in the beginning, both his epistle and his gospel in
his first letter. I just thought I might read these
remarkable verses at the beginning of our scriptures and we want
to focus on this light. 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 night, and the evening and the morning were
the first day. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we do pray that you might illuminate your scriptures and reveal your
son in them, that we might, Heavenly Father, see him. We might believe
on his name, that we might Be those who are blessed with the
most remarkable promises, Heavenly Father, that we have everlasting
life, because you have revealed your Son to us and you've caused
us, our Father, to rest our hope, rest our eternity into the arms
of your Son. We pray that the light that shines
might shine in our hearts today, Heavenly Father. We pray in Jesus'
name and for his glory. I want us to think about these
verses in light of the situation with Nicodemus. Nicodemus was
an esteemed religious man, a remarkably moral man, a remarkably knowledgeable
man, and I love how he's described. He came to Jesus by night. He came out of the darkness into
the light. And as we look at these verses
in Genesis, I want us to be reminded that these Pictures of creation, these words
of creation are true in every sense possible that you can imagine
and they are God's words and they're God's description of
his creation and how he created it. But above and beyond that,
they are a gospel declaration. And that is there so evidently
in the scriptures. I often like to think of what
it was like for the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. they were walking away from Jerusalem
or rather than walking to Jerusalem where the resurrected Lord had
been revealed to people. But they were walking away and
they spent that time with Him. And He opened the Scriptures
to them and their hearts were moved within them while He opened
the Scriptures to them. And what was He saying about
the Scriptures? He was showing them all the things concerning And so I pray that our hearts
might burn because that's what salvation is, isn't it? In 2
Corinthians 4 we have an extraordinary description of this darkness
and this light. It says, if our gospel be hid,
2 Corinthians 4, 3, it's hid from them that are lost, in whom
the God of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe
not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the
image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves,
but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus'
sake. For, because, God who commanded
the light to shine out of darkness, this is Genesis 1. 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. describes for three times in
the book of Acts, we have descriptions of Paul's conversion. When God
repeats something three times, he's repeating it for emphasis,
isn't it? Paul was the one who met the Lord Jesus Christ on
the Damascus road. And he says, when I could not see
For the glory of that light, Acts 22, 11, being led of the
hand of them that were with me, I came into Damascus. You might
recall that light that shone around him. It blinded him to
the things of the world, but it was the means by which he
had his eyes opened to see the Lord Jesus Christ. If you see
him as glorious, you'll see him as the land slain, as we saw
earlier, and you'll see him as a light from heaven, the light
of heaven. And I love what happened. There
was Paul, a bit like Nicodemus, a proud, self-righteous Pharisee,
like all of us are born children of Adam. That's what Adam, that's
what we all are. But I love what the result of
seeing the light is. He says, when I could not see
for the glory of that light being led by the hand, See, no longer, when someone
has seen the light, no longer can they walk in the strengths
of their own doings and their own religion. They are led. And
I pray that we might see that light today and that we might
find ourselves being led, led by the hand. So let's begin at
the beginning because that's where John wishes us to go. So
we spent a little bit of time in Genesis chapter 3 last week
and I'd like us to go back even a little bit further. So let's
read these verses and once again I want us to see them in light
of the gospel. They are, whenever God speaks
scientifically, He speaks with perfect accuracy all the time.
And always the problem is our understanding rather than what
He's saying. And so if we have a problem, we need to go and
take that problem back to God, because this is how He says it
was. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. You
see, creation and recreation, creation and the new creation
are as one. God speaks creative words. separating words and God speaks
words of power and he speaks and creation bows but he's speaking
gospel words. See salvation is a creative act
of God and just as he created in the beginning without any
help from you, so he creates in the new creation. We are a
new creation. created as Paul says in Ephesians,
created in righteousness and true holiness. That's the new
creation. And that was the new birth that
Nicodemus needed. And you need that new birth,
you need that new creation, otherwise you can't see the Kingdom of
God. You can't see the King, you can't see the Kingdom, you
can't see yourself, you can't see and you can't enter. So these
things are vital. He created without any help from
anyone else, and He created by an act of His own will. And creation is the creation
of something that didn't exist before. Only God creates. We play with His creation and
think ourselves creative, and we are, and it's remarkable,
the creativity of man. But God alone creates, and He
creates out of nothing. Verse 2. 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. The waters in the scriptures
so often speak of judgment, doesn't it? The earth became, it says,
it might well be a better translation, the earth became without form
and void. And of course this is a picture
of the fall and it's a picture of the darkness of sin. And whether
you think this is the fall of Adam or not, there was a fall
before the fall because Satan fell from heaven. Satan fell
from heaven, he was before the fall of Adam and Eve, he was
a serpent in the garden, coming there with all his deception
and all of his lies. And so it is like Genesis 3,
it's a picture of the fall of man. It's a picture of this darkness
was upon the face of the deep. The darkness that is in and around
every man until a light from God shines upon. It's a picture,
a picture of the fall. Darkness was upon the face of
the deep. Why do we do evil things? Why do we do things that are
hurtful to our brothers and sisters? Why do we do evil things against
God? It's because that's what we are. We sin because we are sinners. We don't become sinners because
we sin. Of course we and all of creation in this darkness. God saw the wickedness of man
was great on the earth. And listen to God's description,
every imagination of the thoughts. See our thoughts are where it
begins. Every imagination of the thoughts
of his heart was only evil continually. It's just thoughts, isn't it?
If you read the lists in Matthew 7 and other places in the New
Testament, the list of sins against them, it begins with thoughts.
Why do we have such thoughts? It's because, as the scriptures
say, we're shaped in iniquity. We come forth from our mother's
womb speaking lies. We're like a leopard, we can't
change our spots. We're accustomed to doing evil.
And every turning of natural man, every turning from the light,
is a step away from light and into darkness. And it doesn't
matter which way you go, you can go in 360 degrees from the
light. And if you have your back to
the light and your face towards the darkness, that's where you
walk. And it can be like Nicodemus in the most extraordinary morality
that you could wish and the most extraordinary knowledge of the
Scriptures. But he was in darkness. He was in darkness. As much darkness
as the person you think in your heart is the epitome of evil.
If we don't, if God doesn't teach us about the fall and what we
are when we fell in our father Adam, people might object to
the fact that God accuses us of sin because of what our father
Adam did. Well, if you don't believe what God
says about you sinning in a substitute and a representative, then it's
very difficult to believe what he says about you being saved
in a substitute and a representative. The reality is that we sin, didn't
we? This is his darkness. Wherefore
as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin,
so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned. It's darkness. The darkness of Satan's temptation
is repeated again and again and again, isn't it? We believe that
we have the knowledge of good and evil. Only God has the knowledge
of good and evil. We're continually doing as Satan
caused us to do in the garden. Did God really say? Did God really
say? Is God really good? Is God really
just in His judgments? Is He faithful to His word? It is Adam's fall and our fall
in Adam is a reminder that Adam was created upright and he was
placed in a garden under a covenant of works, under covenant law
and one law to keep. He had one commandment, don't eat, And he fell. Every created being
has fallen in every creation that they've been put in. The
angels fell. perfect beings in a perfect place. The children of Israel had the
most remarkable privileges and they fell and they fell again.
David had the most remarkable privileges and promises and he
fell again. Just one commandment. What a reminder it is if salvation
is doing anything, keeping some law, being obedient to something
before we can be saved, or to keep us saved, or to reward us
after we have been saved, then we will fall. That's what Adam's
fall pictures. God saves by the knowledge of the tree of
good and evil, and we were banished from the knowledge of the tree
of life, and God set up those cherubims outside their garden.
The great temptation isn't the great promise of Satan in the
fall, as usually is God's. This darkness covers the face
of the deep. They took and they ate. And they knew that they were
naked, and they'd always been naked. But into this darkness,
into this darkness in Genesis 3, into this darkness in Genesis
1, there comes a light. In Genesis 3.15 there's a promise
that the seed of the woman will crush this serpent, this devil.
In 3.22 there's that glorious picture that I love so much where
they were taken and they were stripped of their fig leaves
and there they were naked before God and he clothed them with
a lamb. There was blood shed in the garden. And in 3.24 there is those cherubim
guarding the way to the tree of life. There is a promise in
Genesis and there is a picture. and the preservation of the way
to the tree of life. And all of this is according
to God's plan. If you turn to Genesis 2.15,
God doesn't say, if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil. Listen to what he says. He says, not if you beat. He says, when you beat. For in the day that thou eatest
thereof, thou shalt surely die. This darkness in Genesis 1 allures
to the darkness in Genesis chapter 3. There is, there is in all
of us So we did the sinning. Why did
the fall occur? Why, does God say, when you eat? Not if you eat. Why the fall?
Well prior to the fall, Adam and Eve would have known something
of the power of God. They would have known something
of the wisdom of God, and they would have known something of
the creativity of God. But God purposed so that we will see in the glory
of what happened prior to the fall, the lamb slain before the
foundation of the world, we will see the glory of God in grace,
we will know what love is, something of all of the glorious
attributes of God as they end up being revealed so gloriously
in the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified. It was God's decree
and it's all for the glory of God. It's also to show us again and
again that before we see the reality around us and try to
assess what's going on. We must understand that spiritual
realities always supersede and go before or precede temporal
realities. And so the question before us
all the time should be not what's man's doing? We go looking in
that box and all you'll ever do is find a can of worms and
you'll never sort it out. The question always is What is God doing in this world
right now? That's the great question, isn't
it? And the great reason and the great benefit of asking that
question is that I will then go and ask Him, and I will go
and seek out what He's doing, and I'll go to Him, because if
it's going to be sorted in any way at all, God has got it sorted,
and God has got it sorted. Don't you love what it says in
Hebrews 4.3, it says, God is not wandering around trying
to work out how this is all going to happen. The fall happened
according to the will and purpose of God, and man is 100% responsible. It's the glory of salvation.
In salvation, God is 100% responsible for salvation from beginning
to end. He's the Alpha and the Omega,
and man is 100% responsible for his fall and for his journey
in this darkness. But we see the glory of God in
the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. This light that comes, the next
words that God says in Ante, In the midst of all of this,
the Spirit moved upon the waters, and God says, let there be light. Let there be light. See, God's
response to the darkness, to that darkness that was upon the
face of the deep, that God's response So what the creation
becoming without form and void and darkness, God's response
is, let there be light. God's response. But what light
are we talking about? The sun and the moon and the
stars were created on the fourth day. So this light here is that
uncreated light. It's the light that we read about
in 2 Corinthians chapter 4. It's the light that shone around
Paul. It's the light that the Lord Jesus Christ describes himself
as, as the light of the world in John chapter 8. He's the light
of the world. Let there be light. that in a little bit longer,
but listen to what happens when the light comes. Verse 4 of Genesis 1, And God
saw the light, that it was good. God saw the light of his Son.
God saw the Lord Jesus Christ, the light of the world, and it
was good. God's finished creation creates is good always good listen
to what he goes on to say God saw the light that it was good
and God divided the light from the darkness God divides the
light from the darkness throughout the rest of this creation going to be a separation between
the light and the darkness. There's always going to be a
separation. There is always going to be no
fellowship between the light and the darkness. And one of
the glorious things about light coming is that light supersedes
the darkness effortlessly, instantly and powerfully. And if this room
was completely dark and someone lit a tiny little lamp, it would
light the whole room and the darkness flees. Such is this
light. There is no fellowship between
light and darkness. As you see in Genesis 4 between
Cain and Abel, there's no fellowship between gospel and law. There's no fellowship between
your works and the works of Christ. If you add to the works of Christ,
then you have nothing then. Christ shall profit you nothing. There is no fellowship between
grace doing something, not Christ plus
me keeping something. The darkness flees when the light
came. The darkness flees, the light
comes. The darkness is gone when the
light comes. God saw this light, his son,
and it was good. And his creation is very good. Why does God save sinners like
us? What was the attack on the character
of God in the garden by Satan? God is not good, is one of the
attacks, isn't it? God is withholding some good
from you that you can get like this uncreated light, the
Shekinah glory of God. God dwells in light. Therefore
He dwells with Christ, and He dwells with all in Him. Christ
in His sheep, Christ in His bride, Christ in His body, Christ in
His vine. God is good in everything He
does. God is good in electing His people.
God is good in redeeming His people. God is good in justifying
and preserving all of His people. Unbelief. How blinding and darkening
is unbelief that says that God is not good. That God is withholding
some goodness for you. He works all things together
for the good of those who call according to His purpose. He
loved them from eternity. He's justified them to be the
foundation of the world. They are in His presence. That light just comes and it
dispels the darkness. For you who have been converted,
you will remember the light coming. Paul is a pattern. The light
of the Lord Jesus Christ comes and all of a sudden everything
is changed. People think that law and threatenings
are going to move the stony heart of man. But it's not that at
all, is it? It's the grace of God. It's the
grace of God. It's the goodness of God that
leads to repentance. It's not threatenings. It's not
threatenings and commands to do. It's a command I seek to obey,
and it's a command that I know I fail every one of you all the
time in so many ways. He says, comfort ye. Comfort
ye, my people, sayeth your God. How do you speak comfortably
to Jerusalem? You cry unto her. You cry unto
her, and you tell her that her warfare Tell her that her warfare is
accomplished. Tell her that her iniquity is
pardoned. Not pardoned if you do something,
but it is pardoned. And that for she has received
the Lord's hand double for all her sins. What a remarkable God
we have. Double for all her sins. That
word double has many meanings, but one of the meanings is to
be folded over. doubled overs, folding over a
cloth in half and they're gone. They're hidden from God's sight. They're gone. What a motivation. What a motivation
to love our brothers and sisters. What a motivation to worship
and adore our Redeemer. Tell them they have received. Tell them they have received.
See in the garden we became takers, and now takers become receivers,
and receivers become givers. Salvation is a creation. It's not you evolving into something
better, it's a new creation. And God, verse four, divided
the light from the darkness, and God called the light day,
and the darkness he called night, and the evening and the morning
were the first day. I love how he's described our
Saviour as the day spring on high, visits us. Unto us a child is born, those
that sat in darkness, those that walked in darkness, a great light
has shined. They've seen a great light. They've
seen a great light. There is, there are in the scripture
so many glorious pictures of this light, aren't there? You
might recall the last but one plague in Egypt was the plague
of darkness. What an extraordinary darkness
that was that came upon the Egyptians. And what a discriminating darkness
it was. The Lord said unto Moses, this
is in Exodus chapter 10, stretch out thy hand towards heaven and
there shall be a darkness over the land of Egypt, even a darkness
which may be felt. And Moses stretched forth his
hand toward heaven, and there was a thick darkness in the land
of Egypt three days. They saw, listen to how dark
this darkness is. It's a picture, of course, of
the darkness, that outer darkness of hell. They saw not one another. Neither rose any from his place
for three days, but all the children had light in their dwellings.
Isn't that remarkable? None of the light in the dwellings
of the Israelites got out to the Egyptians. not one little
tiny bit of it. We don't need a little spark
of light to illuminate all sorts of things. This is God's discriminating
light. You might recall that Shekinah
glory that spent the next 40 years with the children of Israel the angel of the Lord, which
went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them,
and the pillar of cloud went from before their face and stood
behind them. And it came, this pillar of cloud, it came between
the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel, and it was
a cloud and darkness to them, but it gave light by night to
these. So that, The one came not near
the other all the night. There is discriminating in that
light. The word we have condemned in
our text in John chapter 3 is the word to discriminate. It's
the word to separate. There is a division between light
and darkness. There is a separation between
light and darkness. As I said earlier, there's a
separation between, and a division between, grace and works. And
Egypt pictures, of course, the taskmasters of the law, and it
pictures this world. And you might recall that Israel,
in all of its wickedness, kept going back there. And in Numbers
21, when the Lord sent those serpents to them, they despised
the light bread. They despised the Lord Jesus
Christ. And God created a separation,
and the separation is a separation that was about looking, looking
away, looking and living. There is a division such that
they can't exist. Light and darkness exclude one
another. Salvation is all of grace, or
salvation is all of works. legalism, cast out law works. Casting out is the command of
God. The child of works ultimately
hates the Lord Jesus Christ and his children. The world is going
to hate you, the Lord says, because it hated me first. who have witnessed the light
coming into your life and found you despicable in their eyes
and have cast you out. They can't coexist. God called the one day. We're
children of the day. We're children of the light,
brothers and sisters. I want us to think. Come turn
with me in John chapter 8. There are so many glorious pictures
of this in the rest of the scriptures. John 8 is one of the sweetest
of them all. This is the passage in which
the Lord Jesus Christ makes this remarkable statement about himself
in John chapter 8 verse 12. He says, I am the light of the
world. He that followeth me shall not
walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. Light and life are linked together. Light and life and salvation
are linked together. Let's go back and read the story
that prompted the Lord Jesus Christ to make this statement.
It's one of the most beautiful pictures of salvation in the
Scriptures. Verse 2, early in the morning
Jesus came again into the temple and all the people came to him
and he sat down and taught them. And the scribes and the Pharisees,
Nicodemus' mob, brought unto him a woman taken in adultery. It's remarkable, isn't it? You
can find a woman in adultery and you can't find the man. It's
a tricky thing to do, isn't it? Such is in the immorality of what they
had conducted. They only had one purpose in
mind. They hated the light and here they were coming to despise
the light. They brought home to him a woman
taken in adultery and you can well imagine what that woman
looked like. I guarantee you they didn't tell
her to go home and get chased and brush her hair and get herself
cleaned up when they brought her there. She would have been
looking in the most appalling way that was exemplary. of what she had been a participant
in by their conniving, I would suggest. And listen to these
people, these self-righteous religious people. They say unto
him, Master, this woman is taken in adultery in the very act.
Now Moses and the law commanded us that such should be stoned. But what sayest thou? This they
said, tempting him, testing him. This is children of the darkness.
The Lord Jesus Christ called these people children of the
devil. That word testing is the same word that's used of Satan
when he tempted the Lord Jesus Christ in the wilderness. It's
the same word that's used of those who want to bring the Lord's
people back under law and bondage. They are tempting God. Listen
to how he responds. But Jesus stooped down, and with
his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking
him, he lifted up himself and said unto them, He that is without
sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again
he stooped down and wrote on the ground, They which heard
it being convicted by their own conscience went out one by one,
beginning at the eldest, even unto the last. And Jesus was
left alone. I want us to remember that all
of the Lord Jesus Christ's pictures of him dealing with women in
salvation are pictures of him in his church, aren't they? We
are accused by this world. We are accused of all sorts of
things by this world. We are accused unjustly, I trust,
by the people of this world. And I love verse 10. None but the woman. The Lord
Jesus Christ has eyes for his bride. Always has eyes for his
bride. None but the woman. He said unto
her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned
thee? And she said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither
do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more. On the light of the world. on the light of the world to show you how you can be guilty
and not condemned. You can be caught in the very
act of sin and not condemned. Why doesn't he condemn her? Why
doesn't he condemn her? Exactly the same reason that
Nathan said to David, the Lord has taken away your sin. A thousand
years before the Lord Jesus Christ came, the Lord had taken away
your sin. The Lamb was slain from the foundation
of the world. Why? Why doesn't He condemn her? justified, isn't it? To be set
against the measure of God and found to be perfect. It is to
have never sinned. To be perfect in thought and
word and deed. To have kept God's law perfectly. To be presented before the Father
in His sight, wholly unblameable, unapproved. God sees perfectly. And you, like this woman, Might
say, well, I don't see that about myself. It's not your sight that matters.
In the issue of salvation, it's what he sees that matters. He
says, neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. It's his sight. How can God,
who is infinitely holy, because in a little while he
was going to take all of her sins to Calvary's tree and suffer
and die alone and the infinite wrath of God is going to punish
those Even the wicked people of this
world, all things work together for good, even the wicked people
of this world, who despise the Lord Jesus Christ, are working
all things together. Isn't it amazing? These wicked
people brought her to him, that she might hear this remarkable
statement. God's children in the Lord Jesus
Christ are infinitely better off than Adam ever was before
the fall. Adam maintained his place in
the garden because of his righteousness, because of his obedience. We
have our place before God maintained because of the righteousness,
the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ, and God says it's accepted
it's finished God says of his children as he is as he is so are we in this world
are we accepted is he accepted is he holy is he righteous as he is so are we in this world which are under the most severe
persecution in what is now western Turkey. And he says to his people,
you walk in the light. You walk in the light. You walk
in the light. You walk in the light of His
holiness. You walk in the light of His purity. You walk in the
light of His sin-bearing and sin-offering. You walk in the
light of His righteousness. You walk in the light of His
acceptance. It's to walk in the light of His name. It's who He
is. It's to walk in the gospel. in
grace, in Him. It's the fellowship that He creates,
it's the fellowship that He sustains, it's the fellowship that He maintains,
it's the fellowship for which He is completely and utterly
responsible. Our God, our Saviour, took responsibility
for all of His people from before the foundation of the world. And God the Father We look to the same place that
God the Father looks. Well pleased, he says to his
son. What's he say of his children?
Well pleased. Well pleased in him. What a price he paid. not sin against our brothers
and sisters and not sin against the Lord. The greatest motivation
for not sinning is the fact that your sins have been forgiven
completely and perfectly and God says it is finished. It is finished. What a saviour,
what a saviour we have.