Light in the Darkness

Well, thank you very much for the warm welcome. Greetings to everyone and all of those who are watching online. This is a wonderful, wonderful opportunity to be here in a a great beautiful part of God's creation on his Sabbath day that I don't know is is an inspiring look ahead at what Jesus Christ plans to bring to this earth. And uh we are so blessed to
have understanding. Now what I'd like to do with you is talk to you about how our understanding is unique. Near here right behind us is a mountain side. I don't know how tall it is because you can't see the forest for the trees. They're quite tall. But this tree has a thick deep forest. And the the canopy stands very very tall in the air and it's blocked by the branches and the needles.
And as you come down below, the ground is covered with plants, ferns, and plants and fallen pieces of trees and limbs. And there are flowers and there are little depressions and and gorges. And those gorges get washed out and leave rocks. And I'd like you to do something for me right now. It's going to be a little unpleasant, but please let's all do this.
Let's close our eyes for just about 60 seconds. I know you don't want to do this, but just close your eyes for a minute. Now, imagine traversing the wilderness I just described with what you see right now. You're going to get dropped into this and you're going to go to your destination, whatever that is. Seeing exactly what you're seeing right now, you're going to try to navigate what I described.
H along with perhaps some sheer drop offs, some poisonous plants that are there, quite a few of them, prowling animals. This is what we call walking blind. And this, if you were to do this, it would be a rather pitiful experience because the dead branches would be trip hazards. The the branches still on the trees low down are stripped bare and would be poking you in the face and the eyes at times.
You would be tripping. You would be falling onto unknown things that would create injuries or pain. Frustration would break out. Maybe panic would break out. And as you try to navigate through something you can't see, Jesus says in John 11 and verse 10, if one walks in the night with the absence of light, he stumbles because the light is not in him.
Now this is a spiritual metaphor for not seeing the right steps, the steps to a prosperous life with a bright future. And in Matthew 13:13, Jesus says, "Spiritually, seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand." And so consequently, humanity, like you are with your eyes closed, is directing their steps in a self-imagined way, thinking that they know where to go, right? imagining, coming up with their own ideas, which is in this case a slow death experience. Everything's a stumble.
Everything's a bump. Everything is not taking you in anything except towards eventual death. Now, open your eyes if you will. If we look at verse 16 in Matthew 13:13, but blessed or that Greek word meaning supremely blessed are your eyes for they see. Now look around. Look at what we see.
Blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear. Now, what we just experimented with may seem sort of like a a metaphor or a stretch because we we're used to seeing. But actually, if you were blind or if your eyes did not function, that's the world you would live in. That is the world you would live in. And spiritually speaking, the Bible talks about those who do not have God's Holy Spirit as being blind.
And we can see that there is a dramatic difference. It's not just sort of a subtle little thing. It's a dramatic difference. The title of the sermon is light in the darkness. Light in the darkness. You know, the words light and darkness appear together in scripture. 54 different times. We won't go through all of those probably at this men's weekend, but individually these these words light and darkness appear 414 times in scripture.
The Bible is filled with the metaphor of light and darkness in a spiritual sense. So, as we go through this weekend, let's continue now on the theme, seeing various elements of that theme throughout the Bible. Our goal, of course, is the future kingdom of heaven. That's a that's a heavenly realm of of a new kingdom of where things are eternal, new heavens, new earth, and God and Jesus Christ are its light.
In Revelation chapter 22, the last book of the Bible, starting in the very first verse, it says here, John here is seeing in vision, and he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal proceeding from the throne of God and the lamb. So, here is the throne. Jesus Christ and the father are on this throne.
Verse five, there shall be no night there. No night. no night anyway. For or they they need no lamp nor light of the sun. For the Lord gives them light and they shall reign forever and ever. God gives them light. We know that God himself is light. Jesus Christ is light. And here we see that it is the God beings who light the kingdom of God.
We don't know what we know physics. We don't know spiritics. So we don't know what that type of light is. We don't know how they are so energized with brilliant light. But it just is present in the kingdom of God. And so as we look then at the destination and we see that God is light, we see how he then uses that as a metaphor for us in the physical realm.
In scripture, light and dark are used as a metaphor of God, godliness, his mindset, his way, and then darkness as something different, something opposite, totally different, having nothing to do with God or with light, but rather something totally totally different. And so if we think for a minute back at Egypt, uh we know that Egypt is used in the Bible like a sinful society and Pharaoh is a type of Satan.
And God clearly showed that society to be what he would call darkness. It had wonders. It had pyramids. It had all kinds of great things to to impress people. nice palms and lush farms and everything. But God showed in Exodus chapter 10 and verse 22 what that was through his eyes. Exodus 10:22. So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven and there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days.
God just showed that that was nothing to do with him. Thick darkness. Um, one of the commentaries says, "The association of three days and death is found in ancient myths, ancient folklore, and religious beliefs worldwide. Three days and death." And God just made that that that synonymous analogy, that metaphor fit realistically.
Now, how how deep was that? Well, here we have Egypt, which is a dead-end society, a way of death. And in verse 23, they did not see one another. The Egyptians did not see one another, nor did anyone rise from his place for three days. They either stayed in bed or sat on a chair or sat on the ground. They didn't rise from their place for three days.
So with no sight, you have no sense of depth, of space, of reality, of things. There's no view of the environment. What can you possibly do? Well, whatever you do is not going to be profitable, is it? In the way of society, the way of Satan's world, nothing is profitable. Everything marches towards destruction of relationships, destruction of physical life, destruction of animal life, planet life.
You can see where the earth is going. We as a human race are headed towards extinction. Unless God intervenes, there will be no flesh saved alive. In verse 24, there was another group of people. But all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings. Now, this is probably a miracle. It didn't say they had lamps that worked. Didn't say that they had fire.
It said they had light in their dwellings. And if God produces light, there's just light. So, you have a miraculous light in their dwellings. Similarly, in the church today, this this metaphor should be this distinct to you and me. Not just some little thing, but a distinct metaphor that in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 and verse 5 shows us a completely contrasted group of people.
1 Thessalonians chapter 5 and verse 5. As sons of God, we are following a path that is lit by Jesus Christ. It says, "You are all sons of light and sons of the day." Sons of light and sons of the day. If we would really appreciate what he is saying here, that we are all sons of light. That's who we are.
that we are sons of the day. Notice we are not of the night nor of darkness. You and I have that as a task, as a goal to totally come out of anything like that. And that's why we're here this weekend. And that's why every day we strive to be uh children of the day. God and all things associated with him are light.
Uh we heard in the sermonet that God said let there be light. He didn't say turn on the sun. That doesn't happen till day four. He just said let there be light. God showed up and there was light. Right? And that was a total contrast to the darkness. So we come forward from there. We see God in a burning bush. It was a a light. We don't know how bright, but here's God represented by light.
When Israel came out of Egypt, they came out at night. It was interesting. God brought them out in the darkness. And he was the light, bright light, and he became light for them for 40 years through the wilderness. Now if we then are God's sons uh when we are uh with him then we are uh a spiritual example of what the Israelites had.
They had the light of God and they were on the path of God. We see on Mount Si he was bright light. We see in Ezekiel chapter 1, God is described of the the brightness of his appearance. Uh when Jesus Christ um was transfigured, they saw him as brightness at his second coming. We see him very very bright. God provides some spiritual light to people during this age.
We are the current receivers of that light, the possessors of that light. In Job chapter 12 and verse 22, it says, "God uncovers deep things out of darkness." He's uncovered you. And he brings the shadow of death to light. You and I see now, we understand because of God. But he goes on in verse 24 to show how Satan tries to prevent that light from reaching people.
So they'll wander around in the dark and hurt themselves and fail and fall and ultimately die. In verse 24, he takes away the understanding of the chiefs of the people of the earth and makes them wander in a pathless wilderness. Verse 25. They grope in the dark without light, and he makes them stagger like a drunken man. This morning, I walked up the side of this mountain a ways and I stood and I looked at what you could see with your eyes and then imagine what it would be like if you tried to navigate that in the blackness of dark. We don't have
night light that penetrates the forest up there. If there are lights on in town, you wouldn't see them there. It would just be blackness. You could say, "All right, well, I'm going to navigate and trip and and make my way for a while, and I I I know I've been out in the wilderness before. I can Ow, okay, that hurt.
Um, you know, this stung. Uh, maybe I'm tired. I I feel some plants. I could get these tinder plants. I could put them on the ground and make a bed and these these soft flowers would be great. You know, this is human reasoning. When you would take a poisonous plant like are up there with their beautiful flowers, every part of that plant is highly poisonous.
If you put your hand on it and then were to eat something, you would ingest something inside that would poison you and begin to perhaps blister you from the inside out. If you laid down on that and rubbed your face in that and got it in your your eyes and your nose and your mouth, you probably would not survive, especially if you had were susceptible to that.
And so it is with with humanity. You see, society right now, they're making all of these choices that are bad for them. Bad for what we eat, bad for our relationships, bad for life itself. I mean, look at what humanity is doing right now with the food supply, with the armaments, with chemicals. I mean, we're just on a crazy path.
I talked today with Vinnie. Vinnie and I shared our views of this wonderful creation right here, and we're both very inspired by it, and we both have a little different history that helps us appreciate that. uh he's from New York and I I'm from somewhere else and we talk about all the animals and the specialness here.
Then we compared it to environments we've seen in other places around the world and how this one excels in many ways. And then Vinnie began to express bewilderment. He says, you know, at the same time, why why is there so much death in the animal world? He says down by the waters along north of Seattle there he likes to take a walk from his home and they have little baby bunnies that hatch out one season and you had the eagles they hatch out and then then you have the coyotes that come and eat the little bunnies and you know why is
there so much suffering like that and then he said and then people dying he says I just I can't understand why death and we have to bury people and it's so sad bad. He says, "And the world is getting so bad so fast. It seems like everything humanity is doing is turning for the worse." Then he said, "These are the big bewilderments in life.
" And he says, "What do you do for a living?" I said, "Well, I'm a minister." He says, "Oh, but you have a tough time explaining some of these things to people." And I said, 'Well, you know, Jesus Christ is going to return and he's going to change a lot of the environment and change a lot of the the mindsets of people and there is a better world coming.
And he says, well, he must have quite a challenge uh trying to help people understand those things. And he and he joined the rest of his group that's also here uh in this place. but a a typical individual who who just can't see and can't understand and yet sees that things are not going the way they should. But there's a good light that God brings to those who he calls.
We see in John chapter 1 and verse one, in the beginning, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God and all things verse three were made through him and without him nothing was made that was made. And in verse four, in him in Jesus Christ was life. Not this death and dying but was life and the life was the light of men.
And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it. We as humans cannot comprehend God's light. We can't see it. We don't have eyes that that process that wavelength. Just like a human eye that's broken does not process the wavelength of light. And so nothing happens.
When the sun rises, you and I see a sunrise and a glorious sunrise. Those eyes see nothing. Just nothing. Somebody might try to describe it to them, try to tell them what it looks like. They hear it. They don't see it. Maybe they don't believe it. Who knows? But we we see I'd like to just notice in Genesis chapter 1 and verse4 after God made the light.
He declared in verse 4 that it was good. God saw the light and he said it was good. The light comes from the Hebrew word o r. I guess that's or and it means literally light. However, figuratively it means wisdom, joy, happiness and prosperity. So when we talk about light, this is figuratively what the commentary says this word is about.
Wisdom, joy, happiness, and prosperity. And God said that was good. And it said God divided the light from the darkness. So he splits this. He doesn't co-mingle them. He splits the light from the darkness. Darkness comes from the Hebrew word koshek. And koshek literally means darkness. All right? But figuratively from the commentaries darkness means misery, destruction, death, ignorance, sorrow.
So you can see as we at this weekend are talking about light versus darkness, we're talking about something that produces life and good and happiness and a bright future or misery, destruction, death. disappointment, ignorance, sorrow. Humanity is running the misery, destruction, death, ignorance, sorrow path, isn't it? We all know that.
We all see that. And that's why God uses this metaphor of darkness. God, however, is one thing and one thing only. And light is a synonym for that one thing. its purity, its holiness, its right, its blessing, its life, it's goodness, it's life, life more abundantly, eternally, right? That's God in 1 John 1 and verse 5.
God is light and in him is no darkness at all. That's important for us as humans to really grasp. There is no darkness in God. There's no shadow. God's light doesn't make shadows. It just reveals everything in light. And there's no darkness at all. When when you and I say that we're light, we're light to the world.
That's a pretty high standard, isn't it? It's a very pure standard to say, uh, maybe I'm light and in me there's no darkness at all. Well, you know, good old friend of ours, the Apostle Paul said, "That's what I want to be." Well, that's not always what I am. And so, I'm working real hard, real, real hard.
And I don't think I'm going to accomplish everything perfectly in this life, but I'm running. I'm walking. I'm going right. And I I I know there's a great destination for me and everyone who loves his appearing. So, light's associated with the mindset of God. And thus those with the mindset of God are either reflecting that light or they're becoming that light.
We see um this uh reinforcement of of one or the other. In Corinthians 2 Corinthians chapter 6 it says do not be unequally yolked together with unbelievers. uh a yoke as somebody mentioned to me today goes on in on an animal maybe a team of oxen but with that yoke comes reigns somebody's driving that um we need to be yolked with Jesus Christ and him leading us as it were we as uh sheep but we do not want to also be yolked with Satan so we can't be unequally yolked with two different mindsets.
So when we think of what we have to do then um it is important that we cleanse ourselves of levan cleanse oursel unrighteousness of sin. So he talks about what communion or close relationship has light with darkness and what accord has Christ with ballel or the devil. So we can see there is a clear distinction.
We should never in our life say oh I want to be a balanced Christian. I don't want too much works. I mean I'm you know I'm not a law. I'm not going to do too much law. I don't want to do too much sin either you know but I want to be balanced. just, you know, kind of middle road balance kind of guy. I don't sweat the commandments of God too much.
I'm not careful to obey them, but I'm not a big sinner either. I just, you know, compromise a little. We all get along, nice people, and we expect to be in God's kingdom. God says, "Hey, wait a minute. What What do I have to do with with the dark side?" It's funny how humanity casts Satan as dark.
darkness, the dark side, you know, anything with witchery or whatever is is all this darkness, night stuff, and the the guy in the white horse with a white hat and the shining guy, you know, that's always the good guy. Well, um, humanity knows that as well. We have God's precious, miraculous life available, but it's a miracle.
It's an absolute miracle. I think we take it for granted. Jesus sent his apostles in Acts 26:18. And his apostles, uh, Paul here in particular, was sent to open their eyes in order to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God. Once again, you see those two are either or. They're not together.
turn from the power of Satan, which is represented here, darkness, to God, which is represented here by light. So, we begin to see this metaphor building and it's very clear. It's very, very pointed. But let's do this. Um, we talk about these metaphors, but what are the actual applications? Like like I said, we have 40ome darkness and light metaphors.
We have light and dark over 400 times. And we can all leave here and say, "Yep, I want to be light, whatever that means. Uh, I don't want to be darkness, whatever that means." Or, "I think I know what that means." But how do we do it? Actually, the passages that show how to be light or walk in the light are few. They're few.
I'd like to go through a few of those with us today. The personal daily applications of abiding and dwelling and living in God's true light. How exactly do we live the metaphor? 1 John chapter 2 and verse 8. We'll begin with this. 1 John 2:es 8- 11 or 8-10. A new commandment I write to you. So here is a directive which thing is true in him and in you because the darkness is passing away.
Passing away whenever that is used in the Bible is a permanent thing. It's something passed away or is passing away. It does not come back in scripture. That's it. It's the end. So the darkness here is passing away. that state, that mindset, that whole philosophy and everything with it is has an end and it's going to be done.
And it says, "And the true light is already shining." Verse 9, "He who says he is in the light," now here's where we get some application. And and loves less his brother by comparison. Okay? and loves less his brother by comparison. Um, is in darkness until now. He's in that state of misery, of things that aren't working, of fracturing.
He's he's in that state. So, that begins to tell us, um, the true light is shining. What am I doing with this? Am I loving my brother? Am I forgiving him every day? Am I uniting? Am I drawing together in unity and oneness with my brothers and Jesus Christ? Are we fulfilling that oneness desire that he gave his life for in John 17? Or am I just making it about me, me and God? See, it's a good question I have.
And what am I going to do about that? It says here in verse 9, he who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in darkness till now. But verse 10, he who loves his brother abides or dwells in the light. He who loves his brother. That's an agape love. That's a hey, I will give up and sacrifice my time for you.
I will put up with you. I will do love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith as meekness, temperance, you know, uh, all these things. Faith against there. There's nothing against God's that's nothing that's not in harmony with God's law. We could say, are we doing those things? He who loves his brother dwells in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.
You're not going to be up there stumbling around. Now, that may be the path. There's a path that goes up there that maybe I don't even know because I couldn't find a path after I got off the the logging road. But Jesus Christ would know the path and he could light that way and everything would go great on that path. It would be challenging, but I'd probably be in better health afterward.
I'd be inspired. You know, everything would work well. But if I didn't have it and I was blind or if it was midnight, everything would go wrong. I would have some stories to tell you if I was alive to tell them. That's just how that might work. No cause for stumbling. Ephesians 5:es 8-10. For you were once darkness.
We need to understand that we were once darkness, not just in the dark. We were we were part of it. I grew up in the church. I was born in the church. Oh yeah. Well, huh. Guess what? I was as carnal as they came. I was a kid. I wanted other people's toys. I knew where the candy was at the grocery store that the other kids had already broken into the packs in the back and I could slip back there and get me a piece of candy.
I mean, you work the system, right? You grow up working the system. and society. If you look up the word world, it there's a definition that means um the uh almost this thing of ours. Uh it's a it's a way that society works, right? It's this way of society and we grow up and we get into it and we see how it works to make money and have a career and and how you get ahead and how you get popular and you work it.
you just work the system for yourself. So this this little this co lacosa nostra you might say in in Italian or in um some of the uh mafia language is this thing of ours you know it's hurting everybody but it's working for me. You were once darkness but now you are light in the Lord. God shone his light on me kind of like Paul just smacked me upside the head when I was uh 18 years old and said you are the most selfish you know bag of nothingness that exists there's no purpose for you even being here because you're just taking up space
and when I came to realize that you know going through what we call repentance I'm like wow what can save me from this body of death like like Paul said and I I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord that there can be something. And so that's where we go. But if that light doesn't turn on, you don't go down that path. You see? And so here we are.
Now, continuing on here in verse 9, walk as children of light. For the fruit of the spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth. Finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. We only know those things by digging into God's word and applying those things. It's our it's our road mapap. It's our direction. In Proverbs 4:es 10 through 23, I probably don't have time to read that whole passage, but let's let's just get the gist of it. It's incredible.
Uh my son, Proverbs 4:10, here in the years of your life will be many. Ah see God and light is good. He says uh in verse 11 I have led you in right paths and when you walk your steps will not be hindered and when you run you will not stumble. Once again God's way if we live it if we're led into it and we actually live it is going to be great.
We're going to have forward motion. Verse 13, take firm hold of instruction. Do not let go. Keep her, for she is your life. Then it begins to get into how we apply this this life and light. Verse 14, do not enter the path of the wicked. Don't go there. Great. You're with a company, you're in advertising. Don't do false advertising because that's going to lead to false sales when the customers come and your salesmen are going to sell things and they're trying to cover things because your manufacturing is defective, right? Or
it's not up to what you're selling it to be and your warranty is only 90 days, right? and and then you have the receiving of the money and you're gouging a little bit through I don't know some sort of a relationship of tradeins. You give them a little but you resell them for a lot or your financing is really for you and not for them and the interest is high.
You know how this goes. And and then you get the monies and you take from God and you don't pay your workers what they really should see. You start down this path in society and it works really well for the people who live on the waterfront and the big mansions, but not so much for the people who live a few miles away and are struggling to make ends meet.
For the fruit of the spirit, wow, fruit of the spirit is going to lead us into good ways. Don't walk in the way of evil. Says verse 15, avoid it. Do not travel on it. Turn away from it. Pass on. Verse 18. But the path of the just is like the shining sun that shines ever brighter unto the perfect day, and the way of the wicked is like darkness.
They do not know what makes them stumble. In Philippians chapter 2 and verse 14, we narrow this down now to more daily applications. Philippians 2:14 and 15. God's way is getting mind off of self, off of me, the promotion of me. Getting on to we, to us, helping everyone go forward, encouraging, helping everyone, appreciating what others are, more than what you are.
You know, look at other people greater than yourself. Serve. And so he says here in Philippians 2:14, do all things without complaining. What's a complaint? It's about I. You can't complain without saying I. You know what you did. I think what you did wasn't helpful to me. So, I'm going to complain that I was not uh benefiting here somehow.
And disputing. I have a better idea than you or I want my way to work more than your way. So, we're going to have a dispute. We're going to have an argument. In fact, we probably won't be friends afterward because we have this dispute. But do all things without that. Notice that you may become blameless and harmless children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you shine as lights in the world.
Why? Because you're not doing the me things. You're blameless. You're without fault in the midst of a world that is out there all about me. Everything is to do about me, my life, my experience, what I feel, what I think, what I want. So in Romans chapter 13 and verse 12, we then are told to put on the armor of God. Notice Romans 13:12.
The night is far spent. This this way of darkness is about to end. If you think of how long Satan's been around and you think of how long humanity has been misled by him, Jesus Christ is almost here. Almost here. And Satan's judgment and being thrown in the lake of fire will take place at the end of the millennium.
right after the millennium. The day of the night is far spent and the day the day of God is at hand. Therefore, let us cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the day, not in revalry, not in drunkenness, not in lwdness or lust, or in strife and envy.
Every one of those things is about the capital M on me. Every one of those things promotes me and doesn't love or serve others. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its icentric meusts. That's what lusts are. It's things that I shouldn't have, things that don't belong to me.
You can't lust after your lovely wife. You can't lust after having wonderful children. You can't lust after having your home. They're yours. But you can lust after something that doesn't belong to you, something that is not yours. So, uh, do not make any provision to please the self, but be responsible for what we have. All scripture promotes good. Good.
Good for God, good for man, good for the environment, good for the kingdom of God, and good works produce a good return on investment. We all like good ROIs, right? Well, God's way is a great ROI on everything. You go through the the Bible and tick them all off, everything has a great return on investment.
If you go through the the worldly dark system, there isn't a single ROI that you want. There's a lot of ROIs, but all of them are bad. They're they're destructive. They're bad, and your company is going to be in absolute nothingness at the end. Spiritually speaking, that's the same thing. So in 2 Timothy 3 and:e 13 we see that in the world the evil the the selfishness the greed is only going to get worse.
2 Timothy 3:13 and even in the church he's talking evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse deceiving and being deceived. Now, if you're deceived and you're trying to apply for uh credit and you're deceived and you're giving all your information to a some sort of a dark web source unknowingly, what do you think's going to happen? It's going to go really, really bad for you.
Um, Generative AI recently uh told an individ or an individual used uh an AI app to uh find the US uh passport application website and it found it for them. and he's busy filling it all in, all of his information, and got to the social security number and happened to ask his wife, "Hun, uh, do you have to give your social security number to the the government to get a passport?" And she says, "Uh, let me see what let me see what you're doing.
" Oh, look at the URL there. That's uh like uh a foreign agent is getting your information and AI gave that fake page to you. See everything out there is conspiring. But verse 15, you have known the holy scriptures. Aha, another application. We need to be in God's word and know his holy scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Jesus Christ.
So this light and darkness has definite applications. So far, we've seen things like we need to be mindful of God's word and his commandments. We need to be carefully using that spirit with the choices we make throughout the day. We need to be fasting and humbling ourselves and raising up others. It says in verse 16, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable.
" There's our ROI. All scripture is profitable for doctrine, reprove, correction, for instruction in right, in doing right righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, not this broken down shell that's heading for, you know, every conceivable, I don't know, um, would you give counseling advice to help me as you spiral into nothingness and live in a tent and then die? I don't know.
But the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. Good work. Right? Everything's working good. So it's vital for us to understand that this is where God wants to lead us. And also we need to come to this understanding that that miracle of light can extinguish, can simply be switched off.
I don't know how many of you went through the 1995 experience in the church, but we had spiritual giants in the church and lots of members and at one moment in time the light switched off. They could be absolutely saying we will stick with the truth of God forever and in the next second it went away. We need to be respectful that like it said um in 2 Corinthians 4:6, it is God who commanded light.
Remember that first commandment we heard in the sermonet. It is God who commanded light to shine out of darkness. Who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. There are many of us who grew up in the in the faith, grew up in the church, and you think, "Oh, I've I've been in it my whole life, therefore, it's part of me." No, it's not.
It's a miracle that's happening. You know what the Bible says that there's a spirit in man, and then there's a spirit of God. And we just read here that God commands this light and he calls certain individuals. Doesn't matter how long you're in the church, it's either stays with you or it's gone in a second. gone in a second.
We know that in Job chap 24 and verse 13 there are some who change their mind. It says there are those who rebel against the light. They do not know its ways nor abide in its paths. In verse 16, they do not know the light. You know, there's a dramatic contrast event that's going to happen to this world.
We can look back and we can see what happened in Egypt with those three days of darkness and then the light appears. You know, the same thing's going to happen in a few years. Exact same thing. Let's go to uh well, I'll just read it first from Mark chapter 13 verse 24. Immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light.
And there are several references in the Bible, other gospels and Revelation that speak to that event where darkness is just going to hit. And in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 and verse 8 it says, "And then the lawlessness or the lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming.
" That's why it says that everyone's going to see him. You have this darkness that falls and then he's going to come like lightning or light from the east to the west and every eye shall see him and the brightness of his coming is going to destroy um the the lawless one. Jesus is going to come in Isaiah chapter 60.
The same event is is spoken of in this way. Isaiah 60:1, "Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory or the brightness of the Lord is risen upon you. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and deep darkness shall cover the people. But the Lord will arise over you, and his glory, his brightness will be seen among you. And then the Gentiles shall come to your light and the kings to the brightness of your rising.
And so the end will have a thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ in in the light in the feast of tabernacle. One other scripture as we wrap this up. Isaiah 42:6, God the Father called Jesus Christ to be this light in the future. I the Lord have called you in righteousness and I will hold your hand. I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people as a light to the Gentiles to open blind eyes to bring out prisoners from the prison.
Those who sit in darkness from the prison house. See how God sees that prison house. People are locked away. They're they're slaves. They're captives. They're they're imprisoned by this way of of death. Jesus Christ and those who become the bride of Christ with him get to come and do that to bring light and let their light shine.
In conclusion, we are called by the light and we are called to walk in the light and we are called to be the light. You know, that's sort of the three phases of our life. Called by light, called to walk in light, and then called to be the light. And that's not just a metaphor because let's go to Matthew 13:43 as we close.
As first fruits to be of the kingdom of God, we live in this world of darkness. It's all around us. We want to be clear. We want to be distinct. We want to be of light. no darkness in us. Let's be about becoming bright, loving, godly examples reflecting the mindset of God's family. Yes, we can do that. We can do it daily.
And if we do, then we get to be light with God. Not just God burning bright, but we get to be light as a God being is light. Notice what Jesus said in Matthew 13 verse43. Matthew 13:43, then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father. So let's all be very very diligent in our daily lives to be shedding anything to do with darkness and becoming total reflections of the light of Jesus Christ.