Can I tell you something? I am a sinner. I was actually born a sinner. I was born destined to Hell because of my sin. The bible calls this darkness or spiritual death. Like a zombie. You know one of the things I am a little afraid of is the dark. We all especially guys, hate admitting that we are afraid of the dark. I hate telling someone that I’m afraid of the dark. But you know it’s really not the dark that we get afraid of or nervous of or at the very least what gets us on edge, but it’s what could be out there in the dark. And the best thing to do in those situations is to shine a light. You know it’s funny, we think when we’re alone in the dark, that if we get safely to some light, that we are completely safe from any murderers or monsters. But of course that’s not true! But one of the things that makes me feel better in the dark is when I can shine the light to see what is out there. But you know there is one person that doesn’t like that. That’s the person that is supposedly trying to murder you. And when the Bible talks about the darkness, it’s talking about our sin! It’s talking about the sins with those around us. Darkness is the same thing as sin and evil. This is going to be important to know before we get into the verses. So one of the things I personally hate is when my sin gets revealed. I don’t go around telling people hey listen to this embarrassing sin I did. A murderer doesn’t go around saying let me tell you about this guy I just murdered. But here is the thing I always missed. I used to think that Jesus’ Holy Spirit exposing the dark dead in my life was so he could make me feel bad. So what I would do was I would try really hard not to sin, relying on God as much as I thought I needed. What I didn’t realize is that the light is what I needed to focus on. It’s not so much about not participating in the darkness, but experiencing and living in the light.
But I would imagine all of us in here would rather keep our mistakes and wrongdoings all to ourself. Imagine if every week we met, if we all made a slide for the powerpoint that listed every wrong thing we’ve done over the last week. I mean everything! Not just the things we do, but the things that we think! But the darkness or the spiritually dead areas in our lives are places we don’t want others to see. We don’t care about doing a lot of the sinful things we do, until we’ve been caught. And one of the things that Jesus does in all of our lives is be the light. Jesus is the light that exposes the dead in our world and in us, because remember, we still have that old dead self in us that keeps rising back up. Jesus is the light that exposes the sins in our life. Jesus is the light that replaces the darkness in our lives. But I don’t want us to be confused here. Jesus does not expose the darkness to embarrass us or just to make us feel bad, but he does this to show us what light is like. In an episode of criminal minds that is about serial killers and kidnappers and stuff there were 2 sisters in one episode that were kidnapped when they were very young. The police were looking for them for many years, but no luck. Eventually, the FBI is called and find the 2 girls, and bring them back safely. Now these girls, they were sheltered from everything in life for years. During that time, they came out with smartphones and tablets. So one of the FBI agents gave them an ipad and they had no idea how to use it. They had never experienced a lot of the life that we would normally experience. It’s similar with the spiritual darkness. Until we can see the light, we know nothing of the light. So how does Jesus break down the walls around our life? How does Jesus reveal the darkness? The Spiritual death? What’s so great about the light, Jesus and living right?
