Seeking for the help of the Lord, I direct your prayer for attention to Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 32. But called to remembrance the former days, in which after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions. Hebrews 10 and verse 32.

After ye were illuminated is a call to remembrance. A call to remembrance. It's a wonderful illustration of the work of grace that God should shine in a dark heart one that is dead in sin, one that doesn't even want to come to the light, and yet God shines and illuminates there. And this is what is a call to remembrance, that time, and what then followed that time. And it's done by way of encouragement and the strengthening of the assurance of God's people.

In the beginning of this chapter, we have the setting forth of Christ's sacrifice as being so much better than that of bulls and of goats. It is upon that sacrifice that our hope for heaven is built. for one offering, by one offering we read in verse 14, he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. That which is done outside of us, that which is done at Calvary, done by the Lord Jesus Christ.

But then he goes on further and makes it a personal covenant by teaching and putting the laws in the hearts of God's people. It is another way of putting what our text says of being illuminated. We have the Holy Ghost bearing witness in verse 15. Also is a witness to us for after that he had said before, this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord. I'll put my laws into their hearts. and in their minds will I write them. Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.

Now notice, it says it is the Holy Ghost that is a witness to us. There's two ways of this. It is because it is his work in the soul, his work to teach, but it is also his work to inspire the word of God. So when we read, that he is a witness, for after that he, that is the Holy Ghost, had said before, this is the covenant. And that is referring back to Jeremiah. So in the prophets, in all the Old Testament scriptures, it is the Holy Spirit that is speaking.

And so then we have set forth the need to draw near with a pure heart to consider one another, encouraging one another unto love and to good works, and that we might have the real assurance of eternal life and the comfort of it, and the need for that, as iron sharpeneth iron, to gather together, to be amongst those that are witnesses of the same grace, the same work, the same belief, the same faith, not forsaking that, assembling together to that end.

But then there's a solemn warning, a warning of those that turn away, that willfully sin. And it can be very searching for us because sometimes it seems like we do so willfully sin. Sin is so lying at the door. While we don't enter into it, it's not our sin, it's temptation. As soon as we enter into it and walk in, than it is our sin.

But in one sense, the key is where we read further on, he that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses. A child of God that falls into sin, that mourns over sin, that struggles with sin, they're not despising the law of God. Yet we find further on those that have trodden underfoot the Son of God, have counted the blood of the covenant wherewith He has sanctified an unholy thing, done despite unto the Spirit of grace. So if you are tempted and think that you have sinned willfully or that these solemn things are written against you, really ask yourself, have you really counted the blood of the covenant as an unholy thing? Have we really done despite under the spirit of grace? Have we trodden underfoot the son of God? And I trust the answer is, God forbid, we would not want to do it. It is our grief to think that we ever could walk that path and that we have sinned at all.

And so to counter that then, The Apostle gives that encouragement and points us to remember. Remember former days, remember when we were illuminated, and remember what followed afterwards. And so it is on those points I wish to speak this evening.

Firstly, a call to remembrance, former days. And then secondly, when you were illuminated, looking at that specific time and remembering that time. And then thirdly, what followed that illumination, which was a great fight of afflictions. There was an effect that followed it.

Then firstly, remembrance. How important a place in the Word of God is remembrance. Now, very many parts of the Word of God are done in a way, acronyms or following the Hebrew alphabet, as in several of the Psalms and also Ecclesiastes, Lamentations. We have those things that are used to aid remembrance and to remember the Scriptures, remember the Word.

You think of how our Lord saw fit with the covenant with Noah to even say that he would remember, I do set my bow in the cloud, I will look upon it, I'll remember my covenant, and we can look upon that rainbow as well and remember what God has said concerning it.

Then we think with the children of Israel, they had the Passover, they had to remember that as an ordinance. when they were brought out of Egypt through the shedding of blood and the Lord brought them out of bondage and into the wilderness and to serve himself. And it was done in such a way that when their children in time to come were asked, what mean ye by this sacrifice? Then they should explain to them what the Lord had done. The ordinance was a means of remembrance

When they passed over Jordan they had stones put in Jordan and stones on the other side Jordan and again it was with the purpose, what mean ye by these stones? The Lord brought us through Jordan as on dry ground. It was a needful remembrance, in fact the whole of the way, we are told in Deuteronomy 8 verse 2, thou shalt remember all the way the Lord thy God hath led thee these 40 years in the wilderness, is to try thee, to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldst serve him or no.

And they were not to forget many of the things, they were humbling things, they were things to remember their sin, their rebellions, their murmurings, but then also to remember the Lord's long-suffering, His forbearance, His mercy, Moses' intercession, the giving of water from the struck rock, and of the manna from heaven. They were to remember these things.

You think of in the Church of God, how that through the constant preaching of the word, there's a remembrance made of the things of God. of all what the Lord has done, what has been prophesied, what has been fulfilled, and a remembrance of his work in our hearts and lives as well. And the ordinance that God has given is not the Passover, but that which replaced it with the great anti-time, the sufferings, the bloodshed of our Lord and Saviour in the ordinance of the Lord's Supper. this do in remembrance of me, as oft as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show forth the Lord's death till he come. And so remembrance is a very important thing. God does things that are not meant to lie forgotten. They are to be brought back. And so he has also given the Holy Spirit who has been given the name not only as Comforter, not only as the Holy Spirit, but also as the Remembrancer. He shall bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you.

God does not forget the words he's spoken to his people, what words he's used to quicken them, what sermons have been used to be a blessing to them. He does not forget where he has met with them, And all that he's done for them, his teaching of them, he remembers it all. And the Holy Spirit is able and does bring it back to remembrance. And I hope it will be, as we come to other points this evening, that the Holy Spirit will bring back to your remembrance, to my remembrance, some of those times when we were illuminated times, when the Lord has shone into our hearts.

So may we be helped to remember, and may we also feel that as well as the blessing of having new blessings, it is a blessing revisited when an old blessing, an old visit, is brought to our remembrance, especially with a sweet savour and strengthening of our faith. And so, don't just look for new blessings, but that the old might be made precious again, and the Lord visit again, and come to the soul again.

I want to look then secondly, when ye were eliminated. Our Lord said that light is come into the world, that men love darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil, that men will not come to the light that their deeds might be made manifest. But the great miracle, the great wonder of sovereign saving grace is that God himself comes. And he shines in dark benighted hearts. He illuminates there. You know, if we have a room that's all in darkness, we can't see anything that's in that room. We don't know what is going on in there. Everything is a mystery. Everything is hidden. Everything is in secret. But then if it's illuminated, if the lights are all turned on, the light is shined upon it. Then what is hidden is all brought into light, is all seen and is all known. Those who are secretly doing things in the dark, if suddenly light was shone upon them, then they are ashamed, then they want to hide, then they don't want to be in that light. And yet God does this, does this with his people and shows them what they did not know before. or did not want to know before.

No, Peter, he speaks of the word of God as that light that shineth in a dark place. In his second epistle, he says we have a more sure word of prophecy that's more sure than the vision that he had on the Mount of Transfiguration. For unto you do well that ye take heed, as a light that shineth in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star rise in your hearts. Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation, for the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake. as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost, the author of the Word of God. Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path. And so the Word of God is instrumental, is used in shedding light upon a sinner's heart. But it is this illumination, it's this showing what is there, and it's a beautiful A beautiful way of describing conversion, the new birth, we could say a new birth, we could say regeneration, being born again, that vital change, but this is another way of describing it.

When we were illuminated, when light shone into our hearts, when light shone upon the word of God, We think of, in a very literal way, with the Apostle Paul, when he was on the Damascus Road. You know, he thought that our Lord was an imposter. He was hailing men and women to prison that called upon the name of Jesus of Nazareth. He persecuted them, thinking that he did God's service. He was in darkness. He did not know the truth.

But then as he went to Damascus with letters to hail men and women to prison, then there shone literally that light from heaven and the voice, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? Who art thou, Lord? I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest. It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. God literally did. shine in his heart, shine outwardly upon the path. And what a change. That was his new birth. That was his change of life. He saw then that Jesus was the true Messiah. He is truly God. He saw what he'd been doing was so wrong.

It's a beautiful illustration because I believe all of God's people will be able to look at things in their life where they did not see, but God shone on the word, or shone in their hearts, shone through the ministry, and they did see.

What did they see then? What is shown? You know, we sang in our hymns that we are not willing to have the truth told. We don't want to know that we are sinners. We don't want to be told that we're evil, that we're hell deserving, that their heart is desperately wicked. We don't want to know that. But when God shines in the heart, he shows us those things that we cannot escape it. You know, if someone is denying something, denying something, and then this irrefutable proof is set before them, they can't escape it. They've got to own up to it. And that's what God does in a sinner's heart. It shows us our sin, and for the first time we see what sinners we are. We see sin where we didn't see it before. We see evil where we didn't see it before. We see where we've gone astray. We've seen those works that we thought were good before God, and yet we see they're more stained and dyed with sin. And we see our righteousness as filthy rags. The truth of what our hearts are, The Bible describes it, and we say, Amen. And that is by the enshining of the Holy Spirit, the light shining upon us.

But then it shows the other side as well. As much as it shows the malady, it will then, in God's time away, it will show the remedy. It will show the gospel. It will show the Lord Jesus Christ. He will shed light on those passages like the eunuch had. Whom speaketh the prophet this, of himself or of some other man? He couldn't see the Lord Jesus Christ until Philip came and began at the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus. The two on the way to Emmaus couldn't see, though they'd seen thee, Lord suffer, bleed, and die, and was buried. But they couldn't see that this was redemption. This was what had been fulfilled. fulfilling the Scriptures and what had been spoken of through the centuries, until our Lord came, drew near to them, and opened up in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. And so the Lord then shone on those Scriptures and a lot of the preaching, that is what we seek to do, is to take a text and take the Word and shine the light, God's light, a truth upon that word and shine it also upon the hearts of those that hear. And that the Lord then uses that. It is that thing that is shown that was not seen before. That which is revealed now that was not known before.

Do we know such a change as that? Do we know even one text where the Lord has shone a light upon it. And we've seen that text as we've never seen it before. One truth of God, Luther was like that, that we are justified by faith, not by works as the Roman Catholic Church taught, but by faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ, in what he has done. We're justified by faith and what faith reveals. the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, accounted free from condemnation and guilt in believing and laying our hand upon that Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, identifying with him that the water and the blood from thy riven side which flowed, be of sin the double cure, cleanse me from its guilt and power. It is when I see the blood I will pass over you.

Much of what is seen in the illumination is in these two headings, what is seen of ourselves and our sin, and what is seen of the Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. And we beheld him, the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and of truth. that which the people of God have testified as they've viewed the Lord, and they've viewed Him, they've worshipped Him, they've loved Him, they've seen Him as the Chosen of God, the Lamb of God, as John Baptist pointed out, behold, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.

And so may we, under this heading, Remember, when ye were illuminated, when light first shone in the darkness, and this is the design of this, is to encourage us and to strengthen us. We think of how in other places we read, he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ. This is that good work, this light first shone. And we think of other places as well that speak of when the Lord begins, he does not leave off, he does not cast off his people, his sheep, they know his voice, they know him, they follow him, and they are secure in his hands. No man is able to pluck them out of mine hands. Give diligence, be exhorted to make Your calling and election sure.

Well, here is the calling described in a time when illumination was given. And I would emphasize again, and what was said forth in the hymn, by nature we do not want to see the evil in us. We shy away from it. We would rather have darkness than light, our Lord clearly testified that. So when light is shown, when we've had to bow before that light, that is a clear indication of the teaching of God, the light of God, the shining of God, making us see what we would not otherwise choose to see and would not have seen otherwise.

We may not all have, we certainly won't all have, the experience that Paul had on the Damascus Road, that we will all have in measure, light that is shown, light showing what we are, and showing what Christ is, and light upon the Word of God. And I hope that that is an ongoing thing, that we see new things out of the law, out of the Word of God, and out of the Gospel, that light is continually being shown upon us, so that it becomes a living word, a living book to us, and those things shine forth from the words into our hearts to give the light and the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

I want to look then in the third place, that not only was light given, but then there was an effect due to the change of behavior and walk. So if we may be tempted or tried whether we really had the light, then let us think of it on another way. From that time, what happened? Did our lives just continue on exactly the same, or did they change? Were there things we started to do that we hadn't done before, like reading the Word of God for ourselves, like prayer, like attending the means of grace, like going with God's people? Are there those things that when we stopped doing, going to the theatre, mixing with worldly company, doing ungodly, sinful things, Did it make a difference in our lives when that light shone? And when that difference was made, did it then have an effect on those round about us?

Because the Apostle Paul, it certainly did. Instead of him being then the persecutor, he ended up the persecuted. And we read this here, the following on from our text, but called to remembrance the former days in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions. Why? What caused those afflictions? Partly, whilst ye were made a gazing-stock, both by reproaches and afflictions, and partly, whilst ye became companions of them that were so used, joining with the people of God, they were persecuted with the people of God. and in taking up with the things of God, their old company, despised them, persecuted them.

A man's enemy, says our Lord, are they of his own household. He says, I've given them thy word and the world hath hated them. These effects of the change, where light is on one soul but not on others, it makes a difference. The others cannot see what the other one can see now. And so they think it's strange. Why are they acting like this? Why are they saying these things? They're good people. They're not sinners. They might say they're an upright person. And what is this that they're saying? That they're sinners, and they're guilty, and that they need a saviour. And they're cast out as being a strange people.

When the Lord works, there are those things that the word describes as accompanying salvation. Those that are joined with him. And some of us, we have those things that are in providence as well. Some have had to move house, some have had to move a job, some have had to give up things that they've been going to. Those that have had to walk a path that they wouldn't have done if the Lord hadn't have intervened and hadn't have shone light upon their path. And so even then we have witnesses that, if I say strange witnesses, Satan coming and tempting and for the first time we fear instead of the beautiful juicy things we go after, now they're temptation, now they're things we don't want to here we don't want to yield to, and so they're a trial.

Then we have our flesh. The flesh loves the things of the flesh, the natural things, the worldly things, but now we find the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, so he cannot do the things that he would. There's a warfare that goes on within, and so there's this effect. It's not just a light shining one time and that's it. It makes no effect on our lives and no effect on those around us. It is a light that does make an effect. A new creature in Christ, the new birth has taken place. We are not now what we once were. We have been changed, renewed, born again of the Spirit, put amongst the people of God. made to be what the Lord would have us to be, brought into his school, as we have early on in this chapter, where the Lord begins to teach and carries on to teach right through our journey's end. I will put my laws into their hearts and in their minds will I write them. Their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.

A taking up of the cross, are bearing the cross after the Lord. Like Moses, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.

Where the light shines, it will shine and it will make a difference, and it will make their soul so that they can never again return to that dark, darkness of unbelief they can never undo what God has done and then return to being a complete unbeliever or one that has never seen the light. No, where the Lord shines, then those things are seen which are remembered and they are to be remembered.

This is why our text says, but call to remembrance the former days. And some of us, we think of those early days, and how much of a fight with sin, how much of a wrestling, how much of a struggling, how much of a striving after the Lord, and hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and a zeal then which, you know, sometimes it is nowhere near the same later on.

Like the letters to the churches in Asia, one of them was charged with leaving their first love. The first love of God's people is the Lord himself. We can so easily be taken up with the world. But if we have backslidden, if we have gone away, then the answer with the word here before us tonight in this text is to remember those former days.

God doesn't say, Look, those former days were a mistake. Those former days, they reprove you because you've departed from them, you're no longer a child of God. No, he says, remember the former days, because that is where we are again, and where you had the light, you walked in the light, it had an effect, and you remember it, not for your condemnation, but for your encouragement.

You have changed, The Lord has not changed, and that which is done is still laid up as a witness in heaven. Here is a poor soul that received the light, that acted in that light, walked in that light, maybe made a profession of faith in that light, maybe made many things and changes in their lives in that light. And so this is a beautiful illustration. I don't want you to lose this. I don't want to lose this illustration, this picture.

Ye were illuminated. A light did shine in our lives. A light shined in our hearts. A light did shine upon the Word of God. That light showed us things we hadn't seen before. And it was God. God who is light. God who set the sun and the moon in the heavens. God who is light himself, let there be light and there was light. That's what he's done. In your heart, poor soul, that's what he's done. In mine, where he's shone there.

And so may this word be an encouragement and the Holy Spirit be the remembrancer to take you to those times when light shone and what effect it had and what followed on. And may we be able to say with Paul, by the grace of God, I am what I am. By the grace that was shown in giving me light and illuminating my poor soul, it has changed me and made me to be a follower of the Lamb and to walk in his light as he is in the light.

May the Lord bless this word to us this evening.

but call to remembrance the former days in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions. Amen.