Good evening. I think you all
know that Gabe and Hannah and the girls are getting a well-deserved
vacation. I got a text this morning from
him saying that it was the most relaxing vacation he thought
he'd had in a long time, and that's good. That's a good thing. All right. Let's turn to Psalm
27. Our subject tonight is Christ
the Light. You might have noticed when Brother
David read in John, the first 14 verses, that
we see two of the many, many names or titles that God reserves
for the Lord Jesus Christ. Three times he is called the
word, that's in the very first word, very first verse, and that's
word capital W. And four times Jesus Christ is
declared to be the light, capital L. And it's good, a good thing
to learn is that when you see a word that's capitalized in
the scripture that you think, hmm, that's odd or different. All it is, is generally indicating
that's another of the names that God has reserved for the Lord
Jesus Christ. And the word there with a capital
W, you could just say that in its place, the Lord Jesus Christ.
When you see the word Light, capital L, you can put in the
Lord Jesus Christ. You know that three times the
word capital W, four times the light capital L, and once he
is said to be the light capital L, which means he's the only
light. Twice he is proclaimed that light. What's that mean? It means when
you look in the Old Testament here and you see the word light,
he's that light. You follow that? He's that light.
And finally Christ is proclaimed in that first chapter of John
to be the true light, capital L, which we should take and everyone
who ever reads this word should understand that's a warning.
That's a warning to those who are not called but handle this
word. These so-called pastors, preachers
out here, people who claim to be preaching something, that's
a warning to them that It's a serious business to handle this. You
see, so-called lights, little l, from God's people should be
wary and flee from them. When somebody is obviously, does
not know who the light is, capital l, it becomes obvious, get away
from that. Get away from it. And David in
Psalm 27 makes a simple and yet profound declaration. Do you
see here in Psalm 27, verse 1, he says, the Lord, capital L,
is my light and my salvation. Let me see if I can illustrate
this to you. I sort of remember the first day of algebra class
in the eighth or ninth grade. And the first thing this fellow
did, the teacher got at me, turned around, and he wrote on the blackboard,
2A plus 2B equals 2C. And I remember sitting there
going, What is he talking about? I did not have a clue what he
meant. And you know, there were some in the class, they got it
just like that. They looked at that and went,
mm-hmm. And there was some of us, it took a while. But eventually,
the light bulb went on and we realized what that meant. Bless
their hearts, there was some that failed to get it through
the whole semester. They never understood what was
going on in there. And David boldly claims when
he says the Lord Jesus Christ is his light, he's saying he's
my illuminator. He's the one who turns the light
on for me. By nature we cannot understand
who God is, what he did, why he did it, or where he is now.
We just don't get it. God has to turn the light on.
illuminate us. And David was saying, Christ
has illuminated me. He's enabled me to see. To see
not a what, not a theory, not some facts, but rather God's
light reveals a who. A who. Now, the first word, the
first that the word reveals, who I am, that's the first thing
that happens. If the word comes in power, I
will get a glimpse of who I am by nature and what I am. And
it'll be things like the scriptures full of this having happened
to God's saints. One said, back Isaiah was his
name, he said, I'm undone. I'm undone. It was another of
the saints said, I'm the least of all the saints. One of the
other saints, the light came on, he said, oh wretched man
that I am. One said, Oh, woe is me. Wasn't it Isaiah who spent the
whole first, how many chapters in Isaiah going, woe is you,
woe is you, y'all are in trouble. And then finally the light came
on and he went, woe is me. He saw who he was. Another said,
I'm the chief of sinners. There was a man in the temple
who said, oh God, be merciful to me. I'm the sinner. He beat upon his chest why the
light had come in and revealed what was in there. But then the
light, capital L, also not only illuminates who we are, it illuminates
the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our salvation, who he is, God
born in human flesh, the one who came to live a perfect life
for his people. He reveals by his spirit how
he allowed his blood to be shed, to die the death that his people
deserve. We see Christ risen from the
grave, seated in glory. waiting for the time when He'll
call us to Himself. And finally, we'll be fully illuminated. Now we just see through a glass
dimly. It's like we've got real heavy sunglasses on all the time
about this. We need God's Holy Spirit to
eliminate Christ, the person, not facts and information. But
how important is this? The simple truth is that every
one of us here tonight One of two things is true. Either He
is my light or I don't have any light. We have no light and therefore
we dwell in darkness. And the second thing is either
Christ is our salvation or we don't have any salvation. Is
that too simple? It's just true. Now turn to Genesis
1 with me and let's see The very first mention of the word light
in the scriptures is in Genesis 1. On the very first day of creation,
God declared that there would be salvation from darkness, and
that salvation would be called the light. You see in Genesis
1, verse 1, 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, capital day. And the darkness he called night.
And the evening and the morning were the first day. Notice in
verse three, the first thing that we read is God said. God said. We need to understand
this about when God says something. When God says something, whatever
He says, that's what happens. How God says a thing is going
to happen, that's how it happens. No other way. It happens that
way. When God says a thing is to happen, you can count on it.
That's when it's going to happen. God said into the dark, He said,
This is void and formless and a dark place. And he spoke and
said, let there be light. Now that sounds like such a simple
thing, doesn't it? Hey, even man can make light,
right? Well, let's think about this
just a minute. You know, we walk into a, even the children here
can walk into a room, it's dark, and all they have to do is go,
and the light's on. You say, that's so easy. Man
can make light. Well, let's examine that a little
further. You know what it takes to make that light? First of
all, some miner up here 100 miles up into West Virginia has got
to mine the coal. And it's got to be hauled down.
Have you seen those shows where those guys are in there? They're
a mile down, digging in there with conveyors and getting that
out. And it's got to be trucked to the plant. or they got to
split atoms, better be careful with that, right? There's a whole,
there's power plants that have to be built, miles and miles
of wires have to be run and towers built, millions of poles stuck
in the ground, and every one of those, every junction's got
to have an insulator. Because if somebody just touches
it, one time I saw a squirrel touch one of those wires. Somebody
else may have seen it too. I'm telling you. All of a sudden,
he reached off the pole and touched the wire at the same time, and
all it was was, and just this little gray stuff filtered down. I'm telling you, handling power,
handling light power is a serious thing. And if, you know, we need
to be conscious of that. And this ought to be a warning
to the false prophet. Don't try to handle the light
of God without God's grace. It's a consuming fire, he says.
Isaiah 5 says, woe to them that put darkness for light and light
for darkness, because there's no light in them. Those who profess
to speak of Christ the light, listen carefully to what they
say. If it's not according to this word, there's no truth in
them. But man, you know, we get the light all the way from the
coal field down to your door, and even then, we've got to install
fuses and breakers, because it can all go wrong. And then a
bulb's got to be made. It's incandescent or fluorescent,
mercury vapor, glass has to be blown, tungsten mined and stretched
into those little filaments in the bulbs, and this goes on and
on and on. And finally, when you get your
house built, the electrician comes in and runs wires and puts
that thing in the wall, And this is such a simple thing. We walk
in the room and it's dark and we go, and the light's on. And we think we have real power
here. We've got, we've got this mastered.
However, this is so puny, so as not worthy to be compared
with what God did. You know what God did? God said,
He spoke. He said, let there be light.
And where there was no light, all of a sudden, the sun came
into existence in space. And there was light. In this
earth, this planet, it was darkness. And God spoke. What we do is so insignificant. In an instance, the sun was there. And God put it precisely, I've
been on the internet some, 92,960,000 miles away. You say, that exact
number? That's what they say. And why
that number? You know, they say if it was
a mile closer, we'd all burn up. If it was a mile further
away, we'd all freeze to death. You say, how do you know that?
Well, as the earth goes around it now, When it gets far enough
away, the temperature drops down to zero sometimes or below, doesn't
it? And other times when we get closer, it gets up over 100.
God did it exactly as it needed to be. And do you know this? The time it takes to get from
a ton of coal mined to the light switch I don't know whether that's
months or years or whatever it is, but it's not but what, a
few miles up here to the coal mine and the power plant, whatever,
it's no big deal. You know how long it takes God
to get a ray of light from the sun over that 92 million miles? You say, how'd you figure this
out? Well, somebody did, and it's on the internet. It takes
eight minutes and 20 seconds for God to supply enough light
for this whole planet. in one second like that. We're
now told that we're wasting light or energy if we put a 100 watt
bulb where a 40 will do, don't we? Well, God sends his people,
you know how much power he sends us, how much light he sends us?
A thousand watts of light for every square meter of this earth,
every second, of every minute, of every hour, of every day.
In one hour, every hour, God sends his people more light than
the entire population of earth could use in a year. One day of God's light would
last the entire planet 25 years. In addition, God put the moon
in place to reflect the light of the sun when it's dark, to
remind us even in darkness who the light is and where the light
comes from. In addition, God hung the stars
in space. Do you know how many stars there
were? I was astounded at this, in our little universe. They
guess there's at least 100 billion suns. Y'all ever pick up sand
at the beach and go, wonder how many grains of that we threw
out there? God, on the first day, threw a hundred billion
stars, suns, into place, exactly where they're supposed to be.
You say, what's their purpose? I don't know what all purpose they serve,
but I know what they do when it's dark outside and there's
no sun, no moon. You know what it does? It gives
ambient light. God never leaves us without light. His people receive the light. Now, why did God do all this?
Number one, to glorify his son, who is the light, capital L.
And number two, to give the life of his children, who were born
into darkness, the life that's in his son, the light of the
world. Not the sun, S-U-N, but the sun,
S-O-N. Are there any words, any wonder In verse 4, God saw
the light. You know what he said? This is
good. He said, this is good. You know,
the light, little l, is good, and that's a type and a picture
of the light, capital L, which is so very good. If we ever see
Christ, we'll say this. He's good. He's so good. Oh, my. Now, turn over to 2 Corinthians
chapter 4. Second Corinthians 4. What does man do with the artificial
light that he makes? I'm afraid to say that it's unfortunate,
but what we do mostly is better see how to go about our dark
business. It's just so we can send 24 hours
a day if we're so inclined, which we are. And for what purpose
did God become the light? To save his people from their
darkness. Look at second Corinthians four verse five. For we preach
not ourselves, but Christ Jesus, the Lord and ourselves, your
servants for Jesus sake, for God who commanded the light to
shine out of darkness. We read that in Genesis, didn't
we? Has shined in our hearts. That's just a picture of what
he spiritually does. Shines in our hearts to give
what the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. That's the whole reason he recorded
this word, so that when his children read about the Lord Jesus Christ,
the light comes on. It is by the preaching of the
gospel that God enables his people to see the light, capital L,
which exposes what we are by nature, children of darkness,
but light causes God's people to quit trying to hide in the
darkness, but rather to repent before God and to acknowledge
and confess before God, not so much what we specifically have
done, but for what we are. And that we will then beg for
mercy, pleading that he'll change us as only he can. And it is
by the preaching of the gospel that God enables his people to
see the light, capital L, which reveals his son, Jesus Christ,
and him crucified. His children of light see the
perfection and the glory and the hope and the peace and the
joy, the forgiveness, the remission, the regeneration that's found
in Christ. And without that light, we don't
understand any of those words I just said. When God blesses the preaching
of the word, it's even better than the first day of creation.
When God speaks to one of his children for the first time,
you know what that is? It's the first day all over again. He goes, let there be light. And boy, we wake up. We see for
the first time. And the spirit of God will look
upon a sinner lost in the dark void without form and say through
his preacher, let there be light. And light
will burst forth. There'll be light. And the sinner
will agree with God as the sun burst into being. The sinner
will agree with God and will see the light and say, he is
good. He is good. Turn to Luke chapter
one. Folks, we ought not give up. on our lost children, our lost
loved ones. We need to keep asking them to
come here, build up all the goodwill you can, and then trade it in
for one more, come on, go to church with me this morning.
And I've seen some of you doing that. It's a good thing to do.
It's the wise thing. In fact, it's about the only
thing we can do. We never know when someone's first day will
occur. At the end of Luke chapter 1, John the Baptist is called
to preach the gospel. And following that call is the
definition he was given that constitutes preaching the gospel.
You see Luke 1 verse 76. And thou, child, shall be called
the prophet of the highest. John is told here, God is going
to refer to you as a prophet or a preacher of the highest. You see that capital H there?
That's a person. You're going to be a prophet.
A true preacher is a prophet of the Lord Jesus Christ. For
thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways.
And look what you do. This is preaching the gospel
to give the knowledge of salvation unto his people. John said, he
is my light and my salvation. by the remission of their sins,
through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the day spring...do
you have a center reference there? What's that day spring mean?
The sunrise. when the light comes on. Is there
anything more beautiful than to get up in the morning on a
clear day and look and see that sun start to peak over the horizon? You think, man, that's magnificent.
And it is. I'll tell you, when the day spring
comes into our heart for the first time, God illuminates us
and we see Christ. It's better than any sunrise
there's ever been. But it says the preaching of
the gospel enables whereby the day spring from on high hath
visited us." It's not the preacher. It's not really the words he
says. It's the word, capital W, that
comes from the light of God that illuminates the heart. Look at
verse 6, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the
shadow of death to guide our feet into the way of peace. Christ
is the way, capital W. Now, We notice in verse 79, to
whom the light is to be given, to them who sit in darkness.
Who is that sitting in the darkness talking about? Well, that's God's
people. You see, unbelievers, they don't
really sit in the darkness. Do you know what they do? They
live in the darkness. They dwell there. They like it
here. They like the darkness. By nature, we love our sins.
We don't want to give it up. We love it. But if the light
has shined in our hearts, we do want to give it up. I mean,
we wish we wouldn't do it despite the fact that we keep doing it.
But we just have to sit in this until
we get to go be with him, and then we'll stop all the sin,
and it'll be gone, and we won't have any memory of it. It'll
be wonderful. But unbelievers dwell in the
darkness and run after it, wallow it. And believers are redeemed
from the darkness, but we still walk through the darkness. And
I'm just like you. Most of the time I'm out there,
and somebody else is up here. And do you know what we do? Boy,
we leave here on Sunday night, and you know what we've got to
do? We've got to walk through the darkness until Wednesday
comes. And then when Wednesday comes,
we get to come into the light for a little while, and then
we've got to go back out in the darkness. You know, we come here
begging God for an extraordinary portion of light, don't we? We
want to see Christ more and more and more. Turn over to Psalm
36. Let me try to illustrate what
I was just saying. You know, your car runs on fuel
of some kind. Any of you ever run out? You're
driving down the road and you're not paying any attention, all
of a sudden, and boy, it's a sick feeling, isn't it? You go, uh-oh,
I'm out of gas, and you're not anywhere near a gas station.
It's bad, isn't it? Some of you probably, maybe some
of you remember, there's a few as old as me, in the, you remember
in the 70s, we had a gas shortage? I mean, you know, I lived in
St. Louis. There were thousands of
gas stations in St. Louis, and none of them had any
gas. And you'd see one that had gas,
and you'd pull in and get in line, and there'd be 40 cars
in front of you. And you'd get up there, and they'd sell you
three gallons. Or you'd be driving down the road, and somebody,
the gas stations were all closed, and you'd want to go open, and
you'd slam on your brakes and get back in there, and you'd
buy all they'd sell you. And the guy would be open for
an hour, and his gas would be all gone. They called it a gas shortage.
Can I without disrespect refer to this place where the gospel
is preached as a light station? Does that make any sense to you?
Out there there's no light stations. Not a one. There's just not. I mean, unless the gospel is
preached in a place, but in this town we're not aware of any other
light station. This is it. And it's why the
When this is open, we best be here. We best come get all we
can get. It's why the greatest gift God
can give a people is a faithful pastor to preach Christ crucified. And the most foolish, self-destructive
thing a believer can do is not come to the light station when
it's open. It's an egregious neglect not to bring our children,
whether they want to come or not. The place where God gives
his children what they need to get through the darkness is at
the lighthouse on a mountaintop, his gospel church. You see here
in Psalm 36, look what it says in verse nine. For with thee is the fountain
of life. In thy light shall we see light. You know, there's so much we
don't understand about the word, about Christ, about our Lord,
about ourselves. If we want to know more, come
to the only place where there's going to be more light shed on
it, and that's this place. Now, turn to Colossians 1 with
me. Whenever God does something such
as speaking light into existence, there's always more to it than
meets the natural eye. Did you all hear that? When God
spoke and there was light, And there was light here, but there
was so much more to it than that. And when the gospels preach,
there's so much more to it than just words coming out of somebody's
mouth. Natural light, it appeared, do
you know what color natural light is? You say, well, it ain't got
a color. You see right through it. That's
true. It doesn't have any color, does
it? That's so we can see through it. But do you all remember the
first time a science teacher took that thing called a prism,
all right, that little glass thing, and shined the light to
it up against the wall, and all of a sudden, you got a rainbow
up there. And if you haven't seen a prism,
you've seen a rainbow, haven't you? All that is is light shining
through moisture, revealing that's God's prism. You say, what's the significance
of that, Bob? Well, we learned. From that, that light is comprised
of color. Every artist learns soon that
there's only, you know how many primary colors there are? There's
only three. Listen to what they are. They are derived, all these
colors can be made from these three. There's blue, there's
gold, which we call yellow. You know, yellow's only in the
scripture talking about the color of hair. All the other times,
gold is gold, all right? And the other color, is crimson,
which we call red. And that's the only three colors
that make up light. No doubt there's a whole additional
message about what all this means, but let me give you this. When
God's Spirit reveals Christ the light to someone, suddenly things
are not just black and white. Black is still black. Sin is
still just sin. But Christ the light is so much
more than we can ever imagine. What this is saying is that blue
is the color of divine nature. Gold is the priceless, precious
righteousness of Christ. Crimson, the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ as our sacrifice. And as we grow in the knowledge
of Christ, we find out, you know, if you mix blue and red, what
you get? Purple. You know what that is? That's
the color of royalty. Christ is our King. And do we
see that Christ is the light? The point I'm trying to make
with this is, boy, we haven't seen the tip of the iceberg yet. We haven't seen the tip of the
prism of the rainbow from where it begins and ends. But as we
grow, we see more and more and more. But we can partake of some
of it right now. And let me show you this in Colossians
1, verse 12. It says, giving thanks unto the
Father, which hath made us meet or qualified to be partakers
of the inheritance of the saints, what are we? The saints in light,
who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated
us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption
through his blood, even the forgiveness of sin, who is the image of the
invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. Light seems
to be invisible to us, doesn't it? And yet it's not at all. There's so much more. Christ,
no one here has seen Him face-to-face, seen His person, okay? But He's
real and there's so much more to it than we can imagine. Light
is invisible until He's viewed through the prism of God's Word.
One more scripture and we'll be done. Turn to Revelation 22. Revelation 22. This message sprang
from an old writer I was reading about the light. And he said
this, we who enjoy the light should be more grateful for it
than we are. It's true. And we ought to see
more of God in it and by it than we do. You know my parents used
to receive and pay what they called the light bill. You say,
why they call it that? Today we'd say the electric bill.
But the reason back there was other than the lights, and I
think we had this little refrigerator, I mean, the furnace ran on coal,
which you had to fill up, and the stove was gas, and we didn't
have appliances. The only thing I remember is
that refrigerator and the lights. So they called it, when the bill
came from the electric company, it was called the light bill.
And my parents used to receive and pay that. And my dad was,
to this day, you can ask Rebecca, I'm going around flipping off
lights everywhere because I heard that all my young life. Don't leave the lights on. Turn
them off when you're done. When you come out of the room,
turn them off. Because I suppose back then it was a lot of money.
But even today, considering the cost and effort required to get
it to us, boy, it's a bargain, isn't it, what we pay for electric
bill? But what does, here's my question.
What, I mean, we're going to pay for every watt of electricity
we get from the power company. Here's my question. What does
God the Father charge his children for the light? Anybody here getting a bill from
the son, S-U-N? Well, I'll tell you what, we're
never going to get a bill from the son, S-O-N, or from his father. The scientific measure of light
is a lumen. That's an appropriate term since
it illuminates and enables us to see. And God sends untold
lumens from the sun, S-U-N, to all who receive it at no charge. You know what else? What's the
cost of Christ the Light, capital L, the Lord Jesus Christ? To
all who receive it, all who receive him, It's the free gift of God's
grace. There's nothing anybody can do
to earn it. There's nothing anybody can do to deserve it. And nobody
can pay for it. It's the free gift of God's grace.
He cannot be purchased, only received. But oh, the cost. You know what it costs God for
the light, capital L? It cost the dead, the death,
the shed blood of His priceless, precious Son. Oh, how thankful
we should be. One day we'll see this in the
full light of glory as John did look here in Revelation 22, verse
5. Revelation 22, 5. He said, "...and
there shall be no night there." There's no darkness in heaven.
"...and they need no candle." We don't need any artificial
light. There's no switches to throw. "...neither light of the
sun issue in." Won't need it. Why? "...for the Lord God giveth
them light, and they shall reign forever and ever." You say, who's
that light? It's the one on the throne. It's
the Lord Jesus Christ. And perhaps tonight someone will
see light, capital L, and come into Christ from out of the dark.
Perhaps it'll be somebody's first day. If so, we'll know the same thing
God said is good. This is good. This is a good
thing, isn't it? Hadn't we been observers when
God hurled the sun into space, I'm sure we'd have gone, whoa,
whoa, how amazing and wonderful that is. But I tell you what,
if we've ever seen anybody, including ourselves, ever behold the Son,
the Son of God, and seen that He's life, that's better than
the first day. It's our first day. And He'll
turn the darkness of our sin, it'll be removed, and the glory
of Christ will be revealed. All right, let's stand together
and we'll be dismissed.