Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2413
“While you have light, believe in the light, that you may be the children of light. These things spoke Jesus, and departed, and did hide Himself from them.” John 12:36.
OUR Savior was very gentle with those who had real difficulties. He would argue with them over and over again. He would state a Truth of God, and re-state it. He would cast it into the form of a parable, or He would condense it into a sentence comparable to a proverb, or He would enlarge and expand it, for He was gentle with seeking souls as a nurse is with her child. I do not believe that there is any real difficulty in the hearts of those of you who are sincerely seeking Jesus that He will despise. He will not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed and, therefore, come to Him with your doubts and your anxieties, believing that His tender heart so loves you and so desires your good, that He will sit at your feet that He may induce you to sit at His feet—He will come down to your level that He may lift you up to His level!
I notice, however, that, while it is true that our gracious Master was very gentle and patient with those who had real difficulties, yet He did not always answer everybody’s objection. When the difficulty was raised for the sake of questioning and disputing, when it was mere quibbling, when the enquirers were not in earnest and did not really wish to know the Truth of God, He often declined to answer them. My Master has no desire to be merely victor in a debate—He did not come into the world to fight a battle of logic just for the sake of winning it. It is you and your salvation that He is seeking!
So was it in the case of these Jews—when they came with fresh objections, saying, “Who is this Son of Man?” our Lord, instead of replying to them, exhorted them to believe and walk in the light while they had it. He assumed that He was the Light—He took that as a thing which had been proven—He did not go over that ground, again, but He let the quibblers know that He claimed to be the Light of Life, the Light of God whereby men can come to God. And He pressed them to cease from questioning and to begin to practice real and true dealing with Himself. “While you have light,” He said, “believe in the light, that you may be the children of light.”
I am not going, on this occasion, to attempt to meet any difficulties, or to answer any questions. The most of you have no difficulties about the way of salvation and many whom I address, here, have done with asking questions about Christ. The point is, how to come to a practical decision. Spirit of the Living God, make this the day and this the hour when many shall believe in the great Light of God, and shall be made the children of Light once and for all!
I. First of all, I shall call your attention to a very solemn matter which may be described as THE THREATENED END TO A TIME OF PRIVILEGE—“while you have the light.” You have no freehold possession of it. You have the light, but the time of light will come to an end. Observe the 35th verse, “Yet a little while is the light with you.” You have it at present, but it will soon be gone from you. Take heed lest it be gone before you have used it, for when it has once been withdrawn, darkness will come upon you and, “He that walks in darkness knows not where he goes.”
Now what was this light of which our Lord thus spoke? To the Jews, it was the light of the Presence of Christ. It was a great privilege, indeed, for the people living in that age and in that country to have the Son of God among them bodily. John tells us that there were some few who beheld His Glory, “the Glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of Grace and Truth,” but the vast multitude were so blinded that, with God, Himself, in their midst in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ, they did not perceive who the illustrious Stranger was! He came and He went away, again, and they knew not who it was that they had rejected, “for,” as Paul said in writing to the Corinthians, “had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.” That was the Light of God that the Jews had—and which they lost.
Christ has never personally come to you, dear Friends, in the flesh, but the light of His Gospel is still with you, and in a sense, that is His Presence, for Jesus is the very Life of the Gospel. There is also a light that comes to some men, I might even say in human form, for there are some ministers whom God specially appoints as His representatives to bless others. I cannot help looking back in history to such men as Whitefield and Wesley and their companions in that great revival period. It was a time of bright light while they were among the sons of men! They flew like flaming seraphs over this land, leaving a trail of light behind them which banished much of the darkness in which England had been shrouded. It was a great privilege to have heard those men and, when they were gone, to a large extent, and to many people, the Light of God went with them.” There are some preachers still on the earth whom God blesses very greatly in the conversion of souls, men whom you cannot hear without being profited in your souls.