John 12:35-36 (NIV) 35 Then Jesus told them, “You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. Whoever walks in the dark does not know where they are going. 36 Believe in the light while you have the light, so that you may become children of light.” When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them.
I John 3:7-10 (NIV) 7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. 8 The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. 9 No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. 10 This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.
For Jesus, the enemy was more than the people standing around the Cross jesting and ridiculing Him, reveling in his death. The enemy was a power behind them. Jesus had called this power the Accuser, the Deceiver, the Father of all lies, Satan. Jesus was seeing something that we find hard to see and comprehend and to deal with. Do we fall into that trap, seeing the cause of our faults and failures, our problems and difficulties as always being something visible and tangible that we can manipulate and control?
If there is an evil power that opposes God’s will for us and seeks to sabotage our life and capture our mind and heart, there is also a power that overcomes the darkness, and that power was unleashed through the death of Jesus. How did the death of Jesus conquer the power of evil? We do not know fully how the Cross works, but we know its power is verified in history and in human lives. We can debate the existence of evil and discuss the theories of the Cross until we are thoroughly confused. But when our sanity and survival are at stake, only our experience of the Cross is important.
How does that come about? Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. To believe in the light is to live in a spirit of confidence and trust that the ruler of this world has been cast out. Trust helps us to see through the deceits that try to control us and drive us. Most of us know when the demons of fear and anger, greed and guilt and a host of others are the residing dictators of our life. We absolutely can do nothing about them without trust and confidence in God to act in us and for us. By faith and with trust, we resist the deceit that drives us even further down the road to poor judgment and woeful song of self-pity. Jesus saw the real cause of the Cross, not because He had some supernatural knowledge that has been denied us. He saw because He lived with such complete trust in God.
From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope April 5, 1992
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell
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