From Darkness Into Light

Well, thank you, Mr. McNamee. Once again, good afternoon to all of you. It's good to be together. It's nice to be able to come before God and worship on such a beautiful Sabbath day. I got a little bit nervous there. You know, it's funny, we didn't know that Mr. Dr. Uncle Dunkle was going to be giving his sermon today, because it got selected, I think, last night or this morning. I just handed it to somebody. I said, hey, pick one of these. You know, go find something good for a first split. But I got a little nervous halfway through. He started kind of jumping on my topic, and I started going, oh, no, he's not. No, he's not going to do that. So there may be some similarities here between what was discussed today and what we're going to be getting into today. But that's a good thing, because repetition is important. And actually, the section that he goes, well, I don't really have any more time to talk about that. That's pretty much what I'm talking about. So it worked out beautifully. God's so good. So funny how that works. Well, rather than a number of years ago, there was a group of scientists that did a study with a group of young people. So a bunch of kids, they basically brought them to this research facility, and they began going through and asking them some pretty specific questions.

The initial experiment actually was designed to illustrate how deeply held preconceived notions could continue to be held, even at times when evidence was presented to the contrary. So situations where somebody believes something, they've grown up believing something one way, they have evidence that shows them the contrary, and they still refuse to see the evidence itself.

In the study, the scientists removed all light sources from a room. They actually covered and protected the room from all external sources of light. So in this room, for example, they would block out curtain all the windows, they'd wrap all around the outside of the window so no light could seep in from around it. They would go and they would block out all the areas around the lights, any places that could possibly provide any sort of light whatsoever, and they painstakingly ensured that this room had no light in it, not a single photon in this room.

So they essentially made a room that the end result was, it was truly pitch black. You could stand in the middle of it, you could close the doors, you could do all the things and set it, and it was as black as it could get inside of this room. It was just absolutely dark. There were no sources of light in the room, there were no sources of light outside the room that was ultimately impacting the space. What the researchers wanted to know, what they told the students that they would be doing essentially, is that the kid would enter the room that was dark, the researcher would have them sit down at the table at the center of the room in one of the chairs, the researcher would sit in the other chair, ultimately. But as soon as the kid came into the room, they would sit down and the researcher would begin sealing off all the edges of the room, making sure that everything was still closed. They would close the door, and then what they asked the student was, how long will it take your eyes to adjust to the darkness? How long will it take for you to be able to see the things in this room, this chair, this desk, the walls, these various items, how long will it take you to do that? And so based on previous experiences, you know, these kids think about their life and experience, they knew that when they went to bed at night, they went into their room, and their parents tucked them in and read them a story. And said, okay, good night, and they flipped the light off. Well, they recognized that as soon as you flip the light off, it gets kind of dark in the bedroom. And maybe it's a little hard to see at first, but as time goes on, eventually you realize, wow, I can actually see pretty well for there not being any light in this room. That's fantastic.

After a little while, their eyes would adjust to the light, and they could more or less see in that low light situation that was in their bedroom. And so because of that previous circumstance, because of that experience that they had before, they were certain that that would be the case again. They were absolutely certain that would be the case again. So they stuck the kid in the room, they closed the door, they sealed it off, and they started chatting with them as they went through this process.

And in another room, there's a set of observers, essentially, kind of keeping track of this. And as the minutes ticked by, the young person was talking with the researcher in the room about how they felt certain it wouldn't be much longer. It wouldn't be much longer before my eyes adjust, and I'll be able to see the things that are in this room. And five, ten minutes went by, fifteen minutes went by, twenty minutes went by, and their eyes never adjusted.

At that point, they began to question the preconceived notion, but interestingly, they continued to hold the belief even afterwards, even after being in that room for thirty minutes, that their eyes would ultimately adjust. Now many of you have been in experiences like this. You've been in a situation of complete and total darkness. You may remember, you may think back to where you experienced something like this. In 2002, I went down to Belize for a tropical ecology course. We had done all the coursework at Western Oregon University. There was a final trip, it was like a two-week trip down to Belize, where we capstone it, we did our research project and all that. Well, part of the trip was on an island out in, off the coast of Belize. The other half of it was inland, was on the mainland in the jungle, out in this little fire station that was kind of out in the middle of nowhere.

And I remember them saying, oh, one of the things we've scheduled for this is a night cave. So we're going to go into this cave, but we're going to do it at night. I remember thinking to myself, oh, about that. I was right. It was a terrible, terrible outing. I've shared with you actually in another sermon a story of that exact same situation, when I discovered a spider the size of a dinner plate that was about eight inches from my face. And I also discovered on that trip that I'm actually a soprano.

I didn't know that. That was a shock, as I screamed and took off running and trying to get everything off of me. But we got into this cave, deep inside this cave, after several turns, several corridors, you know, the walls of this thing, the ceilings of these caverns, as we would come into them. You know, the corridors didn't have them, but we would come in, and there would just be these spiders all over the ceiling. They'd be all over the ceiling. They'd be all over the rocks. I mean, there were a lot of them. A lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of them. But we would keep going down, and as long as we were in the corridors, and we weren't touching the walls, you were generally fine.

We got down to what we would consider, kind of, I don't know, the bottom, I guess, of this cave. And the guide goes, we should totally turn off all the lights. You guys will not believe that. And I'm looking around, and all these spiders going, why? Why? At least with the light, we know where they are. We turned the light off, we have no idea. They could be right next to us, we would have no idea. But they decided we were going to turn the light off anyway.

So they did. And we sat in the bottom of that cave, for what probably, it felt like 30 minutes, it was probably 15. It was probably 15. And we sat in that darkness, and I've never experienced anything like it. It was oppressive. Truly, it was oppressive. And I think because of the stagnancy of the air, the darkness just felt thick, for lack of a better description. Just felt thick. And this was in the days before cell phones, it was in the days before smart watch. I know kids, there was a time once before there were cell phones. Before, everybody had a smart watch on their wrists, and cell phone screens, and digital devices.

So by and large, the only light sources we really had with us were the flashlights and headlamps that we had brought. But there was no light at the bottom of this cave. Nothing. And, spoilers, my eyes never adjusted. I could not see my hand in front of my face after 15 minutes. I knew it was there. I mean, I understood, proximity-wise, that it was present.

I couldn't see it. I couldn't see the person sitting next to me. I couldn't see all the spiders on the wall, which was partly a good thing. Partly not such a good thing. Turns out, thankfully, they were still where they were. You know, what God has done as far as our creation and putting together humanity is incredible. You know, the adjustment of our eyes, the process that actually takes place for this to happen, is incredible. It's very intricate. Our eyes actually shift from the primary processing of what we see using the cones of our eyes to the rods of our eyes.

And in that process, in that shift, it allows us to be able to increase our sensitivity to light by about 100,000 times. Which seems like an incredible number, but other animals can go even more than that. I mean, it's pretty amazing what the animal kingdom can do, too. But in addition to those chemical changes, there's physical changes. Our pupils dilate. They open up to allow more light in to be able to help us to see these various things. In ordinary, full light, so you and I, while we are sitting in this room right now, we are using our cones to process our vision primarily.

So cones are designed to help us see color. They're designed to help us see sharp images. So in full light situations, such as this, sunlight outside, lights in the hall, our cones are the primary source that we're using. But if we turn the lights off in here, and I mean we block out the lights in here, those cones are going to begin to adjust to the reduced light.

It takes them about 5 to 10 minutes to reduce to pretty much what they're capable of doing. If you stay in dark longer than that, what your body says is these cones aren't going to cut it anymore. What we need to do is now start shifting the photo processing to the rods of the eye. And what ends up happening is, after about 20 to 30 minutes in darkness, the photo processing of your eyes is now in the rods.

And there's a pigment in the rods of your eyes called rhodopsin. And it's a purplish pigment that's in the rods of your eyes. In normal bright light, so right now for most of us, your rhodopsin levels are very low. They're not currently really there. They're being bleached. And what ends up happening is if you turn off the light and you allow about 20 to 30 minutes of darkness, that pigment begins to regenerate. It takes about 30 minutes to do that. And once that pigment has regenerated and that rhodopsin is present in full amount, you have the ability to see in low light situations in a way that you would not have otherwise.

But the reality is, for you to see an object, there has to be light reflecting off of it. And so in a room with no light, you will not see anything. Your eyes will never adjust. And that is what the young people in that experiment found out. That it turns out when there is no light for your eyes to adjust to, they are never going to adjust. Where are we going with this? Turn with me, please, over to Genesis 1.

In the Bible, we see an analogy that's developed primarily in the writings of the Apostle Paul, but there's traces of it that are found in the writings of the Apostle John throughout the Psalms, throughout the Pentateuch, and throughout the Gospel accounts. This analogy, in the way that it's been built in Scripture, this analogy juxtaposes two situations, two conditions.

It juxtaposes the way of God, symbolized by light, and it juxtaposes the way of Satan, or the world, so to speak, symbolized by darkness. And one of the first places that we see this kind of fundamental concept in Scripture laid out is in Genesis 1. Genesis 1 and verse 1 says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 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.

There's a lot in this passage to unpack, Genesis 1 and 2. There's a lot here. We're going to skip over some of that today for sake of time, but realistically, Moses, who we believe wrote the Pentateuch, writes that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Those are things that we accept. The physical creation came into being. And in this initial state, when this Scripture picks up, we see an earth that is without form, that is formless. The Hebrew word is tohuu, formless.

It's like a wasteland, in a sense. It's empty. It's without form and void, empty. Darkness was on the face of the deep, the waters that are present here on its surface.

Then, verse 3, God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And so the evening and the morning were the first day. There's a really cool poster that was on my supervising teacher's office wall one time, and it said, and God said, and then it gives this big old, long calculus equation.

And it says, and there was light. And it's just such a cool concept that God just spoke light into existence. Right? Through the, maybe the language of calculus, probably not. But that's our human attempt to describe what it is that God did. But God spoke, and light sprang into existence. But what we see is that one of his first acts in creation is to divide that light from darkness, to separate these two things.

From the beginning of God's creation, light and darkness were separated into day and night. They were made to be distinct. They were made to be divided. They were made to be separated. And as Scripture continues, we see this analogy continue to build out through the concepts that we see in the teachings of God. Let's go over to Psalm 119. Psalm 119. Psalm 119 is a psalm of meditation. It meditates on the Word of God. It considers His law. It considers His way. It considers the Word that He's ultimately revealed to mankind. Its benefits. Its blessings. And we'll pick it up in Psalm 119, verse 97, for the context. But what's incredible about Psalm 119, these passages are divided up into 22 stanzas of 8 verses each. And each of those 22 stanzas has one letter of the Hebrew alphabet that is set up to begin it. So it's a acrostic poem in that sense. But when we look at this, often we look at it stanza by stanza as very separated things. But in addition to being separated out in stanzas, it's also one big, long poem. And these concepts connect from one to the next to the next. These ideas, these concepts, are present from one to the next. So Psalm 119, 97 gives us some context, gives us the direction that the psalmist is going to go. It says, Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. You, through your commandments, make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me. It says, I have more understanding than all of my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients, because I keep your precepts. I have restrained my feet from every evil way, that I may keep your word. I have not departed from your judgments, for you yourself have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Through your precepts, I get understanding, and therefore, I hate every false way. So in these verses, they're considering the law of God, the wisdom that that law provides, the understanding that leads to obedience, and the keeping of these precepts. And in verse 101, Psalm 119, the psalmist describes that those precepts have allowed him to restrain his feet, to restrain his feet from every evil way. The Hebrew word here is, orach, which can be translated as path, or road, or ground. The word orach is derived from a Hebrew word, or Hebrew root, rather, that means to go, or to go on a journey. And what's interesting about this particular word is the implication is that this is a path that is well-trodden. This is a road. This is high traffic. That is what this is talking about, one upon which goods, caravans, can travel. You can imagine this in your head as a pathway that somebody is driving a team of oxen down, carrying a cart with a pile of donkeys behind them, and they still got room on either side. This is a large way, a large road, a large path, which in our English signifies something a little bit smaller. But, orach, that concept, gets at this idea of a large road. That is a road that's easy to walk down. It's a road that's easy to traverse. It's a road where you're probably not going to trip over something. It's pretty clear. You're not going to stumble. You're not going to have stuff in the way. Your oxen are going to be able to go down the road, no problem at all. But the sense that the author is building here is that the Word of God, His precepts, keep our feet from these evil paths upon which so many people in the world around us, high traffic, are trotting.

Those precepts restrain our feet from departing the true path. Verse 104 emphasizes the prior point that through God's precepts come understanding. Difference in these ways, through God's precept, comes understanding. Therefore, He hates every false path. It is though He forsakes those paths, refusing to go down them as a result of the way of God and God's teachings.

But now again, here's one stanza. But keep in mind, these concepts are connected. Verse 105, the next stanza builds off of this idea. Verse 105, Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I have sworn and confirmed that I will keep your righteous judgments. I am afflicted very much.

Revive me, O Lord, according to your word, except I pray the free will offerings of my mouth, O Lord, and teach me your judgments. My life is continually in my hand, yet I do not forget your law. The wicked have laid a snare for me, yet I have not strayed from your precepts. Your testimonies I have taken as a heritage forever, for they are the rejoicing of my heart. I have inclined my heart to perform your statutes forever to the very end. So the psalmist writes here, Your word, Your word is a lamp to my feet, and it's a light to my path.

You might think, well, it's probably the same word, right? A rock. He's talking about a path. He's talking about a road. It's not. The word is the Hebrew word nathieb. So the psalmist is intentionally using a different word here to describe the concept.

That matters. That's important. In Hebrew, nathieb represents a footpath. In fact, the root comes from the Hebrew root to tramp. So it actually comes... how do you make a footpath? Well, you walk over the area, and you tramp down the weeds. How do goats make a path? How do deer make a path out in the woods, those of you that have ever hunted? You go see game trails. Where do the game trails come from?

A few deer, a few animals running down these little itty-bitty trails. That's what comes to mind when we think of nathieb in Hebrew. We think of that word. It's a footpath. It's an area a few people have trodden, and it's laid a trail in that particular area. What he says is that God's word is a lamp to his feet and a light to that footpath.

He's not on the big road. He's not on the well-lit highway. He's not over here with all the high traffic. He's on this narrow path. On that narrow path, if you don't know where to put your feet, you're not going to stay on it for very long. And so the light that he describes, God's word, the light, enables him to see where to put his feet, to understand where to put your foot down. So he doesn't catch his foot on a rock or a root or something else that's sticking out there that the goats didn't notice because they're goats.

The light of God's word illuminates the darkness and gives us the ability to see the path that we walk on. Why does it do that? Because light drives out darkness. That's what light does. That's the concept of illumination. In fact, one of the most interesting things that was brought out in that experiment with those young people was that in circumstances where there was any light, any light at all allowed in that room, like even the smallest of little LEDs.

Suddenly, after a period of time, your eyes adjusted to the low light from that one little LED, and you could see the walls, you could see the chair, you could see the desk, you could see the other person. Darkness, scientifically, by definition, darkness, is the absence of light. If you have a low light, you automatically have a low light situation. It is no longer darkness, by definition, because light is present.

How do you illuminate the path for your feet? By allowing there to be light. By allowing the light to drive that darkness away and enable us to see. There's a couple other places where this concept begins to come in scripturally. I'll give you a couple quick. John 1, verse 5. If you can pop it up on the screen, fantastic. John 1, verse 5 says, The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it.

You may see comprehend it. That word can be translated either way. Some translations have overcome, some have comprehend. John 8, verse 12, records the word of Christ as he describes to his disciples, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

Why would we never have darkness if we follow Christ? Because the light of Christ drives that darkness away. You cannot have darkness in the presence of God. Finally, 1 John 1, verse 5. John writes a similar concept. We are going to turn over here. You ever get stuck and you're not sure which passage it is that John writes about Christ being light? Just take a random guess. Either his gospel or his first epistle. Both of them. Chapter 1, verse 5. It's beautiful. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but it sure helps.

1 John 1, verse 5. Which is right here. 1 John 1, verse 5. It says, John kind of further develops this idea that God himself is light. That there is no darkness in him. He's not like the Gnostics taught in the latter part of the first century. That God was some sort of blend of both good and evil. Or that to fully experience the joys of that which is good, one must first completely experience the depths of sin.

John's saying that is not the case. God is light. There is no darkness in God. In fact, his presence drives darkness away. His presence drives darkness away, which is what John concludes with in verse 6. He says, if we say that we have fellowship with him and we walk in darkness, we lie and we do not practice the truth. He says you can't be walking in darkness and be in God's presence. The two are incompatible. God is light. If God is there and his presence is present, there ain't no darkness. That's what John's getting at here, is this idea of what light and dark, how these two things connect.

And so because of that, John concludes, if we claim to have fellowship with him, if we claim to say, yeah, I know God, we're close, I have fellowship with God, and I'm here walking, as many of the Gnostics did, here walking in darkness, he says we cannot by definition have fellowship with him because his presence drives the darkness away. John connects that presence with the blood of Christ and how staying in his presence, remaining connected to God, gives us the ability to be forgiven of our sins and to be cleansed.

He says instead, if we walk in darkness and we claim that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. That is a state of deception at that point. John states that it's only in the light that truth can flourish, that darkness can be banished, can be kept at bay.

And it's important for us to keep in mind that that light doesn't come from us. It comes from Christ. It comes from his presence. So we have this concept that's been kind of built up throughout Scripture. We have darkness and light separated at creation, tonight, today. We have this idea that Christ is light. In Christ there is no darkness. Satan and Christ are then separated in that sense. Darkness flees from light. When things are illuminated, suddenly they're no longer in darkness. It flees from this idea of illumination. With all of that in mind, let's turn over to Ephesians 5 and verse 8. Ephesians 5 and verse 8. In the book of Ephesians, Paul is addressing the believers in Ephesus.

It was a newer congregation that had developed and was growing in the midst of a culture that was full of idolatry, full of sorcery. When Paul originally went there, it kind of mentions in Acts 19 and Acts 20, kind of gets a little bit of the story there. But when he originally went there, it was just a small handful of believers that ultimately turned into this just massive group of people that turned Ephesus upside down.

I mean, people were burning their sorcery books, they were putting the idol-makers out of business. I mean, it was a big old thing and the city ended up in a riot. Well, in that process, these brethren that were coming into the church at that time were coming out of a Greco-Roman culture. And as they were called out of that culture, they were called into a very different way of life. Ephesians 5 and verse 8, again, keeping this principle of darkness and light in mind. And Ephesians 5 and verse 8 reads, Paul describes the state that they were in before their calling. They were in darkness. They were in a state that was separated from God. They were divided from Him, as night is divided from day. However, Paul says, you are now light, how? In the Lord. Not light because of their own efforts, not light because of what they've done, but because they have been invited into God's presence. They've been brought into His light in that sense. And staying close to Him, remaining in that presence, keeps that darkness at bay.

Jesus Christ illuminates the way. He drives the darkness away. And so Paul says, walk as children of light. Navigate your life in such a way as though you are children of that light. He says, don't have any fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.

Paul says, not only should you not have any fellowship with those things, he said, you should expose them. How? How do you expose something that's in the dark? You turn the light on. You turn the light on. Or in our circumstance, you reflect the light of God into that darkness. You reflect God's light into that darkness.

You know, we mentioned earlier, if we took every single source of light in this room out, thick paper over the windows, cracks to the outside, all sealed up, everything there, hallway to the gym, we closed everything off, turned off all the lights, turned off everything, and we could make this space enter into abject darkness, where you could not see the person next to you, no hands in front of your face or anything, no lights, and we sit long enough, we would not be able to see a thing.

If after an hour or so of that, if any of us could handle it, people have gone crazier at Alcatraz for less, if we put a small candle on a pedestal in the middle of this room, just a little candle, in the middle of the room, in complete and total darkness, after a period of time, we would be able to see the walls, we would be able to see the people, we would be able to see a number of these things, as that was reflecting off of the space and allowing us to be able to see what was there, that single, small point of light is enough to reveal that which was previously shrouded in darkness.

That's all it takes. A little bit of light. That's it.

How do you expose the unfruitful works of darkness? You reflect the light of God into the darkness.

You reflect God's character into the darkness. Verse 9, Paul describes these things. He says, the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, truth, finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. So we learn, ultimately, what's acceptable to God by the illumination of His Word, kind of showing us the path, showing us where to put our feet as we walk in His way. But interestingly, Paul, in verse 13, describes the role that light plays in this process. The New King James is a little clunky in its translation of Ephesians 5, verse 13. I'd like to read it for you in the New Living translation. I think it explains it a little bit more effectively here. Verse 13 of Ephesians 5 in the New Living says, But their evil intentions will be exposed when the light shines on them, for the light makes everything visible.

The light makes everything visible. That's that word manifest in the New King James. It's a challenging translation because you think of manifestation in a different way.

The light of God makes all things visible, and it makes all things able to be recognized for what they are. It illuminates them. It allows them to be seen for what they truly are. Rather than the reality is that darkness has no power of its own in that sense. Satan has been given authority by God. He's been given dominion by God for a time in this process. We recognize societally in the world around us. We have a very darkened world. Darkness is simply the absence of light. And when a room is dark, when you walk into your space at night and it's dark, you don't fight the darkness. You don't sit there and start airboxing the darkness. You don't try to sweep the darkness out of the room somehow or otherwise push it to the corners. Argue with it. Hey, darkness! Do this!

How do you get rid of the darkness? Flip on the light. You turn on the light. Realistically, the darkness disappears when we introduce light.

That's how it goes away. And the same is true spiritually. Sometimes I think we spend so much time focused on the darkness that is around us. The confusion of society, the moral decline of culture, the pressures of the world, that we forget sometimes where our attention really belongs. The answer has never been to become experts on the darkness. That has never been the answer. The answer is to draw closer to the light, continually and constantly drawing closer to the light. The closer that we remain to Christ, the more clearly we're able to see. The more clearly that these other things will be illuminated for what they are. The more time we spend in His Word, the more obvious the difference becomes between truth and between error, between righteousness and sin. The light of God's Word illuminates the narrow path. It gives us where to put our feet, while the broad way leads to destruction. And just as travelers on those little narrow paths need illumination to know where to put their feet, we do too. As believers, we depend on God's Word to help us to see where we're supposed to put our feet. Brethren, do we stay close enough to Christ, do we stay close enough to Christ, that His character is reflected in our words and our actions, in our attitudes and our decisions? Are we staying in His presence, close enough, that that is the case and that that darkness is kept away? Do we allow His Word to illuminate the areas of our lives that still need change, still need work, getting ready to put our foot down on the path and we see a snake, aah! Spider, big old spider, right? Don't put your foot there. Do we reflect His goodness, His righteousness, His truth into a world that needs it so desperately? We've not been called to admire the light, so to speak. We're called to walk as children of light. Called to walk as children of light. And when we do, when we do that, the darkness around us is not going to define us. Instead, we'll be reflections of His light, shining in a world that needs so desperately to know where that path lay.