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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
John 8:12
Again
Jesus spoke to them, saying,
"I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me
will not walk in darkness,
but will have the light of life."
Well, welcome to the weekend here
at Christ Community Chapel.
My name is Zach.
I'm one of the pastors here,
and I'm so glad
that we get to be part of your weekend.
You know, 2026 is for us as a church,
a year of more life.
We are asking, believing,
even expecting more life,
more life in our relationship
with God, more life and our relationships
with each other, and our marriages,
and our parenting, and our career.
We're asking, believing, and expecting.
Not not because we deserve it
or we're owed it, but because Jesus
tells us in the Gospel of John chapter
ten, verse ten that it's his mission.
He says, I have come so that they may
have life and life more abundantly.
And so we're saying to Jesus,
hey, if that's what you want for us,
that is what we want.
And we're chasing after that.
Of course, this spring,
what that looks like is we're learning
through the seven
I am statements in the Gospel of John
that the pathway to more
is not trying harder or doing better.
The pathway to more is a relationship
with Jesus, as he reveals
more each week to us of who he is
and how our relationship with him
leads to the more life he promised.
We're going to continue that this week,
so if you have a Bible, you can open it to
John chapter eight, verse 12.
Of course, if you don't know, probably
you can check out the screen behind me.
Anytime we reference the passage,
or if you want to use one of our Bibles
in the pew in front of you,
or in the back over in East Hall.
It is inconveniently located on page
851, bottom right hand corner,
and you have to turn it to page
852 to end it.
However you're getting to John eight
or watching the screens,
let me hold out to you an outline I'm
going to use to guide our time together.
Three points. Very simple.
I want to show you, an observation,
an invitation,
and illumination. Observation, invitation,
illumination.
All right. Let's start with observation.
Obviously,
Jesus is making an explicit claim
in this passage about himself.
He is saying something,
declaring something to be true of himself.
And we'll look at that in a minute.
But the key to understanding
this verse is not just seeing
what he is saying,
but to hear what he isn't saying.
What I mean by that is there's a
a subtext, a point he's making
that's kind of buried in this verse that
I actually think is where we should start.
Let me read it to you. I'll show you what
I mean. Here's what it says.
Again, Jesus spoke to them, saying,
I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will not walk in
darkness, but will have the light of life.
Jesus says, I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me won't walk in darkness.
They will have the light of life.
But of course, the implicit point
he's making is whoever doesn't
follow me will walk in darkness.
Jesus is saying, without me
you have darkness.
Apart from a relationship with me,
you will get darkness.
He's calling.
He's observing
that our world is a world of darkness.
Now what does it mean
to be a world of darkness?
How is he using that metaphor?
Well,
if you read the context of the passage,
if you kind of zoom out,
especially the end of chapter seven,
or even what
follows this, what you're going to find
is that Jesus as the Son of God, God in
the flesh, is teaching with absolute
clarity and authority.
He is revealing who God is
and what God is up to,
but he's consistently met with confusion.
People are arguing about who he is
and misunderstanding what he's saying.
And so when Jesus talks about darkness
here, what he's really saying is that
our world is a world of darkness.
Meaning our world is a world of confusion.
Our lives, our lives of confusion.
Without him, we will get confusion.
Now, let me drive this point home to you
by using two different metaphors.
Let's start with this one.
You know I am 42 years old.
If somebody said to me, Zach, describe
what the earth has been like
for your 42 years.
There are a lot of ways
I could do that, but.
But one way is I could tell the story
of all the diet fads that I have seen.
And there have been many,
like when I was a kid
in the early 90s, both
my parents were really into fat free.
I don't know if you are around for this,
but the idea was somehow
you could eat whatever you wanted.
But we found a way to take the taste out
and the fat out.
So you have free cookies,
fat free cake, fat free brownies.
I mean, they weren't good,
but they didn't have fat in them.
And for a while I was thinking,
that's how you're going to get healthy.
Until someone came along and was like,
no, actually, you need fat.
Like fat provides some benefit.
So, fat was back
and all of a sudden we were into low carb
or no carb diets, couldn't eat carbs,
you could eat anything else.
You just couldn't eat carbs.
We were eating meat for days.
And then someone came along
and was like, well, actually, you know,
processed carbs are bad,
but actually there are some healthy carbs.
You can't cut out carbs.
Then we went from that to gluten free,
which meant we all had to learn
what gluten was.
I'm 42. I still couldn't tell you,
but for a period of my life
I knew gluten was bad.
You didn't eat it, you didn't look at it.
You weren't in the same room as it.
You couldn't touch it. Gluten was baking.
Anything you want
just couldn't include gluten
until someone came along and was like,
well, no.
Actually, some people have a sensitivity.
They can't eat it.
The rest of you are idiots.
And we stopped doing
that and
then we got into intermittent fasting.
I don't know if you were down with this.
It was like
you would stop eating at a certain time
and you would go 12 hours or 15.
You know, if you could push it,
you not eat breakfast.
And and that was going
to get you in shape.
And then we realized that wasn't any fun.
And we switch now to high protein
everything protein I'm squirrely
and there's all kinds of protein.
You go to Starbucks now, you get a coffee.
They'll put somehow
they will put protein on it.
Okay.
And I don't know if you know this,
but we're post protein now.
Protein is not cool anymore.
Now it's fiber okay.
You want to get as much fiber as you can.
That's a long way of me
saying we have no idea what we're doing,
so we have no idea what we're doing.
When someone comes out with a diet
and we buy, we buy the book
and we watch the YouTube video
and the Ted talk, and we go all in
until someone else comes along goes,
that was dumb, but you should buy my book.
And we go, okay.
And we buy that
when we don't know what we're doing.
And the thing is,
when I when I talk about confusion
as it relates to our diets,
we chuckle right?
But if I say we're
just as confused about marriage,
that's not funny.
Or we're just as confused about parenting.
Or money
or friendships.
I mean, because another way of talking
about my 42 years
on earth, or all the times
I thought I knew what I was doing
only to find out I did it.
And that's not funny.
You know,
I turn on the news
and see what's going on in Iran,
and I don't know what to think of it.
You don't know what to think of it.
We're confused.
And that's not funny.
And it's not just that
we experience confusion.
We experience darkness.
It leads to a certain kind of living.
Let me give you a second metaphor.
So I'm flying out to Atlanta this week.
I love to coach
leaders, be in rooms with leaders.
I'm going to go do some of that.
And what that means for me is
I will stay in a hotel room
and when I sleep in a hotel room,
I need it
to be absolute pitch black, dark,
no light.
And what that means is
I will take all the extra towels
and blankets that I can find.
Then I will cover up anything
that has any light in it
so that when I'm laying in bed, I can't
even see my hand in front of my face.
And that will be perfect.
And then I'll fall asleep
and everything will be great
until 3:00 in the morning when I wake up
and I need to go to the bathroom.
And then I have to make a choice
stay in bed
and be uncomfortable or risk death.
Because I know somewhere out
there is a table.
I just don't remember where, right?
And so I can lay in bed
and be uncomfortable.
I can go for the bathroom
and run into furniture, right.
And and have some bumps and bruises,
or I can split the difference
and kind of put my hands out
in front of me and walk really slow and,
and kind of look like an idiot
if the light would ever come on.
But to make my way to the bathroom,
I think that's a great metaphor
for the way we're living.
We know we don't know what we're doing
right.
We know we don't know what we're doing.
And so some of us, the way that manifests
is with crippling anxiety.
Anxiety is the body's way of telling you.
You don't know what you're doing.
It's the physical manifestation
of the stress of going,
I don't know how to do marriage.
I don't know how to raise kids.
I don't know how to get ahead
in my career.
I don't know how to make enough money.
I don't have any answers for life's
biggest questions.
And your body is saying, I know, I know,
I know, and you're freaking out.
And that's how some of us live.
We this is the most
anxious generation, statistically,
of any generation ever before.
Well, why wouldn't it be?
We know more about the world
than we've ever known,
and we know we still don't know anything.
Others of us
are a little more adventurous,
so we run headlong after what
we think we want.
And our story is a
story of running into things
of bumps and bruises,
of marriages that didn't work.
Broken family relationships.
Broken friendships.
Financial difficulty.
Right?
We can point to every bruise
and tell the story of how
we thought we knew what we were doing,
only to find. Out we didn't.
At best.
At best, we split the difference
and we move through life
slowly and carefully,
just trying not to mess anything up.
And a good day for us is a day
where we don't mess anything up.
But we're not really living.
Jesus says that the root cause of that
is that we are confused.
That the root cause of our anxiety,
the root cause of the bumps
and bruises of the fads we chase, the root
cause of the cautious, careful,
not really living lives that we lead as
we don't know what we're doing.
Do you feel that?
Do you feel anxious?
Do you feel confused?
Do you feel wounded?
Well, if you do, you're going to love.
My second point.
Because Jesus isn't just making.
An observation,
he's making an invitation.
Look at what he says. John 812
he says this.
And again Jesus spoke to them, saying.
I am the light of the world.
Now I want you to notice
that Jesus does not say,
there is a light in the world,
and I know how to find it.
He does not say, there is
there must be light out there somewhere.
And if you and I link arms,
we can find it together.
He doesn't say there's a light inside
of you and he knows how to bring it out.
No, he doesn't say any of that.
We would resonate with any of that. Right?
He doesn't say that.
What he actually says
is something even more audacious.
He says, I am the light of the world.
And when he says that, he's saying
two really important things,
the first thing he's saying,
he's inviting us to watch him
because Jesus is saying that the darkness
that you and I live in, the confusion
that we carry, he doesn't carry it.
He doesn't live in it.
He's not in the darkness.
He says.
He's saying that for him,
the hotel room light is on.
He knows what he's doing.
He's inviting us to watch his life.
Look, I told you two weeks ago
that if you're new to the Bible,
if you don't,
you don't have a ton of background
with the Bible.
You should start with the Gospel of John.
I bet there were some of you
who are like, I'm going to do that.
And then you didn't do
it. Don't feel bad about it.
Tomorrow's Monday. Great day to start.
Give it a shot tomorrow.
And if you were to read
the Gospel of John, what you would find
is that Jesus, his life, reads
as though it has absolute clarity.
I mean, he just moves through life.
He's not doing this. He's moving
full speed.
He speaks truth to power.
He uplifts the weak.
He speaks with confidence over who God is
and what God wants and what God is doing.
He lives a life of absolute clarity,
and he even goes to death
with absolute clarity.
He tells us over and over again,
I've come to die.
I'm going to go to the cross.
You're going to kill me.
I have to die in order
for you to be forgiven.
Even on the cross.
As he's dying, he says, father,
into your hands I commit my spirit.
In other words, I trust you.
I know what we're doing.
We have a plan.
And then three days later, just like he
said, he raises from the dead.
He goes on to ascend into heaven
and tells us, see, I told you.
I told you this is what I was going to do.
I have come so that you can have life.
Jesus lives and dies
and resurrects and ascended into heaven
with absolute complete clarity.
Never a moment of confusion.
But here's the other thing.
He's inviting us to.
He's inviting us to come to him to get it.
It's interesting.
In John 812
he says, I am the light of the world.
That's not an encouraging thing
to say necessarily.
Like if you say to me, hey, Zach,
you're living a life of complete confusion
and darkness.
And I go, I know.
And then Jesus goes,
I am the light of the world.
Like, that's true,
but it's it's not it's not encouraging
because all he's really doing
is saying how superior he is to me.
But do you see?
That's not where he stops.
You have to see this.
If John 812 stops with Jesus saying, I'm
the light of the world,
this is not an encouraging passage. True,
but not encouraging.
But look what he says.
John 812 again Jesus spoke to them,
saying, I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me
will not walk in darkness, but will have.
The light of life. Jesus saying,
I have light. I want to share,
I have life and I want to share.
Do you see that?
Here's
what Jesus is saying when he says, I'm
the light of the world and you have to
feel this. It's an audacious claim.
What he's saying
is that from the moment he.
Arrived till now.
Till.
All eternity,
because Jesus is the light of the world,
darkness, confusion is no longer
inevitable.
It's a choice.
Do you understand?
That's what he's saying.
He's saying that because
he's the light of the world and he's here.
Darkness, confusion, anxiety,
bumps and bruises,
cautiously moving through life.
That's a. Choice.
You can have darkness if you want it.
But Jesus is saying,
but you can come to me.
If you want light.
Which of course begs the question.
Which do you want?
And if you
find yourself saying, well, you know,
I want light.
Well, that's my third point, actually.
Not just an observation,
not just an invitation,
but here's how you get illumination.
Jesus says, whoever follows me.
Will not walk in darkness, but.
Will have the light of life.
What does he mean when he says,
whoever follows me?
Well, I think he has in mind three things.
I'm just taking these
from his teaching everywhere else.
Three things, and they're linear.
You start with one,
move to two, move to three.
Here's the first thing he's talking about.
He's talking about salvation.
Do you know what salvation is?
It's a very churchy word.
You didn't grow up in the church.
Maybe you kind of think, you know,
not really.
Here's all it is.
Salvation is simply
the end result of saying.
I don't want to be in darkness anymore.
I have no idea what I'm doing.
My body is telling me that my, my,
my story is telling me that
I have no idea what I'm doing.
I don't want to live this way anymore.
And seeing in. Jesus
a way out
in his life,
in his death and in his resurrection.
To be a Christian is to say.
I have chosen darkness.
I have walked in darkness.
It's been miserable.
I don't want it anymore.
And in Jesus I have found a way out.
I got to tell you, in two weeks
we're baptizing.
You know,
since we launched the reimagined vision,
we are dangerously close
to a thousand baptisms.
I'm gonna tell you, when that day
happens, we're going to celebrate.
That's awesome.
But right now,
my mind is not on a thousand.
It's on one. It's on you.
Because I talk to people, think, well,
how do I know if I'm ready to be baptized?
And and there's so much I don't know.
Listen, when you get baptized,
you're saying there's a lot I don't know.
Here's one thing I do know.
I don't want darkness anymore.
And Jesus has given me a way out.
And if that's all you
know, you're ready to be baptized.
Because baptism is not about achieving
and earning.
It's about acknowledging that
we would have lived and died in darkness
if the light had not come.
But he's come and his name is Jesus.
Two weeks, two weeks. We'll baptize you.
We're going to baptize.
We'll have clothes ready.
You can come take a class.
You're a planner plan.
You're not a planner.
We got you. Come.
Anyways, here's the second thing.
Salvation is where it starts.
So the second thing,
the leadership of Jesus.
Jesus, when he says, whoever follows
me will not walk in darkness.
What he means
is that the very first thing,
the fundamental thing that he gave to
he came to bring us
clarity on is who God is
and how God feels about us, right?
That we could know
we'd be forgiven, that we could know
we be accepted, that
we can know we'd be included.
But Jesus is saying, it's
not just clarity on who God is
and how God feels about us.
Jesus has come to bring the light
to darkness
in every area of our lives.
Because it isn't just that.
On a macro level,
we don't know what we're doing.
Pick the area, marriage,
parenting, career, money, friendship.
We have no idea what we're doing.
And Jesus is saying.
But I do.
Well, let me give you an example.
I can give you a million
different examples,
but for whatever reason,
this one's on my heart.
This week,
eight out of I, eight out of ten couples
who apply to be married
here at the church are living together.
Now I want you to hear me.
We don't do guilt and shame here, okay?
It's actually the opposite
of what we believe we don't do, so I don't
I don't say that to guilt you or shame you
if that's your story, keep coming.
I'm glad you're here.
I just say that to see what
that tells me as a pastor,
is that you have bought into the cultural
fad of how to think about marriage.
Of how to think about sex,
and how to think about relationships.
Let me ask you a question.
The generation that came before you do,
they seem like
they know what they're talking about
when it comes to marriage.
So who told you that?
You said, well,
it's a good way to save money.
It's a good way to try each other out,
to learn each other.
Did you know statistically, that couples
that lived together before marriage
are vastly more likely
to divorce than couples who don't?
I bet you didn't know that.
But nobody ever told you that.
That's because the people selling the low.
Carb diet never tell you you need carbs.
Do you understand what I'm saying to you?
So I don't want you to feel guilty.
I don't want you to feel shame,
but I do want you.
Jesus is saying you can learn.
The table is there. By running into it,
or you can let him
tell you where the table is.
Do you understand that.
The Bible has so much to say about
how you think about debt?
We're all somewhere
in the book of Proverbs, by the way.
We're going to talk about debt.
We're going to talk about friendships.
We're going to talk
about all kinds of stuff,
because Jesus doesn't want you
to keep running into the furniture.
Do you want that? Yet?
We're so prone to doing things our way
and finding ourselves in a mess.
Because when you walk around
in the darkness, that's what happens.
And then we get angry at God
and we blame God.
And how could you let this happen?
How could you do this?
But is it really his fault?
God doesn't want.
Confusion for you.
He wants clarity,
and he knows how every area of your life
is meant to work.
He does not want you to go through life
just hoping
you don't make a mess of things.
He wants you to run.
And he knows how to get you there.
Here's the third thing. You're ready.
So we come to Jesus for salvation.
We learn who God is,
how he feels about us.
We bring every area of our life
to him in leadership.
We listen to him
about every area of our lives.
We get more light. We get rid of darkness.
Here's the third thing we.
Participate
in bringing others into the light.
This is so. Important.
Because the mission of Jesus is to.
Dispel darkness and to bring in light.
That's the mission of Jesus.
So what that means, brother
or sister in Christ, is that your life
isn't just about doing things
the right way.
It's about being on mission, finding
meaning and purpose, which we crave
and we have no idea
how to find in the work of Jesus,
even here at the church,
to reach other people.
Because we if we don't want
to run into the furniture,
if we realize we can live life and run,
not crawl towards meaning and purpose,
why wouldn't we want that for everybody?
So you
came in this morning
and my guess is somebody helped you park.
Somebody greeted you at the door.
Somebody made you coffee.
Somebody with your kids right now
telling them about God's love.
People came up here and sang and led you.
People helped you find a seat.
People made you move
so that someone else could find a seat.
Do you know why they do that?
Do you know why they do that?
Because they have discovered
the joy of stepping out of confusion
into the light,
and they want that for you.
Which is why I'm going to tell you
you will never unlock true meaning
and purpose in your relationship with God
until you join.
Him in his mission
to bring other people divine.
That is a
shameless plug for you
to get involved here,
if for no other reason than you and
I have no idea how to find meaning
and purpose apart from Jesus.
Friends
barely moving through life, crippled
by anxiety bumps and bruises
from running into stuff.
Hoping just not to make a mess of
things has become.
The American definition of. Normal.
But it is not normal.
You were made for more
and only Jesus,
the light of the world can get you there.
Let me pray for you, father God.
Because it's a two part prayer.
Pretty simple.
One is build in us a dissatisfaction
with darkness and confusion.
You know, the old adage goes, fish
don't know they're wet.
We don't even.
Realize how confused we are.
So show us.
And before that feeling overwhelms. Us,
show us the hope that is available
in Jesus
that we might pursue him for your glory,
for our joy,
and for the good of those around us.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.