Spiritual Sunburst :: Magnificent Seven (Pt. 2) | Pastor Levi Lusko

and we are in a series of messages we have called magnificent seven and we are looking at seven things that Jesus said about who he is this is not Jesus secondhand or Jesus in someone else's opinion this is Jesus in his own words and if you have a Bible we're gonna be in John chapter eight this week John chapter 8 where Jesus we read last week in John's Gospel had said I am the bread of life and he who comes to me will never be hungry just speaking about this this powerful soul food that he offers us and in verse 12 of John chapter 8 we find the second I am statement where he says this he says I am the light of the world he who follows me shall not walk in darkness but have the light of life one more time let's read it just this let these words hit you Jesus spoke to them again saying I am the light of the world he who follows me shall not walk in darkness but have the light of Life father we're so grateful that you've given us these precious red words and through them we get to understand more about who you are and we need to keep growing in our understanding of who you are and let that not be static but dynamic and fluid and changing and we just trust that you're gonna give us more and more about who you are to deal with the uncertainties of the day and the difficulties and the trials that we face and so we pray now for what your word says is necessary that your spirit would open up the eyes of our hearts to see glorious truths in your word we pray that if a single person has come in this week to church without God without hope in this world heavy-hearted not knowing you looking to this world to satisfy the emptiness within we pray that you would draw them to yourself through your spirit and we would see salvation take place here like like Paul describes Gail's falling from his eyes they would see you for the first time and would change everything and we ask this in Jesus name and everyone said amen title of my message if you take notes is spiritual Sunburst now a spiritual starburst that's a delicious treat spiritual sunburst the sunburst is an occasion where the Sun breaks through the clouds and shines fully even if just for a moment don't you love those moments when this you know cloudy and overcast and and then just for a second you just get the boom doesn't you just almost feel like someone flipped a switch Sun bursts now I like that there's a word for that I don't know know if you've ever gone on vacation and needed some Sun and been disappointed to find no Sun but you're just determined to experience the summer anyway I did that one time we were we had a couple days we had an Arizona and you know you're thinking Arizona and you're thinking this is the place where the Sun lives when it's not where we are and and so you're excited I was excited and there was a pool there's like we're gonna lie by the pool and it was so cold it was but I was down by the pool and I just I'm enjoying this this is my teeth are shivering I didn't know it got so cold in the desert but I was I was freezing and so I ended up you know wrapped up in towels there's nobody else there you know the people who live in Arizona they were wearing ski gear I mean they were it's 60 we're not going in you know but I was but but there was just a few moments and the reason I stayed there is because like every 15 minutes or something there would just be a little bit of the clouds moving enough to where whadya like throw the towels off soak up all the Sun I can and then you know shiver hunker back down because it was just as cold mean nasty wind sunburst someone say it with me sunburst it's a brief moment where the clouds open and there's just the powerful bright full Sun that shines through and that is Jesus to a tooth in history it's it's there's clouds but then you have Jesus and in Jesus you have the clouds of obscurity and anonymity and the unknown God and some Creator but in Jesus we have the sun shining through the clouds parting and the full sunlight what what can be NOLA can be seen of God the image of God who is invisible made visible in the face of Jesus sunburst but spiritual sunburst really the story of the Bible it's been said can be summarized in the following four words from darkness to light I know it's 66 books in the Bible but someone said you could just describe the whole thing as from darkness to light really it's how the whole thing starts in Genesis chapter 1 the Bible says that everything on the earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters and God said let there be light from darkness to light the same is true in the end of the Bible the book of Revelation you understand how this whole thing ends with perfection with life again with light again with us walking with God and in that state the Bible says in revelation 22 look at it there shall be no night there they need no lamp nor light of the Sun for the Lord God gives them light and they shall reign forever and ever and in between the darkness turning into light in Genesis and the darkness perpetually becoming the perfection of light in Revelation we see of course the darkness of death creeping in the darkness of guilt creeping in the darkness of despair the darkness of emptiness the darkness of loneliness and Jesus is God turning off the dark that's what we have between Genesis and revelation we have us bringing darkness us sending us going astray all of us like sheep who disobey their Shepherd and Jesus coming to turn off the darkness that we turned on in our disobedience that's the gospel in fact the prophets looking forward because the people walking in darkness what did Isaiah say that on this land where people were walking in darkness he prophetically looked forward to the coming of the Messiah Jesus and said those people who walked in darkness have seen a great light those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death upon them a light has shined Christmas is God turning on the light for those of us living in a land of Darkness Malachi the Prophet said the same thing he said he said that the Sun of righteousness will rise with healing in his Ray's this is figuring both the coming of Christ and the return of Jesus Christ which we even today still wait for it makes sense then that at Christ's coming to this world those who got to be witness to it witnessed incredible dazzling displays of light in the sky both the Wiseman who came seeking him with gifts and the shepherds who were keeping their sheep by night looked up and saw the glory of God surround dazzling like the aurora borealis just all of a sudden boom over I like to think that it was just like God chose to just turn the Northern Lights on just for a minute yeah over over the Middle East just cuz he owns the place you know literally and and then the angels are there singing and but then it was gone as quick as it came certainly in fact God is someone who wears light like clothing Paul speaking of both his immortality and his luminosity what big word luminosity look what he said in first Timothy 6 16 he said he alone God can never die that's huge accomplishment and he lives in light so brilliant that no human can approach him no human eye has ever seen him nor ever will all honor and power to him forever we can't see God that's why he made himself visible to us in the person of Jesus Christ it light though is not just what God is it is who he is that's important to understand it's not just what he is it's who he is for John tells us in first John God is light that's the message we've heard from him right all across the pages of Scripture God is light God is light in fact John's Gospel if you flip back just a few pages I don't have it to put up on the screen for you but it says describing the entirety of creation in another perspective in the very beginning of John in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God he was in the beginning with God all these things were made through him and without him nothing was made that was made listen to me in him was life and that life was the light of men and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it from darkness to light that is the story of Scripture and that is why Jesus Christ came because God is light but listen to me it doesn't work backwards light isn't God God is light but light isn't God God is not less than light but he is also more than life he's not less than light but he's so much more than one he's not only like John first John also tells us God is love so so we understand that God is light it's what he's surrounded by wherever he is there is light but light isn't God we don't worship the Sun as though regattas pantheism we're not worshipping you know a created thing because God is life but light isn't God he's not less than light but he's also more than I'm teaching some theology is that okay do you mind it a little bit alright so we understand God by understanding that he is light and where he shines his light darkness doesn't stand a chance for light always wins for all you have to do to drive out the darkness is to turn on the light and that's why Eleanor Roosevelt was so smart to say you know that we don't defeat darkness by yelling at it we defeat darkness by turning on a candle by lighting a candle by lighting up a source of life for where there is light there cannot be any darkness for darkness is simply the absence of light therefore by definition where light has been turned on darkness has been turned off and so we don't need to turn off darkness in our heart we just need to turn on light and it will do the job for us and that's why all of this is why in the seven I am statements that we have given to us in the Gospel of John one of them is that Jesus said I am the light of the world if you follow me you won't walk in darkness but you will have the light of life now to really understand this we need to kind of approach it from three different perspectives we need to first of all understand the metaphor being employed here secondly we need to understand the magnitude of the moment and then third and finally we need a nurse tan the mission this then presents to us the mission then that we are on because of this let's start with the first the the metaphor this is a metaphor what do I mean I mean it's a spiritual sunburst and yet there are things about physical sunlight that God is like God like we said isn't the Sun but he's like in many ways the Sun that we actually have in terms of physical light so when when Jesus said I am the light of the world the easiest thing to understand is the light that we have for our world and it's called the Sun and it's star but the Sun gives us three things the Sun gives us life the Sun secondly gives us vision and the Sun thirdly gives us joy or happiness and well-being without the Sun you couldn't have any of those things take the Sun away from us we're we all die we it's it's over friends but even if the Sun just stayed behind the clouds for too long life in a place would not be possible because crops would die that's why sucks the the plants and the trees and the fuzz all grow stretching toward the Sun they stretch toward the Sun because from the Sun they derive energy they're able to convert oxygen or do whatever into whatever and kick out oxygen as a waste product when I thank you I'll take that right it's like hey they're able to drink the carbon monoxide normal to kick out the oxygen they pull energy from the light to do this witchcraft thing called photosynthesis and chlorophyll more like bora phil right anybody with me on some some adam sandler's solid solid reference in in that moment but but basically the the sun is what makes life possible on this planet and so god is like that that's why the metaphor of physical light actually works because if it's it's like our dependence on the sun and we can understand then and can crawl draw the lines and make the the parallel to our dependence on God we need God like people on the earth need the Sun from him we get life like the metaphor would suggest secondly vision we need the Sun to have vision there are two ways to know if I'm driving in my car down the street there's a wall in front of me there are two ways to know that there's a wall in front of me one is to hit it and the other is to see it those are the two ways and if we didn't have a source of light in the room that we are in if we didn't have a source of light thank you god for hanging one in the sky for us that shows up when it's time to be away if we didn't have the ability to have lights the only way we would see anything if we were alive which we wouldn't be we've already established that but let's say we figured out a way right we would bump into things we would discover our environment we would have the truth of our awareness situationally only by seeing it or by smashing into it but the ability to see something you're not actually seeing the thing you're just seeing the light reflected off of it light hits this Bible and goes into my retina it's a bank shot perpetually that's how we see you know light traveling it's waves travels from the source to a surface the source to the surface the surface to the your eye it goes into the pupil it gets focused by the inner lens it gets beamed under the rear wall of your eye which is called a retina a surface covered in millions of photoreceptors called rods and cones that take the information to the optic nerve to your brain for constant processing in real-time so it comes from a source it goes to a surface it comes into your eye and we see things because of the light we're not actually even seeing the thing we're seeing the light come to us in it so take colors this is really where it gets messed up and I had to spend a lot of time alone processing this in a quiet place this week these things aren't actually the color that they are they just have a pigment that is that causes the light that hits it to bounce off in the color that you see so what we call red this block is absorbing all light except red red reflects off of it that's why we see red this block is actually ever every color but red if you think about it because there are seven colors in in the rainbow or so Isaac Newton said right you could actually divide it thousands that's arbitrarily but Newton's Newton so we'll just go with his rainbow right the the light that bounces off is because this block reflects red but it accepts all the other colors of the rainbow it accepts all those colors so it's actually those colors it just rejects red so it's kicking red off back to my eye and your eye from a surface to our eyes and so that's what we're seeing here here's the thing that's crazy about this if we turn all the lights off this retinas wouldn't be red anymore it would be black for the only light only occurs in our mind color only occurs in our mind rather for the light that we see comes into our eyes and we see the light coming off of that surface because of the pigments so without listen to me without light there can be no color therefore when you're in a black room and orange is not orange in color anymore it's just black everything that you think about call the colors the clothes in your wardrobe they're not that color they're just that color as light bounces off of them and reacts with the pigments and comes into your eyes so you're seeing the color in your mind it's I know I've tried so sighs like I was like whoa and I wasn't even high I mean it was just I was having a totally high moment just thinking about there's no real color it just is light we've all been lied there is no spoon there's a third the third we've gotten pretty deep here we're in it now aren't we without the light there is no life without light there is no vision and without light there is no happiness or joy or sense of well-being we know it's a fact that with with people who live at the poles the North and South Pole there's higher levels of depression and despair that must be wrestled with because of lower levels of light people who live in areas who get less light they have a difficulty having a sense of happiness for there is just happiness that comes from life we know there's a vitamin D deficiency that can happen if you don't get enough sunlight to your skin so what Jesus is saying when he says I'm the light of the world is he saying I'm like the Sun I'm like your need on this your dependence on the Sun you are you are so dependent on the Sun for life and for sight and for a sense of well-being and I'm like those things to you in how you actually need me so that's the metaphor and is that helpful I think there's a second thing that even makes this more significant not less and it's understanding the magnitude of the moment for Jesus for speaking into a situation that was ongoing and if you had read John 7 and if you read the rest of John 8 into John chapter 9 you're seeing Jesus in his three and a half year ministry interacting with people as specific events this specific event where he spoke these words I'm the light of the world were during a feast called the Feast of Tabernacles and the Jews had different feasts on their calendar different parties on their calendar one of them was the Feast of Tabernacles which is when they looked back on the wilderness wanderings and specifically they celebrated God's faithfulness to them during that period of time where for 40 years they lived in the desert and when they got thirsty God gave them water from a rock and so they had a party at one point where they would pour water out and and and prophesy believing in faith that God was gonna send now living water to them there was it literally looked backwards but it also looked forward okay then there was there was this awesome thing they did where they involved their kids you always got to involve your kids in the spiritual discussion in life and so what they would do is they would all move out of their homes this is awesome some of them will move onto the roofs if they had a roof that allowed it and others were moving to their front lawn there was also you know just like RV park areas where if you lived in an apartment complex you could all get a little bit of land somewhere in an open areas awesome and you would build these little booths or little huts so one of the nicknames of the feasts or Tabernacles was the feast of booths and they would build these little huts so these little thatched palm fronds structures and the whole family would camp out for this feast and the kids are like my xbox is in the house what gives you know mom and dad were like hey look our forefathers didn't have an xbox they didn't have a house they lived for 40 years in the it was kind of like we are living right now like this and we want to look back to God's faithfulness and look forward to his provision and we're gonna look forward believing and of course all of these things look forward to Jesus as the Messiah now the most significant for our purposes and understanding is that there was also a huge involvement of light light you see there was these enormous candelabras gigantic candelabras that were set up in an area of the temple complex known as the court of the women and of course you know back then there was the court of the Gentiles and Gentiles could only go so far but then women who were Jews could go past the court of the Gentiles and and so could men of course into this area but then only men could go past it to the next checkpoint and the men could go past it to the next checkpoint but but then only the priests could go past that one so and then past the temple area there was an even holier place where only the high priest could go and he could only go in once a year and he had to wear bells because you're like why would he have to wear bells he also had a rope tied to his ankle because if he had any unconfessed sin in his life if he went into the Holy of Holies with unconfessed scent he would die on the spot and they would stop hearing the bells jingling and they would pull him out with the rope on his foot right so this this always does not oh sure certifies as dangerous taking this job man I mean the perils they save in America the most dangerous jobs being a commercial fisherman or being a lumberjack I'm gonna put high priests above either of those things you know I'm saying so anyhow so there was all these different areas well look at the court of the women every Jew could go into so it was a way of very much a common area and that's where they had all the offering boxes and they could they nicknamed at the Treasury okay so in the Treasury area I was one of the biggest areas they had these enormous golden candelabras with a ton of different torches that would be off of them and at a certain point in the celebration they would light them all up they would they would light up every single one of them and in and it often happened in a most significant way on the final night of the feast the final night of the Feast of Tabernacles they had something called the illumination ceremony and william barclay describes it this way he says they sent these candelabra scents a blaze of light throughout Jerusalem that every courtyard was lit up with their brilliance so they were massive and of course they built with limestone so you can send white limestone you could just imagine the flickering of the light off of all these stones and it just would have been beautiful because they didn't have a lot of competing light in that day there wasn't electric light bulbs or LEDs anywhere so we waited till nighttime and then when they lift this thing up it was like the pyrotechnic display of all displays and would have not been magnificent now get this everybody then once they were lit on this night would get torches and they would sing and dance and praise God till the rooster crowed I mean this is like a sanctified Burning Man Coachella for Jesus I mean it just seems awesome every description I read it I'm like can I go to that that sounds lit right so so it was just it was going off this thing was going right now check this out now no no we're told jesus said these words where John chapter 8 verse 20 tells us exactly where he was when he said them these words he spoke in the Treasury as he taught in the temple meaning exactly in the vicinity of these giant Khanda lebra's only if you read John 7 53 and 8 verse 1 you will see that it was early in the morning then on the day after the big party the rooster had crowed the the torches were all extinguished and that the candelabras had burnt out now is there anything more depressing in the whole world as picking up the remnants of last night's firecrackers on the fifth of July all your bad decisions all your bad decisions and wasted money is just all that's just the least enjoyable job maybe second to it would be taking down the Christmas tree how many times have you thrown it away with the lights on because you just couldn't stomach anybody with me I know that's not good for the environment but I've done it I have done it I have done it I have done it right because it's just the party's over there's no fun when the party's over and sometimes the sadness that we feel in those events I think it's because we perhaps we're hoping that those holidays would a little bit more magic than they were capable of giving and we were hoping perhaps that they would be the bread that would satisfy us and we were looking to them in that way and I loved that Jesus was so wise as they were pointing to the past faithfulness of God which of course the candelabras in case you didn't connect the two from the book of Exodus which we've been talking about it also looked back to a significant thing that Exodus tells has happened in the wilderness wanderings the Lord went ahead of them guiding them during the day with a pillar of cloud providing light for them at night with the pillar of fire this allowed them to travel by day or by night so that's awesome God just lit up the sky with fire and so they were looking back to how God provided light for them but they were begging God in the coming days to provide fire for them and and and when the fire went out they were left there standing there realizing God hadn't answered our prayers yet and the sense of and it was at that moment that Jesus stood next to the candelabra and said I am the light of the world I am I am ego Amy the light of the world I am I am the light of the world you don't have to walk in darkness I have life you don't have to be empty I have life you don't have to be sad and lonely I have meaning you don't have to be a person without a sense of mission I have joy and joy I want to give you to overflowing and so life to the full not just biological life by eternal life I'm the light of life now who does that not just come to life when you picture Jesus in the moment because of not just the metaphor was rich but the actual magnitude of the moment was literally perfect and there's a third thing I think that we need to pull away from this and that is in the second half of the verse let's read it one more time the second half only jesus said on light of the world we got that but then he said he who follows me he who follows me he who follows me meaning on the light of the world but the light coming to you with not automatic you don't just get the light for being for breathing air I'm the light of the world but he who follows me shall not walk in darkness but have the light of Life now in the wilderness wanderings they had to follow the pillar of fire when it moved they were supposed to move but so that's the first way that we tap into our mission here's his epic metaphor and it's even more it's because of the magnitude but then in it we find an assignment our mission if we choose to accept it is a to follow him we have to follow the light Jesus again and again and again equated being a believer to being a follower he said to the fisherman he said to the tax collector he would say to those follow me follow me and to a great degree with a wide net to every Jesus follower who is not called to leave their day job he's not called to leave work who's called to be a teacher called the be a ski instructor called to be a baker called to be a firefighter called to be a mayor called to be an actor he said take up your cross and follow me you see where to follow the light were to believe Jesus is who he said he is and were to follow after him to follow in his footsteps to do what he tells us to do regardless of how we feel to follow the light and if we follow the light we will not walk in darkness we will have the light of life why because if we're with Jesus and he's life will always have light if were with Jesus and he like we don't have to go looking for light somewhere if we just gotta follow Jesus Psalm 36 but this way with you is the fountain of life and in your light we see light so we're to follow Jesus to follow light that's our mission there's a second aspect to it we're to not trust our eyesight follow the light that's our mission and not trust our own eyesight now there are many interesting things to me about light I've been studying about it I'm fascinated about it I found out that one-third of the American population sneezes when they are exposed to the Sun if the Sun if there's a sudden Sun bursts and the clouds come out one-third of a man you with me in church every location okay yeah that's roughly about a third of us that's incredible and I every location I'm assuming that's true I'm swimming in Salt Lake City there are some sneezy sneezy citizens there when the Sun comes to stretch you right there's not a power of suggestion on sneezing and that's good because you say that where it's nice no one's needs but if you say the word yawn they say that a lot of people and it's happening around you right now the power of suggestion of saying the word yawn is incredible it's one of the most contagious things on planet Earth so interestingly enough there's this more that says nothing to do with my sermon that's just interesting to me I also think it's interesting you can see light from far away so for example if you were in a wilderness situation but you brought a flint with you what you should if you were to shoot the Flint off at night just over and over again that can be seen for three miles away so they say in a situation where you have no ability to rescue yourself even just the smallest flint can be seen for up to three miles so that's interesting it's also interesting to me that light is very very fast yeah of course of course it is it's very very fast but it's fascinating how fast it is that it takes a long time to get to us they say the light that we see now when you go outside look at the Sun it left the Sun just over eight minutes ago eight minutes ago which means if and when the Sun burns up we won't know about it for ten minutes I mean it's crazy think about it right the world's over but you don't even know you're still making a cappuccino you have no idea right your ears type in an email you have no idea that that it's all it's all it's all over and then that's of course because the Sun is 93 million miles away so even though light travels 186,000 miles per second it's gonna take a bit to get to you even when it's on its final last race with love son peace out suckers I'm out of here and you won't know till it's over but out of all those things my favourite thing about life is the fact that so much of light is invisible to our eyes so much of light is actually invisible to all rights how much you said they say visible light makes up only a tiny tenth of a billion of the electromagnetic magnetic spectrum and the electromagnetic spectrum is what light is a part of and visible light is just a small portion of that there's actually more light than what we know of as white light now white light of course you know if you take a prism you figure out that out of the prism comes what we thank you Isaac Newton know of as the seven colours they say I haven't written on the back here it's red it's orange like you need that for that yeah well pray for me red and orange and yellow and green and blue and indigo and violet and that all comes out of a prism when white light goes into it these seven colors go out but in 1880 a man named William Herschel he was projecting a prism so imagine this is the prison that shined out the rainbow and he was investigating the prism and he was taking a thermometer and he was measuring the heat in the area on the the right side of violet and on the left side of red and he found out that even though there was nothing visible happening there that there was a temperature difference so obviously something was going on there and so he chose to call beyond red infrared and he chose to call above violet ultraviolet now some of you understand that there's there's there's a lot that happens out there and we can't see it but when the white light turns into the seven there's actually a whole lot more than than just that because of ultraviolet and infrared by the ways creepy pit vipers can see infrared and bees concealed to violence that's interesting this light here tin shine an ultraviolet light we can't see ultraviolet but way blacklights work if you ever remember going rollerskating as a kid right the way black light works is it contains ultraviolet light and when it though we can't see it comes in something visible goes out so if I were to take and write on here with a sharpie you can't see that very well but if you look at it under ultraviolet light something invisible going in causes something visible it's highly visible to come out and so what I love about light is that it's a perfect parallel for our journey of faith for does not second Corinthians tell us we do not walk by sight we walk by faith meaning all that's there isn't seen by our human eyes so as we follow Jesus he's going to tell us things and help us to see things that we can't see in the natural we can't see in our normal everyday abilities that he's able to show to us when his invisible power comes in to us we will be able to by faith see invisible things that are unnaturally apparent to us so I think it's just an amazing parallel to walk with Jesus to walk by faith to not look at our job and just see our job but to look at it through his eyes and to trust that his invisible power going in will cause invisible things to become visible to us right ultra sight it's always happening oh by the way this will be this will change how you look at people because you won't just look at normal people you'll look at people and see the glory of God inside of them and here's the interesting thing all of you if you look around at each other person sitting next to you people sitting around you every single one of you is glowing and I'm glowing and we're all glowing it has been scientifically proven that every single human body listen to me puts off a bioluminescent glow but it's a thousand times weaker than our eyes ability to see it but if you look at people and and and and you could see all the light that's actually there being put off our bodies we're brightest at our heads of course for there's more blood but but if you were to look at people and see them how God sees them you would see Christ in the hope of glory even people who don't know Jesus you would see what God intends them to be when they have the light of life inside of their eyes now as we wrap this all up and we're we're getting real close and and I just want to say this the problem with all this is that there's a flip side to it and the tension is light isn't just wonderful it's also dangerous it's actually deadly light isn't just wonderful it's also very dangerous you see the same light that leads to life and light and happiness is the same light that can take it away we need light to have life but if you have prolonged exposure to light it leads to cancer if you are able to go beyond our atmosphere it would be instantly deadly to you in outer space you jump out of your space suit your tears and your your sweat will boil and you just think about what what would happen with the Sun come into so which brings light can also take life what brings life can take life what brings sight the Sun you couldn't see anything if it weren't for light bouncing off of the source to the surface to us yet if you were to stare at the Sun it would fry your optic nerve in the same light that give sight would take sight so it is with pleasure it feels great to get some Sun just for a second just give me a minute of sunshine right but that Sun can also burn your skin if you're not careful and here here's the first thing you can realize I need light because I can't see what I look like but if you get too much light in a dressing room give me a dimly lit dressing room every day I want to feel great just for a minute give me a give me just I look so good in low light you don't I'm saying that I just when the light comes on you like oh the same light that made you feel good now it makes you feel bad if you see yourself really or - pilot light that's discouraging what's the point the point is the metaphor applies in this way to that which we need the most is God but if we were actually to stand before God he dwells in unapproachable light all of us as sinners it would he died on the spot that's why Moses who asked God show me your glory was told this look what God told Moses he said you cannot see my face for no man can see me and live it would be would fry that which you desperately need you are also incapable of receiving and living and so it is well all of us are groaning for God but that which we need the most we are also incapable we cannot live with God there's a separation between us because of our sin and we would not live we would not survive his glory and his power and his holiness and his wrath and his justice but that's why it is mercy he sent His Son Jesus and his son becoming veiled the pillar of fire becoming veiled by by human flesh because that's what happened Jesus Christ was was God's glory God's light but veiled and you got a smiie a sneak peek of that went on the Mount of Transfiguration you know the story in the Gospels he took Peter James known on the high mountain and what does the Bible say he was transfigured before them his face shone like the Sun his son clothes became white his life he liked what's the diff what's the big deal that happened to Moses no no Moses was the moon when Moses went up on the mountain with God he was just he got to see a glimpse of God's glory he shines because he was reflecting like Jesus was the source of that light he was the light was shining out of him was radiating out of him when just for a moment he showed us a glimpse of his true self now here's here's the beauty the beauty is the way Moses got to even see what he did that day though it was imperfect was God said here's what I'll do I'll hide you behind the rock and if you hide behind this rock I will pass by and my glory will hit the rock and not kill you but you'll just get to see a bit of it because you're there for the moment and that is why Jesus came we couldn't stand before God on our own we couldn't go to heaven on our own but God sent His Son Jesus Christ and if we hide behind the one who is not only the light of the world but also as a rock he'll tuck us safely in the cleft of the rock and God's glory can't hurt us because we are in Christ and that's the power of the gospel is that God sent His Son Jesus to do for us what we can never do for ourselves to pay for our sins and to live to tell the story about it and if we come to him we don't have to walk in darkness and shame and secrets and guilt and hidden things we can live a life in the light and I pray that for each of you who have never made a decision to give your lives to Christ and that's an open opportunity to every single person listening to this message for those of us who already are believers we get to live to this message walking in the light each day maybe there's some things in our lives we need to come clean to someone in our life too and not live that tension of carrying a secret but get that out in the open so we can be healed and that's why our small groups in our church are so important if you're watching on television getting into a local church and being in a small group is so incredibly important but but but for those of us who are here and you've never given your heart to Jesus today's the day announce the times God sent his son to die for you he rose from the dead and and and he is today right now in this moment knocking on the door of your heart and if you open the door of your heart he will come into your life make it his home and change you and make you new and give you the hope of heaven and give you peace while you live here on this earth and we're gonna bow our heads right now every location all of us together praying as we give those an opportunity to surrender their hearts to God thank you Jesus for this message thank you for the gospel thank you for the truth of your word you telling us that you're the light of the world and we don't have to live in darkness we can have that light I pray right now for anybody who is ready to give their heart to you who's empty and guilty and lost and afraid but doesn't need to be one more day longer because of your spirit even right now making it possible for them to see you and with every head bowed and every eye closed all of us praying and thinking about just where we're at with God I believe many of you were drawn here for this moment because God loves you wants to save he wants to know you I'm gonna ask you if you're ready to make that decision to pray with me I'm gonna pray just a simple prayer out loud and if you're ready to give your heart to Jesus I want you to pray this prayer with me out loud right where you are I'm gonna ask the church family to pray this prayer with us showing that we're all together in this decision meaning we have your back as you choose to give your heart to Jesus pray this prayer media in your heart God will hear you dear God I know I'm a sinner I can't fix myself please come into my heart make me new I believe Jesus died for me and rose from the dead thank you for new life I give you mine what an incredible message thank you so much for joining us in this teaching from fresh Life Church if during this message you felt led to make the decision to follow Christ we'd love to send you a 21 day devotional that goes through the book of John that Pastor Levi row and you can also register your decision on our web site fresh Life Church just click the know God tab and we'd love to get connected with you if you've been impacted at all through what God is doing here at fresh Life Church we would absolutely love to hear from you all you gotta do is click to the shared story tab at the top of our website or you can email us at story at fresh Life Church and share how God is using this work to impact your life and finally if you'd like to partner with us financially and support the things that God is doing in and through this house you can text the word fresh two four five seven seven seven you can click the give button fresh life dot Church or you can give via the fresh life app thank you so much for watching

Channel: Fresh Life Church

Views: 8,174

Rating: 4.8095236 out of 5

Keywords: fresh life, freshlife, fresh life church, levi lusko, pastor levi, church, church montana, levi lusko sermons

Id: ux7wooBYDcY

Length: 42min 53sec (2573 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 26 2018