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 water. And God said, Let
there be light, and there was light. We talked about that this
morning. Where the light came from comes
from God. He spake, and light was. And after he spake, and light
was, God saw the light. God saw the light, and it was
good. God saw the light, and it was
good. God divided the light from the
darkness, and God called the light day, and darkness he called night.
and the evening and the morning were the first day." Well, there's
a thing about this light in a spiritual sense, not in the natural sense,
but in the spiritual sense. We can say that every man needs
light, and if he's ever come to a saving knowledge of the
Lord Jesus Christ, he must have light, and we said this to indisputable
proofs that Light reveals in its beginning operation on the
alienated sinner. It convinces him beyond a shadow
of a doubt that he's lost an atom, and if he's ever to be
saved, it'll be saved in the second atom. Life is indispensable. We must have it. Creation must
have life. Vegetable life and animal life
is dependent upon life. So as life, as creation, must
have life, the new creature in Christ Jesus must have life. It's necessary that he has life,
and light only comes from God, and God is the sovereign dispenser
of life, and His claim is this. I will have mercy on whom I will
have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion."
That's God's claim, isn't it? Didn't God claim that? He said,
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, I will have compassion
on whom I will have compassion. And here's what it says, I'll
harden whom I will harden. It went on to say, Jacob have
I loved, and Esau have I hated. God is sovereign in the disposal
of life, dispensing of life. Light comes from God, natural
light, spiritual light. Another thing that we can say
about this spiritual light, that it's irresistible. It cannot
be resisted. Spiritual light can't be resisted. When God says to a man's soul,
let there be light, he can't resist that light. He yields
to it. Now, people sometimes speak of the
will of man as being omnipotent. But the will of man is not omnipotent.
Only God is omnipotent. Man has power to resist the ordinary
motions of the Spirit of God. But when the Holy Spirit comes
to give life unto a dead sinner, dead in trespasses and in sin,
he comes to effectually work that work of grace in his soul. And he cannot be resisted when
he comes effectually to work that work to turn on the light
in a man's soul that he might find out who he is, and find
out who God's Christ is, it's effectual. He accomplishes his
designed objective. When the Holy Spirit comes to
effectually work, he puts forth his mighty power. And he says,
who then can stay his hand? Who can resist his power? None can resist the power of
God when he comes to give light to a poor, poor, helpless, doomed-damned
soul. He gives him light. Who shall
stay his hand? None shall say unto him, What
doest thou? You remember there in the book
of Ezekiel when it talks about this crowd of people there lying
in their own blood, filthy and polluted? It says, and when he
passed by, when God passed by, he said, live! And that polluted,
filthy, A lot of dead bones. No resisting of the Holy Spirit
when He comes to work effectually. We praise Him. I thank Him here
tonight publicly. I thank Him privately. I thank Him for the first glimpse
of light that I ever received in my soul was according to His
sovereign purpose. It wasn't by accident. He did
it on purpose. Everything God does, he does
on purpose. No accidents with God. He knows what he's doing, and
he knows how to do it. And he doesn't ask for any advice
from fallen human nature in order to accomplish his purpose. He
is of mighty power, and when he comes to work effectually
in the sinner's heart, none can resist him. He makes that man,
although that man at first is willing, or I mean is unwilling,
he's a rebel. He dwells in darkness. He loves
darkness and he hates the light. And prior to the coming of the
Spirit of God's work, effectual grace in his heart, and giving
light that he can see himself and see who Christ is, he has
to be made willing. God does not save a man against
his will. There's no man who has ever been
saved against his will. What God does, He saves a man
against his will with his full consent. That is, he makes the
man willing, see? He makes the man willing to be
saved. When the apostle Paul was saved, he wasn't looking for God. He
wasn't looking for Him. He was the chief enemy of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And he was going down to Damascus,
and he had papers of authority in his hand, names of men and
women who were followers of the Lamb of God. And he was going
to have them incarcerated. Some of them he was going to
put to death, but he was going to put them in jail. He's going to keep this gospel
business under his hand. He's getting
out of hand. Now, he was on the road to Damascus
to put these people in jail, and God met him in the middle
of the road. He was riding on some sort of
a beast of burden, and God unhorsed this proud Pharisee. and put
him in the dust immediately, and made him willing in the day
of his death. And he said, Who art thou, Lord? Who art thou? And he said, I
am Jesus, whom thou persecutest. And you know what this enemy
of God and the enemy of the Lord Jesus Christ said? He said, what
will you have me to do? Made him willing, made him willing.
When the Holy Spirit comes to work effectually in the heart
of a poor sinner, he makes the poor sinner willing. And he says,
what can I do? What will you have me to do?
How can I be of any service to you? I'm willing!" Oh, listen, does he not say,
I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy? This is the divine
claim of God then, and this is God's divine claim right now
in O.W. Now, tonight, January the 5th,
1996. It's still in effect. It was
that God's claim then, it's God's claim now. God, it says, saw
the light. God said, let there be light,
and there was light. There's that world that was shapeless,
without form and void, utterly empty, nothing there. You can't
even conceive what a thing looked like. Nothing. What is nothing? Nothing's nothing. Nothing there
without form, shapeless. God looked at it and said, I'll
make a fair and pleasant world out of this that's nothing. And
God said, Let there be light. And he saw the light. God called the—God saw the light,
verse number four. God said, Let there be light,
and there was light, and God saw the light, that it was good. The light was good. God saw the
light. Does not God see everything? Yes, He sees everything. But
this here does not refer to the general perception of God as
to all His works. It doesn't refer to that. This is something special. When it says, God saw the light,
this is something special because he looked at it with pleasure. He looked at this transformation
of this shapeless form and made that which is present
to look on. He looked upon it. with an eye
of pleasure. And he looked upon it with an
eye which he does not view, or he does not see other things.
Like a father. Like a father in the school auditorium. And there's a crowd of boys on
this side. And the father sees them all. He sees all the boys. But there's
one in that crowd he sees a whole lot better than he sees the others,
because that one boy that his eye is fastened to is his boy. And he looks upon him with tenderness
and pride and care and concern. He sees him differently from
all the rest of the boys. Oh, no. His eye rests on him
especially. Well, you know that those of
us here who are believers, we're believers in Christ. We trust
Him. He's our only hope. We've been
shut up to Him. We've had every hope taken away
from us. And every hope that we had in
ourself has been rendered useless. And we have been effectually,
by the Spirit of God, turned to trust in God's Christ as our
salvation. Now, we groan after we're saved. We groan because of inbred sin. I'm saved from my sins. The Lord Jesus took the sins
of every believer, and bore the penalty that was due them against
their sins. He paid what I owe. He paid the penalty. The wages
of sin is death, and he paid the penalty for me, and my sins
are gone. But yet I groan because of inbred
sin. Yet, because of my groaning,
that is, I would do right I have a desire to do right.
God knows I want to do right. But oftentimes, I do what I don't
want to do. And there's a struggle within
me. There's two principles within
me. There's the good and the bad.
There's the light and the darkness. And they struggle, and they fight,
and they wrestle. And what I would not that I do,
Paul says. So I have this struggle. Yet, when he says here, and God
sold the life and it was good, though I groan and moan and confess
my sins unto God, And I know in my heart of hearts the penalty
has been paid. And I'm a child of light, not
a child of darkness. And heaven's my home when I die. I know that. I take great comfort
in it, but yet I struggle. Yet I have this fight and warfare
that's in me because of this inbred sin. Yet the Lord sees. Whatever is good in me and in
you, and whatever is good in me and you, He sees it. And we know that it's good because
He put it there. If there's any good thing in
us or about us, if there's a good work that we have ever done in
the past, and will ever do in days to come, anything, that's
good. He's the author of it. Every good and perfect gift,
where does it come from? From above. God sees the light in a special
way, because He's the author of that
light. And he sees that good in us. He's put it there. Now the devil, Satan, he's our
chief enemy. Now he sees the light in us,
and he tries to put that light out. That's the reason our Lord
said, when you pray, be sure to pray unto your God that he'll
lead you from temptation. He'll lead you from the evil
one, because you cannot do combat with the devil. I know these
holiness people talks about how they whip the devil every day,
and they're fighting the devil. You can't whip the devil. You don't even be on the devil's
ground. He's so much smarter than you and I. We wouldn't last
one round with the devil. We need to pray, God, help me
to resist the devil. Lead me from temptation. Don't
put me out there in a place where I can be tempted, because I'm
as weak as water, and I'll probably fall. Lord, don't put me there. Well, that's right. Satan sees
the light, and he tries to put that light out. Oh, he'll tell a fellow, he'll
say, don't listen to him, you know what he's talking about.
You're all right. You're not any worse than other
people. You try to put the light out.
If you've got a little bit of light, just a little bit of light,
just a glimpse of light, your heart is beginning to melt. And you think this could be right,
what he's talking about. We're talking about God's Christ.
He might be right. He'll come along, and He'll sow
some seed there, which is contrary to the seed of light. He'll try
to get you. He'll try to quench that light
that you have. The world can see that light,
and the world hates it. The world hates the light. and
would, if they could, put it out. And there's sometimes, brethren,
even you and even me, and I'm not emphasizing me. I'll emphasize
you. Even you, there's sometimes even
you, and I'll crawl up there alongside of you. I'll stand
in your shoes because what's true with you is true with me.
There's times when we can't see the light. How many times have you been
off by yourself and you said, Oh, my God, I should... It must
be a mistake here. I ain't no Christian. I ain't
no believer. The thoughts that I have, These
awful, wicked thoughts that cross my mind, though they but be for
a fleeting second. I can't see much light in me. Well, thank God. God sees it. If you can't see it, Brad, if
you can't see it, thank God He sees it. He sees the light. I don't change anything because
you can't see it. Remember I preached one time
on the book of Job? I preached on that text. He knows
the way I take. When I come forth, I shall be
his goal. He knows where I'm going. He
knows the way I take. My problem is, do I know that
he knows it? And if I find out, if I discover
by revelation, if God teaches me, enables me to perceive and understand
that God Almighty Himself knows, He knows the way I think, He
knows the deep valleys, He knows the pain, the anguish, He knows! And when I know that He knows,
my God, that's the victory. Sometimes even we can't see the
light, but He sees the light. God sees it. Did you know that
it's far better that God should see the grace of God in me than
that I should see grace in myself, or better, that he sees it. Of
course, when I see it, I'll start bragging about it. I'll start boasting about what
I do and what I don't do. See? It makes me comfortable. It makes me happy to know that
I'm one of him. That's my comfort and my joy,
that I'm one of His. Now, you can't have much joy
or much comfort or much peace in believing in Jesus Christ
unless you have the gracious assurance of this fact that you
know you belong to Him. Now, if you don't know that,
you can't have any comfort, any peace, any joy. But if you know
it, you can have some comfort, and you can have some peace,
you can have some joy. But still, that fact is not the
foundation of my hope tonight. I know that I'm saved or not. The Lord knows, and He sees the
light, and I'm safe, whether I know it or not." Huh? I think I'm right. This is the foundation that the
believer has. The Bible says, knoweth them
that are his. And let every one that names
the name of Christ depart from all iniquity." You remember the
Pharisee in the temple? There were two fellows who went
to the temple to pray. One of them was a Pharisee, very religious. prayed at least
three times a day, and the length of his prayers were anywhere
from an hour to two hours. He didn't pray in secret. He
prayed out on the streets, out on the street corners of the
city of Jerusalem. He stood there with his garments
on, and everything to indicate by his dress that he was a Pharisee,
a member of the highest religious order of Judaism. And he went out to pray two or
three times every day on the street. Well, one of them Pharisees
one day went up into the temple to pray. He said something to this effect
in his prayer unto God. He said, I thank thee that I
am not as other men are. That's what he said. He said,
I thank you, Father, that I'm not like other men. Now, most people in the the man
that said those words, because they think he must be a noble
and great saint of God Almighty. But the Lord knew him, and the Lord sees no light in
him. He may be envied by the masses,
but the Lord knew him, and seen no light in him. Now there was
another fellow who was off in the corner, and
he was a publican, and he was the vilest of the vile. The most
hated occupation among the Jews under the Roman
rule was a tax collector. Nobody likes a tax collector
now, and nobody liked him then. He overtaxed people, and he was
hated by everybody. And he'd come up on that temple
porch along with that Pharisee, and he was over there in the
corner, far away from the Pharisee. He dared not get too close to
that Pharisee. contaminate the Pharisee. A Pharisee
would have told him to move over. Don't you get over here and rub
your outward hassock on mine and contaminate me with your
impurities and filthiness. But he was over there in the
corner, and he couldn't even lift his eyes towards heaven. He was a heavy laden with guilt
and shame. He found out who he was. He knew
who he was. He knew he was a sinner, a sinner
by nature, a sinner by birth, and a sinner by practice. He knew there's no hope in himself,
about himself, in himself, outside of himself. No hope. He'd have to look elsewhere.
And he looked in the right place, because there's mercy with God. towards poor sinners who own
up to their sin. He couldn't lift his eyes up
to heaven. He smote his chest. His heart
was depraved. He said, I've got trouble here
in my heart. My heart's not right. He said,
God, be merciful to me. God's seen the light in him. The man who said, I thank God
that I'm not like other men, oh, God should see no light in
him, but he's seen light in this poor publican. And you know,
the Bible says that one of these two men went down to their house
to justify. And the one that went home justified
was that poor sinner. Why? Because God was so blind. Ah, poor puppet. God sees the
light in him, and he goes home justified. What does the word
justify? Justified against all charges. No charge against him. He's like the one that's described
in Romans, chapter 8, verse 1, where it says, There is therefore
now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. No condemnation
means you're justified. No charges. No charges against
you. Somebody paid your debt. paid
your bill. Somebody took your liability.
Someone paid it in full. Well, you know, the apostles in the
New Testament mention the virtues of the saints of God, in particular
there in, I think, in the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews.
When he talks about Abraham, the faith of Abraham, when he
talks about Noah, when he talks about Jacob and Isaac, their
faith, he also talks about Rahab the harlot. Now, he speaks and
magnifies the faith of Rahab. But he doesn't say a word about
her lies. He doesn't say a word about her
misusing the truth. Why is that? Because God saw
the light when he was writing this book of the new creation,
and he said nothing of darkness. He's only talking about that
which is light. He could see the light in us,
not the darkness. Oh, God saw the light, and it
was good. Now, light is good in all respects. Natural light is good. It's a
pleasant thing, as it was today when we went forth from the building.
And someone was telling me, well, bad day, isn't it? And I said,
no, open the door. And she opened the door and she
said, Well, lo and behold, the sun's a-shining. Wasn't that
right? How pleasant it is to behold
God's sunshine. Natural light is good. Gospel
light is better. Gospel light's what I'm talking
about. Our Lord Jesus Christ said this about gospel light.
He said, Blessed are the eyes which see the things. which you
see, oh, if you ever see what you are, if you ever discover
that you're hopeless and helpless, you can't save yourself. You
can go to the priest, he can't save you, he can't save himself. You can turn to some work, you
can change directions, have a new lifestyle, but there's no salvation
in that. Oh, gospel light's good. Blessed are the eyes which see
the things which you see. Spiritual light is good. It comes
from God. It comes from above. I've already
told you that every good and perfect thing cometh from above.
It's good. He saw the light, and it was
good. And it says down here that he
He divided the light from darkness, and God divided the light from
darkness. The moment, and I've went over
this a little bit, the moment that you become a believer, you'll
begin to fight. You'll have trouble. In this
modern 20th century age, modern religion, Hollywood religion
and evangelism, They're on a high all the time. Blessed be Jesus. Oh, Jesus this and Jesus that.
The football players, when they come off of the field this afternoon,
some of them that I heard, the first thing they said was, thank
the Lord. God's good to us. He's good to
us. God give us the victory. This and that and so forth. Well,
I don't know about all that, but it looks to me like God. The holy, holy, holy God Almighty,
who is so pure that He cannot be approached apart from the
Creator. It looks to me like if you try
to bring Him down here to the level and associate Him with
a football game or a basketball game or put Him on a license
plate, it looks to me like you're doing God an injustice rather
than honoring Him and exalting Him. Don't you think? God divided the light from the
darkness. And the moment that a man becomes
a believer, he'll have to fight. He'll not only have to fight
the world and the flesh and the devil, but he'll have to fight
himself. Now, I know a lot of people that
do a lot of fighting, but I don't know many that fight themselves. Paul said, I fight. I have fought a good fight. I've
kept the faith." He said, I keep this body under me. I keep my
body under. I govern. So you have a struggle. Why?
Because the believer is a double man. Two principles in him. At first there was but one principle. That's darkness. That's darkness,
that's the first principle. At first there was but one principle
of darkness, but now, you believer, because light has come and entered
in, and these two principles disagree. Light and darkness
disagree. They struggle, they fight. And
that's the reason you have this warfare that goes on in you. And you think, You've grown when
your passion, your anger is stirred for a minute, and you might even
swear. You may even use a word of profanity
in your heart. Maybe you won't speak it out
here, but in your heart you may use a curse word. Or you may
tell a small lie. Infer something. Exaggerate. If they do that, you'll back
off and you'll say, why did I do that? Why didn't I do just what's
right and tell it like it is? Instead of trying to attract
some attention with my story, why didn't I just lay out the
bare facts and let them fall where they were? We're prone to that, aren't we?
Why we do that? We've grown because of it. There's
two principles here. light and darkness, and we're
going to struggle with these two principles to the day we
die. There's no sin on us. He paid for our sin, but there's
sin in us. It never changed our nature in
it. We've still got a sinful nature. We've still got a bad
heart. We still have bad thoughts. Don't
we? Bad thoughts. I'm not trying to be overly religious.
I hope you don't take it that way. But sometimes I pray. Most of the time. I ask God,
give me good thoughts today. I'm so full of bad thoughts.
Lord, give me some good thoughts. Let me have good thoughts of
you, good thoughts of those that I see. Oh, God, help me today
to do what's right. I want to do what's right, whether
you believe it or not. I don't even believe it myself
sometimes, but I want to do right. Two principles work again. Light
has come and entered in, and darkness has come and entered
in, And these two principles disagree and they argue and they
fight. Darkness by itself now, you can
get along with it. I got along with it for about
23, 24 years. I got along with darkness. I
couldn't find nothing wrong with darkness. I like darkness. I
was comfortable with darkness. But when the light comes in,
you couldn't stand the darkness. There's a struggle. You can live with darkness. As
a matter of fact, you don't even know you're in darkness. You
can be in darkness and don't even know it. But when the light
comes, you find yourself divided into two camps, the good and
the evil. You find both Cain and Abel in
your heart. Well, I'm going to quit. You know what I'm talking about.
Things must have names, don't they? They've got to have names. I was reading in the paper this morning, I believe it was,
one of the, I don't know, yesterday maybe, I read the paper. Someone
had a new baby, and they called him, this is
not the name, but they called him John Jacobs III. He was the third John Jacobs.
Remember I said everybody ought to have his own name? Everybody
ought to have his own name, your own name. Things and people must have names. Adam named the beasts of the
field, didn't he? God created all the beasts of
the field, and they went by old Adam. And he told Adam, he said,
You name them all, Adam. I'm going to let you name them
all. There went a cow by and he said,
That's a cow. There went a horse by and he
said, That's a horse. There went a monkey and he said, That's
a monkey. There went an elephant. There went my Dixie by and he
said, That's a dog. That's a dog. But listen, Adam named the beast of the field,
but God himself named the day and the night. Did you ever notice
that? It says, and God called the light day. He named the light
day, and the darkness he called night. The Bible says, ye are
no longer the children of darkness. You're the children of light.
You know what he says? He says, walk in the light as
he is in the light. And we have fellowship one with
another. Walk in the light, live in the
light, and glory in the light. God. Called the children of light.
Light wears the name of day and darkness. Where's the name of
night? And where are the children? Those
who are believers. Where are the children? He said, work while it is yet
day.