I can’t think of a greater condemnation to be levied against a people than this: They loved darkness instead of light. I would never want that to be said of me. But that is the way God sees the world. You and I see the world as it is right now. Most of the people around us try and do the right thing and when we are wrong hopefully we apologize. So we tend to think well of most people. But look out on the passage of time….

The Ancient World of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Hellenism, Rome, Persia, India, and East Asia was filled with the ignorance of hundreds of thousands of gods, magic, rituals, superstitions, human sacrifice, conquests, sewage(refuse was mostly thrown into the streets for the rats and dogs), disease (priests attempted to foretell the course of a disease by examining the livers of sacrificed animals). And the list doesn’t end there: ethnic bigotry, civil wars, persecutions, despots, tyrants, class rule, and the systematic murders of tens of thousands.

The Middle Ages of Persia, Constantinople, Islam, Britain, China, India, Genghis Khan and the Mongols, Timur and the Turks, Europe, African Empires and the Americas. All of them covered in the darkness of man’s inhumanity to man: Revolutions, expansionism, Mohammad’s Conquest and Christianity’s Crusades, warlords, heretics, witchcraft, increased trade bringing death and plagues to millions, and the crowding in the cities spreading the misery all the more. And on top of this misery wars fought for every ridiculous reason known to man.

The Enlightenment and the Modern world also have faired no better. We too have loved the darkness instead of the light. Europe, Africa, Mid-East, India, and the Americas have all dipped their finger into the cesspool of sin: Guns, germs, slavery, the need for women’s suffrage, massacres, socialism, resistance to democracy, religious fundamentalism’s resistance to progress, Fascism, Communism, The Holocaust, the Ku Klux Klan, greed, the market crash, The Depression, world wars, The Bomb, and lest we forget 9/11.

I can’t tell you what a short list this is. And this says nothing of the millions of women and children who have suffered throughout the ages at the hands of ruthless men. There is no way to write that history because it is hidden from the pages of history.

Yes! Men have loved darkness rather than light. There is a morbid destructive tendency in all of us. We dabble in the diabolical. We revel in revenge. And we hate in our hearts. My, how we love to live in the shadows! What must God think of us?

Here is his verdict, as true today as it was when it was pronounced 2000 years ago: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light, because their deeds were evil. This is Jesus’ description of mankind. And can any of us argue with him?

For a few moments let’s look at the world through the eyes of God. What does He see?

I. 

First there are those who acknowledge not the darkness. God sees all those whose deeds are evil, who fear being exposed by the light. Make no mistake. We all, all men and women, can be lumped together into one category, as sinners, but there are those in this world whose hearts are hardened and for the most part are beyond hope. They fear the light. Now I know it seems improper for a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to say that some are beyond hope. And while it is true that anyone at anytime, even the most vial criminal, might repent and believe, Jesus said, everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. They will not come because they hate the light. Jesus eventually turned his back on the Jews and reached out to the Gentiles. He turned his back on entire towns and cursed them. He instructed his disciples to shake the dust of a town off their feet when they were not received. They were to go and look for more fertile soil to sow the seeds of the kingdom. 

This past century has been a century characterized by darkness. For all the advances that mankind has made there were very dark days that lie ahead. The age of enlightenment promised through science, medicine, industry to usher mankind into a utopian society. Indeed it looked like it might actually happen and then WWI slipped in to dash these hopes. Nationalism reared its ugly head and brought man's head down in shame. The thought then after the war was that it was the war to end all wars. One last final dying breath of man's inhumanity to man. We had gotten it out of our soul. We had washed our hands of the dirty business of war. Now we were set to build the society we'd dreamed of. The peace of Versailles would insure this. Albert Einstein formulated his Theory of Relativity. Airmail service was established in the United States. The 19th Amendment gave American women the right to vote. Gandhi emerged as India's leader in its struggle for independence. Charles Lindbergh flew the "Spirit of St. Louis" from New York to Paris. The world was indeed getting smaller. 

But another spirit had landed in Europe: The spirit of fascism. Hitler was building his Third Reich, and with it death and horror on a scale which mankind had never known. Entering into that war almost too late, the United States turned the tide, righting one of histories greatest wrongs. A great hope dawned as a result of that great victory. Prosperity beyond any ever known improved lives around the world. But there was a shadow that was cast in the dawn. For the war was won in 1945 by the invention of the bomb. And today it still casts its long shadow. 

Since then the Korean War and Vietnam were reminders of just how chaotic the world could be. And then we seemed so close to a lasting peace. The wall had gone down in Berlin. Eastern Europe had opened up. The cold war with Russia had thawed and at that time in the early 1990s, we thought, "Finally! At long last, we can have a peaceful world." But then suddenly on August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait launching a crescendo of tension-packed events that led to the Persian Gulf War. Then, ten years later, we experienced the horror and tragedy and heart-wrenching pain of September 11, 2001, which led to the War on Terror, prompting military action in Afghanistan and now in Iraq. And over the last few dramatic days, unforgettable images have captured our minds and touched our hearts. 

There will always be dictators, tyrants, wars, and rumors of war. There will always be the darkness. The story is told of a young man who entered a very strict monastic order. It was so strict that members were permitted to speak only two words per year to the abbot. At the end of year one the young man appeared before the abbot and spoke his two words, "bad food." At the end of the second year the young man appeared before the abbot and spoke two more words, "hard bed". At the end of year three he came to the abbot and spoke his last two words, "I quit." The abbot responded, "Well its about time, because complain, complain, complain is all you've done since you came here." 

We humans are people of darkness. We complain, rebel, work against the Kingdom of God. Death is all we know. Lives filled with the patterns of sin. These are the first things God sees as he looks down upon us, those whose deeds are evil, who fear the light because their evil deeds will be exposed. 

II. 

God does an astonishing thing. He brings the light anyway. He erects a cross of death that we might look up and live. He leads us out of the darkness. He loves the world and does not condemn it. He does not condemn you, if you do not fear the light...if you will believe. Faith, Trust, Belief that’s the second thing that God sees as he looks out over the world: There are those who acknowledge the darkness. There ARE those who live by the truth, who have allowed themselves to be exposed by the light. You see that's the difference. There are not those who are evil and those who are good. The difference is this: There are those who do not want to be exposed and there are those who are willing to be exposed. There are those who hide their evil deeds and there are those who allow God in Christ to shine his light and expose those deeds. In a word we all do evil deeds but if you are truthful you are willing for those deeds to be exposed. 

I love the story that comes out of California. Police there were staging an intense search for a vehicle that was stolen, even to the point of placing announcements on local radio stations to contact the thief. The reason for the intensity of the search lay on the front seat of the stolen car-a box of crackers that, unknown to the thief, were laced with poison. The car owner had created the poisonous crackers intending to use them as rat bait. Now the police and the even owner of the VW Bug were more interested in apprehending the thief to save his life than to recover the car. So often when we run from God, we feel it is to escape his punishment. But what we are actually doing is eluding his rescue. 

When we are willing to have our deeds exposed, we can be saved. Jesus said, whomever lives by the truth comes into the light. 

III. 

Finally, God sees there are those who acknowledge their need for forgiveness. When Nicodemus came to Jesus, he did so under cover of darkness. Jesus said to him, Nicodemus, you must be born again. You must go through a rebirth and learn to live all over again, because up until now you have tried to please God by the Law. You have tried to be righteous through your own efforts. And you see the mess that's gotten you into. You see all the destruction in the world. But now, Nicodemus, God requires one thing. Acknowledge your need for forgiveness, acknowledge that you need to go in a different direction with your life, and acknowledge God's love for you in Jesus Christ. 

That is what mankind needs. He needs the love of God. He needs forgiveness. She needs to recognize her need for forgiveness. He needs to be convinced of this love. Looking back on the last 100 years humans have been intolerably cruel to one another. God looks down and sees the evil but he does what we need most. He says I like you anyone. I love you regardless. I do not condemn you. I am sending you my son so that you might be saved. He will tell you of my love. 

Charles Shulz, creator and author of the Peanuts cartoon characters often conveys a message in his comic strips. In one strip he conveys through Charlie Brown the need we have to be loved and through Lucy our inability to love one another. Charlie Brown and Lucy are leaning over the proverbial fence speaking to one another: 

CB: All it would take to make me happy is to have someone say he likes me.
Lucy: Are you sure? 

CB: Of course I'm sure!
Lucy: You mean you'd be happy if someone merely said he or she likes you? Do you mean to tell me that someone has it within his or her power to make you happy merely by doing such a simple thing? 

CB: Yes! That's exactly what I mean! 
Lucy: Well, I don't think that's asking too much. I really don't. [Now standing face to face, Lucy asks one more time] But you're sure now? All you want is to have someone say, "I like you, Charlie Brown," and then you'll be happy? 

CB: And then I'll be happy!
Lucy: Lucy looks at Charlie Brown, turns and walks away, saying, I can't do it! 

What Lucy cannot do, sinful as she is, God does. What Charlie Brown needs, lost and alone as he is, God supplies. 

God loves you and is telling you today, "He loves you!" "For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. "