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The Light Of Truth

Bible Study, , ,

THE LIGHT OF TRUTH

He said to them, ‘Do you bring a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead don’t you put it on its stand? For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open. If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.’

‘Consider carefully what you hear,’ He continued. ‘With the measure you use, it will be measured to you – and even more. Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.’ (Mark 4: 21-25).

Some important principles for life which Jesus wove into His teaching over and over again.

Who and what was He talking about when He used the illustration of the lamp? In context, I think He was talking about the reason for speaking in parables. God’s word is the light. Jesus brought the light to them as He taught and preached God’s word and showed them how to live in the light in their daily lives. What would be the use of coming to earth if He did not shine that light for people to see what was in their own hearts? People are afraid of the light because it exposes the darkness in their hearts. It was Jesus’ role to bring the light so that the sin in the human heart could be brought out into the light.

“It is inevitable,” said Jesus, “that everything hidden in the heart will eventually be brought into the light. No one can hide from God. He is inescapable. How much better that you respond to my word now so that your hidden sins be dealt with before Judgement Day.”

One of the reasons for speaking in parables, Jesus had explained to them, was to confirm the hardness of people’s hearts. If they had no intention of receiving His word, every time He taught them, their hearts would become harder. The sun that melts wax hardens clay. It was up to them, His disciples, therefore to listen and respond to His teaching with all their hearts because the measure of their hearing would be the measure of their receiving.

It seems harsh, doesn’t it, that those who have will receive more and those who do not have will lose the little that they have. But that is just how it works. God has offered us forgiveness for our sin and grace to live a new life. The measure of our response to His mercy to us will determine the measure of our experience of His grace to live.

God is absolutely fair. His judgment is not arbitrary. He has set the standard but He has also given us the choice to obey or not to obey. The outcome will depend on our response to His truth. He does not force us to obey but He will judge us by our response to His requirements. We will, in the end, be our own judges when we stand in the light of His revealed truth.

Imagine a bride dressed in her dazzling white bridal gown. In the centre of her bodice is a stain which does not show up in ordinary light. However, when she steps outside into the brilliant sunlight, there it is, visible to everyone and spoiling the beauty of her garment. Imagine her walking down the aisle to meet her bridegroom with the awareness that a stain spoils the purity of her gown.

It is the pure light of the Son that shows up the stains of sin on our hearts. We can either pretend they are not there, try to hide our sin from Him, or come to Him for forgiveness and cleansing so that the stains are washed clean and removed forever from us.

Why did Jesus keep on preaching to those who were hardened in their unbelief? The religious leaders and Pharisees, the very ones to whom had been entrusted the responsibility of teaching the people the word of God, were the ones who refused to receive the light. Every time they heard the word, they were given another opportunity to believe but also another reason for God’s judgment to fall on them when they rejected the word.

How important for us to heed Jesus’s warning. “Be careful how you hear. Don’t be like the footpath or the rocky or thorny soil because, if you lose the word of God, you have nothing to guide you on the path towards the Father. We are all on a journey. Our destination is determined by our response to the truth of God’s word. If we choose to ignore or reject His word, there will be consequences. We will have no one to blame but ourselves if we arrive at a destination which we did not plan.

Jesus said that His way leads to life. He is the way to the Father. Anyone who follows Him will never walk in darkness. God’s word is the light on our path. Without His light we will find ourselves off the path and lost in the wilderness.

Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light for my path (Psa. 119: 105).

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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Keep It Circulating

Bible Study, , ,

KEEP IT CIRCULATING

“‘No one lights a lamp and then covers it with a washtub or shoves it under the bed. No, you set it up on a lamp stand so those who enter the room can see their way. We’re not keeping secrets; we’re telling them. We’re not hiding things; we’re bringing everything out into the open. So be careful that you don’t become misers of what you hear. Generosity begets generosity. Stinginess impoverishes.'” Luke 8:16-18 (The Message).

Come on, Jesus! What are you getting at?

He had a lot to say about the Pharisees who paraded their “righteousness” for the crowd’s approval. Yet He told His disciples not to cover up their light but to display it. What are you supposed to do, to let people see how generous you are, or hide you good deed so that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing?

The answer is “Yes”. It all depends on motive. The scribes and Pharisees used their “generosity” to show how religious they were. They wanted people to admire them for their rigid obedience to the Law, but it was all on the outside. Inside they were greedy, stingy and crooked. They used every opportunity to make money out of the common people.

Jesus exposed their sickness when He threw the merchants and money changers out of the temple. They were using the Passover to extort money from the worshippers through crooked deals. The unsuspecting people were being charged exorbitant rates to exchange their ordinary money into temple money to buy their lambs for the sacrifice. Those who brought their own lambs had to surrender them because they had “blemishes”, which were promptly sold to the next family as “unblemished”.

Their so-called generosity was nothing but window-dressing and a cover-up for their evil hearts. It’s no wonder Jesus ruthlessly exposed their hypocrisy. He wanted the people to see them for what they were and not be taken in by their unashamed falseness,

But that does not cancel out the outcome of true generosity. On another occasion Jesus urged His disciples to let their light shine before men. This is the ultimate purpose for which we were created. Like the moon, we are to shine with the reflected light of the Son.

When Jesus shines His light into our hearts, transforming us from selfish and self-centred people into those who focus on serving and meeting the needs of others, we reveal to the world around us in earthly terms, what the heart of our God is like. He is kind and generous to all, even those who would not give Him the time of the day. The creation is a reflection of His generosity and so should we be.

God’s gifts to us, including our knowledge of Him, are intended to be stewarded, not hoarded. Every time we hoard what God intends for us to share, we are like the person who switches on a light and then covers it with a blanket so that it serves no purpose. No sane thinking person would do that, and yet we treat God’s gifts like that. It makes no sense, does it?

In God’s way of doing things, the more we give away the more we make room to receive more. The more we hoard the poorer we become inside. God’s resources are meant to be circulated. Water remains fresh when it flows. A stagnant pool becomes undrinkable because all kinds of unsavoury creatures breed in it.

With the right motive, we can draw attention to God’s glory and not our own. It all depends on whether God’s light is in our hearts or not. If He “who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ” – 2 Corinthians 4:6 – has shone in our hearts, then the motive of our shining will be to reflect the glory back on Him.