Alright, let's take our Bibles
and turn to Genesis 1. I want to look tonight at verses
14 through 19. But before we get into this study,
and maybe this is something I should have done before we ever started
this study in Genesis, but I want you to understand and fix this
in your mind. and fix it in your heart that
God is Spirit. He is Spirit. He's not a statue. He's not a cap. He's not in a
cross on the wall or a picture we hang up. God is Spirit. And
the Scriptures represent Him as everywhere present. The universe
dwells in God. He doesn't live in the universe. exists in God. He's everywhere
present. He's all-knowing. There's nothing
that he don't know. He knows everything. David said,
He understandeth my thought afar off. He knows my uprising and
my down-sitting. There's nothing. God is all-knowing. God is all-powerful. None can
resist him. None can stay his hand or even
question what he does. God does what he wills. And God
is spirit. And no man has ever seen God. That's what he says there in
the book of John in some of his opening comments when he talks
about the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us back there
in the book of John. And he said, And we beheld his
glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full
of grace and truth. Now, he said, No man hath seen
God at any time, save he whom the Father hath sent, and he
who is in the bosom." Who is in? Now, here he stands. The Word was made flesh and dwelt
among us, and he stands on this earth, and he says, I am in the
bosom of the Father. God is Spirit. He is Spirit. And in John chapter 4, to the
woman at the well, our Lord said this, He said, You worship, you
know not what. But the hour cometh, and now
is, when true worshipers shall worship the Father in Spirit
and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship Him.
God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him
in Spirit and truth. not just in spirit. Pentecostalism
is a religion of our day that has gone all together into a
spiritual realm, and all they talk about is the spirit and
spiritual gifts and spirit this and spirit that. When he talks
about God being spirit and those worshiping Him in the spirit,
and worshiping him as the Spirit, he connects this with the truth
because God cannot be seen with the eye. What we know about God,
we know about God through this book and through the testimony
of his Son. His Son appeared and declared
who he was. No man has seen God at any time
save he who is in the bosom of the Father. The only begotten
Son. Listen to this in John chapter
3, verse 31. He that cometh down from above
is above all. He that is of the earth is earthly,
and speaketh of the earth. He that cometh from heaven is
above all. And what he has seen and heard,
that he testifieth, and no man receiveth his testimony. He that
has received his testimony hath set to seal that God is true. For he whom God hath sent speaketh
the words of God, for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto
him." He alone, he alone can declare to us who God is. Everything that we know about
God, we know through his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. But one
of the disciples said, Show us the Father. And he said, Hast
thou been so long time with me? Hast thou not seen the Father?"
Everything we know about God. What would I know about the Holy
Spirit of God? Everything I know about Christ. He said, I'm going to leave.
He said, it's expedient for you that I leave. And I'm going to
go away. But when I go away, I'm going to send again the Comforter.
And when He's come, He's going to convince you of some things.
He's going to convince you of sin, of righteousness, and of
judgment. He's not going to speak of himself.
Anytime you find somebody, you write this down, you mark this
in your mind and you remember it. Anybody who stands up here
behind this pulpit and just talks constantly about the Holy Spirit,
the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit, don't know the Holy Spirit. When
He has come, He will not speak of Himself. But he shall take
the things of man, and show them unto you. Whatsoever he heareth,
that shall he tell you." That's what he's going to speak. That's
what he's going to say. What he hears. And so everything that
we know about God, we know through the Lord Jesus Christ. There
are no secret visions, no dreams, no special experiences, no revelations
in the middle of the night. These things come to us through
an understanding of the Lord Jesus Christ, who He was, why
He came, what He did, where He is. And if you know anything
about God, that's how you're going to learn it. It will be
known through His Son. In John chapter 16, He says that
about the Holy Spirit. And as plain as words can make
it, He tells us what the Spirit will not talk about. But what about the Old Testament?
What are you going to do back there because Christ hadn't come
yet? Christ hadn't appeared. The Word hadn't been made flesh
yet. What are we going to do with the Old Testament? Well,
when questioned concerning his doctrine and the preaching of
Christ in the Old Testament by the high priest of Israel and
by the council of the Sanhedrin, And by learned men who were of
the Jews, those who were set in authority, those who knew
the Old Testament like the back of their hand, they questioned
Stephen about his preaching Christ. Now, you remember when these
apostles in the book of Acts preached Christ, they had no
New Testament. They were the New Testament.
They preached Christ strictly, altogether, from the Old Testament. And when these high priests stood
in Acts chapter 7 and they questioned Stephen, he went all the way
back to Abraham. And all through that chapter,
he preached Christ to them. In Abraham, he preached Christ
to them through the sons of Abraham and the patriarchs. And he preached
Christ to them in Moses, who led Israel through the wilderness
and through the kings. And all down through there, he
preaches Christ to them. And then finally, in verse 51,
he said to them, He said, You stiff neck and uncircumcised
in heart and ears, you do always resist. Now listen, the Holy
Ghost. What in the world is he talking
about? They wouldn't receive the testimony of God in Christ. That's what it means to resist
the Holy Ghost. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets have not
your fathers persecuted, and have slain them that showed before
the coming of the just one?" This is what men despise. This
is what men will not receive, and why they persecute the church
of the living God, because the church stands and proclaims without
backing up. that everything that God has
and intends in salvation and for sinners is altogether in
the hands of his sovereign King, the Lord Jesus Christ. It's all
in his hands. And if you get it, that's where
you're going to get it from. And you're going to get it from
him, and you're going to receive his testimony as he is, not how
you think he is. That's what the gospel is all
about. It sets forth the Lord Jesus Christ in his true offices,
in his true person, in his true purpose for coming into this
world, and sets forth in him the character of God and the
purpose of God in redemption. And I say this to you, to in
any way begin to enter into who God is or true worship, I have
to have some understanding of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's play
acting. It's just pretense. When we come
into a place like 99% of religion does, they come into a place
and play act. They come in there and act like
they know something they don't know. Ask them what they know. They can't tell you. Ask them,
on what foundation do you think that you're going to stand before
God and He's going to justify you in the day of judgment? Ask
them that. They can't answer you. The best they can come up with
was, well, I accepted Jesus as my personal Savior. Something
never mentioned in the Word of God. Never. Never mentioned. Never hinted at throughout the
Old Testament, throughout all the ceremonies, types and pictures,
throughout all these things. Never mentioned about accepting
Jesus as your personal Savior. It wasn't preached through the
ages. They just came up with this in the last 200 years. So if you want to make that your
hope, you go right ahead. But you won't find it in the
Bible. And I'll tell you this. I can,
with a clear conscience and assurance of mind and heart, view everything
in the scriptures that even remotely picture his person and work in
full confidence that it was written for this purpose." Listen to
what Peter says. This is over in 1 Peter 1. He
says in verse 10, "...of which salvation the prophets," that's
the Old Testament prophets, "...have inquired and searched diligently
who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching
what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in
them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of
Christ and the glory that should follow." Do you see that? The Spirit of Christ testified
beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the gifts of grace
that are to be bestowed at his coming, and all this because
of his suffering. And these people would see these
things, and they'd know these things, and they'd bow to these
things, and they'd receive these things. All those things were
revealed to the prophets of old. You know, we get this idea that
Noah was like some old codger in the Stone Age that had his
little rock-wheeled wagon that he pulled around like the Flintstones
or something, and these guys didn't know anything. You go
through the Scriptures and read the messages of Enoch, and Noah
and Abel. These men are singled out in
the chapter of faith, in Hebrews chapter 11. These men are singled
out for what they said and for a testimony they left on this
earth. And all the way back to Abel.
Now, this is the second one down from Adam. This is his son. And
it says, By these things he yet speaketh. He yet speaketh. Things are not outdated, they
are not old, they are not for another age. So I preach and teach with one
hope and one confident assurance, and that is the revelation of
Jesus Christ and the gospel of his dear Son. Now, that having
been said, I want to make just a few comments about the message
that I preached last week. And that is that resurrection
of that body, that dry land around which the oceans of God were
gathered into one place. Now, I gave you a Scripture reference
in Job chapter 38, if you want to turn over there and look at
this, what I'm about to tell you over in Job chapter 38. And the Lord asked him, He said,
Gird up your loins now like a man. I'm going to ask of you, and
you tell me. And boy, he starts, and I'm telling you, for three
chapters, one thing right after another, and everything that
he hit him with, Winston, was out of creation. He talked about
migration. He talked about the animals like
the wild ass. He talked about the geese. He
talked about the snow. He talked about the frost. He
just goes on and on and on and on and on with things of creation.
And he said, Have you entered into these things? Do you know
the mystery of them? Well, I can tell you what the
mystery is, whether I can see it or not. It's the Lord Jesus
Christ and that work of redemption that He accomplished. They tell
me that no snowflake is the same. Not one snowflake is the same.
Every last one of them is different. You talk about glory. The glory
of creation is just beyond your imagination. It's beyond your
imagination, the things that God has created. But he gets down here in Job,
and in verse 10, he makes this statement, Job 38.10. Before this, he's talking about
how he made the clouds a swaddling band all around this great sea. covered it in darkness, a swaddling
bank. And they were removed and doors
and bars were put into place to hold back that all-consuming
sea of God. And then in verse 10, he makes
this statement, And break up for it my decreed place, and
set bars and doors, and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, and
no further. And here, in this broken place, Here shall thy proud ways be
stated." The appearing of the land and the gathering of the
waters required a breaking up of something deep beneath the
surface of that sea. Down there where that body was
hidden, God purposed and broke up within that body a cavity
into which all those things gone was posed. so that the body didn't
so much resurrect from the sea. If you look at the wording there
in Genesis chapter 1 where he talks about it, he doesn't talk
about it so much being raised as he does the waters being gathered. You see it in there? Those waters
were gathered into a place. And Job tells us that he broke
up the place. Now I don't care what kind of
natural, I was watching something this afternoon caught my eye
and I flipped it over on Discovery Channel and watched it a few
minutes and they were talking about how the earth was formed. And
I don't care, I've read books on it and heard people talk about
it and all this kind of stuff and listened to preachers talk
about it, but I don't care who you listen to, they all say this.
There was some kind of cataclysmic something that happened. Tremendous
happened there. There was a breaking up and a
shaking of the earth, a shaking of all things. There was something
cataclysmic that took place in order for this land to appear.
And that's exactly what Job says. God broke up for it a place. Well, what in the world is he
talking about? He's talking about the Lord Jesus Christ who was
broken in order that that justice and judgment of God might be
satisfied, that might be gathered around that body like a priest's
garment, all around that body. And then Job said, in that he
made his decree, Here hitherto shall thy proud ways come, and
no further, no further. The only way for God to redeem
fallen sinners to Himself is to satisfy His own judgment and
righteousness and holy vengeance, or breaking up within Himself
a place for these things to be contained. And I stand before
you and pray you to be reconciled to God on this basis, on this
basis, not on the basis of something in you, not on the basis of something
in me, not on some universal offer. But I can stand before
you and pray you to be reconciled to God on the basis of sin being
satisfied in a substitute." That's the only way, or any other way. Because God has made him to be
sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him. In order for these waters to
be gathered, in order for this body to be raised, upon which
he purposed the glory of life, that justice and judgment and
wrath and vengeance must be satisfied. There has to be a place broken
up within God. Nobody else could contain it.
Nobody else could do it. All the demons in hell, all the
men that God sends to hell will never satisfy that justice. It
could never cause that water to sway. Not in a billion, million
years. It couldn't do it. It couldn't
do it. God has to break that place up within Himself. And
in Himself, He's satisfied. He's satisfied. He causes those
waters to recede. Much the way He did in the days
of Noah when those that He determined to save were all put in the body
of that ark. Determined to save, he put in
that ark, and that ark rose up above the waters, and it sat
there, and it sat there, and it sat there. And when God was
satisfied, when that vengeance was satisfied, and that wrath
burned out, then he sent his wind, and the waters began to
sway, and the ark sat down. That's exactly what took place
right here in creation. Those waters came down, and when
they did, they revealed a body. And he called that body earth.
And I told you last week that that name means firm place. That's
where we get our terminology, terra firma, that they call the
earth. It means firm place. Well, what's
more firm than the Lord Jesus Christ? He's the foundation stone. He's the chief cornerstone. Upon
Him are all the apostles and prophets and all this church
and everything that God is going to do in this holy temple. that
God is building for a habitation of God through the Spirit, it
is all based on that foundation. And I talked to you about those
breakers. The C means to roar. And I was
trying to think of this hymn last week, and the name of the
hymn is Jesus, Savior, Pilot, Me. Do you know the hymn? Listen to this last verse. When
at last I neared the shore and the fearful breakers roared.
That's what the sea does. Old breakers roar. They roar,
and they threaten vengeance, and they threaten wrath, and
they threaten holiness, and they threaten all these things to
be brought into this judgment day, to which me and the peaceful
rest, then while leaning on thy breast, may I hear thee say to
me, Fear not, I will pilot thee. Old breakers come in and roar
and clash against the rocks. and they fall satisfied back
into the sea. And now he says, he raises this
body up, and this is something I want you to see, that this
body now takes preeminence in everything else that God does
in creation. You'll notice if you finished
out last week's reading that he says the earth brought forth
grass. And the earth brought forth the herbs. And the earth brought
forth the tree that bore fruit whose seed was in itself. All
those things. Adam. How did he create Adam?
He reached down and took that red earth in his hand and created
the man. Everything pertaining to life
is going to come out of that body. In him was life. In him. In that body. And then
tonight I want us to briefly consider this fourth day. In
Genesis 1, verse 14, God said, Let there be lights in the firmament
of the heaven to divide the day from the night, and let them
be for signs and for seasons and for days and years. And let
them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon
the earth. And it was so. And God made two
great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser
light to rule the night. And He made the stars also, and
God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon
the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to
divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good,
and the evening and the morning were the fourth day. I told you
early on that I believe this firmament, which is the atmosphere,
that's what he's talking about. It's the atmosphere that's all
around us. It's a picture of God's sovereign
grace. There's one reason why you're
able to walk and talk and hear, breathe, eat. One reason, this
atmosphere. Take this atmosphere away and
you're going to die in a matter of minutes. You're not going
to live outside this atmosphere. And you're not going to live
spiritually apart from grace. It ain't going to happen. Everything
that comes to you must come to you as a gift. You can't demand
anything. You've got no worth in you to
run up before God and begin to demand things from God. We're
a curse from God. We fell in Adam. We've got no
clout. We've got nothing to offer God
that God wants. We have nothing to offer God
with enough value to take away our sin and take away this curse. And we sit here in darkness,
and we sit here in confusion, and we sit here in ignorance.
And we don't demand of God. God freely gives. He freely gives
everything. He gives His revelation. He said,
I hath not seen. Listen to this. This is 1 Corinthians,
chapter 2. He said, I have not seen nor
ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things
which God hath prepared for them that love him. But he said, God
hath revealed them unto us. A revelation. Faith. By grace
are you saved through faith. See, even faith comes as a gift
of God. It is not of works, lest any
man should boast. And you can go on and on and
on. You can go through the believer's experience of grace. You can
go through his life and his doings and his good works. Let every
man work out his own salvation in fear and trembling, for it
is God that worketh in him both to will and to do of his good
pleasure. Even your good works is a gift
of God. Even the desire, even a remote desire to even consider
the gospel is a gift of God's grace. It's a gift of His grace. And if we look at that firmament
in the heavens and the atmosphere as God's sovereign grace, then
these lights that are set in the firmament are gracious lights. They are gracious lights. These
are lights given, now listen, he says, to give light upon the
earth. He hangs these gracious lights
and every last Old writer that I read said this, every message
I listened to said this, that these lights are the witnesses
of God. He is talking about preachers,
he is talking about individuals, he is talking about his church,
he is talking about his son, he is talking about all these
witnesses. You remember in the book of Hebrews,
he said, we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.
In this grace of God, in His sovereign grace, He sets witnesses. He just fills the firmament full
of lights. I had the honor one time going
down to Brother Walter Gruber's down in the Yucatan, and there's
just no pollution down there. There's nothing out there on
that Yucatan Peninsula. And you go out of a night, and
there's three times more stars out there at night than what
you see here. We don't see them because of the pollution and
all the things. in the air, but you go down there or one of these
islands out in the middle of the ocean somewhere where the
sky is clear, it's just unbelievable. The sky is just filled with light. It's filled with light. And you
look up there and there's that big moon. Every picture of these
island resorts that they show on TV trying to get you to go
over there, they always got a picture of this big moon. This big moon
sitting out there at night over the sea. Just think of the light
that God hung up in the firmament, all of these lights. And they
didn't evolve into place. They didn't find their place
by chance and circumstance. They were given there by the
purpose of God. And they were given there, every
last one of them, to shine on that body, on that resurrected
body. All this light was hung in that
firmament to shine on Him. He says it twice. He says it
once in verse 15 in Genesis 1, and he says it again, look here,
in verse 17, and God sent them in the firmament of heaven to
give light upon the earth. And I tell you this, I stand
up here to preach, and sometimes I stand up here in the power
of God's Spirit with tears rolling down my cheeks, and I so hurt
in my soul wanting somebody for God to penetrate that dark, black
heart of theirs and show them His light and bring them to see
His Son and the glory of His Son. But I tell you this, I stand
up here, whether they see or whether they don't, in expectation
to do one thing, and that is that that light might shine on
him. When I'm done with my message,
if you're upset, you're upset. If you love it, you love it.
But whether you love it or whether you don't, my determination is
that He gets all the glory one way or the other. That's what
these lights are all about. These lights stand up as a beacon,
and they shine on one thing. They shine on Him. They shine
on Him. And I don't care if it's the
sun. Think about that for a minute. That sun is a picture of Christ.
David said that in the Psalms. He said that sun comes as a bridegroom
out of his chamber, and his circuit is from one end of the earth
to the other. He talks about the earth being
like a great tabernacle and that sun coming out. But it shines
on this earth. Well, how can the sun shine on
the sun? That's what he said in John chapter
1, wasn't it? Huh? That's exactly what he said.
That's what he said in John chapter 3. He said the same thing. No man has ascended up into heaven
except he that is in heaven. He is in heaven, both at the
same time. He's the supreme light. He is
that sun and the moon. I don't know. Use your own imagination
there. I see the moon as gospel preaching
in His church. Or you can see it as a symbol
of His church whose one purpose in this world is to preach His
gospel. And the reason I say that is because the moon, you
never see the moon except at night. That's the only time you
see the moon. Very, very seldom you ever see it during the day.
You might just get a very little glimpse out of it. Most times
you see it at night. And when it shines the brightest
is when it gets the darkest. That's when you see the moon.
That moon is his church in this dark world, in this fallen world. And they're preaching the gospel.
They're preaching the gospel. What is the gospel? That's Christ.
He shines on them and reflects that light into the darkness.
The stars, I see them just as Job. He told Job, he said, your
children, your seed, he said, are going to be like the stars
of the sky. I see that as all God's elect who stood as witnesses
of this light, whose lives were a light, a light. Let your light so shine that
men may see your good work and glorify your Father which is
in heaven. You are the light of the world,
he said. No man lighteth a candle and putteth under a bushel. It's all God's elect, each one
having his light within him. Each one set in a certain place
and a certain position to give light in the darkness. And I
want you to think about this for a minute. You know how I
was in the Navy, and we had learned this when we were in there, but
the old mariners used the stars to find their way. I want you
to think about that. God sets a light in the firmament. He sets his children. by His
grace as witnesses. And what do they do? They try
to show men the way. Ain't that what they do? They
sit right where God puts them. He puts them in a special place.
He arranged those stars in such a manner as that when men look
at them in a certain way, they give direction. And so it is
in this world. Everybody's not a preacher. Everybody's
not an apostle. Everybody's not a prophet. Everybody's
not an evangelist or a missionary. And no matter what we do, if
we sit in the pew or if we stand behind the pulpit, we are all
lights of grace, and God uses us to direct men to the way. And Christ is the way. He is
the way. And it says that the stars were
hung in the firmament for signs, signs to point the way, to give
direction, to give warning, and to stand as a testimony of God's
free grace. They light up the firmament. You talk to any saved man, and
I guarantee you the message, the first thing out of his mouth
is going to be Christ, and the second thing is going to be grace.
I guarantee you. These lights in the firmament,
they light up the firmament. They light up. They shine on
the grace of God. They give witness to the grace
of God. They provide light. And they
shine down on that body who is Christ. And I tell you this, God's grace
is alive with lights. It's alive with lights. The firmament
is filled with light. No man needs or can find an excuse
in the darkness and deadness of his own depravity because
God has left himself a witness. A witness. And I tell you, this
is what the Scripture says about condemnation. There in John chapter
3, he tells them this. He said, I came down from heaven
not to condemn the world. I've not come to condemn the
world. I've come to save. I've come to save. But he said
the world is condemned already. He didn't have to come to condemn
the world. The world was condemned when
Adam fell. By one man, sin entered into
the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all
men." And the evidence is that they've all sinned. They wouldn't
sin if they weren't sinners. They wouldn't act accursed if
they weren't cursed. The curse is upon all men, upon
all men. But he said, here's the condemnation. If you really want to know what
condemnation is, here it is. Men love darkness rather than
light. It is not for lack of light.
God filled the family. Do you see what he is picturing
here? God fills this world with the preaching of the gospel.
He has filled this world for how many thousands of years with
His church and faithful witnesses. He sent His Son into the world,
the brightness of the Father's glory, the express image of His
person who bears witness of the Father, upholding all things
by the word of His power. He's come and He shined as the
sun. And He left His church and He
sent His Holy Spirit. And He reflects that light through
His church. And His church shines. And those
stars and witnesses and all God's elect stand and shine. It's not
for lack of light that a man's going to be condemned. He's condemned
because he loves darkness rather than light. He'd rather the lights
didn't shine at all. Sure they would. That's why folks
quit coming to church. They don't want to hear it anymore.
They don't want to hear it. Oh, they'll tolerate it from
time to time. Sure they will. I'll tell you,
when I first went down to Louisiana, that building was full. It was
wall to wall. They had all the relatives and cousins and first
cousins and neighbors and everything. They had a pastor for a change. And now everybody gathered in
and they filled the building up. And we had some activities
going on. So everything went pretty good
for about a year. About a year. And then I just started preaching
Christ. Preaching Christ. Preaching Christ. Preaching Christ.
And they started going out the back door. One at a time. One
at a time. One at a time. Out the back door.
Finally, there was a little group not much bigger than what we
got in here tonight. A little group out there. Come, sit, and
listen. It's not for lack of light. It
was like every day that I stood by the grace of God behind that
pulpit, I proclaimed Christ to those people. Paul, in tears,
told that church when he left them. He said, I had not shunned
to declare unto you the whole counsel of God, but I know this,
after I leave, wolves are coming through the door, and they are
going to gobble you up. It is not for lack of light.
There is light. There is light. There is gospel
preaching on the internet, gospel preaching on the radio, gospel
preaching on TV. The gospel goes out. It goes
out. There are lights, the firmament,
the grace of God filled for the lights. Not for lack of light,
it is for the love of darkness. That is condemnation. There is
your evidence. There is your evidence. Men come
and they hear and they hear and they go away. They go away. God's grace is alive with lights,
filled with light. Listen here to what David said. This is a man after God's own
heart, and I'm quoting here from Psalm 139. He says, Whither shall
I go from thy spirit? Whither shall I flee from thy
presence? If I ascend up to heaven, thou
art there. If I make my bed in hell, behold,
thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning
and fly to the uttermost parts of the sea, he said, even there
shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. If
I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, even the night, he
said, shall be made light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth
not from thee, but the night shineth as the day." God has filled this world with
His light. Christ who is the brightness
of the Father's glory in all the types and symbols of the
Old Testament and the prophecies of the Old Testament prophets,
in the people of God whose lives are candles set on a hill who
give light out to this world, and in His church by a veritable
cloud of witnesses and by the gospel of His sovereign grace
in Christ shines in our hearts. Even in a condemned world there
is light. And then thirdly, and I'll close
with this, he says the light rules. The light rules. That gospel, that gospel light
that he sets in the firmament, he's determined that his power,
his power, his will be in that gospel. That's how he rules. He sets
his authority down in his church. And I'll tell you how he rules
over men. They don't stand up here and
take the whip and crack the whip of the law on you. That's not
how he rules. He rules through the gospel. That's how he rules. The gospel, when it comes in
power, takes hold of a man's heart and it brings him into
subjection to Christ. And it wins his heart. It wins
his soul. It takes over his life. And his
life is turned around and laid down at the feet of Christ. It
rules. It rules. And that light of the
sun and that light of the moon. And I just want you to think
about this. Just think about the tides. That's what we're
talking about tonight is tides. Think about that moon. There's
not another light in the heaven other than the sun. that can
move the sea. But the moon can't. We call it
tides. We call it tides. That moon has
such an effect by the purpose of God that it can move the sea. What does he say about the prayers
of a righteous man? They availeth much. Is that what
he says? It can move the sea. move the
sea. Think about that. They rule. It rules the day, and it rules
the night. But night or day, the light of
God always has its way. And you stand, and I proclaim
this gospel to men, and Paul said his gospel was always successful. Always was. If they got up and
ran out of the room, or if they stayed there and cried and fell
in the floor, it didn't make any difference. It was always
successful. And he said to some of them,
they tasted it, and it was like death unto death. But others
tasted of it, and it was like life unto life. But it was always
successful. It always accomplished what God
sent it to do. And I preach to men and women
in hope that God will penetrate their hearts. But more than that, I want this
light to shine on him. And that's what I wanted you
to see. All these lights. I don't care if it's the back
light or the light at night or the stars or the witnesses. All
these lights that God puts in the firmament are to shine on
him. He gets the glory no matter what. He gets the glory.