Light and Darkness

Address—Don Rule
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Number 93.
From the palace of His glory, from the home of joy and love, came the Lord Himself to seek us. He would have us there above.
There, from that eternal brightness have his thoughts flowed forth in love number 93.
God's help and blessing.
Our God, we seek thy blessing.
Speak to us this afternoon. Give us each to know that it is Thy voice to us.
We ask our God to honor the Lord Jesus Christ in our hearts and our thoughts this afternoon.
And do thy work by the power of thy Spirit, we ask, Father, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Turn with me briefly to a verse in Second Corinthians chapter 5.
First, it was read to us last night at the Sing.
2nd Corinthians chapter 5 and.
Sorry, chapter 4, Second Corinthians, chapter 4. The last verse, verse 18.
While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.
Stop and think about that.
We look.
At the things which are not seen.
Many would say, what's that mean? What? What could possibly? How could you possibly look at something that's not seeable or not seen?
But I just want to make it's not the subject of the afternoon, but it's an important point nonetheless. And that is?
There are things that can only be seen with the eye of faith, and with faith God gives us the capacity to see things that otherwise could never be seen. We looked in the Word of God this morning and yesterday in things which cannot be seen.
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By the natural eye of the natural man. They can only be seen through the eye of faith.
Now let's turn to the subject before me, because it includes what we've just said. Turn to 1St John, Chapter one.
First Epistle of John, chapter one.
John says he has a message.
For us.
And that message, he says in verse five of chapter one. This then is the message.
Which we have heard of him, and declare unto you that God is light.
And in Him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth.
Before we comment on this, let's turn back to Genesis chapter one.
Genesis chapter one.
Verse one In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And 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.
And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.
We're going to look the time we have.
On the subject God is light, God is light.
We all and God uses natural things to teach us spiritual lessons. He's created the world in such a way that when we see it, He can use it to us as an object lesson to teach us spiritual things. And so we have all of us, all our lives been exposed to light. We all have some sense of light and we consequently have a sense of.
Darkness as well the absence of light.
And God says of himself, he is light.
And in him is no darkness at all.
We also have the statement of God that light and darkness cannot share.
He divides them.
Every single person that's in this room this afternoon is ultimately going to end up in the presence of light.
Forever with no darkness.
For you are going to end up in darkness forever, where there is no light.
You are going to spend your eternity as a creature of God.
Created with the knowledge of himself and angels. Likewise, all creatures that are created with a knowledge the Guardians are going to spend their eternity either.
In life with God.
Or in darkness forever. It's an important matter.
To be concerned in that way.
God says God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.
And then the immediately says speaks of fellowship. Fellowship is to have common interests and common understanding. And God is making a statement from himself to us that if we are to have fellowship with God.
It's on the basis that God is life.
It's impossible for God to have fellowship with anything that's not light.
In him is no darkness at all, and he divided the lot darkness from the light. They aren't to be together, they have no place one with the other.
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Our lives.
The only way we can have fellowship with God in our daily life or in our eternity.
Is in.
Perfect light.
Suppose I sin.
The moment I sin since darkness.
New love, Darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.
And the moment, the moment I act disobedient to God, that sin, we know that.
My fellowship with God in light is lost immediately.
I challenge myself.
In first John one it says we walk in the light.
I know to illustrate the importance of it.
Supposed, and I'll just be random about it. Suppose everybody's name was put in a hat.
This afternoon and we pulled one name out of the hat.
Young or old, doesn't matter, we pulled one name out of the hat.
And then God were to choose to put on the screen in front of us a record of the past week of that persons life.
Exposing it to the light.
That's why the next person first, John says the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin because otherwise we couldn't be sustained in life if we didn't have the provision of God, of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and the value of his blood to God. Because who would say if your whole.
Life just for the last week, everything you said, everything you've done, everything that's passed through your mind were to be publicly displayed for all of us to see.
And so the subject of light and darkness is as its application to everyday light, everyday life. But here it's particularly we see the very basic principle of it that everything to continue must be brought into the conformity to what God is. God can't have fellowship with something that's not consistent with what he is, and he's light.
And consequently, when we look on to eternity, God says there will be no night there.
When we get to heaven, there will be no night there, because there will be nothing there.
That is inconsistent with what God is God in the Lamb or the light thereof.
And they will shine perfectly in the courts of glory, and in so doing, there won't be any need for any natural light in that place.
Notice then it says.
Verse 6 God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters to divide. Let it divide the waters from the waters. Verse seven, God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so.
And the permanent God called the firmament heaven. And the evening in the morning were the second day. I turn over to John's Gospel chapter one.
John's Gospel chapter one verse 3 All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
In him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.
Verse 9 That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, and he was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
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We know how the creation began with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
We know how sin came into the creation.
And it brought darkness with it.
And.
If you will, if you go forward in your thoughts to before the Lord Jesus.
Just before the Lord Jesus came into this world, I believe to the eye of God in a large extent. He could look down upon the earth and say darkness covered the taste of the deep. There are exceptions to that. There were believers with light in them, but in a general way God looked down and the scene was one of darkness.
And God's choice.
Was to enter into that darkness.
And illuminated.
The.
God's Son came down into the darkness.
And it says his life was the light of men. His life shined on man.
You know, if you have good eyes and it's a dark room, all you really need is somebody to turn the light on.
But the picture that God gives us of what he found isn't that.
He illuminated the world morally.
And it says the darkness comprehended it not. In other words, man wasn't just in the dark, he was darkness itself.
That's the way you and I started life Darkness. We weren't just in the dark, we were actually darkness itself.
Dark hearts, Dark minds.
In the word of God.
Blindness.
Is generally connected with unbelief.
In John Chapter 9 there was a blind man.
And he started life blind and there were lots of people that started that chapter.
With good eyes.
But it's a chapter full of blind people.
The one man physically blind, but many other people spiritually, morally blind. And in fact the Lord had to say to him, you say you see, therefore your sin, your blindness remains in you.
That one dear man started life physically blind. He got his physical eyesight, he responded to the Lord Jesus, and he got spiritual eyesight because he had faith.
I don't know. I look around the room and.
I wonder how many blind people are in the room.
Oh, I don't see anybody physically blind. But if you don't have faith, you're blind. And if you're blind, you don't see the light.
And you won't see the light, you won't understand, you won't get the blessing of God for your soul until that unbelief is dealt with. And you say, I believe.
And so here the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness comprehends it not.
It lightens every man.
Here's the very light of God among men and.
It says they knew him not.
No, I'm not.
Let's go back to Genesis chapter one.
Verse nine God said let the waters under the heaven be gathered together in one place and let the dry land appear, and it was so.
And God called the dry land earth, and gathering together the waters, he called the seas. And God saw that it was good, and he said, Let the earth bring forth grass.
Herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind. And the sea was seed was in itself upon the earth, and it was so.
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To my own soul, this is a picture of the cross and what happened at the cross.
The light comes into the world.
And it meets with darkness.
And there's the separation. Light and darkness can't be together. God divided them.
The one who was light was refused. An unknown man knew him not.
If you're blind spiritually this afternoon, you don't know him, you don't appreciate him.
You can appreciate the life.
If I could speak reverently or respectfully for God, He could have chosen.
To remove himself.
But he doesn't, does he?
God is love.
And so the person of the Lord Jesus goes deeper into the darkness.
We read of him on the cross. Darkness covered the earth. He entered into that darkness.
It goes farther than that.
In Scripture, death is a picture of darkness.
And he enters into that as well.
It's the love of God.
That would go down into that darkness in which man was.
That he might do the work to bring man up out of the condition in which he was found. We thank God this afternoon that He's light, but we also thank God that He was willing, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, to go all the way to where we were.
To rescue us from that condition of things so that we wouldn't remain in the darkness forever.
You know, the Bible talks about people being lost.
You can't live.
A good life.
If you're in the dark.
Stan.
If you're in the dark, you're going to be lost.
And that's the way man starts out life. He's lost.
That's the condition in which he's in. He's a thinner because he sins. He's lost because of what he is.
These darkness, such as condition and in his life.
To see, to live by. The psalmist says thy word is a light unto my feet and a lamp unto my path. He needs that to see the way to have a path to follow. And that's the only way through life really is God illuminates and we follow in that light. And if we don't have God, if we're dead in the darkness spiritually.
We're going to spend our whole life lost and die lost.
And then go to the darkness of the darkness forever. I just want to encourage if you're a young person here.
Why go through life lost?
In the darkness.
You can have the light of life, and so it says his life was the light of men. We have to have that life to have life. They're connected with God. Without life, there's darkness. But if you have the light of God, you have the life of Christ, you have life.
And then you enjoy.
And then you have a path, and you have light for your feet. But in order for it to be so, there was number fruit for God, for man.
Until the cross.
And at the cross, the Lord Jesus saw the waters of God's judgment were gathered together in one place, and he went into the darkness, if you will, under those waters of judgment, and he suffered them.
But God raised him from the dead, from that condition of death.
Into the dazzling light of glory, where he is the glorious Son of God there, but before there could be any fruit from for God in the earth. And we'll see this a little more in another example, but it says the earth brought forth grass and so there was fruit after the waters are gathered together in one place and the judgment.
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Cell.
Now notice it says in verse 14.
God said let there be lights in the firmament of heaven.
To divide the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and for years.
Let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth. And it was so. And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, And he made the stars also.
The Lord Jesus is the greater light of day. The Church is the lesser light of night.
And each believer in this room is one of the stars.
Also.
Let's look first of all at the church as light. We've been in Revelation. Turn over to Revelation.
Chapter One.
Are we in the night?
Time or are we in the daytime? The Millennium is the daytime right now for this Earth. It's passing through the cycle of night.
Peter says that the dates are needs to rise up in our hearts because the day is about to dawn and the day is coming. We believe that the day star is risen. I trust in the hearts of us here because of the dawn of the morning is about to break.
And it will usher in the daytime of the millennial day. But right now it's still in the dark. And during the dark, God placed for his creation a lesser light to rule the night. And So what says here in Revelation chapter one?
Verse 20 The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in thy right hand are 7 golden candlesticks.
Candlesticks, and in fact in Revelite and Genesis one it calls them light bearers.
For the day and for the light, that which bears the light. And so here.
The Church was placed in the earth as a light bearer for God in the absence of the Lord Jesus.
It's a lesser light. It's not bright as bright as the sun, but Thursday night, driving across Michigan in the evening and in the dark.
Was full moon beautiful beautiful moon.
Last night when I left this building and I looked in the sky, I saw the same beautiful full moon.
And while I enjoyed it in its beauty, it also made me a little sad.
Last night.
When I looked at it.
Because I looked at it and I thought.
Is that?
What the Church is today in the world.
Is the Church that bright moonlight reflecting the glory of the sun?
Since it has no inherent light in itself, all the light of the moon is reflected.
From the Sun.
Is it?
Not according to.
The one in Revelation chapter one that evaluates it, he looks at it.
And he says if you don't bear the light.
I will remove you as a Candlestick. I will remove you as a light bearer.
I put you there for a purpose, and if that purpose isn't being accomplished.
If that light isn't shining on the earth, I'm going to remove you.
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We know.
At the end of the church is a light bearer for God is.
She's put there in faithful responsibility.
As she fulfilled it, is She fulfilling it today in the world? Does the Word look upon? The profession of Christianity is a great light for mankind.
We all know the answer to that.
Sad, but God is faithful with us. He tells us the truth and he has to replace her with a faithful light.
Which is soon going to do in the person of the sun.
Turn over to Ephesians chapter 5.
Ephesians.
Chapter 5, verse one.
Now we're going to look at the stars also.
Be therefore imitators of God as dear children.
Walk in love.
As Christ also loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour.
But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not once be named among you, has become a Saints, neither filthiness nor police, talking nor jesting, which are not convenient, but rather giving of thanks.
For this she know, that no *********** nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolatrous, hath any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and of God.
Let no man deceive you with vain words, for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.
Be not therefore partakers in them, for with them for ye were sometimes darkness.
But are now light in the Lord walk as children of light.
But the fruit of the Spirit, Mr. Darby translates it here, the fruit of the Light.
Installations chapter 5 is it. It's the fruit of the Spirit, but here it's the fruit of the light. The fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth, proving what is acceptable unto the Lord, and have no fellowship.
With the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.
We're just ashamed to even speak of these things, which are done of them in secret.
But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light.
For whatsoever death make manifest is light.
So here each one of us who has put our trust in the Lord Jesus. Our previous condition is found in John chapter one is ye were sometimes once in your life, your darkness.
And in darkness, no fruit for God in that life.
But here it says you who were sometimes or once darkness, are now light in the Lord.
Walk as children of light.
The light of life.
Is now in.
Us. And so we're like stars, little compared to the whole, but individually each one of us is a light in this Dark World.
I remember someone once kind of gave the idea, you know, it would be nice. We might think, oh, it'd be nice if all of us could come together on a weekend like this and, and if we could walk in harmony as we would like to and so on. It'd be nice if we all had a place where we could kind of live together in a community together and wait for the Lord to come. And some people have tried that.
It seems like a nice idea because it's a way of being separated from a lot of the temptations and so on of the world.
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Letter Brother wisely once said God hasn't chosen to put all his streetlights on the same street corner.
God has chosen to put you on a street corner to be alike there.
Whether it's a school, it's in your work.
To shine as well in the assembly and in the home.
And the consequence as we had in Genesis 1.
At first there was number light, no fruit, just separation. But here it speaks about a child of God and fellowship.
No longer fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but fellowship with God and fellowship with God is that which will produce fruit for God.
We're not going to have God's fruit of goodness.
Righteousness and truth apart from walking with Him.
And yet, brethren.
Young or old, it's a privilege.
Why did God create us?
Since he wants to have creatures he can love, he wants to have creatures to share his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ with. He wants to have fellowship with us in the light.
Today's coming when we're going to spend forever with God, enjoying the Lord Jesus.
Who dwells in the bosom of his heart, and will be our eternal joy as well.
We'll never get tired of it. But is it also God would say to us, we don't have to wait till you get to heaven.
We're not talking about something that you've got to wait for.
You can, you and I God, and you can enjoy together fellowship in light with the sun.
It tells us in first John chapter 2.
He that hath this hope in him.
That is the hope of being with and like the Lord Jesus.
Purify himself even as he is pure, that is, if the heart is constrained by the love of Christ, as we had in the same last night.
This is the apostle Paul said for himself, I want Christ.
And anything that contributes to my knowing him, I want it. And anything that would keep me from knowing him, I'm not interested in it.
So we make choices.
Some choices we have, some are made for us, but everyone of us has a certain amount of time every day that isn't claimed by specific responsibilities.
Do we share it with God in fellowship? Do we enjoy what God enjoys?
Our thoughts, our hearts, our intent? Or do we escape from the pressures of light somewhere else?
In our thought life, in our high life, in our foot life.
That is, do we think? Do we see, do we do things that would make us enjoy our fellowship as children of light, children of God, or do we go somewhere else?
So here, he says.
I have no fellowship with the untruthful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.
Why was the Lord Jesus?
Rejected by many.
Do people like to be around someone who?
Makes them feel.
A little uncomfortable because their own style of life.
Do we seek out? Someone once said water seeks its own level.
Do we seek out those that would help us to know the Lord Jesus more or do we stick out those that want to do things that we can share together which may not be like.
And do we always like to have the light? Not always, do we? That's why most robberies are committed at night.
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Because if you're going to do something in the darkness and it's wrong, you want to get away with it. Why do we do certain activities? But the Lord Jesus, perfect light in his life, he never had to hide anything. He was an open book. We we would love to see a week of his life in all its detail.
So honoring to God and so blessing to man. But some envy that and some were convicted by it and so they said we don't want.
This man, what was the world doing? Choosing darkness?
And chose naturally chooses darkness over light because it's what he is.
But here we have the privilege.
Of being that, as it says here, for whatsoever death make manifest is light.
God's holiness.
Is an expression that he is liked, and it exposes everything in its true character, doesn't it?
Everything has been consistent with what God is, is exposed and manifested by the light. And so the light of the Lord Jesus perfectly manifests all that God is to us and we thank Him for it and we yearn to be more in the good of it in our lives. OK, let's turn back to again to Genesis chapter one.
Genesis chapter one.
And verse 26.
And God said, let us make man in our image.
After our likeness.
Verse 27 So God created man in his own image.
In the image of God created he him. Now over to 2nd Corinthians chapter 3.
2nd Corinthians, chapter 3.
Verse 12.
Seeing then we have such hope, we have great plainness of speech.
Not as Moses, which put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished, but their minds were blinded, for until this day remain at the same veil, unticked away in the reading of the Old Testament, which Vail is done away in Christ.
And even unto this day, when Moses has read, the veil is upon their heart.
Nevertheless, when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away. Now the Lord is that spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, but we all with open face beholding.
As in a glass, or the thought is without a veil, we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, we have received mercy. We think not, but have renounced the sitting things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, not handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.
But if our gospel is hid, or if our gospel is veiled, it is hid or veiled to them that are lost.
In whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel, or the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image, Genesis one of God, should shine unto them.
For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants, for Jesus sake. For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
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But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the Excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.
There's light and there's light.
Scripture shows us that there's different.
Degrees of light are character to light.
Moses.
When he came down off the mountain the second time, not the first time, but that's important. But when he came down off the mountain the second time, his face was shining.
It was shining and the children of it, physically, the children of Israel, couldn't look on it.
And so he had to put a veil over that shining face so that they could he could speak to them and they could be in his presence. When he went into the presence of God again, he took the veil off in God's presence, but in front of man he had to put it on.
But before if we back off, if you go to First Timothy chapter 5, it says.
That God dwelleth.
In light.
That no man has seen, and no man can approach unto it.
No man shall see it. There is in the person of God, and the God had a brilliancy of light that is unrevealed and will never be known by us. God dwells, it says, an unapproachable light in the majesty of His own person.
That puts God in his place and it puts us in ours and we thank him for it. He says I am God.
And you are you. You are my creature, and I'm going to bring you into a brightness of light that will fully satisfy you. But I will always be God, and I will always be an unapproachable light.
We have Moses as an example of light, and it shines in his face. It's the light that was connected with God's majesty and character in the law mixed with grapes in the case of Moses, because when he first came down in the in law alone, there was no shining. But then God expressed his loving kindness to Moses, and when he came down the second time with the tablet, that was already a mixture of grace so that God could go along with his people.
But.
On the amount of transfiguration.
Which is millennial glory. The face of the Lord Jesus physically shines.
Like the sun?
When the apostle Paul was saved.
It describes what he saw as a light above the brightness of the noonday sun.
Lord Jesus says in John 17.
Father I will that they those whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory.
I want to connect that with comments made in the first reading meeting by our brother Steve.
In the Father's house.
There are the shining out, shining of glory that we will see in heaven that will not be seen on earth, and it'll be above the brightness of the noonday sun, the millennial glory and the church and its visible glory for the earth coming out of heaven with God in Revelation 21 That some enjoyed last weekend.
Is the brightness of the noonday sun. But brethren, what God is prepared for us?
In the chambers of the Father's house goes even beyond that. It's not fully described yet. Lord says we yell. They're going to have to be there so they can see it. We're not yet in a place, but there are the brilliance and glory.
So can I express it? Let me express it this way. In Revelation, in the foundations of the heavenly city, you have jewels.
Described in Their Beauty.
Suppose we were all the most beautiful jewels were of the world were brought into this room and put in the center of the room, and all the lights were out.
Would we see any brilliance to him?
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Would we Dave, turn the lights out? No. You have to have lights or a jewel shows nothing.
The the glories that we think of are like jewels in that they're the outshining of that which starts with the source of light and God himself and I look at a faces of people that are.
Going to be adorned with the jewels of the glories of Christ and the pull out shining of what God is in his being, in his presence, and it'll be a dazzling display beyond what our present capacity would be to see.
And in heaven far beyond the brightness of the new, of the noonday sun. And we can't even.
See that now, physically, can we? Nobody's going to go outside on a very bright day and look straight at the sun. Nobody dares approach it either. It's unapproachable and it's light and it's just a natural expression of something for us.
In Adam and Eve in the garden, they were created in the image and likeness of God.
But that was marred by sin.
But there's a new creation.
And in that new creation which begins for us with Christ and resurrection and ascension into the glory.
He's the first of the new creation. He's this last atom.
It's a creation in which everyone that participates in it will bear the image of God.
Light, love, holiness, truth, righteousness.
All the attributes of God, those who participate in the denominator, have that life.
Will be.
Displayers of the image of God. But here we see for us there's no veil to hinder us because we have received the life. We're children of light. And so God says you don't have to have a veil in the Lord. Jesus is seen to you and his heavenly glory as he is now, as you may with the eye of faith, not the physical eye, but you may look upon him.
And you may see him.
And the Spirit of God and the word of God as you gazed upon him. I'm doing a work.
To make you like him. And so it says.
We are changed into the same image.
Changed into the same image by the Spirit of the Lord.
God's doing a good work in this room.
It may not be visible except to the eye of faith, but everyone of us at least gets a glimpse of it in each other.
Go look for the failures of your brethren. Look to see the glories of Christ in them.
You'll find it if you look for it. If you focus on it, it's there and it's a better jewel to.
To focus on then, the darkness of the past.
It says in first John chapter 2 That.
The darkness is passing. The true light now shines.
The world, in one sense, is in the night. It is in the night.
But in a wonderful other sense, as John presents it, the.
Darkness is passing and the true light now showing. It is because the true lights now shining in the souls of each that is his own in this room and throughout the world. And as those lights are there in the soul, it makes the darkness tasks.
And it will fully pass out until the millennial day when the whole earth will be filled with the knowledge of God, and every man shall know the Lord, and the light will shine on the earth in its earthly glory.
But what does it say here? Just a word?
It's the gospel of the glory or the glorious gospel that it's the gospel of the glory of the Christ. We have a message from God to man.
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There's a man in the very presence of God, of light.
Accepted there.
He was a man who lived here on earth, but he's not here on earth anymore. He's accepted in the presence of God and all the holiness and light that God is. And it's a wonderful message because man can share in it.
By becoming one of his own.
So that he too has that saying destiny and place with God in light.
Satan's at work, verse four. The God of this world at blind, dead, blinded through unbelief.
The minds, and as we had in the previous chapter with Moses, the heart.
God blinds the OR Satan, given an opportunity, will blind the mind and blind the heart.
I deal with blind people every week.
I go where there's quite a few blind people every week, talk to them about the light of God and.
Very often.
All the logic in the world, all the words, all the conviction that the human.
Might bring to bear on such a person that does nothing without the work of God. It's the Spirit of God that works in them.
To awaken, to take away the blindness.
To off the veil, off the heart, and that's what we pray when we have the gospel that God would do that work in souls. So it says we we preach Christ, but what is it for us, the light.
In Genesis one, God spoke and there was light.
Brethren, God spoke to you and there's light in your heart. Same power. Genesis 1 spoke.
To you individually and personally, and the result of that speaking, there's light.
In your heart, and it's the light of the knowledge of the glory of God.
And is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.
There's the glory of his person.
There's the glory of.
Redemption.
We look upon his face on the Lord's Day morning by faith.
And we see the glory of God displayed in Redemption's work.
Greater glory than creation glory. We see that glory which is inherent in His person. We see that glory which is in Him as a man.
We look forward to seeing him in his millennial earthly reign of glory.
And all of them are available to us to look upon and enjoy and have in us as a treasure.
A treasure for our lives now, and a treasure that will we can take to heaven with us.
You know, there are lots of things that are called treasures that won't go to heaven.
But this is a treasure that will leave the earth.
And go to heaven and we can treasure it up to our souls now and our lives.
If we're just occupy with him, if we just allow that constraining love to draw us so that we would stand with the apostle Paul and say for me to live is Christ.
Let's pray.
Our God, our Father would just ask that, as we did in the beginning, Please bless. Please speak to us by the power of the Spirit into our hearts.
And our thoughts to.
That we might more fully enjoy and enter into the glory that thou hast displayed to us in the person of thy Son, that it might be the more the controlling.
Power of occupation and joy of our lives we thank the our God that while we once were afraid and feared and hid, we can now joy in the.
And have fellowship with the and of the same interests now and forever. We just bless the our God for loving us in this way and doing the work for us through thyself, Lord Jesus and Thy precious name, Amen.