May it please God to bless us
together this evening as we meditate in his word. Let us turn to the
book of Psalms and Psalm 43 and we'll read the prayer of the
third verse. Psalm 43 and the prayer of the
third verse. Oh, send out thy light and thy
truth Let them lead me, let them bring me into thy holy hill and
to thy tabernacles. It's a blessing for us that there
are so many prayers recorded in the Word of God. And I suppose often we don't
realize that The book of Psalms is full of prayers. And of course
they are not just prayers which are repeated in a natural way,
but they're prayers which emanate from the heart. And so here we
have a real prayer and a true prayer of the Psalmist. And he was desiring that God
would send to him light, and that he would send to him truth,
and that as the Spirit of God blessed him with these things,
then that he might be led, and also that he would be brought
into thy holy hill and to thy tabernacles. And what he was
referring to there, of course, was the temple, the temple which
had been built, and perhaps only been built relatively recently
by David. And we know it was built on Mount
Zion, being the holy hill. And so there was this concern
that he might be brought here, into this place, so that he might
be able to truly worship the great and almighty God. It's a wonderful thing today
to have that same desire, that same concern, that same prayer
as the psalmist had when he said, O send out thy light and thy
truth. Well, we can of course examine
ourselves and the Word of God does so many times encourage
us to examine ourselves and to see whether therefore this prayer
that we read is a prayer that we would pray from our heart. And it really means that we desire
God to shine upon our path, that we might be led in a right way,
and that it might be the way of truth, and we know the Lord
does lead in that way of truth. And therefore we can trust the
Lord that he will keep us, and that he would direct us by his
word. Because in the prayer of the
Lord Jesus Christ in the 17th chapter of John, we read, thy
word is truth. What a blessing it is that we
have the word of God, that word of God to lead us, that word
of God to indeed direct us. The 119th Psalm. Speaks to us
about this and in the hundred and fifth verse we read thy word
that means the Bible thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a
light unto my path so if we are traveling along through this
life, and we don't seem to see things very clearly and In fact,
the way ahead may seem very dark and difficult to interpret. Well,
we have this word to encourage us. Thy word is a lamp unto my
feet and a light unto my path. What the word is telling us really,
that we will find every answer to the need we have of leading
and direction in the word of God. There's no need for us to
go anywhere else. There's no need for us to look
to people to direct us. Often, you know, perhaps we want
to be encouraged by people. We may say something to people.
We may say, well, I'm not sure what to do. You know, sometimes
people just try to please and therefore don't really give a
true answer. We should never be left to seek
for direction and blessing from man. we should always seek for
a direction and blessing from Almighty God. Because the Lord
God will never lead us astray. He'll never give us a wrong direction. He'll always give us a right
direction. It may not always be the direction that we want,
but be sure of this, the Lord will never lead us in a wrong
way. And so as we have this desire
that the truth of God's word and the light that God shines
upon the pages may indeed be that which leads us. And surely
we desire to be led into all truth as it is in Jesus. And as we read in that eighth
chapter of John, Lord Jesus said, I am the light of the world. And so may our concern be to
be led to that great and glorious light, the Lord Jesus Christ. Because the light that shines
in the Saviour is so wonderful, because it directs us to everything
we need for our natural life, And more importantly, it directs
us to everything that we need for our spiritual life. So when we read a word like this,
we must be conscious that the Spirit of God is directing us
to the Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, if we read the Word of
God carefully and prayerfully, we will find so many words of
direction to the Lord Jesus Christ. Many in the Old Testament as
well as the New Testament. And we should always be concerned
to see the Lord Jesus Christ speaking to us in the Old Testament. And so may we come with this
prayer that the light of the Lord Jesus and his truth may
indeed be that which leads us and leads us in our spiritual
journey. We're all on a journey, aren't
we? We're on two journeys, really. We're on a natural journey and
we're on a spiritual journey. Well, we know that our spiritual
journey will be that which is eternal. We know our natural
journey will be that which will finish when our life ends on
this earth. So it'll be a great blessing
for us if we possess that spiritual light, that spiritual life as
we view the light in the Lord Jesus Christ, that that light
has shone into our hearts and brought about the knowledge of
the gospel. The Apostle Paul, when he wrote
to the Corinthians and in the second epistle of the Corinthians
he wrote some very precious words which are contained in the fourth
chapter and in the sixth verse he tells us for God nonetheless
for God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has
shined in our hearts and to give the light of the knowledge of
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Won't it be
a wonderful favour, won't it, if that light has shone into
our hearts and revealed to us the Lord Jesus Christ as the
glory of God? And surely that is so, because
our need of the Saviour is so very great Because without the
Lord Jesus Christ, without the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ
as our Saviour, we will be eternally lost. We won't be found in heaven,
we won't be found with the Church of God, we won't be found praising
the Lord Jesus Christ. So may we indeed have the evidence,
and if we don't, to pray for it, that we may have the evidence
that in our lives God has commanded his light, the glorious light,
to shine out of darkness. By nature we are in darkness. We live in darkness until the
Lord comes and shines into our heart, hath shined in our hearts. And when that light shines, it
shines for a specific reason, and a very important reason,
and it is to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ. Well, we may ask ourselves the
question tonight as to whether that light has shone into our
hearts. And if that light has shone into
our hearts, it's revealed to us the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Lord Jesus Christ as
the only one who can save our souls, the only one who can forgive
our sins, the only one who can take us safely home to glory. What a mercy if the Spirit of
God comes then upon us in this way and has shined into our hearts. Well, we must all answer before
God, but it's nothing which is trivial. Many things in our life
today are trivial. We may spend a lot of time on
them, but they have no real lasting value. But the things of the
Saviour, when that light shines, they are of infinite value, because
they are concerned with our eternal souls. So how important it is
that we're able to give a right value to the things of God, and
by comparison, a value on the things of our natural life, which
we often set so much store by. But may we indeed have this true
living desire, as the psalmist did when he prayed that that
light and the truth of God might be sent out into his heart, that
it might be an eternal blessing And therefore, as this light
was to shine, and the truth of God, it would be that which led
him along into greater knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. We really know so little of the
Lord Jesus Christ. You may say, well, I think I
know quite a lot. I think I read about him in the
New Testament, I know about where he was born, and how he was born,
and how he lived, and how he died. I know all those things.
Well, yes, that's true, and that's good that we do know all those
things. But when the light shines into
our heart, we see far, far more than just an outward position
regarding the Lord Jesus Christ. We see why he really came into
this world, and the reason why he came. how he came and the
details of it and nothing then is of a little consequence. Everything
is important from the very moment that he was born in that manger
in Bethlehem to the time when he died upon the cross at Calvary
and then of course when he was resurrected and ascended to his
father in heaven. Every single detail is very important. and it will be cause for much
meditation. It's good for us to be able to
think upon these things. We have time, don't we? You think
in the day. Each day we do have available
time, don't we? Available time to think upon
the things of God, but sadly we often waste that time. We
waste that time. We read in the Word of God the
simple words that we are to be found redeeming the time. That really means to recover
the time that we've lost in our lives. All of us, I'm sure, when
we look into our lives, we've lost minutes and hours and days
and months and perhaps years. We read in the prophets I think it's in the prophecy
of Joel that the Lord will restore the years that the locusts have
eaten. You know that means that locusts
are little insects which consume vast quantities of vegetation
and a swarm of locusts very quickly clears a great area. Well, in
our lives, perhaps, we've lost a lot. We've allowed the things
of the world to come in who have consumed the things of God, so
we haven't had any room for the great things which are so important
concerning our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, it would be a wonderful
blessing for you and me if the Spirit of God moves us to desire
to discover more and more of the life and the meaning of the
life of the Lord Jesus Christ to us as individuals, so that
we come truly hungry and thirsty for this true great spiritual
knowledge. To know the Lord Jesus Christ
and Him crucified is the vital need that we all have. But look
as we go back to the time when Jesus was born. The light shines. The light shone, didn't it? You
remember on that wonderful time when there was that star. That
star shone, didn't it? With wonderful light to direct
those wise men and to direct the shepherds. They were able
to come and to find the place where the Lord was. What a wonderful
thing then for that light. And the same really today in
our spiritual life, to see the light shine which directs us
to the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we think of that,
to recognise that the Lord Jesus, he has to come into this world
and he had to live that perfect life. and he had to die that
sinatonian death. Otherwise there would be no hope
for us, there would be no forgiveness. There was a very wonderful work
that the Lord Jesus Christ had to do. Because if there had been
no Lord Jesus Christ, there would be no salvation. The Word of
God throughout the Old Testament directs us to the need of a Messiah,
and how it was prophesied, and how it came to pass, and how
the Lord Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem. Yes, in those very
humble circumstances, He was born of the Virgin Mary. And again, these things today
are discounted and put away. The significance, of course,
is very great because the Lord Jesus Christ's Father was his
Father in Heaven. He didn't have, as it were, a
natural Father, although we know Joseph was spoken of as his natural
Father. His Father in Heaven was his
Father. So Mary conceived and brought
forth in due time the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. People
didn't realise who he was. He lived, you know, for those
30 years in really isolation, in a humble back position. We read virtually nothing of
him apart from the time when he was 12 years of age when his
parents went up to Jerusalem to worship and they left him
there by mistake and he was found seated and expounded in the Word
of God to the eminent Jewish people, the doctors. But apart
from that, we read nothing of him until the time when he came
to be revealed as the Son of God to the people. And John the Baptist, of course,
was privileged to be the one who was directed to speak of
him, directed to see him, directed to baptize him. And to hear those
great words from the Father as the Spirit of God descended on
him as a dove, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Well, these things will be real. They won't be fiction to our
souls. If our souls are hungry to know
that the Lord Jesus Christ did come and he did live, and what
did he do, He took on himself our human form in everything
apart from no sin. Trace out the life of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Trace out how humble he was. He didn't possess anything really
in this world apart from the clothes he stood up in. And we know that We're told he
had nowhere to lay his head. Yes, nights were spent in praying
to his father. What a wonderful example we have.
What a wonderful saviour we have, who left that place of glory,
that place in heaven, that wonderful place where there is no sin and
no needs of everything, to come into this sinful world with a
one purpose, of keeping the holy law of God, so that through his
life and through his death, he was to stand in the place of
his church and to bear the punishment due to us. Well, it's a wonderful
blessing if the light has shone into our hearts, declaring to
us the truth of God, so that we recognize that we do need
a saviour. Because our lives, however good
they may appear to be, are full of sin. And our lives will never
be satisfying to the holy law of God. We are failures. We are
complete failures. And if we are relying on ourselves,
there is absolutely no hope for us at all. And so Here we have
then this desire of the psalmist that he might be benefited gloriously
from the light and truth of God shining into his heart and that
to lead him. And we need none less than that
today. We need to realise we have such
a great and wonderful saviour. Let us never underestimate the
amazing sacrifice that Jesus gave. He left that perfect condition
in glory and he was born in the most humble of circumstances. No comfortable manger, no beautiful
hotel, just in a stable. He humbled himself to come into
that position and the truth is that no one today No one has
ever lived, no one ever will live, can say, well, I was born
in more humble circumstances than the Lord Jesus Christ. He
was born in the most humble situation. And then you see, he didn't then
vaunt himself and say, what a great person I am. He lived his life
so very humbly. And then when he was revealed,
he did his father's will, His Father's will was to be baptised,
and His Father's will was that He should do the Father's will. And so He did His Father's will. He carried it out completely. He did not fail. However difficult
it was, and try and imagine Almighty God condescending to come and
live in this sinful world. this sinful world, how much there
must have been to make him sad and sorrowful and
to come against him. But, you see, he carried on. He did his father's will against
all the unjust, just words, all the unjust accusations. How many
people were to speak against him? If you read the New Testament,
the accounts In the Gospels and the life of the Lord Jesus on
this world, we see how perfect his life was and what opposition. People hated the words that he
spoke. He spoke truth. He spoke truth. And so may we know the truth
of the Lord Jesus Christ as he spoke it. and we are found seeking
after Him and desiring His righteousness and not our own. But surely the
great blessing of this light and truth coming into our hearts
is to direct us towards the end of the life of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Yes, we know that He suffered
all through His life, but more particularly, when he came down
to the last few days. And we see his wonderful love
to the Church of God in that Passover night, in instituting
what we now term the Lord's Supper. That supper which was to take
the place of the Passover. The Passover which had been carried
out for so many years and of course It prefigured, it prefigured
so clearly the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it prefigured
the blessing of safety through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because we have to trace back,
or we can trace it right back to Genesis, and trace it back
to Abraham's life, and then trace it back to when, of course, Israel
came out of Egypt. And unless that lamb had been
slain on that Passover night, there would have been no redemption
for those Israelites, for those firstborn. The lamb had not been
slain. You may say, well, why was that?
Well, it's very simple to see, isn't it? When the lamb was slain,
the blood was shed, and that blood was taken as a symbol of
the death of that lamb. And that blood was taken and
then placed upon the lintel and the doorposts of the houses of
the Israelites, so that when that avenging angel passed over
on that night, all the Israelites would be safe, if they were indoors
and had passed through that doorway and were under the blood. Outside
of that, no safety. And it's exactly the same today. Now, may God shine into our hearts
then, this light, to behold the glorious scene we see in the
Old Testament that directs us so very clearly and personally
to the need there was that the Lord Jesus Christ should die. and in dying He shed His most
precious blood. It is precious blood because
it's through that shed blood and through that alone that there
is salvation for you and me. This light of the glorious Gospel
shining into our hearts and directing us to the death of the Lord Jesus
Christ. not forgetting of course the
great agony and the ignominy that the Lord Jesus Christ suffered
so that you and I might receive eventually the great glorious
blessing of eternal life through his death and through his ascension. So we have the wonderful scene
at Calvary, the wonderful scene in Gethsemane's garden, the wonderful
scene in the Upper Room, the wonderful scene in the Judgment
Hall. And I often think when the Lord
Jesus had instituted the Lord's Supper, the great love to his
church, when having done that and told us to do this in remembrance
of me, what a privilege it is for the Church of God. What a
blessing it is for the Church of God to remember the death
of the Lord Jesus Christ by that supper of remembrance, in partaking
of that broken bread which signified the broken body of Christ, and
the wine signifying the blood of the Saviour. Lest we forget. We don't want to forget. If this
light shines into our heart, we don't want to forget. And so then, the Lord spoke those
glorious words recorded in the 14th, 15th and 16th of the Gospel
of John. As we read them, and may you
read them and may you rejoice in them, to think that the Lord
Jesus, shortly before he was to suffer so greatly, his great
love to his church, he spoke those wonderful words. Well,
if the light of God shines into our hearts, to know that those
things that Jesus spoke were very truth. Yes, they were truth,
and how needful they were to be recorded, and how thankful
we are that they are recorded, because it directs us to the
whole plan of God, the whole plan of salvation. We should
rejoice in the truths that we're able to read there. And so the
Lord Jesus then was taken to that judgment hall, and there
he suffered so greatly. the perfect man who knew no sin,
and he endured all that so that you and I might be blessed with
that great and glorious freedom we read of in the 8th chapter
of John. If the Son therefore shall make
you free, ye shall be free indeed. And that freedom has only been
obtained through the Lord Jesus Christ. paying the price for
our freedom. We couldn't free ourselves, but
the Lord Jesus Christ, he paid the price. And the price was
his life. And leading up to that death,
that terrible suffering, well, what a mercy it is to know we
have such a Saviour. all of us may know, all of us
may be blessed with this light and truth coming into our hearts. If it hasn't come, and we do
need to be honest before our God, we must never pretend to
say we know things when we don't. We must be honest. The devil
will try and deceive us. He's always been a deceiver.
and he continues to be a deceiver, and he will be right down to
the end of time. But we don't want to be deceived. And if, as we stand before God,
we can't recognise the gracious work of God in our hearts, to
know that the light and truth of the glorious Gospel has been
shone into our hearts and has been a blessing, then here we
have The recommendation here is prayer, O send, you can pray
that prayer, O send out thy light and thy truth, that it may be
that which leads us, because it is only this light and truth
which leads us into the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's
a line in a hymn which tells us The great blessing of this,
and it says this, to know my Jesus, crucified, by far excels
all things beside. Now, you won't believe that until
the Spirit of God leads you into light and truth. And you may
have to say, well, I do believe it, but I wish I understood it
more. Well, I'm sure every child of God says, exactly the same
thing. But it's a blessing to have a
desire to know the truth of these things. And so the psalmist asks
and prays for this question, O sender of thy light and thy
truth, let them lead me. And of course, under the Spirit
of God, they will lead us. And they'll lead us to Calvary.
They'll lead us to Calvary. And there, by faith, we observe
and see the Lord Jesus Christ suffering and dying that sin-atoning
death for our souls. You see, it's not something that
we can take for another person. We need the influence of God's
Spirit to show us that Jesus has come and died for us And
you see the psalmist continues by saying, let them bring me
unto thy holy hill, unto thy tabernacle. And this was not
without significance, because in the tabernacle, And it uses
the word here tabernacles because there was of course the holy
place and there was the most holy place. And of course there
was the outer court. And all of these places were
very important because all the actions that were carried out
there pointed the seeker to the Lord Jesus Christ. So we have
some understanding of why. the Siamese wanted to be brought
and to send here and to be led here to the temple and to observe
there the wonderful ceremonies which were carried out which
all pointed to the need for forgiveness of sin and the satisfaction for
the forgiveness of sin which was found in the shed blood. Well we have of course the revelation
of these things, we have those Old Testament scenes explained
to us in Paul's epistle to the Hebrews, but we also have of
course the real situation spoken to us of in the Gospels and also
explained to us in the epistles and also in the words of the
Lord Jesus Christ. So, may we indeed have this as
our prayer. Send out thy light and thy truth.
Let them lead me. We don't want to be led astray,
do we? We don't want to be led in a
wrong way. We don't want to be led into
the broad way. We want to be led into the narrow
way, which leads to eternal life. Well, may it be our real prayer,
our real concern that the Lord Jesus Christ may indeed lead
us, as it were, take us by our hand. Sometimes to come to these
places, to come to these blessings, we have to go down into, as it
were, deep places. Real religion is not superficial. Real religion brings us into
the situation where we come to realise our need of a saviour. To know that we have sinned against
a holy God, and unless we are forgiven, there will be no hope
of salvation. What a blessing therefore if
we are led to seek salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. The last verse in this psalm
is a verse which is recorded a number of times in the psalms,
but it's good for us to realise and it's encouraging because
sometimes we may be cast down and we may be disquieted because
things don't seem to be working out and we may have thought that
we have sought the Lord and we are seeking him and we don't
seem to have made much headway. In fact we may perhaps think
we haven't made any headway. Well, what does the psalmist
say? He asks the question, why art
thou cast down, O my soul? Again he is speaking about spiritual
things. And why art thou disquieted within
me? We may be disquieted tonight,
the Lord knows. And if we are, then here is the
solution. Hope in God. For, says the Psalmist,
he has faith. My friends, we all need faith.
But God gives faith. And this is what it says. In
confidence, believing that his God would hear and answer his
prayer. And therefore he says, hope in
God, for I shall yet praise him who is the health of my countenance
and my God. You see, as we may come to God
tonight, praying that he might send out his light and his truth
into our heart, and perhaps to bring us into the holy hill and
to thy tabernacles, we do have to come believing the Lord Jesus
Christ can and will do these things. Don't forget the devil
is at our elbow and he is a liar from the beginning and we will
have to battle with an evil heart of unbelief. But may the Lord
give us that peace of God in believing. There is a peace of
God in believing. to be able to come and to say,
well, this is my need. I understand what the psalmist
was praying for. I do seek that the Lord will
send out his light and his truth. We may be disquieted. We may
be cast down. Don't give up. Hope in God. For I shall yet praise him. The time will come. The Lord
gives us a living faith to seek after this God. In true prayer,
there will be that time come when we shall praise him for
his health, for the health of my countenance and my God. Well, what a blessing that is
and what a blessing it will be. And may it be true in all of
our lives. so that we have come to seek
for this blessing that God's glorious light and his truth
may shine into our hearts so that we have a good hope through
his great grace that we are in the narrow way leading to eternal
life and by his favour we one day shall be in glory with the
Saviour to praise him for all that he has done. Amen.