Believers Walking In Darkness

Q: What does the Bible say about walking in darkness as a believer?

The Bible acknowledges that believers can experience times of darkness and feel a lack of God's light, as seen in Isaiah 50:10. According to Isaiah 50:10, even those who fear the Lord can find themselves walking in darkness without light. This state reflects the reality of the Christian life, where true believers may encounter trials and struggles that obscure their vision of Christ. The experience of walking in darkness does not signify that one's faith is absent; instead, it often reveals the trials that test and strengthen our faith. It is during these times that believers are reminded to trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon their God, recognizing that such moments can lead to deeper reliance on His promises.

Q: How do we know that God is with us during dark times?

God assures His presence and comfort to those who fear Him, even in times of darkness, as highlighted in Isaiah 50:10. The assurance of God's presence during dark times is found in His promise to His people. Isaiah 50:10 encourages believers to trust in the name of the Lord even when they feel lost or without light. This trust is significant because it acknowledges God's continual involvement in the believer's life, despite the feelings of abandonment that may arise during trials. The New Testament echoes this sentiment, reminding us that the Lord is close to the broken-hearted and those in distress (Psalm 34:18), reinforcing the idea that our faith should remain anchored in Him, even when circumstances lead us into darkness.

Q: Why is the fear of the Lord important for Christians?

The fear of the Lord is crucial as it is the beginning of wisdom and leads to a deeper relationship with God. The fear of the Lord is essential for Christians, as highlighted in Proverbs 9:10, which states that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. This holy fear, distinctly different from natural or sinful fear, is a gift from God that instills a deep reverence and respect for Him. It forms the basis of our relationship with God, allowing us to recognize His glory and our dependency on His grace. Through this fear, believers are guided in their paths, affirmed in their faith, and drawn closer to the heart of God. It inspires a longing for holiness and obedience, positioning believers in the light of God's covenant promises.

Q: What should believers do when they feel distant from God?

Believers are encouraged to trust in the Lord and return to the basics of their faith during times of distance. In times when believers feel distant from God, the call is to return to trust in Him, as emphasized in Isaiah 50:10. The sermon outlines two main instructions: trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon God. These actions remind believers to lean on God's promises and character rather than their own strength or efforts. By returning to the fundamentals of faith—acknowledging God's mercy and seeking His presence—believers can rekindle their light and deepen their relationship with Him. It’s a recognition that our efforts often fall short, and it is only through Christ that we find our way back.

Isaiah 50, and I just want to read a couple of verses from the end of the chapter. Isaiah chapter 50, and reading from verse 10. Who is among you that feareth the Lord and obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light, Let him trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon his God. Behold all ye that kindle a fire and compass yourselves about with sparks. Walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand, ye shall lie down in sorrow. Amen. May the Lord bless to us this reading from his word.

The main verse that I want really to think about is the 10th verse. Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light? walking in darkness with no light. Hardly seems to be the state or condition of one who has the fear of God in their heart and who obeys the voice of the gospel. And yet here it is in Isaiah 50 verse 10.

Let no one imagine that the Christian life is without trouble. If you're a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you know that the Christian's pathway is often hard, that trials are frequent, and that the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ can be dim and elusive despite the promises of scripture. Indeed, there are a multitude of references in the scriptures to the Lord himself being our light. He is the light of the world. He is the bright and morning star. He is the bright light of the glorious gospel. And believers, can sometimes fall into times and seasons when they have lost sight of the Lord Jesus Christ and his beauty and his brilliance and his light. Believers can walk in times of darkness having no light. That's because we are still fleshy in this world. That is because we are tempted by this world.

The promises of Scripture require faith in order to be enjoyed. And faith can sometimes be very weak. It is only when we are called, it is only when we have to put our faith to the test that often we discover just how weak it is. And it is as well that we come to expect it. It is as well that we know that these times can occur in a believer's life. So that it is not an altogether unusual thing if we experience it for ourselves. If that has not been your lot in your Christian life, that you have encountered these periods of darkness, these times without the light of the countenance of the Lord, then I am pleased, that's good. But you ought to know that it can happen.

The Lord does not bring his people through life without testing our faith. without showing us our innate weaknesses, and without teaching us what it is to have to lean upon Him, without giving us a sense of desire for lost comfort and lost love. There will be times in our Christian experience when for one reason or another, The light that is in us will appear to be darkness. And this can be a time of real spiritual coldness, anxiety, and distress.

And that's what Isaiah is speaking about here in these last couple of verses of Isaiah 50. Indeed, I think it's more than that. I think it's pretty clear from this whole chapter that this is the Messiah who is speaking, that Isaiah is recording, as it were, the words of Christ himself, and that this chapter is actually the Lord Jesus Christ who is speaking and telling the church that there will be times of darkness. He is calling to those who fear the Lord who desire after the Lord, and yet who walk in darkness. He's speaking words of comfort, therefore, to weary, exercised souls in times of spiritual distress.

Souls who have lost sight of the light of the gospel, the light of life, whose views of their Saviour have grown dim. and their fellowship with him has become formal and superficial. The hymn writer and poet William Cooper spoke about this sense in his own experience when he wrote, oh for a closer walk with God, oh for a calm and heavenly frame, a light to shine upon the road that leads me to the lamb. And maybe you feel as if you've been walking in darkness for a while. Maybe you feel as if the Lord's countenance no longer shines on you as clearly as once it did, or indeed as you hope it might, to lighten your way and to direct your path.

So let us see what the Lord in this passage has to say to such a person today. And I think it is timely that the Lord should give us such a word. It's Christ who's asking this question. Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light?

And it reminds us that he is aware of our wanderings as his sheep, and he is aware of the troubles that we encounter. He is addressing this question because he is asking us to be honest about the experience. He's aware of the troubles that we encounter and he is touched with the feeling of our infirmities and he has a desire to be gentle and kind to us and lead us back to himself. Such questions are not simply to be read and passed over as someone else's problem. They ought to be taken personally, they ought to be considered, they ought to be applied. And Christ is asking us to answer truthfully to these matters.

Are you walking in darkness, child of God? Have you lost your way? Have you no light in a matter that causes you concern? And asking or answering that question ought to stir up hope. in our hearts that our great physician has some help to offer. Dark times come into our lives for many reasons.

Hidden sin can cause that light in us to diminish. Unconfessed sin causes us to lose sight of the Lord. But perhaps more often, it's the trials of life that cause us to lose sight. It's the pain that comes maybe through loss or illness. Losses that cause change, effect change, that knock us out of our stride, cast shadows over our hearts.

And darkness in a believer's life can come suddenly, swiftly, like someone switching a light out. Or perhaps a loved one is taken from us unexpectedly and suddenly we're bereft and we don't know where to turn and everything looks black and everything looks dark. Or sometimes that light can go out gradually over a long period of time. Like when we're sitting in an unlit room and the sun goes down and suddenly we realize that we're alone in the dark and we didn't notice what was happening because our mind was taken up with something else.

And this world is so ready to take up our minds with something else, anything else that will distract us from the Lord. But I don't think that it's so much the reason as to why the light is lost that is before us today, as much as the recognition that it has been lost. The Lord is asking us to realize that things are not as they ought to be. or that they could be in our communion with him and our fellowship with his people. It's a wake-up call, if you like, to us to acknowledge our state and to seek once more that light of his countenance.

Proverbs 16 verse 15 says, And that's what we desire as the Lord's people, that refreshing rain, that blessing that comes from the light of Christ's smile upon us. So the Lord is speaking to believers here and the remedy that he gives to those who walk in darkness hinges upon two criteria.

He asks, who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant? So I want to ask the question, what is it to fear the Lord? What does that mean, to fear the Lord? I think there are three kinds of fear that are spoken of in the Bible.

And we all know the first two. There's natural fear, there's sinful fear, and there's holy fear. Natural fear is a dread of harm, an anxiety about getting things wrong. And we all feel that at different times. It might be because there's a school bully. It might be because we've got too much pressure at work. It might be because we're anxious about our financial situation. It might be our health. We know natural fear because it is something that is integral to us as men and women, as human beings.

Sinful fear. arises from guilt, knowing that we've done something wrong. It preys on our conscience and it makes us nervous that we're going to be found out and we're going to be held accountable. Proverbs 28, verse one, describes sinful fear when it says, the wicked flee when no man pursueth. So there's natural fear and there's sinful fear.

And since the fall of man, the whole human race has known the effects of these two kinds. Adam, when he sinned, hid himself from God among the trees of the garden because he was afraid. He felt an emotion he'd not known before. And his fear was natural and his fear was sinful.

The New Testament tells us in Hebrews chapter 10 verse 31, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. But there's a third kind of fear, which only, which only those who are born again know. Only those who have been spiritually renewed by God's grace ever experience holy fear, the fear of the Lord.

It's not natural fear. It's not sinful fear. It's something quite different. It does not even originate in man. It's supernatural, and it is a gift from God. God gives us the gift of holy fear. Now, we might wonder why God would give a gift of fear, but he tells us. We read in Proverbs 9, verse 10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. and the knowledge of the holy is understanding. So that when the Lord reveals to his people spiritual things, that is done by placing in our hearts the fear of the Lord, a holy fear. It's an awareness of his glory. It's a divinely implanted respect for God. It's a spiritual work to produce reverence and trust in Christ.

And the Lord speaks of this holy fear in Jeremiah 32 in the context of his plan to gather to himself a sanctified and a saved people, his own dear children to worship him forever. This is what he says, I will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from them to do them good. But I will put my fear in their hearts that they shall not depart from me. So the placing of holy fear in the soul of a man and a woman or a young person is in order that we will not depart from the Lord.

And here we see some of the qualities of this holy fear, this implanted respect and trust. It's a felt experience. So this is where the spiritual, which is secret, begins to be felt and understood in our awarenesses, in our experiences. It's a function of life. It is the felt experience of awe and wonder in the heart of the people of God, the heart of the people whom the Lord has been pleased to call his own and to bless with salvation.

The Lord has a people and in order that we might know him and in order that we might understand him, he places within us the fear of the Lord and that wonder, that respect, that reverence, that honour, that holy awe becomes part of our experience and we appreciate the greatness and the grandeur of the one with whom we have to do.

Men and women in nature don't understand that. This is the covenant God. This is the God who speaks about having a relationship with individual men and women, who speaks about gathering to himself a church, and all who possess this awe, this fear of the Lord, are joined to the Lord. by this everlasting covenant, the covenant of grace, the covenant of peace, the covenant of redemption. It's got a number of names.

This covenant is God's promise. to bless His people and it assures the goodness of God's mercy and grace will be freely given to these men and women upon the merits of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the connection between the fear of the Lord and the everlasting covenant of grace. Jesus fulfilled all the covenant obligations on behalf of God's elect people. He carried our sin. He carried our guilt. He stood surety for our debts. He has redeemed us from the curse of the law.

He has answered every demand of our holy God against us. and benefits that flow to us, the good news benefits, the blessings of the gospel, the benefits that flow to us in Christ are God's everlasting love towards us and the blessings of justification.

That is, he has made us righteous. He has imputed righteousness to us. He has declared us to be righteous in his sight. He has sanctified us. He has set us apart. He has blessed us. with that desire to honor him by living according to the pattern and example that the Lord Jesus Christ lived before us. He has redeemed us. He has forgiven us. He has adopted us. He has given us everlasting life.

He has promised us heaven's glory. These belong to those who fear the Lord. And it is the fear of the Lord that is the testimony that these covenant blessings are ours. They're our spiritual inheritance. And the fear of the Lord is the felt awareness in mind and in heart and in spirit and in soul of our interest in the Lord Jesus Christ. The fear of the Lord.

What about obeying the voice of his servant? That was the other criteria that was spoken of by the Lord in the context of those who walk in darkness. What is it to obey the voice of his servant? Well, the servant that is being spoken of here is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the servant in the book of Isaiah. He's sometimes called the suffering servant.

Christ was the servant of Jehovah in his office as mediator. So sometimes when we talk like that, sometimes when we use this kind of vocabulary, which is Bible vocabulary, people think, oh, We can't have. Jesus being called the servant of God or more usually the enemies of the gospel try to deny the preeminence of the Lord Jesus Christ by suggesting that he is a creature and therefore in some way less than the father. But just because the Lord Jesus Christ is called the servant of God doesn't mean to say that he is any less.

It is a description of the roles and responsibilities that he voluntarily undertook within the covenant of peace. And that's what it means here. So that to obey the voice of his servant is to obey the voice or the words or the gospel of Jesus Christ. He was bound, Christ was bound voluntarily under the terms of the covenant to purchase those sold under sin, purchased them with his own blood. And the voice of Christ is the gospel of Christ, whereby that accomplished work is declared to men and women as the gospel is preached. It's a gospel he preached. It's the gospel he committed to his apostles, and they in turn committed to faithful men.

It's the gospel that is faithful to the teachings of the apostles and the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. So that to obey Christ is to obey his gospel. We're not talking about the law here. We're not talking about Moses 10 commandments. We're talking about the gospel and obedience to the gospel is faith in the gospel. It is to believe his words. It is to trust in his work. It's to follow his example. Believing and trusting and following is the work of grace in a sinner's heart.

The fear of the Lord causes us to believe and trust and follow Christ in the gospel when he is faithfully preached to us. So that the Lord gives the fear of the Lord and we respond by trusting in him who is worthy of our faith. So who amongst us fears the Lord? who amongst us hears Christ's voice in the gospel.

The Lord's own people do. The Lord's people do. His chosen do. His cleansed do. His forgiven people. His redeemed people. His reconciled, called, and converted people. They hear the voice of the Lord in the gospel. And they have that sense of the fear of the law, that awe, that reverence, that majesty. Our hearts have been changed. Our minds have been transformed. Our souls are quickened by the light of the glorious gospel. The light of the glorious gospel.

And yet there are times when we walk in the darkness. with no light to lighten our steps, no lamp to shine on our path. When the fellowship is cold, when the hearing of the gospel is barren, when communion with the Lord is strained, what is such a man to do? What is such a woman to do? When we walk in darkness, when the Lord shows us that we're walking in darkness.

Well, what's the Lord's answer? I think he has two instructions here. He says, first, let such a man trust in the name of the Lord, and then stay upon his God. And this is the simplicity of truth. When the Lord shows us that things are not as they ought to be in our spiritual lives, Okay, let's cut to the chase. When the Lord shows us that things are not as they ought to be in our spiritual lives, when he shows us that our Christian walk and experience has become uncertain, the instruction that he gives is as familiar as it is easy.

Return to your first love. Go back to basics. Go back to the beginning. Go back to what you know to be true. The first one then was to trust in the name of the Lord. When the Lord shows you that you've grown cold, when the Lord shows you that the light has dimmed, then trust in the name of the Lord. Trust in the Lord and the name of the Lord. Don't trust in yourself. Don't think to yourself, I can kick myself out of this. I can get back.

What I need is a new regime of Bible reading. What I need is a new book. What I need is a new opening in a... a doctrine, and if I could just get that, then I can get sorted. I need to meet more people. I need to go and listen to more sermons. No, go back to the Lord first of all. What did we say to the youngsters today? Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Seek first Christ's rule in your life. Recognize back to the fear of the Lord. Trust in the Lord. Have you lost your bearings? Have you lost your footing? Have you lost your light? Then look to Christ in the gospel. Trust in the Lord, your savior.

Is he merciful? Do you know that he's merciful? Then trust in his mercy. It hasn't changed. Is he gracious? Do you know that he's gracious? Then trust in his grace because it hasn't changed. Has he been good to you in the past? Has he been faithful? Then thank him and ask for some more. His name is who he is and what he has done. His name was worthy of your trust once. You knew it once. Return to it. Return to your first love.

The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runneth into it and is safe. Proverbs 18, verse 10. Christ's name is the Lord, our righteousness. He is worthy of our trust. He gives us trust. To trust him in the dark is a glorious act of faith.

Second thing the Lord says by way of instruction is, let such a man stay upon his God. Your covenant interest that you first learned, that you first experienced, that you first tasted, that you first saw, came through the fear of the Lord. So let a man stay upon his God.

It hasn't altered because your view has dimmed. It stands as firm. It stands as eternal. As God himself, it is the foundation upon which your life is built. It stands as firm in the darkness. It stands as firm in the time of trial and in the bleakest tests and troubles. God is the believer's God still. Faith stays fixed on him. Dependence upon him to save and no other. Dependence upon him to guide and no other. Dependence on his grace and in his goodness to supply all that we need.

These were the things that first brought us into the experience of his goodness. These are the things that we lose when our spirituality grows dim and dark. This is what we go back to, back to basics, back to the gospel, back to the covenant, back to the promises.

Child of God, because it's you that we are speaking to today, are you walking in darkness? Back to the work of Christ on the cross. Are you walking in darkness? Back to the voice of Christ in the gospel. Are you walking in darkness? Back to the covenant promises of God, to his immutability, to his faithfulness, to his mercy and his love. There is but one help for the believer who is walking in darkness. Return to the same Savior who first gave you light and to the same gospel that first gave you life. May we all be enabled to do that in such times of trouble. Amen. Thank you for your attention.

Believers Walking In Darkness

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about walking in darkness as a believer?

How do we know that God is with us during dark times?

Why is the fear of the Lord important for Christians?

What should believers do when they feel distant from God?

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Believers Walking In Darkness

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about walking in darkness as a believer?

How do we know that God is with us during dark times?

Why is the fear of the Lord important for Christians?

What should believers do when they feel distant from God?

Sermon Transcript

About Peter L. Meney

Comments

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