John preached this morning from John 8:1-12, looking at the subject of walking in the light and using the word itself to highlight points about that light: it is Living, Illuminating, Growing, Holy and Testing.

The scene which ends with Jesus proclaiming He is the light of the world begins with scribes and Pharisees dragging a woman caught in the act of adultery to Jesus. They were trying to catch Jesus out and were not really interested in the woman herself or even in the law (for if they had been, the adulterer would also have been brought, as prescribed by the law.) Jesus, the only sinless One present, did not condemn the woman but instead reminded people of the light He brings into the darkness.

Living Light

Those who follow Jesus will have the light of life. In order for us to flourish, we need light and illumination. The light illuminates and illustrates the way we should go (see John 14:6-9) and shows us the way. It is a reflection of God’s presence and power.

Illuminating Light

We each have an individual choice to follow Jesus and His word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Sometimes we will need to look down to our feet, for the terrain will be rough; on other occasions, we will need to look up to see the path we must take. In the mining industry, the only way a miner survives in the darkness is to have an individual lamp on his helmet. We need the light of Christ to illuminate our path in exactly the same way that the miner needs a lamp!

Growing Light

1 John 1:5-9 reminds us that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all; moreover, it shows us that if we claim to know God, we need to walk in the light and therefore have fellowship with God and with one another. We need ongoing cleansing from our sin and can know God’s forgiveness, refreshing and renewing in our lives. As we grow, we will become fruitful. (John 15:1-2)

Holy Light

The forgiveness and cleansing we receive from God enables us to live holy lives, reflecting God’s holiness. (1 Pet 1:15-16) Holiness is not the same as self-righteousness, but is to do with our relationship with God, with each other and with the world. Isaiah’s vision of God’s holiness (Is 6:1-7) is described in terms of light, for the seraphim covered their faces from the brightness of God’s glory and holiness. Moses’s face shone when he had spent time with God (Ex 34:29) and since God is light, our faces should reflect this light. It’s a bit like the Ready Brek glow in the advert – visible!

Testing Light

Continuing the theme of adverts, John mentioned the ‘Daz window test’, where all washing had to be held up against a window and bright sunlight to test if it really was clean! Jesus is the Light of the world, but in Matt 5:14-16, He made the astonishing statement that we are the light of the world too and that as others look on us, they will see the source of that light. We are to reflect God’s light to others, just as Elijah’s cloak was passed on to Elisha. Jesus did not condemn the woman, but offered her forgiveness and a new way of life. Similarly, we are to be agents of grace and compassion towards other people, not condemning them or excluding them, but reflecting God’s radiance to them.

Last night’s Bible study looked at 1 John 2:12-14, John’s ‘reasons for writing’ as the heading in the NIV calls this section. Here, John writes to three main categories of people: ‘dear children,’ ‘young men’ and ‘fathers’, but rather than taking these words literally, we looked at how they symbolise the three main ages (or stages) of our Christian walk: being a new Christian, growing in the faith and becoming more mature. We have to go through all these stages (none can be omitted; there are – alas! – no shortcuts to maturity), but in some ways, we can exist in all three stages at once, being more mature in some areas than in others. We thought of this rather like a music equaliser, where the levels are different, allowing for different volumes of different frequencies, so that we may be more advanced in ‘faith’ (for example), but still struggling with ‘patience’.

The ideal (in Christian terms, but not necessarily in musical terms, of course!) would be for all the sliders to be at the top, meaning we are fully mature in all areas of life and faith, but as our series ‘Growing Up In God’ has discussed, this will not be until we see Jesus face to face! In the meantime, we are all works in progress.

John writes about different aspects of understanding and growth associated with the three different stages. Firstly, he talks about forgiveness of sins on account of Jesus’s name. Accepting God’s free gift of salvation can be hard for us to believe, inured as we are to the world’s maxims that ‘if it seems too good to be true, it probably is!’ and ‘there’s nothing free in this world.’ We may start well, but often fall back on the belief that we have to earn God’s approval or forgiveness, instead of understanding that the basics of the faith – salvation through grace, forgiveness of sin, God’s unconditional love for us – remain true throughout every stage of our walk with God.

As we grow and mature, we encounter opposition and attacks from the enemy. The devil, unlike God, is not creative or inventive, however. His tactics and strategies remain predictable (and sadly their predictability alone is no guarantee of our overcoming them, for they are effective and we are often weak!) As we journey through life, we come to recognise these tactics, however, and learn strategies from God to overcome the evil one. Knowing and applying God’s word is crucial in this (see Ps 119:9, Prov 30:5, Is 40:8, Luke 11:28, Eph 6:17, 2 Tim 2:15, Heb 4:12) We overcome the evil one ultimately because God’s Word lives in us; just as Jesus used the Word of God to defeat the enemy in the wilderness temptations (Matt 4:1-11), so too as we grow and mature, this becomes our weapon.

Knowing God is, according to John, the pinnacle of maturity: the fathers ‘have known him who is from the beginning.’ John Stott says this speaks of a ‘deeper, ripened communion.’ The more time we spend with someone, the more we know them and this is true of our relationship with God as well. We know their characters and their characteristics; we know how they act and react and can predict what they will do in particular situations. The more we know God, the more we can assess and judge whether something is ‘like Him’. That does not mean we can ever entirely predict how He will work (for He is eternally creative and far greater than our capacity for understanding!), but we can see His hand of love and mercy even in difficult situations and circumstances. So often, we think of knowing God as being at the start of our Christian journey, but eternal life is all about knowing God and Jesus Christ (John 17:3) and so this knowledge remains essential to maturity.

A group from church went to the ‘Big Church Night In’ on Wednesday in Bradford (arranged by the organisers of the ‘Big Church Day Out’, which this year will be on 24 & 25 May in Sussex) to sing along to Matt Redman and Christy Nockels. The meeting was held at the large Life Centre in Bradford and was attended by approximately 1200 people (based on Garry counting rows of chairs and estimating those standing, so this figure could well be wrong, though his estimates concerning numbers are far more likely to be reliable than mine!)

Matt Redman


Christy Nockels


Singing ‘Blessed Be Your Name’

For those who are interested, the set lists were:

• Our God
• Sing & Shout
• Here For You
• Holy Spirit (chorus added & merged with Here for You)
• Waiting Here For You
• Healing Is In Your Hands
• Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)
• Let it be Jesus (new song written by Matt Redman, click here to listen)

Beth Redman on video spoke about the work of the A21 campaign to abolish slavery in the 21st century and the second set list was:

• Blessed Be Your Name
• You Never Let Go
• Mercy
• Revelation Song
• One Thing Remains
• We are the Free
• Dancing Generation
• Benediction
• 10,000 Reasons

During the evening, Matt Redman spoke about magnifying God in worship. He said there are two kinds of magnification: that by microscope, whereby we take something really small and make it look bigger and that by telescope, whereby we seek to see something so vast and large that we cannot glimpse it on our own. So often, we take the microscope to our problems and blow them up out of all proportion. In worship, we need to magnify God, gazing at someone so glorious, so vast, so immense that we cannot possibly come to the end of His greatness.

Yesterday was a first aid course. By the end of it, hopefully we were more proficient than the photos imply…

The last signs of spiritual immaturity considered were:
8. Relying on outward appearances
9. Sectarianism
10. Having a grumbling, ungrateful spirit
11. Legalism

Relying on outward appearances
Teenagers tend to put a lot of emphasis on outward appearances, especially regarding fashion and make-up. They judge themselves and other people by how they look. This is not how God judges, however, for ‘The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.’ (1 Sam 16:7) What is truly important (and far harder to judge!) is the state of the heart. (see Prov 4:23) Actions flow from the heart attitude (Luke 6:45), but we need to be careful not to judge by appearances and certainly not to prefer those who seem outwardly to be more successful. (James 2:2-4)

Sectarianism
Sectarianism means ‘bigotry, discrimination, or hatred arising from attaching importance to perceived differences between subdivisions within a group.’ Although often used to describe the divisions between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, the term looks deeper into the way we tend to isolate people who are different to us. There is no place for cliques or bigotry and discrimination in church life, for we are commanded to accept each other as Christ has accepted us. (Rom 15:7) Discrimination is gone (Gal 3:26-29) and love has to be our new motivation in all relationships.When we are mature, we learn to value each other, even learning to appreciate each other’s differences and diversity, because we recognise that each part is being fitted together by God to form the whole.

Having a grumbling, ungrateful spirit
Since we have said thankfulness is a sign of spiritual maturity (1 Thess 5:18, Eph 5:20), it is obvious that the opposite is a sign of spiritual immaturity. The Israelites were condemned for their grumbling in the wilderness (see Ps 78, 1 Cor 10:1-5) and missed out on entering the Promised Land because of how this attitude led to a refusal to believe and obey God. The challenge is for us to be thankful where we are, allowing contentment to be formed within us.

Legalism
It is so easy for us to start by means of the Spirit and then to try to live in the flesh. (see Gal 3:3) God is looking for people who will walk by faith and not by sight and who will live according to the Spirit, not according to the flesh (Rom 8:1-17). Life is not about ‘painting by numbers’ and this walking by faith will always involve risk, uncertainty and dependence on God. When we mature, we understand that it is not about living by rules, but about living by faith, which pleases God.

Tonight we looked at further examples of spiritual immaturity as we looked at leaving behind childish things. (1 Cor 13:11) Last time we looked at four characteristics of immaturity:

1. Wanting our own way
2. Having the wrong worldview
3. A tendency to see things in two dimensions only
4. Having no concept of the benefits of delayed gratification

Tonight, we continued by looking at other examples:
5. Believing you know it all
6. Believing that one size fits all
7. Making mountains out of molehills
8. Relying on outward appearances
9. Sectarianism
10. Having a grumbling, ungrateful spirit
11. Legalism

Teenagers in the natural realm often believe they know it all. They are often arrogant, believing they have the answer to all of life’s questions and are often intolerant of any who disagree with them. As we mature, we realise that there is much that we do not understand: as Mark Twain wryly commented, ‘When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.’ As we mature, we come to understand that knowledge is not the be-all and end-all of faith and that love is the thing that builds up. (1 Cor 8:1-3). Compromise, tolerance and humility are all characteristics of maturity.

Immaturity also believes that ‘one size fits all’, or, in DIY terms, ‘I have a hammer and everything is a nail.’ Just as one size in clothing will not fit everyone, so we need to appreciate complexity and diversity in life, attempting to get to grips with the ‘whole will of God’ (Acts 20:27) rather than having bees in our bonnets or having a blinkered view of life.

There is also a tendency to make mountains out of molehills or to trivialise the important and to highlight the insignificant. This is especially seen in teenage mood swings and Christians can be equally unstable. Rather than being ‘tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming’ (Eph 4:14), God wants us to be rooted and established in love. (Eph 3:17-19) Churches can be split over disagreements that are really nothing more than molehills, but we are urged to make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. (see Eph 4:3, Phil 4:2, Heb 12:14-15)