Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on June 22, 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Audio Transcript
I invite you to take your Bibles and turn to Luke chapter 11. If you want to use the Pew Bible. It’s page 9 23. Looking today at how is your eyesight? God has blessed us with sight so that we can enjoy beautiful things.
He’s blessed us with eyesight so we don’t run into walls when we walk around. But most importantly, God has given us eyesight so that we can come to know him better by looking at his creation. We talk about that as being general revelation. When we look at the stars, when we look at the sun, when we look at the flowers, when we look through microscopes, it’s just amazing. All that he has created and he’s given us eyesight so that we can appreciate those things.
Today we’re going to be talking about the truth, True light. And the true light is Jesus. May we begin reading? In Luke chapter 11, no one lights a lamp and puts it in the cellar or under a basket, but on a lampstand so that those who come in may see its light. Your eye is the lamp of the body, and when your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light.
But when it is bad, your body is also full of darkness. Take care then that the light in you is not darkness. If therefore, your whole body is full of light with no part of it in darkness, it will be entirely illuminated as when a lamp shines its light on you. May we pray? Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word.
We ask that you would help us to understand it and to apply it to our lives today. We thank you for the freedom to be able to sit here today to sing your praises and to hear from you, guide our hearts into making decisions that we might be more like your Son and share the true light in this world. It’s in his name that we pray. Amen. Just a couple verses here, and this is the Like a picture on the wall, an artist can spend hours and hours thinking out the picture, putting everything in it exactly the way he wants.
And you can walk by and say, yeah, that’s a nice picture. Or you can stop and look at the picture and try to figure out what is really the author, I mean, the artist trying to relay to us today. And Jesus here is giving us a picture of. Of a lamp and these different objects, a basket, a lamp stand. And it’s a picture that we understand.
But we can’t just walk by. We need to understand what is it that Jesus is trying to relay to us. We begin with no one lights a lamp and puts it in the cellar or under a basket, but on a lamp stand so that those who come in may see its light. It makes me remember when I was a little kid, I wasn’t sitting, supposed to light matches in the house. So you know what I did?
I crawled under the house to light the matches. You can imagine what problems that could have caused. That’s neither here nor there in the sermon. That’s just something about me.
I was sinful too, and I still am. What we want to see here is that Jesus is not the with a little T like, but he is the with a little capital T light. And we’re going to see that he claims to be light. And the light has been with us representing Jesus all through the Old Testament and into the future, that God was preparing the Israelites to look for the true light that was coming. So the question isn’t, what is the light?
The question is, who is the light? Everything about God’s creation, creation points us to God in one way or another. And light is an excellent example. I heard of a pastor one time and he would ask kids, they’d come up and do a child sermon, and he would ask them to bring something from home and he would use it as an object lesson and never seen it before to tell them something about God. But that’s how our world is.
And everything should point us to him, whether it’s a lemon or an orange or the sunlight or trees or flowers. But light here is an excellent example because when we think about what light does, it tells us about God. It allows us to see. It provides us life by giving us warmth and food through photosynthesis. And it’s seemingly everywhere it wants.
It’s like we don’t know where it’s from, coming, coming from, or where it’s going. It’s just like God’s eternal presence in a way. It’s powerful enough to destroy and incinerate us, as if you were to get too close to a fire or to the sun. But it also provides energy so that we can live. So many things about light if we just think about how it does picture God.
Jesus himself tells us in John 8:12, I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life. Then again, John records him in John 12, I have come as light into the world so that everyone who believes in me would not remain in darkness. Jesus made the claim himself. He is the light.
He gives light to all who follow him, and he rescues all who follow him from the Darkness of sin and the entrapment of Satan. So we find in the New Testament, Jesus is the light, but we also have to think all the way back to creation. And again, it’s in the New Testament in John chapter one. But he’s referring back to the creation, how the light was there at that time. We read in John chapter one, the beginning was the Word.
The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God.
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He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him. And apart from him, not one thing was created. That has been created. In him was life.
And that life was the light of men. And that light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it. John is sharing so much in just these few verses. I just want to remind us of a few things not able to go into depth today because we’re mainly talking about light. But what are some things that points out to us?
Well, John was writing under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and with the Holy Spirit’s wording. This is what he’s telling us. First, that the light, the Word Jesus is eternal because when nothing else existed, the Word Jesus was what he was there in the beginning. It also tells us here that not only was he in the beginning, but but he’s eternal because he no beginning and end. And then we kind of get a brief description of this hard to understand concept about what the Trinity really is, because he says the Word was with God, which means that he was distinct.
If I go out on a date with my wife, we’re not the same person. We are together, but we’re separate. So Jesus is deciding distinct from the Father. But then he makes this almost contradictory statement where he says the Word was God. So he is God, but he’s distinct from the Father.
John is trying to present this to us. It tells us that Jesus, the light, the Word, was active in creation, that he is the source of life in this world because he is the light. And John said that he will, he does, and he continues to overcome the darkness. But again, we’re focusing on the fact that Jesus is the true light. Let’s go back to the Old Testament.
Now, we talked about Genesis, but we also find that there was this picture of the light in the wilderness with the Jewish nation. It says they set out from Succoth and they camped at Etham on the edge of the wilderness. The Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to lead them on their way during the day. And in A pillar of fire to give them light. There it is at night so that they could travel day or night.
Pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night never left its place in front of the people. It was a picture of what Jesus would do for us.
The light then gave them guidance. The light now gives us guidance. And they were out in the wilderness. So in the day it was hot and it was a cloud to give them shade. And at night, in the wilderness, in the desert when it’s cold, he became a what?
He became a fire to keep them warm. He gave them direction. We go on to read in Exodus 14, verses 19:20.
Then the angel of the Lord who was going in front of the Israelites forces moved and went behind them. The pillar of cloud moved from in front of them instead of leading them, and it stood behind them. And the reason was is because the Egyptians were coming after them. The pillar, it came between the Egyptian and the Israelite forces, and there was cloud and darkness. It lit up the night.
And what it did is that neither group came near the other all night long. Not only did the light guide them, but the light protected them. So it is that Jesus does for us. He offers protection for us. Then we come to the tabernacle, and again we have a light.
And my circle is a little off. I don’t know what I did wrong. I’m not PowerPoint. But the lampstand is right there beside that circle. It was the only light source in the tabernacle, and it was a picture of Jesus Christ like everything else in there.
And if you can look at all the different layers there, it’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 layers. It’s like being in bed under all of every single one of your grandmother’s quilts. That would be extremely dark. So when the priest came in, it would have been completely dark in there, unless there was what A light to show them the way. The lampstand pictured how Jesus is the light for the the priest to move into the presence of God at the holy of holies.
The light also showed him where the table of showbread was. It pictures Jesus body and blood that he gave for us that we might have life. And it also gave them light to show them how to get to the altar of incense, which represented the prayers that we offer up. Without the presence of Jesus in the temple, they would not have found their way to God. And it’s a picture of how if Jesus did not come to earth and die on the cross for our sins, we would not have Any way of knowing how to get to the Father?
Jesus was the only light in the tabernacle. He showed the way to the flesh Father, the way to direct communion with God, the way to prayer, the way to the life giving table of bread, the way to true fellowship and communion with God. So we see that Jesus is the light in the New Testament. He was the light at creation. He was the light with the people of God in the wilderness.
But he’s also the light in the prophecies. Let’s go to the book of Isaiah. We read in Isaiah 49:6 it says he and we’re talking about the Father here says, it is not enough for you to be my servant, raising up the tribes of Jacob and restoring the protected ones of Israel. Jesus came for the tribes of Israel. But he says also I will also make you not just for Abraham’s children through Isaac, but a light for the nations to be my salvation to the end.
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To be my salvation to the ends of the earth. The prophecy in Isaiah points to this servant that is going to come is going to be a light for the entire world. World. He is for the nations. He is salvation for all.
Let’s go to Isaiah 42:6,7. Again we’re talking about this sermon. What is he going to do? I am the Lord. I have called you for a righteous purpose and I will hold you by My hand.
I will watch over you and I will appoint you to be a covenant for the people and a light to the nations in order to open blind eyes to bring out prisoners from the dungeon and those sitting in darkness from the prison house. When Jesus said that he was the light of the world, it’s like this picture. It was going to make the Jews remember things in their biblical text about the prophecies and about creation that he was coming to fulfill what those things had pointed to, pointed to. We learn here that God said that when he came, he would open the eyes to the freedom available to us through Him. He would rescue us from slavery or the dungeons of darkness that we live in until we are freed by Him.
It also says that he would free us from the prison where we are in bound by Satan himself. Go to Isaiah chapter 60. And now we’re not looking to Jesus first coming. But now the prophet refers to him as being the eternal everlasting light that is going to come in the new creation. Because Jesus isn’t just a light for a while.
He will be the eternal light for us. And the prophet speaks about that day, when the new creation is here, that the sun will no longer be your light by day, and the brightness of the moon will not shine on you. We won’t have the sun and the moon, because the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your splendor. Your sun will no longer set, your moon will not fade, for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and the days of your sorrow will be over. Jesus is the light from beginning to end.
Throughout Scripture. What does that mean to us? We’re supposed to respond to God’s word. So we come now to the Christian respond to the light. We’re supposed to respond to it just like plants respond to the light.
If you grow plants, if you turn them, they keep doing what? Keep turning. You ever watch the sunflower field? What do the sunflowers do? They follow the light.
It’s very interesting how the whole field will do that. That’s what it’s supposed to be like in our lives. We’re supposed to respond to the light that gives us from the sun. Let’s go back to our passage in Luke 11. No one lights a lamp and puts it in the cellar or under a basket, but on a lampstand so that those who come in may see its light.
What we do with the light, it’s up to us. It’s there. But we have a choice whether we’re going to put it under a basket, whether we’re going to keep it upstairs, or whether we’re going to put it in the cellar. That is our responsibility. We can use the light wisely, or we can use it foolishly.
We can choose to share it with others, or we can choose just to hide it and keep it with ourselves and we can allow it to shine, or we can keep keep it hidden in our life. It is our responsibility. A similar passage comes up in Matthew chapter five, where we get a little bit more information about our responsibility that we have here. Because Jesus in this passage isn’t only saying that he’s the light, but now he tells us that we are here now to represent him in this world. He says, you are the light of the world.
A city situated on a hill cannot be hidden, and no one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand. And it gives light for all who are in the house. In the same way like you do with physical light. He says, let your light shine before others. In other words, don’t cover up your light.
It’s your responsibility not to cover it to let it shine. And the reason for this is so that they may see your good works, and as a result of that, give glory to your Father in heaven. If you want to glorify God, you want to share your light, and that is our responsibility, if we are true believers. Luke 11 Again, verse 34, we read, Your eye is the lamp of the body, and when your eye is healthy, your whole body is also full of light. But when it is bad, your body is also full of darkness.
Our eyes cannot produce their own light. They have to rely on some other source of illumination. If there is not an outside source of illumination. There is. Then no light can get into somebody’s body and we would live in darkness.
It’s a picture of where we are until Jesus comes into our life. But when we see Jesus, when we see the light for the first time, then it shines into our eyes, and we either choose to continue to live in darkness or to follow him by faith. But even after we give our lives to the Lord, we let the light in. Sometimes we can have unhealthy eyes, and that’s why it says here, when your eye is healthy. So we have to examine ourselves today and think, are my eyes healthy?
And we’re talking about our spiritual eyes here. But again, we think about the physical nature of our eyes. What would keep your eyes from being healthy? What would keep them from receiving light? Luke chapter 6, 6:41.
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Luke chapter 6, verse 41 talks about a speck being in one man’s eye and a log being another person’s eye, whether it’s a speck or it’s a log. What happens to your eyes? What do they. Do they just close up or you can have just closed eyes, period. He decided, I don’t want to look.
I don’t want to see something. I choose today not to see the light of Christ in my life. People might even choose to live in darkness either part of the time or all of the time. When I go to bed at night, I like to close the shades because the sun gets up at like 2:30 in the morning this time of year. You know, it wasn’t this way in Florida.
You could sleep decently late. But you know, spiritually you can choose to do that. You can say, well, right now I’m just going to close my eyes to the Lord because I want to do this thing over here that gives me pleasure, and I know it’s not going to please God. People can choose to live in darkness sometimes, but you can also have eyes that are infected. And that’s when you need to get some type of medication, you need some type of intervention.
But basically all these things are talking about when there is sin in our life, it keeps our eyes from being healthy so that we don’t completely live in the light. And whether that sin is something that’s active that we’re choosing to do, or maybe we, we sin in some way and it’s like, oh wow, I really blew it. I didn’t mean to do that. Any of these things, things cloud our vision. So the light of Christ is not fully there.
So how do we avoid sin? How do we live continually in the light? Let’s look at some suggestions in Scripture. Let’s go first to Revelation, chapter 3, verses 17 and 18. In Christ’s letter to the lay Odyssean Church, he gives this warning.
He says, you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, naked, a terrible state. But he says, this is what you can do. He says, I advise you to buy from me gold refined in fire so that you may be rich and you won’t be wretched and pitiful and poor. Buy from me white clothes so that you may be dressed in not naked, and so your shameful nakedness is not exposed. And lastly, buy from me ointment to spread on your eyes so that you may what?
That you may see. If there’s any sin in your life, the first place to go is to go to God for healing. Confess to him your sins. He is faithful and just to forgive them. If there’s sin in your life that is keeping you from having the light in you completely 100%, don’t just try to deal with it yourself.
Go to God first. Ask him to heal you. He was telling them that they needed to seek his help. His ointment to heal their eyes so that they can see. Seek God’s healing.
The next thing is to focus on Jesus. Go to Hebrews, chapter 12, where we read, let us run with endurance the race that lies before us. And when we run the race, we’re supposed to keep our eyes on Jesus. If you are a runner of races, where do you look when you run? You look ahead.
If you look at your feet the whole time you’re running, what’s going to happen? You’re going to run into something out here. If you’re continually looking back at the other runners, what’s going to happen to your race? You’re not going to finish. Well, now you need to be aware of all those things.
I mean, you kind of glance at the ground. You don’t want to step in a hole, and you don’t want to run into other people. But your focus is supposed to be on Jesus. Your focus is on the light, because everything other than light is darkness in this world. Ask God to heal you.
Focus on Jesus. And the best way to do that is to study the Word. Again, here we have a reference to light in Psalm 119, verse 105. Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path. When you get up in the middle of the night, especially when you have little kids that love Legos, it’s really nice to have a what to have a light.
You know, that’s what God’s word does for us when we spend time in it. It helps us to avoid things that are going to be painful to us in our life, things that we wouldn’t otherwise see. And it helps us to focus on Jesus. Because Jesus is not only the light, but he is the Word. Seek God’s healing, focus on Jesus, study the Word.
And then the next thing that we find in scripture is focus on good. We go back to our text. Take care then, that the light in you is not darkness. Again, he’s saying, you take care. It’s our response, responsibility to make sure that we are focusing on the light.
In other words, focusing on what is good and what is righteous in this world. We see this in Philippians chapter four. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is, is commendable. If there is any moral excellence, and if there is anything praiseworthy, dwell on these things. Focus on what is righteous, what is true, what is good.
The opposite of that is to focus on lies, to focus on things that are unhonorable, to focus on things that are not. Just to focus on. This audio was created with podcastle AI. Unhonorable. To focus on things that are not, just to focus on things that are not pure, to focus on things that are not lovely, and to focus on things that are not commendable.
That would be doing the wrong thing, that would be choosing not to focus on the good and to just focus on the light as opposed to the darkness. In your world, we’re also supposed to shun darkness. We go back to the text. If therefore, your whole body is full of light with no part of it in darkness, it will be entirely illuminated, as when a lamp shines its light on you. The emphasis here is that God wants to illuminate how much of Our body, what’s the world there?
The word, our whole body. He doesn’t want just 90% illuminated and 10% left in darkness. That’s why it says with no part of it in darkness. But in a lot of Christians lives, we say, yeah, I’m giving God 90%, but I’m going to keep 10% over here. I know it doesn’t please him.
It’s a sin, it’s a relationship, it’s something in your life. And you say, well, I’m giving him 90%. I don’t really need to give him that 10%. God is saying he wants you 100%. He doesn’t want you even harboring 1% there.
If you’re married, you understand that you want your spouse to be 100% committed to you and you alone. You don’t want them taking 10% of what belongs to you, giving it to someone else. But it’s our choice. We can close certain rooms off in our life and say, well, I’m keeping that to myself. Jesus wants all of you because he wants to be the best friend ever to you.
He wants to be closer to you than anyone else. But not only does he want to be with you, he deserves to have you 100%. He deserves that because he created you. You owe your existence to Him. But he also deserves it because he came to save us by dying on the cross for our sins.
And he didn’t come and do that in one week. It took him a lifetime to do that because he came and wanted to experience other people’s sin. He wanted to experience pain, he wanted to experience ridicule, he wanted to experience suffering. He went through all of that for 33 years to understand us, to be our friend, and then to give up his life for us. He wants all of us, but he also deserves all of us.
But we have to shun that darkness in our Life. If it’s 5%, 10%, whatever it is. So we come to the conclusion today. Two questions are first, are you following the light? At some point in your life, you have to come to God and say, God, I need salve for my eyes.
I need you to save me from my sin. And I understand that if I place my faith in Jesus Christ alone and what he did on the cross, you’re just going to give that salve to me. Just like insurance, covering everything in a prescription. Isn’t that wonderful? And then other prescriptions, you go in and it’s a month’s wages.
God doesn’t ask you to pay anything for what he gives us for healing. So if you’re not following the light today, we ask you to give your life to the Lord and tell him you accept that gift of salvation. And we would love to take talk to you about that after church. And there’s also a little flyer out there. It’s called what is the Gospel?
Just to help you to understand that better. But the next question is for those of us that are believers. Is there any part of you that is in darkness today? Is there some 10% that you’re hiding, you think you’re hiding it from the lord? Is there 5% of your life?
Is there just a closet in your heart that the door is shut and you’re reserving that because you’re saying, you know, God’s not going to really care that I don’t serve him 100%. He does care, and he deserves you not to be doing that. If that’s the case for your, for yourself today, ask God first to heal you in that area, because you’re not going to be able to do it by yourself. And then decide, what do I need to do to help me there? Do I need to focus more on Jesus this week?
Do I need to study the Word more? Or maybe I just need to make sure that I’m not watching television programs and movies and reading things that are untrue and unbeautiful and unkind and ungood. Instead, I need to spend my time focusing on what is good. Are you following the light today? Or is there any part of you that’s in darkness?
These are the two questions to consider as we’re singing our invitation hymn. And we ask that God would lead you what you need to do in response. Today, may we pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the light from creation throughout eternity. It is there for us.
It will never end. The power that you have, Father, is for all eternity. And that gives us great hope and comfort because you are able to do way beyond what we can do for ourselves. Help us to understand today, Father, if we need to open our eyes to the light and accept the gift of salvation, or if you need to show us some area in our life, Father, maybe we don’t even realize it’s there. Point it out that we might be fully committed, opening up completely, letting the light of Christ shine in our entire being.
And then let us choose, Father, to show that to the world, that others might come to him in faith. It’s in his name that we pray. Amen.
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