Claire McKeever in her book, “Blessed are the Women” talks about being negatively impacted by the “purity movement” of the 1990’s.
She says that she is still a Christian but disagrees with what she learned in the movement. She says that it left her without tools for her dating relationships and made her feel disconnected from her body.
I’m not going to dispute her on that…I don’t what she was taught or by whom.
I will say this, there is clear biblical and practical and historical evidence that “true love waits” is a really good idea.
She goes on…
She wants her two kids to have better relationships with their bodies — to talk about theeir feelings they’re having without shame.
Okay, again, I’ll take her word for it.
But then, comes the point where I couldn’t disagree more.
This is a direct quote:
“If you can access that inner wisdom, then as far as I’m concerned, you can live a really beautiful, free life. And that’s what I want for them with sexuality and with everything.”
Imagine if children, teens, or adults…made decisions based on their own “inner wisdom”…well you don’t to imagine, you can see it every day.
It’s an utter disaster.
Epistemology is the technical term for the worldview category for how humans know things.
It’s the Greek words for knowledge “epistime” and the word for word “logos”…which when used as a suffix means…”the study of things.”
Cosmology, or anthropology.
So, it is the study of knowledge…or how we know.
Not everyone would recognize or be able to define the word, but everyone has a belief about the topic.
Everyone has ideas about how they know what they know.
For this lady in terms of what her kids should do with their bodies (which is very important by the way)…she believes they can know via their own inner wisdom.
Most people would be confident about their belief in how they know what they know, and many would just think it is “common sense.” “inner wisdom”
“How do you know something is true?”
“You just know!”
Usually, we trust ourselves…a lot…when it comes to how we know what we know.
This is truer now than in the past, because in the past few decades confidence in outside authority has been in steady decline
This whole conversation could be complex…but the basic ideas are fairly limited, I’m going to simplify them down to two.
There are two ways to know things…Reason(start with self)/Revelation(start with God).
1.Reason: Starting with self can mean a wide range of things.
We know through our own personal experience:
-This includes thinking things through, inner wisdom, (we can right, and we can be wrong here)
-Observation (we can be fooled by what we think we see)
-Experimentation (scientific method)
But scientific conclusions change, it happened recently with the discovery of the creation of oxygen in the ocean depths without photosynthesis.
*Science told us this can’t happen…it did…so, now, there is new theory to match existing reality.
And increasingly…people “know” through what we call emotion…what we feel to be true…maybe want or don’t want to be true.
This unfortunately has become a primary path to “knowing”…people believe what they feel, even if it’s not real.
And people will make huge decisions based on how they feel about things.
-Permanent decisions: starting with less to greater: tattoos, surgery, suicide
In the famous 1960 Nixon/Kennedy debate…first one TV
-People concluded that Nixon was not to be trusted and Kennedy was…because…
-Nixon looked sweaty and creepy, Kennedy looked handsome and calm…so was the winner declared based on facts of the debate?
No, mostly feelings related to perceptions.
This happened to Oppenheimer, the famous physicist…he was everyone’s favorite scientist in the 40’s, then he fell out of favor, then he became everyone’s favorite again.
How did this happen…did he change his ideas or his lifestyle…nope, he went on Edward Murrow’s tv program…and he seemed like a good guy.
A short TV program completely changed public opinion.
Christians will sometimes, baptize their trust of their own feelings and then claim it is the Holy Spirit’s leading.
But this is dangerous ground, especially when it’s clearly not biblical(what you believe you are being lead to do or think) and/or it goes against wisdom and the counsel of others.
Christians can be more superstitious than biblical…and put more weight on their feelings or wishful thinking than on the objective truth of Scripture…or on good, wise counsel.
We trust ourselves too much.
Then, people can become very disillusioned when what they “felt” to be from God, didn’t pan out.
Some say you can’t know anything for certain…this still falls into the category of reason…or starting with self.
Because they claim to “know you can’t know” anything…so they start with their own minds and then make conclusions about everything, everywhere.
How could you possibly know, you can’t know anything for certain…It is circular and absurd and widely believed.
We have gone over all this before…but we need to continue to revisit it over the years, because it is just so important…increasing so.
We sit in here week after week and study God’s word because we believe it is God’s revelation…it is how we know the most important of things for us to know.
You Start with self, or with God.
Reason or revelation.
- Revelation. Things that are revealed by God alone.
Most, if not everyone in here believes in a combination of reason and revelation…as the way we know what is real and true.
Because we believe that God exists, and that God has given us minds that can be, to a limited degree, trusted….so we can know some things through reason.
And that same God has revealed to us, what we could not discover on our own.
So, we have what is called, General revelation:
-Creation and conscience tell us some true things.
Special revelation:
-Jesus and the Bible that gives us the truth of Jesus…tell us the most important of all things.
General revelation tells us some general things…we can know that there is a powerful, personal, creator.
We can know that there is a right and wrong:
-People disagree on what is right and wrong, but not usually on the categories themselves.
There is a sense that something is right, and something is wrong built into us…this is not an evolutionary quirk…it is, as Ecc. says, the fact God has put eternity in our hearts.
Special revelation tells us some specifics of who God is, who we are, what our problem and solution is, what happens when we die, what we should do with our lives.
It tells us the specifics of what exactly is right and wrong, good and bad, worthwhile and worthless…it tells us what to do with our bodies and what we should not do with them.
The old story of the man who put his ladder against the wall and climbed and climbed and at the end of his life to his horror, realized he had put his ladder against the wrong wall.
Because of revelation…God has spoken…we don’t have to make this terrible mistake.
We can know what is true, and valuable…we don’t guess, humans are terrible guessers. We can know…because God has spoken.
The Bible doesn’t always tell us everything we want to know; it does tell us all that we need to know to address our greatest problem and what do with our lives.
What wall to put the ladder against.
We must use all of our minds and give full effort to understand the Bible, anything less than that, is to fail to be found faithful.
But we must not merely trust our minds, it is God’s word, and we need his Spirit, and we need each other to properly understand and consistently apply it.
And in the end, because we trust God, we trust his word…and when we fail to completely understand it…we obey it anyway.
Not because we are mind-numbed robots…but because we know if comes down to it, we will either trust God or self…and to trust self is foolish and destructive.
It will not lead to good and to freedom.
We are back in John, chapter 8…John’s gospel…is the good news of Jesus…who he is, what he said, and what he did.
The purpose of his gospel is so that we would believe, put our trust in Jesus and be saved, born again.
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.”
This was during the Feast of Tabernacles, the celebration of God’s leadership and provision during the time of Exodus…that great OT event that pointed forward to Jesus.
During this celebration there was a ceremony called the “Illumination of the Temple,” which involved the ritual lighting of four giant golden oil-fed lamps in the outer temple court.
These lamps were huge menorahs (seven lights per stand), seventy-five feet high.
So, 28 huge lamps altogether.
Young guys climbed ladders to light the wicks, which were made of old robes from the temple priests.
If you are using a robe for a wick, and climbing a ladder to light these things…think more Lord of the Rings, the lightening of the beacons in the mountains…than a candle.
They were lighted in the Temple at night to remind the people of the pillar of fire that had guided Israel in their wilderness journey.
All night long these huge lamps shone their brilliance, illuminating the entire city.
It was said that there was not a courtyard in Jerusalem that did not reflect their light.
This would have been spectacular…there was no light pollution back then, no street lights, no headlights, no houses or businesses lit up with electricity.
In that dark setting, imagine these huge flames up on the temple mount
You could see them from anywhere in the city, you could see well enough to eat outside, or celebrate in your yard…the city would have been a friendlier, safer place…bad guys had no shadows to lurk in.
When I was a kid we lived in Alaska, the land of the midnight sun…we complained at bedtime because we had to be dragged into the house from playing in the yard at 9 or 10 at night, the Sun didn’t set in midsummer until after 11pm.
We were not happy about going to bed at what seemed like daytime.
This was not quite Jerusalem but I’m sure Kids were playing outside in the night…and no way did they want to go to bed…because the city was full of light and life.
Jesus is in the temple, speaking to the people again…maybe it is night, and these huge candles are giving off their light.
1“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
Talk about dramatic effect.
This is second of the seven “I am” statements of Jesus in John.
The first was “I am the bread of life”, he made that declaration right after miraculously feeding bread to the hungry masses who had come to the wilderness to see him.
Here, he tells them that I am “The light of the world.”
He doesn’t say I am “A” light in a dark world, like President Bush’s “thousand points of light”…pushing for more social engagement by individuals.
He said, “I am The” light of the world.
“The” indicates uniqueness, he is an absolute singularity among humans.
Remember how John began his gospel?
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. …4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness cannot overcome it… 9 The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world…
When Jesus says that he is the light of the world, he is saying that in him is …eternal life…freedom from sin.
Darkness, of course, cannot win against light…it is merely an absence, light is a powerful presence.
Look again at what he says and notice the Exodus application.
1“I am the light of the world. Whoever FOLLOWS me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
The Exodus is the micro story of the Bible’s macro story.
There, God comes as Savior and King to redeem people, to ransom them from slavery and death, to restore them to the status that was lost by Adam and Eve…to become a holy nation, set apart by God.
A nation where he would dwell with them, in the Tabernacle, and eventually the Temple.
But the Sinai covenant, with the giving of the commandments did not empower Israel to obey God fully…they failed over and over.
So, a greater exodus is anticipated, this one fulfilled in the Life, death, resurrection of Jesus.
Next year, we will be in the book of Exodus and we will all, I think, marvel at what God has done in history and has revealed in Scripture.
Here in John, at the celebration of remembering how God lead Israel in darkness through his supernational light…Jesus stands and says, “I am the light of the world.”
Even as Israel could have stayed in the dark of the wilderness or followed the pillar of fire and have light…so Jesus fulfills what that historic event pointed forward to.
I am the light, but to walk in the light, you must follow me…put your faith fully in me.
Some have turned the story of the Exodus and of the gospel of Jesus itself, into what has been called Liberation Theology…or some form of social gospel.
The story of the Bible, they claim, is about freeing people in various forms of slavery, both actual slavery and things like prejudice, poverty, injustice.
But this is not the story of the bible, and it is not what freedom in Christ is about.
Social injustice is the fruit of darkness…the root of darkness is sin.
The light is not relief from poverty or prejudice, it is salvation and relationship with God.
Now, to be sure…when people repent of their sin, when they follow Jesus into the light of his life…they then become transformed to do good in the world and to fight evil.
Transformed hearts…led transformed lives…and transformed lives bring change all around them.
*Greg and Ai Greer did not go to Thailand just to provide medical care for the Thai people.
They provided medical care because of love for God and for the Thai people…but they went far away from friends and family…because the Thai people need Jesus.
Their daughter and her husband, Hannah and Dalton…did not recently go to Thailand because of their heart for social justice…though they have that.
What took them there was the gospel has changed their hearts…and they want the Thai people to experience new life in Christ.
This has been borne out in history…the fight against slavery in Europe and then America…spearheaded by Christians.
A willingness to take care of the fatherless, the abandoned, the addicted…flows primarily from those who have been changed by Christ at the heart level.
If you start with the goal of “transformed society” then you will end up with something less than transformed lives…and certainly less than positively changed cultures.
Without changed hearts…people tend blow up their own lives and are ill equipped to help others.
If you start with transformed lives/hearts, then you have transformational activity (rooted in the gospel).
Again…when Jesus said…
“Follow me and you will not walk in darkness”
This is not a metaphor for ignorance, or poverty, or a lack of life direction
Darkness is sin, separation from God.
To walk in the light is not personal illumination or insight…it is to believe in Jesus and follow him.
If you don’t, Jesus said, then you will live and eventually die in your sin…this is true darkness.
We are to put “good out into the world”…this has been called the cultural mandate
We build planes and houses, write and paint, and teach, and mentor and so many other ways that we “put good out into the world” in order to contribute to human thriving.
But we exist as a church, as God’s new covenant people…to make disciples…the word is tied to discipline…so followers of Jesus, put themselves, willingly under the Lordship of Jesus.
As they follow him…they walk in the light of his life.
The primary human problem is not trauma, or lack of self-actualization or self-fulfillment…or poverty or lack of education.
It is sin, separation from God.
The solution is not primarily therapy, or enlightenment, or self-fulfillment, or social justice or education…it is repentance, and belief in Jesus…it is salvation.
Again, saved people…bring transformation…they put lots of good out into the world.
But we start with our greatest need…sin separates us from God.
Then our only solution…follow the Lord Jesus in live in the light of his life.
Let’s read on.
13 So the Pharisees said to him, “You are bearing witness about yourself; your testimony is not true.” 14 Jesus answered, “Even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true, for I know where I came from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going.
You couldn’t stand up in a court and say, “I am innocent” and the judge responds with, “Oh, you are? Okay, I’ll take you word for it…not guilty!”
But Jesus says, even if I, all by myself, bear witness about myself…it would be true.
Because I know, unlike you, where I come from (who I am)
15 You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one.
Flesh means through human reason and by human standards…you see things through you own broken vision…I don’t judge that way.
But this doesn’t mean he doesn’t judge at all, just that he doesn’t judge like they do.
16 Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me.
The hard truth is Jesus’s dramatic truth claims mean that all of humanity will divide around him…and those who reject the light will be judged by him.
They will remain in darkness.
Jesus is staking out his absolute authority…he is our Epistemology.
Since he is the Word(logos) become flesh, what he is says is absolutely true, and what he does is absolutely right.
Let’s jump to verse 21, I want to show where Jesus makes clear what the darkness is…not poverty, not prejudice, not social injustice, not trauma…these things are all the results of people walking in the darkness of sin.
21 So he said to them again, “I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.”
Jesus said “I am going away” (to the cross and then back to his Father) and that they will continue to look for the promised Messiah…because they failed to believe in Jesus…the Messiah who has come…they will die in their sin.
“Sin” here is singular not plural.
This is root singular sin of unbelief…the failure to believe the gospel and enter into the light of life…keep that singular “sin” in mind.
22 So the Jews said, “Will he kill himself, since he says, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?”
They are profoundly wrong and right at the same time.
Some misguided people then as now, kill themselves to make a political or social point…they die by suicide to try to change the world.
Back in February an AF member set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in protest.
His death accomplished nothing…it was pure, empty tragedy.
Jesus would not die by suicide; he would however allow himself to be killed and his death would accomplish the salvation of the world.
23 He said to them, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. 24 I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.”
Jesus cuts through their misguided human reasoning by make a dramatic compare and contrast.
You are from below; I am from above.
You are of this world; I am not of this world.
“Now, quit guessing and listen to me…unless you believe (follow me) you will die in your sins.”
In verse 21 it was singular “sin”…the foundational sin of unbelief, refusal to follow God.
Here it is “sins” plural…the consequences of unbelief.
“Sins” (plural) are the diverse and terrible forms of human corruption (fruit) that flow from the “sin” (singular)(root) of unbelief…the refusal to follow Jesus…and be transformed.
Look at verse 25.
“Who ARE YOU?”…this is probably mixed with confusion, and anger, and fear.
Jesus said to them, “Just what I have been telling you from the beginning. 26 I have much to say about you and much to judge, but he who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him.” 27 They did not understand that he had been speaking to them about the Father. 28 So Jesus said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me. 29 And he who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him.” 30 As he was saying these things, many believed in him.
Many believed, and many, of course, did not…more on that next week.
APPLICATION:
What questions puzzle and confuse you?
What about those who have never heard the name of Jesus?
What about sincere people of different religions?
What about people who claim to be Christians and fail in horrific fashion?
What about my own continued failure and terrible doubts?
What about my suffering and pain?
What about some claims of science that seem to contradict Scripture?
Something is real, something is true.
What is not that, it not real or true.
“No, Terry, truth is relative, reality is flexible…lots of things can be true, even contradictory things.”
There is no way around this…to say truth is relative, is an absolute truth claim.
If it is true, that there is no truth…then the statement is self-defeating.
I’ll say it again, something is real, something is true…what is not that, is not real or true…everyone can’t be right.
Reality is what it is.
So how do we know what is true and real?
Access our inner wisdom?…what a horrible idea!
If you look at God’s revelation to us in history and in the Old Testament…it is beyond remarkable.
Then go to the historical reality of the life, death, resurrection of Jesus…it is even more remarkable.
Now, look to his claims and his absolute believability.
Now…decide
Trust Jesus…Believe him.
We don’t throw away human reason and take an irrational leap of faith.
And
We, for good reason, do not absolutely trust our own reasoning.
But, we, for good reason, trust God who has revealed himself to us.
Stop trusting yourself, stop being bossed around by emotions, stop having your head turned by the latest somebody saying something new (that never really is new).
Believe and then live out your belief…don’t be embarrassed, shy, or defensive about it.
Certainly, don’t be angry or arrogant about it.
Be humble, grateful, and live in the freedom of revealed truth.
You will get to the end of your life, and you will find you have not wasted it…you have spent it wisely…you put your ladder against the right wall.
And along the way, you can escape the emptiness of life filled with vain guessing as to what is real and true.