Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on January 26, 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Audio Transcript
Share his message with us. I invite you to take your Bibles now and turn to Luke chapter 8. Today’s message is “Let Your Light Shine.” Luke chapter 8. I’ll be reading verses 16 through 18.
No one, after lighting a lamp, covers it with a basket or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a lampstand so that those who come in may see its light. For nothing is concealed that won’t be revealed, and nothing hidden that won’t be made known and brought to light. Therefore, take care how you listen, for whoever has more will be given to him, and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has will be taken away from him.
May we pray. Heavenly Father, as we look at your Word today, once again we thank you that it gives us everything that we need to know how to have eternal life and how to live that eternal life. Now, Father, that we might reflect your glory in this world. Help us to apply it to our lives. Give us a love for it, Father, and a joy for your Word, like the Psalmist had in the longest book that we have in the Bible. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
We’re looking now at a lamp from the time of Jesus. It was a clay vessel with a wick, with oil in it and a flame that would cause it to bring about light. So, Jesus is giving an analogy today of what we are and how Jesus works through us. The lamps were everywhere. Light is everywhere. The analogy didn’t have a lot of explanation because God just expects us to understand it from what we know about light and what we know about His Word.
Once again, we are the individual pot. We’re not going to be talking so much about the Holy Spirit, but once he comes to live inside of us, he is like the oil that provides the energy, and Jesus Himself, who is the Word of God, and also the gospel that we have, is the spark that causes us to burn and show brightly.
So we are the lamps in this analogy. We’re just made out of clay, and we’re vessels waiting to fulfill God’s ordained purpose for us. Because a lamp doesn’t achieve anything until it has a flame. When we hear the Word, when we hear the gospel of salvation, and we let it light our wick, the Holy Spirit then fills us, and we bear the light of the Gospel for all to see. Once again, it’s an analogy that Jesus expected his disciples to understand without explanation.
Light is so prevalent in the world, and it’s in the Bible, that we need to look at it as we do the rest of creation to understand more about the Creator of light, God Himself. And as I was studying this week, there is so much about light in Scripture that I’m just barely touching on it today. But I encourage you, take a concordance or just go online and Google it to look at what God’s Word has to say about light.
Let’s start out with what we do know about light. The path of light is a straight line. Now it’s a wave and how it moves. But once it starts, it continues in that direction. The speed of light is constant: 186,282 miles per second. It’s essential to life on Earth. It warms the Earth. It drives all of our global weather patterns. It provides energy through photosynthesis that life might exist. It’s a provider of accurate information. We know about the stars and other planets by what light tells us coming from them. We’re even able to look through a microscope and once again use light to further understand the smallest parts of our world.
It’s used to transmit information, and we use it today as a tool, as a laser. So we can just look at these things and arrive at some conclusions about God’s Word, about Jesus Christ. The Word also shoots straight. It is never wavering in its mission to us. The Word, like light, is constant, never changing in its message. The Word is essential to life, both physically and spiritually. For us, it’s accurate in all that it teaches. It gives us an understanding of things that we can see, and it gives us an understanding of things that we cannot see.
The Word is God’s means of transmitting information to us, all that we need for faith and for practice. Scripture also tells us that it is a tool that God uses to change our lives and the lives of other people. That’s what we know about light and how we can compare it to its creator. But let’s start to look at some scripture passages.
In Luke chapter 8, again, we look at the verse, “No one after lighting a lamp.” The most important thing in this text is the light. Yes, there’s a lamp; there’s a basket; there’s a bed. But if we don’t have the light, the most important element, we’re going to miss the point completely. The light is not dependent upon the lamp. It exists without it. But when it joins with the lamp, it serves a purpose.
Let’s go all the way back to Genesis chapter one, where we find the first mention of light in God’s Word. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. And then God said. He spoke. And by his spoken word, he said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” There was an evening, and there was a morning, one day.
What do we learn about light here? What is the truth that we’re learning about the Creator, about Jesus Christ and the message of God’s Word? When God first created the world, it was formless, it was empty, and it was covered with darkness. The first thing that was necessary for it to bring forth life was that he would create light.
So God created light, which is necessary for all things to exist as we know them. But we also find here that the light was good. God saw that the light was good. It’s the opposite of all that’s evil. It’s the opposite of darkness. It’s the opposite of life and death. The Scripture says that God is light and that Jesus is light. Therefore, it’s similar to say that God is love. Saying that God is light, saying that God is love, helps us to understand him and his character better. There are expressions or figures of speech that help us to understand what his essence is like, what his nature and what his character is like.
But we have to be careful that we never reverse that. We can say God is light, but that’s not the same thing as saying that light is God. We can say that God is love, but we don’t say that love is God because we’re not worshiping light. We don’t worship love. We worship the creator of these things. The light, therefore, creates a picture of him that helps us to understand what he is like. Just like if we look at an artist’s picture, it gives us some understanding of the artist’s capabilities, what his interests were, and what he can see. So it is that light helps us to understand God better.
If we go to the Gospel of John, in John 1, this is where John picks up, referring back to the beginning. He’s telling us now that in the beginning, Jesus Christ, the Word, was there, and the Word is light. And I want you to see how these all relate and connect together. We read there, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He was with God in the beginning. The Word here is Jesus Christ. All things were created through him, and apart from him, not one thing was created that has been created. And in him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
Jesus Christ brought life into the world. It was through him that God created the world. But he doesn’t just provide light that gives us physical life, but John is telling us here that he gives us light that provides spiritual life for us. John the apostle testified that Jesus is the light. He is the Word of God. And then we go on in verses 6 through 9 to find that John the Baptist also testified that Jesus was the light. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify about the light so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
Jesus came as the expression of light in this world so that he might not only give us physical light since creation but now to bring true spiritual life to us. John the apostle testified to this. John the Baptist testified to it. And Jesus himself claimed that he was the light. In John 8, we read, “Jesus spoke to them again, ‘I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.'” And then in John 12, “I have come as light into the world so that everyone who believes in me would not remain in darkness.” Jesus promised that if we follow him, if we believe in him, then we now have spiritual life that’s expressed by this light that comes into our being through him.
Psalm 119:105 now gives us another part of the analogy that not only is Jesus Christ the living Word, the light, but also the written Word of God is a light to us. In Psalm 119, verse 105, we read, “Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path.” And then in 2 Corinthians 4:4, “The light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” So we see here that Jesus is light, the Word is light, and the gospel of what Jesus Christ did for us. All of this is the light that God uses to light our lamp so that we can fulfill his purposes.
Let’s go to 2 Corinthians 4:7-9, where we learn more now about the clay jar that we are, the lamp that we are. It says, “We have this treasure in clay jars so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed. We are perplexed, but not in despair. We are persecuted, but not abandoned. We are struck down, but not destroyed.” God doesn’t say that we’re made out of metal. God doesn’t say that we are made out of diamonds. God says that we’re made out of basically, what, dirt. We’re just clay jars. We are fragile. We can be afflicted, we can be perplexed, we can be persecuted, we can be struck down.
And we’re so fragile that any of these things could bring about devastation and destruction in our life. But God tells us that because of our weakness, when he fills us with his extraordinary power, then people say, “Wow, that person’s resilient, and they’re different.” And it’s not because of the dirt that they’re made out of; it’s because of the content that is inside of them. Our power and source of light does not come from ourselves. It is God’s strength that is shown in us.
The light, again, is the most important thing because the lamp is useless without light. God could have made us like angels. He could have made us glorious and beautiful and powerful. But he didn’t do that. He made us these weak vessels so that he might be glorified in what people see in us. He made us to show the light of Jesus and not to be something that detracts from that light, but just to bear it. Isaiah 64:8 emphasizes this again, that we’re just merely clay. “Yet, Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, you are our potter. We all are the work of your hands.”
The way we are, the way we look, our gifts and talents are all based upon what the potter did with us. There’s nothing necessarily special about any of us. If we’re plain, if we’re ordinary, if we feel like we don’t have many talents or gifts, we’re just what God made us to be. Because the pot isn’t what’s important; the lamp isn’t what’s important. It’s the contents of the lamp. It’s the light that it shows forth. Therefore, our content, our light, is what gives us value and what gives us purpose.
You can give a very expensive gift of gold or pearls to someone, and you hand it to them in a cardboard box, or you hand it to them in a little bag that’s made out of cloth. If you gave your wife a diamond ring, would she put the ring aside and wear the box? That’s not the purpose of the box. In the same way, Jesus Christ shines forth in our light. The way we look, the way we are is not important. It’s that we show him and demonstrate him.
Matthew 5:16 shows us what our purpose is. “In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” God wants his light to shine through us. He wants others to see the light in us. And yes, they see our good works, but they know it’s not because of us. We’re just clay. They know it’s because of God. And when we shine our light forth in that way, it gives glory to God and not to ourselves.
In 2 Corinthians 4:7-10, we read this: “We have this treasure in clay jars, the treasure of Jesus Christ living in us, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us.” Then he tells us that we carry the death of Jesus in our body so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our body. Whether we live, whether we die, we’re always following Jesus Christ. We don’t realize it so much in our time and where we live, but in other parts of the world, to be a believer means that you’re facing death every day.
The early Christians were willing to burn at the stake, to be sawn in two. We have vast collections of writings of what they went through. Their bodies could be destroyed, but still, they had a treasure inside them that was worth giving up everything for the Lord. People could see their purpose in life, that they wanted to share the gospel with others.
Jesus goes on now to express a problem here, though, that some people have. He says, “No one, after lighting a lamp, covers it with a basket or puts it under a bed, but instead puts it on a lampstand so that those who come in may see its light.” Now, when I was a kid, I used to take a flashlight and crawl under my parents’ bed and shine it because it was dark there. Did any of y’all do that? I think I lit some matches under there one time too, which probably wasn’t a healthy thing. Or you have kids and you tell them to go to bed, and they’re under their covers with a flashlight doing what? Reading when they’re not supposed to.
You know, we can intentionally cover our light that Jesus wants us to be expressing. Why do we sometimes do that? It may be because we’re embarrassed. The people that we’re around, we feel like we’re not going to fit in; we’re not going to be accepted if we let them see our light. So we may intentionally try to cover the light of Jesus Christ in our life. Maybe we cover that light because we’re timid and we say, “Well, I’m not Billy Graham; I’m not Franklin Graham; I’m not a great speaker; I’m not Moses. I don’t really know what to share or say.” And so we cover our light instead of letting it shine.
Or maybe it’s just out of immaturity that we feel like we don’t know enough. And that can be our fault if we haven’t studied God’s Word, if we don’t know how to share the gospel with other people. Jesus says, “Don’t cover your light for any reason.” And if you are, you need to remove that cover because your purpose in life is to show and demonstrate the light of Jesus Christ.
In 2 Corinthians 4, we read, “If our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Those that don’t know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior are facing two dangers. One is that Satan is trying to blind them and cover their eyes so that they can’t see the light. And if we, in turn, are covering our light, their chances of seeing the light do not exist.
We combat Satan by making sure that our light is not covered, that we are expressing it to the world. Satan’s blinding them. We don’t need to enable him by also not disclosing the light that we have. Not only does Jesus talk about the problems here, but he points out a warning here that may not be so evident in what we understand about light.
Going back to the text, it says in verse 17, “Nothing is concealed that won’t be revealed, and nothing hidden that won’t be made known and brought to light.” Light eventually exposes everything. Jesus is warning us that the way that we live in showing our light to the world is important because one day God is going to reveal everything about our life. He’s going to judge us according to what we have done and what we have not done—the things that are good and the things that are bad. He’s going to judge us according to those things.
Now, if we’ve placed our faith in Jesus Christ, the wrong that we have done, the sins that we have committed, they’re covered by the blood of Christ, and we’re not going to see eternal damnation because of our wrongdoing. But God still is going to point those things out to us. Therefore, Jesus is saying, “It’s important that you live your life knowing that everything is going to be exposed someday, that God sees what is going on. You can’t hide anything that he cannot see.”
Going to John chapter three, we read this about the warning: “This is judgment: the light has come into the world, but people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.” It doesn’t come naturally for people to love light. It comes naturally for them to love darkness. “For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it so that his deeds may not be exposed.” Most crimes are committed at night. Things happen in the dark that should not happen because people think that they can hide what they are doing that is wrong. But those things will be exposed.
Verse 21 says, “Anyone who lives by the truth instead comes to the light so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God.” We live in the light. We need to be conscious of that at all times because people are watching us. But more importantly, God is watching what is going on in our lives. Therefore, in verse 18, we read, “Take care how you listen. For whoever has more will be given to him, and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has will be taken away from him.”
Take care how you listen. Are you listening to the light? Are you listening to Jesus Christ? Are you listening to the Word of God? God is telling us that it’s our responsibility to take that seriously. That’s why in 2 Timothy 2 we read, “Be diligent to present yourself to God as one approved.” The King James Version uses the word “study.” What is it we are to be diligent about? What are we to study? To present yourself to God, to be a worker who doesn’t need to be ashamed. And then it tells us what our work is. It’s to correctly teach the word of truth, meaning that we are responsible to share the light of God’s Word, and we’re responsible to study it.
That’s why Jesus is telling us in this short analogy to be careful how you listen. Listen to God’s Word, take it in, and study it. The people in Berea were known for being students of God’s Word. They were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica because they received the Word; they listened eagerly. But they also examined the Scriptures once a year. Is that what it says? No, they were doing it daily to see if these things were so.
The warning here is that we have the light; we have Jesus; we have the Word of God. We need to work at getting to know it better. For he tells us back in Luke chapter eight, “Whoever has more will be given to him.” If you are studying God’s Word and you’re spending time in it, God is going to feed you more and more from that. You’re going to grow in it. But if you don’t spend time in God’s Word, even the little bit that you think you have is going to be taken away.
There’s a parable that Jesus shares in Matthew 25 about some servants. The owner, before he left, gave each of them some talents to work with. And that talent there is the Word of God. One of the servants did a great deal with the talents or God’s Word, and it brought forth a profit, and another one did less. But there was one servant, and he took the talent, he took the Word of God, and he hid it away. He did absolutely nothing with it. So there was no profit from what had been given to him.
And this is what we read about that: “In verse 28, the master said, ‘Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has ten talents. For to everyone who has more will be given, and he will have more than enough. But from the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. And throw this good-for-nothing servant into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'” God is going to hold all of us responsible for what we do with the Word that He has given us. He is especially going to hold us accountable here in America, where we have it in every house; it’s available everywhere as opposed to other countries where the Word of God is forbidden, and they have very little of it.
I read a story one time about a missionary that went into China, and a bunch of pastors were going to this place that was hidden away. When they got there, the leader took his Bible, tore it out, and handed a piece to one pastor. He tore it out. The American guy was like, “You’re desecrating God’s Word. How can you be tearing the Bible apart?” And he said, “What you have to understand is this is the only part of God’s Word that they will have until we can meet again in a year or two.” What they were taking back, a little bit, was all that they had.
We have so much more that we have all of God’s Word here that God asks us to be faithful in studying it and using it. We all have a choice. We have a choice whether to follow the light or not to follow the light. We read in John 12, “Jesus answered, ‘The light will be with you only a little longer.'” Here he’s talking about himself to his disciples, saying that he’s not going to be here much longer. He said, “Walk while you have the light so that darkness doesn’t overtake you.” They wanted and they needed to be with Jesus. They needed to choose to be with him so that they would not go astray.
Jesus goes on to say that the one who walks in darkness doesn’t know where he’s going. There is no spiritual or eternal hope for someone walking in darkness until they come into the light. So he said, “While you have the light, believe in the light so that you may become children of light.” Jesus’ warning to them then, that he was about to leave the world, is true for us today because we only have the light as long as we are still alive. It’s during that time that we have to accept the light of Jesus Christ and accept his gift of salvation because the time will come when we face God when we will no longer have that choice before us.
John 12:46 tells us a little bit more about the choice. He said, “I have come as light into the world so that everyone who believes in me would not remain in darkness.” We don’t have to give money to receive the light. We don’t have to do anything wrong or good to receive the light. We don’t have to attend church to receive the light. Jesus says that the way that we receive the light is just to believe in him, that he died on the cross for our sins and that he was buried and rose from the dead so that we might have eternal life in him.
The choice is in 1 John 1:5-7. It tells us that once we have the light, we have to choose to continue to walk in it. “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in him.” In other words, if we are with God, we are walking in the light. We are not walking in darkness. But if we say that we have fellowship with him—there’s this outward expression—yet we walk in darkness, meaning that our life doesn’t show that we are walking in the light. Scripture says that we’re lying, and we are not practicing the truth.
It’s not enough just to say you walk in the light, but there needs to be a change that you’ve placed your faith in Jesus Christ, and then you live a different life. If we walk in the light, as He Himself is in the light, that’s when we have fellowship not only with God, but we have fellowship with one another. That’s because the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. We choose to live in the light.
And what does that look like when we choose? Let’s read Ephesians 5:8-11. “You were once in darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.” There’s this drastic change. It’s the repentance that we talk about. We’re walking one way according to our desires in darkness. But when we turn to walk with God, we’re walking in the light. And then he says, “When you do that, you should walk as children of the light, for the fruit of the light.” What’s going to come about in your life if you walk in the light is going to be goodness, righteousness, and truth.
Ultimately, we’re going to test everything that we do, everything that we say, everywhere that we go to see if it is pleasing to the Lord. Children, people that walk as children of light, they have this fruit. They have the fruit of goodness, righteousness, truth, and a desire to please the Lord that is evident to everyone. “Don’t participate in the fruitless works of darkness, but instead expose them.” And so it is that people that are walking in the light, they don’t walk on both sides of the fence. They’re not walking in darkness with one foot where there’s no fruit, and they’re not walking in light where there is fruit. Instead, they’re exposing that and saying, “That’s wrong there. This is the right way in which we should walk.” And that’s how our light shines to the world.
So in conclusion today, what are the questions that we need to ask ourselves about light in regard to our life? The first thing is, have you accepted the light of life? The light can’t burn in you; the light can’t show to others until you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ. We place our faith in him because we realize that we have a sin problem that separates us from God. But Jesus died on the cross to take care of that. He takes away the guilt. He takes away the shame. He pays the price. And we now have new life in Him. We receive that gift by believing him and following Him.
The second question to ask is, are you filled with the Spirit and shining brightly for Jesus? The Holy Spirit lives inside of us once we come to faith in Jesus Christ. But Scripture talks about that daily. We need to allow him to completely fill us up. He’s like the oil in the lamp. If we have a lot of oil, we’re going to be able to burn brightly. So the question is, are you allowing the Spirit of God to work in you daily in a mighty way? If so, then your life will be filled with the fruit of light. You should be able to examine yourself. Other people should be able to look at you and see if there’s goodness and righteousness and a desire to do what God wants you to do, a desire to only speak what he wants you to speak, and only to go places, to only make purchases. Whatever it is, you’re always thinking about: “Is this what God wants? Is this what pleases Him?”
Next question: Are you covering the light that you carry? Are you embarrassed to share the gospel? Do you try to hide the fact that you’re a believer? Do you feel intimidated that you can’t share the gospel? Those are all things that God expects you to work on, to learn how to share the gospel, to spend time in His Word so that you can share it with other people.
And lastly, are you using the Word that God has given you? The Word is a light for our life. It provides everything that we need. It shows us how to have faith in Christ, but it gives us practical applications on how to live our life. And we only know what those instructions are and how to live them out if we’re spending time studying God’s Word.
I don’t know where you are today, but think through these things. As we’re singing today, you may want to just bow your head in prayer. You may feel like praising God as Bill leads us here at the end. But ask God, what are you supposed to do in response to the light that he has provided us through Jesus Christ?
May we stand. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the light that surrounds us physically, that provides what we need. But more importantly, we thank you for the light that Jesus Christ provides through salvation. We thank you, Father, that he was willing to come and live a humble life among us, to give up the glories of heaven, that he might experience the difficulties, the troubles, poverty, sickness, and the death of loved ones. Father, he did all of this that he might then turn around and die on the cross, a terrible death, that we might have life through his sacrifice.
Let us search our hearts today, Father, and see what we need to do that we would be more faithful to pleasing you and holding forth the light that you have given us. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.