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These are not attributes of God. This is what He is, His essential being.
He is light and He is love. And I was thinking as I listened, as we all did at the reading this morning, we had much said about Grace.
And then a good deal said about righteousness, keeping the proper balance and holiness. And I just have a few thoughts to share with you that whenever there is a true manifestation of God who is light and love, there must be both of these elements, both of these characteristics present.
Or God is not properly manifested. Look at the Lord Jesus.
Look at that Blessed one as he walked through this scene. He was light and he was love. I'll just quickly refer to two incidents, one in John 4, the woman of Samaria, where he draws her heart out.
And asks her for a drink.
And she wonders why he and you would ask a drink of her, a woman of Samaria. And he says, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, give me to drink. Thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. And there we see the character of God is love. We see the love of his heart going out to this woman.
And offering her that living water, which caused her to say, Sir, give me this water that I come not.
Here to draw and drink, and then we see that God is light. He says go, call thy husband. Her conscience must be reached if there's going to be blessing. It's not enough to reach the heart and draw it out and make it yearn for the blessing that he did, but the conscience must be reached.
The springs of our moral being must be touched, and we must judge ourselves, and we must realize that we're in the presence of him.
Who understands us through and through? Who knows our thoughts are far off? Who understands us? Who knows our down sitting and our uprising? The darkness and the light are both alike to Him, for all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.
God is light and he knows all about you. He knows what you're thinking. He knows your life, He knows mine. He knows our motives. We have to do with Him who knows us all. And she was so blessed that her testimony was when she went into the city.
This outcast, immoral, reprobate woman come see a man that told me all things that ever I did. Is not this the Christ? He had revealed to her that he knew her entire life. He knew how evil it was. He knew that the man with whom she was living was not her husband.
That she was living in sin. And yet he that one that knows all about me, he offered me living water.
Because God is love, the goodness of the heart of God flowing out to the likes of us. For we're not one bit better than that woman, that woman of Samaria. Then John 8, when these the critical, self-righteous religious Pharisees who would bring the curse and judgment of the law against this woman, bring her one caught in a very active adultery.
To the Lord Jesus. Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned. But what sayest thou? They were in the presence of him who is late, and so he.
Answered, He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.
And being convicted in their consciences, from the oldest to the least, they departed. And he who is loved to the said Hath no man condemned thee? No man, Lord, neither do I condemn me.
The only one there that had the right to pick up a stone and hurl it at her. He was the only one who was without sin. But he wouldn't and he didn't because God is love. Well, those are two incidents, and it's beautiful to trace in the epistles. Light and love. Light and love, holiness.
Truth, righteousness, grace, mercy, forgiveness, compassion, and where you have the one without the other, there seemed to be, there was a that was brought out in the reading this morning. Balancing truth. There must be. We are so inclined to err either on the side of legality or on the side of looseness.
00:05:17
There's a ditch on either side of the road and it's only the.
Communion of the Holy Spirit, communion with the Lord that will keep us going down the center, keeping fast hold of both of these truths that God is light and that God is love, and not using them one against the other, as though to press holiness and truth and righteousness negates grace, or to press grace that that means.
You're you're just giving up. Truth.
No, we are to hold to both.
And as we walk in the fellowship with the Lord and in communion, we will hold to both. And I'll turn back with me to one verse in 2nd Corinthians 3, our chapter that we had in the readings, verse 6.
Our brother Hey Ho was making some comments about this and he said in his comments that Grace isn't mentioned in the chapter, but in this verse we certainly have it.
Also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament. Again, the article isn't there. Testament is more properly translated covenant and it's more literally rendered ministers of the of new covenant or new covenant ministers. Now the Church of God is not in covenant relationship to God.
Israel is, and they're going to be brought into blessing on the ground of the new covenant. But Paul says here we are new covenant ministers. Why does he say that? Because when Israel is brought into the blessings of the new covenant, it will be on the ground of pure and sovereign grace because they forfeited everything on the ground of their own responsibility. They forfeited everything. And if they're going to be brought into the blessings of the new covenant, it will be on the ground.
Of grace. And so here we have the principle of grace mentioned. Not not the word mentioned, but the principle of it. Paul was a new covenant minister, that is, he was the minister of grace. Now we had in the chapter the administration of righteousness.
Not the righteousness that we attain to by the works of the law, but the righteousness which is conferred upon us as a free gift. Christ Himself being our righteousness when we have to deal with difficult problems in our assemblies.
Righteousness cannot be set aside or compromised or the truth set aside. It must be according to truth and righteousness and holiness.
For He is the holy and the true. But then the Spirit of grace is to characterize us. And there's a verse this new covenant brings before me, and I want to end with that. Leave room for others in Isaiah 32. I share it with you, Isaiah 32.
Verse that some verses hear that very precious verse 15.
This is looking on to the Millennium, looking on to the time when the Spirit will be poured out upon all flesh, when righteousness and peace will cover the earth. And it says, Until the Spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, in the fruitful field be counted for a forest, then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field. Now notice this.
And the work of righteousness shall be.
Peace and the effect of righteousness, Quietness and assurance forever.
And my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation and ensure dwellings and in quiet resting places. It's been remarked that the do only falls on a quiet night, doesn't fall.
During a stormy night, Nadu speaks a blessing. My people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation. Jerusalem means that dwelling in peace. Little picture of the Assembly. The first word the blessed Lord, risen from the dead, presented to his own was peace.
Peace be unto you. And then he commissioned us to go forth with that message of peace as my Father has sent me, Even so send I you. He brings it to us, and then he commissions us to carry it to others. And the assembly, the epistle of Christ is a dwelling in peace. Now there's such a thing as having peace at the expense of righteousness. They have hurled, they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly saying, peace, peace when there is no peace.
00:10:29
Now, that's not the kind of peace that we have here. Here this piece is the effect of righteousness, quietness, and assurance forever.
And when there's an action or there are actions that are done in this way, and the Lord's glory is maintained and his honor upheld and righteousness manifested, the effect will be peace. And where it isn't, so, where it might be the legality that we were referring to.
In our readings in 2nd Corinthians 3, the superior attitude Stand by thyself, for I am holier than thou.
That kind of thing. Oh, I would never do that. That kind of an attitude. The spirit of superiority, the spirit, the judgmental spirit, which alas, I have to confess to, I have had too much of in the past.
Well, the Lord puts us through things, beloved.
To teach us that we're not better as Elijah had to learn than our fathers, that we're all made out of the same stuff. And his dear old brother Eric Smith used to say nothing but a bunch of crooked sticks. Poor Jacobs, picked up by the grace of God, trophies of his grace, to manifest that in this scene, the crowning glory.
But since that's the crowning glory of the church, grace, the worst perversion, the worst corruption possible, what we read of in Jew turning the grace of God.
Into lasciviousness, using grace to palliate and cover up sin. That's the worst evil that there is. And this is the day of grace, and we're living in days when this is commonly practiced, using grace to excuse every form of moral.
And spiritual wickedness, because after all, God's the God of grace and he'll forgive it and.
To use that.
Who say, let us do evil, that good may come?
Whom Paul says of those whose judgment is just.
No, let us never turn the grace of God into an excuse for doing our own will and for wickedness. Grace the crowning blessing of the Christian. We owe everything to it but righteousness to be upheld and maintained. And when that's so, verse 17, I'll read it again and then close.
The work of righteousness.
Shall be peace, Is it so when there's been a work and it's been a work of righteousness, the assembly will be at peace. Not unrest, not troubled. Sometimes, as a result of certain actions, the assembly is not at peace. Is that the work of God? Is that what God has promised? I know this is looking on to the millennial day, but the principle applies, doesn't it?
The work of righteousness shall be peace.
And the effect of righteousness, quietness.
And assurance forever and my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation and ensure dwellings and in quiet resting places.