide is for, what light.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: Is, what is the fountain from which we draw our light?
[00:09:01] Speaker A: Yeah, because it does make a difference and it is important.
It is so easy to get bad light, it filters into our brains without us even thinking about it. We're walking around grocery stores, shopping, and the music that plays in grocery stores today. If I listened to it when I was a kid, my parents would have grounded me for a month. And we're letting this darkness filter into us without us even realizing it. And so we need to be all the more deliberate to make sure we put true light in.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: I'm amazed how meaningful this teaching is even in 24th centuries, because an average American receives the information at least 85% through the eyes.
We are a very visual nation, and it is very important how we feed the souls through the eyes. And I like to take it even one step further, not only outside our relationship with God, but it is inside the Christian church.
You go on the Internet, everyone pretends that they have the light, they have the truth, and they even put the word truth there and repeat it over and over until people believe it.
It's very important to have a solid foundation, and that foundation should be ours. We have to do our own research, as those Christians from Berea who heard Paul preaching but went home to compare his teachings with a scripture, the Old Testament, they had those days. So in the same way, we have to have a fixed point, and that is the word of God. So I see so much confusion in this world today about all the events that are happening around us. And it is very important to have the big picture of who God is, to clearly understand the purpose of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, to reveal God as a loving you know, we can.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Look back at the Christian church through history and see how they brought in blatant error to appease different for many different reasons. And so we can look at those areas. But to be honest, there are times where I have given a sermon and I said something I didn't mean to say. It didn't come out the way I wanted it to say. Afterwards, someone would come up and say, hey, Pastor, did you really mean to say that?
And no, I didn't. And so the next week I got up and I apologized and I made the correction. But what about the visitor who came in and who was not back the next week? And this is wherever we go, even if we look to a spiritual mentor, even if we put our trust in someone, we need to test everything they say against the Bible. Because I don't know about you, Gabriel, but I am fallible. I can make mistakes. I have made mistakes. All of us know we must check those things.
See, our desire is to be filled with God's light.
What is this passage telling us about God?
[00:12:33] Speaker B: I saw in this passage God as the source of light, the source of knowledge, the source of meaning, of life, the source of joy.
And receiving that light brings fulfillment, make us to be content as being children of God. So fulfillment and contentment are those two components of happiness.
So everything good, everything bright and beautiful comes from the Lord. This is what I see God here as the source of all the light in life.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: When I look at this passage, I see God as light and Satan as darkness.
[00:13:22] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: And I don't know of any device, like a darkness light bulb that you can put in your light socket. And when you turn it on, it takes all the light out of the room.
You can shut the windows, you can shut the blinds, you can shut out light and make a place dark. But there's no device that I know of that can absorb light and make it darkness, make a room dark, make an area dark, remove the light.
And so I see this as God is more powerful than Satan. We might have darkness in our heart, but when we invite God in, even if it is just a little match in a huge cavern of darkness, that light can filter out and dissipate the darkness, and the darkness has no power to withstand that.
[00:14:15] Speaker B: Light is the hope versus despair, is seeing a way forward versus failure. It is those feelings that we are in the arms of the most powerful person in the universe, and nobody can snatch us out of his hands.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: Yes. Let us pray. Father God, we want to be in Your hands. We want to be in Your care, in Your protection, in Your presence.
We want to be filled with light, light from you. We want darkness to be dispelled, darkness to leave every corner of our being.
And so, Father, we surrender ourselves to you now, and we ask that you will do that work within us, that you will fill us with light and that light will shine out to those around, that others may see your good works and that they will glorify you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen.
