Larry Kirkpatrick

A Positive Place on the Web for the Third Angel's Message

Something that Matters

5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him.

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:5, 10, 14).

You may or may not have noticed, but there is a terrific lack of hope on every side. We look out into our world and we want to be hopeful for a better future. We are thinking of our kids, grandkids, and probably ourselves, too.

So. What is ahead? A higher standard of living? A good career? Easier financial times maybe? More peace on earth?

But it is OK, one might say, there are new breakthroughs in philosophy; we will find hope in these. We could start with evolution; but, no hope there. Or, maybe we want to think of the more literary aspects of philosophy. But the latest news on that front is that there is not and cannot be such a thing as "truth." Truth is what is truth to you. That's all. Really, they are saying there is no such thing as truth. So we are all just little islands of biology, destined to be born, and eventually die, drop back into the ground, and become fertilizer so that skunk cabbage can grow.

Again, no hope here.

Just the other day it came out that even the shortest trip to Mars that astronauts could manage would expose them to an enormous dose of radiation. And so, even colonizing that choking, minimally atmosphered planet may be out of the question. We are stuck here then, with global warming, or global cooling, I forgot which is the current theory. And with pollution increasing while natural resources are running out. We are trapped on this tiny, violent globe. With no real past, nothing to hope for today, and no real future.

But there is other news. The Bible says that "The light shines in the darkness" (John 1:5).

Let's work on the darkness idea.

Almost eveything we have said so far is about darkness. What we have out there on every side is darkness. That is why there is no hope. That is why science tells us that we are not made in the image of God but we are a meaningless biological accident, humanity is a strange anomaly, evolved from some lifeless, odiferous soup. It is why philosophy tells us that there is no such thing as truth. So, don't bother to look for it; it isn't there. This is why it seems there is no hope, because certain ways of thinking turn off the lights and what seems to surround us is an absence of light on every side.

But "the light shines in the darkness." It looks to us as though all is unlighted, dark. But there is something that is not darkness. There is light. Where is light? Light is everywhere. Even in the darkness.

There are things that we cannot know just by looking at the natural world. There are things that we cannot know in any way except if there is a Creator and that Creator chooses to simply give them to us. We cannot know unless He hands them to us on a silver platter as it were; that is to say, unless the light shines in the darkness.

What we are talking about here is revealed religion, things that we have no way of knowing unless God shows them to us. And so, He gave. Unselfishly He gave. He gave life. He gave forgiveness. He gave hope. He gave promise. He gave revelation; He revealed His Word through the prophets. The light was shining in the darkness. But the brightest shining He saved for 2,000 years ago. Then the three persons of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, sent the Son Jesus. The infinite God became the limited Man. Jesus entered the human experience. The light shone in the darkness.

Jesus lived and taught and told the truth into a world that then as now had no use for it. Darkness reigned and had no interest in light; light was unwelcome. But the light came and Jesus was there and Jesus shined in the darkness. And the darkness did not understand it, refused to understand it, therefore could not understand it.

10 He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him.

The Bible, speaking of Jesus, says that He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know him. What is more ironic than that?

Jesus was in the world. He knew it well, inside out you might say, for He was its Author, its Creator. He came into the world, this world. Originally, when He had made the world, all had been light. But He made angelic beings and gave free will to them. And one, Halal, Lucifer, Satan, chose to go another way. He, a mere creature, chose to rebel against God and God's order. This was seemingly insane. Can creature rebel against Creator? But God had not made Lucifer; He had made a pure being. The pure being had chosen to follow its own will. He rebelled and sought to substitute his own order in place of God's order. That was how the darkness came to be. Wherever the Creator had created, the rebel sought to uncreate, to paint over, to change the representation on creation's canvas. We call it grafitti. What was light he painted dark. Wherever God was represented he modified the representation.

Did God allow this, you ask? Yes, He did. Because God doesn't make robots and God doesn't make junk. When God gave free will He knew what He was doing. He knew such things could, indeed, would eventuate. And He gave them anyway. Because the Bible says God is light and in Him is no darkness at all (James 1). So He gave and He did not take back. He gave freedom and some angels abused that freedom. And He cast them down to earth to be their prisonhouse.

And here was where God's newest creation was coming into being. He was creating a new kind, a new order of creature. This kind of creature was called "human." Humans were made in God's image, designed to reflect in a limited way His glory into this world. Satan hated that. And so with every means at his disposal he began to misrepresent God. And God, temporarily allowed it. For, if He stopped this misrepresentation, a residual fear would remain in the angel population, a residual concern still exist would, that perhaps there was something to these claims of His unfairness. And so, God held back. It was a contest now between darkness, misrepresentation, and light, truth, the way things actually are.

Time would tell the answer. Would the Creator care for a rebel creation, or would He nuke the place? Would He burn it as the Executor of Justice, or, would He give Himself for it? Would He cast thunderbolts at sinners, or would He take a human body like yours and mine and stretch forth His hands and receive the cold, hard steel of spikes driven through His limbs? Would He crater Jerusalem, or permit Himself to be nailed to a cross and to bleed for rebel sinners? The darkness sought to blot Him out, the graffitti sought to overwrite the whole disk. But the Light shone in the darkness.

There was and is something that actually mattered and matters. It is what and who God is. God is love (1 John 4:16). We are not love. God is love. He is the Source; we are mere illuminable creatures. We can shine but only with His light. We have no light of our own. He is the Source of light; we are its absence. We can shine, human beings can shine, but they must be connected to the Source.

Today the world rejects the idea that there is light; it rejects a belief that there can be a source. It sees and only sees darkness. There is no room in its dark universe for a hand that voluntarily would be nailed through and die bearing the curse for lost rebels.

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

In this Book, this revealed truth, this flashlight, the Bible, it is recorded; the event of all ages; the most spectacular event there ever was or ever will be, the event concerning which more movies have been made than any other thing, is recorded. And this is the truth, this is the life: that Jesus, the Word, became flesh. God entered into His creation. The Creator stepped into the created frame. The Word became flesh, human flesh, our flesh. And He pitched His tent here in camp with us. He came to dwell with us. He came to the city of rebels, those whose sins effectively had pierced Him through, whose sins He freely, voluntarily took and He who received our punishment in our place and died for us. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

The light shines in the darkness. Jesus dwelt among us and hung on the cross. That was the light that blasts into every crack and crevice, the light that takes away the graffitti, the laser that erases the tattoos, the brightness that comes to the darkness and shows us a different path. In His life and on His cross we see Him. He is the Source of grace and truth. He is full of grace and truth.

He is Christ. The World is antichrist because the world is darkness.

But let's boil all of this down.

People are looking for something that matters. But not all people. Some have sold out; they have accepted the darkness. They have accepted that story--the story that they will live and get aches and pains and die and become fish food and that nothing they have done, can do or will do will ever matter. The world is not broken because there is nothing to fix. All that is removed. There is no Jesus because there is no light.

Some people will end thinking that way but no one starts thinking that way. Because the Light shines in the darkness.

If we save our life, we lose it; if we lose our life we save it. If we adopt the code of darkness, we close out the light. But it is still out there. Everything that is of this world is of this world, temporary, transient, of the darkness, limited, not going anywhere. But Jesus is God, a Person, a person in many respects like yourself. Jesus not only thinks, He feels, He is outraged at evil, and glad at mercy. He cannot be fooled because He knows what is in us. He has come into that darkness. The Word became flesh.

He came into hopelessness and brought hope. He is the true light who lights every person who comes into this world. Every breath you take is a gift from Him. Ever beating of your heart, is a gift from Him. Every smiling child, every appreciation for purity, every hatred for evil, for injustice, for sin and suffering, is a gift from Him. Had He not made you there would be no you. No lesser light would be able to shine.

And so, I commend to you today Jesus. He is the light that shines in your darkness. But you are the one who chooses. You can be connected to Him, connected to something, the only thing, that matters. You can be one small avenue for the love of this God to shine in this dark world. Or, you can hang back in the darkness, fearing the light, cowering in fear of the reality that will so very soon burst into brightness when this Jesus who is shining in the darkness, will come in flaming fire, and erase the graffitti and love and heal His wounded children. None need stand tattered in the darkness, but all, you too, can come to Jesus. The wool has been pulled over your eyes. But it is given you to remove it in the power of Jesus who has destroyed the grave and death and whose physical return is very near. Darkness is almost full grown. But Jesus is countering that darkness by growing children of light. He has called all to His kingdom of light for such a time as this.


Presentations:

Bonners Ferry? ID SDA 2013-06-01