Thank you, Brad. That was a blessing. Turn back in your Bibles to Psalm
27. Psalm 27. We're going to look this evening at
the subject, Christ, the light. Now in the first 14 verses of
the portion of Scripture that Brother Matt read over there
and earlier in the service, in John 1, We see two of the many
names or titles that God reserves for the Lord Jesus Christ. You
young people, whenever you are looking through the scriptures
and you see a word that's got a capital letter in front of
it that normally wouldn't be there, most likely that's gonna
be one of God's name for the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a name
that'll glorify Him and exalt Him and it's a good thing to
notice. And there are two such words
in that portion of scripture that Matt read. Three times he's
called the Word, capital W-O-R-D. Four times Jesus Christ in that
portion of scripture is declared to be the Light, capital L. One of those times he's said
to be the Light. And that's a good thing to notice
because Jesus Christ is the only light there is. Twice he's proclaimed as that
light, capital L, again. And that's the light that's so
often mentioned in the Old Testament. It's that light. When you read
through the Old Testament and you see the word light, you can
often notice, ah, that applies to the Lord Jesus Christ, capital
L. It's that light. And then finally,
Christ is proclaimed to be, in John 1, the true light, capital
L, which we should take as a warning that there are false lights or
so-called lights from which God's people should be wary and should
flee from. But David in Psalm 27 makes a
simple and yet profound declaration concerning light. Do you see
in verse 1 he says, the Lord is my light and my salvation. The first time this ever happened
to me in school was in algebra. Eighth or ninth grade, I don't
remember, I'm too old. But I remember the teacher walked
in the first day and turned around on the blackboard and wrote 2A
plus 2B plus 2C or equals 2C. And you know, there was some
people, the light bulb went on right there. They got it, they
knew it, they understand what it was about. And then there
were others of us that it took a while to figure out what he
was talking about. And you know, there were some
who failed to get it the entire term. They never understood anything
of what he was talking about. And David David claims here boldly
that the Lord Jesus Christ is his light, is his illuminator,
the one who turned the light on. David says Christ has illuminated
me, has enabled me to see. And it's important to notice
that it's not a what, or some theory or some set of scientific
facts that the Lord enabled David to see, but rather God's light,
capital L, always is concerning a who. Not a what, not some things,
but a who. And let me tell you who the who
are. There's two who's here. Can I say that? Two who's. The
first who that the word will illuminate is a sinner. one of God's people. If God sends
us the light, and here's examples as you read through the scriptures,
here's the way it will illuminate a sinner. There was one who said,
I'm undone. I'm undone. There was another
who was illuminated and said, I must be the least of all the
saints. Another was illuminated and he
said, oh wretched man that I am. There was another illuminated
who said, it was Isaiah, he said, oh, he spent the whole first
part of Isaiah saying, woe is you, woe is them, woe is him,
woe is her. Then all of a sudden he got illuminated
and he said, oh, woe is me. Another got illuminated, Apostle
Paul said, I'm the chief of sinners. And then there was that publican
in the center. Boy, when the bulb went on for him, he said,
oh God, be merciful to me. I've gotta be the worst sinner
that ever lived. Oh God, be merciful to me, the
sinner. You see, God's light illuminated to him who he was.
And if that ever happens for us, we'll find out who we are. That's the first two. But then
the light, capital L, will also illuminate The Lord Jesus Christ, who He
is. And He'll be like David. David
will say, the Lord's my light and He's my salvation. The light,
capital L, is my salvation. Who is He? We'll find out that
He's God born in human flesh. He's 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, how he was allowed to, he allowed
himself to be put to death for his people, for the death they
deserved. We'll see Christ risen from the grave, seated in glory. And you know what he's waiting
for there? For the day when he will call his people to himself
and finally, finally, fully illuminate, reveal the light of His glory
as who He really is. Boy, won't that be something?
To have that illumination? We'll then know why the capital
L is in front of light. He's the glorious Son of God. He's wonderful. These words will
take new meaning. He's magnificent. He's altogether
lovely. He's the Prince of Peace. He's the Pearl of Great Price.
He is our salvation and our light. We need God's Holy Spirit to
illuminate us for who we are and to illuminate Him for who
He is. Now, how important is all this,
what I'm talking about? Well, everyone here, there's
one or two things that's true about us. Either He is my light,
He's your light, as David said, we can either say, He's my light,
or you know what? We don't have any light. We're
in darkness. And the other thing is that either
Christ is our salvation, or we don't have any salvation. It's
just that simple. Turn now to Genesis 1 with me,
and I want us to see the first mention of the word light in
God's Word. On the very first day of creation,
God declared that there would be salvation from darkness, there
would be deliverance from darkness, and that salvation would be called
the light. Notice in Genesis 1, 1, in the
beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and notice how
this earth was, it was without form and void, and darkness was
upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon
the face of the waters, and God said, let there be light, and
there was light. And God saw the light, that it
was good, and God divided the light from the darkness, and
God called the light day, and the darkness he called night,
And the evening and the morning were the first day. I want us first to notice something
that's maybe too obvious to even be mentioned, but I don't think
so. It says, God said. God said. Young people, three
important things about what God says. First of all, whatever
God says, that's what happens. Is that too simple? Boy, it's
profound. Whatever God says right here,
that's what's going to happen. How? How God says a thing is
to be, that's how it's to be. That's how it will be. That's
how it always has been, always will be, and always is. And thirdly,
when God says a thing is to happen, when a thing's to happen, that's
exactly when it's going to happen. And God said in the dark, in
the void, in this formless place, let there be light. Now that
sounds like such a simple thing, doesn't it? Let there be light.
For you and I, you kids don't have an issue with that, right?
You can walk in and go dark in there, flip the switch, and there's
light, right? You say that's easy enough. Well,
let's examine that thought for just a minute. How simple is
it actually? Consider what it takes for man to be enabled to
walk into a dark room and turn on a light. Well, first of all,
somebody's got to mine the coal. You ever see one of those shows
where those fellows are down in there digging that stuff out
and getting it out in trucks and conveyor belts and all that
stuff? Or they've got to drill for oil and refine it and transport
it. Or they've got to build a hydroelectric
dam. When I was a young person, they
were building dams down here in Kentucky and all over the
place to generate powerful lights. And, of course, they can always
split atoms. That's no big deal, right? No,
it takes years, decades to build those plants to do that. And
after all the power plants and things are built, you've got
to lay miles and miles and miles of wires and cables and you've
got to have towers and you've got to have millions of poles
stuck in the ground or dig ditches and put them in the ground. You've
got to have insulators, you know, to put at every junction that
you come to because the sheer power of the thing will kill
anybody that touches it. 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. Isaiah warns, woe to them
that put darkness for light or light for darkness, because there's
no light in them. But we got all that happening
and then for a man just to be able to throw a switch for a
light bulb, man has to install fuses and breakers. Do you ever
have the lights go out in your house? In the middle of the night?
What happened? Well, if that fuse didn't go
or the breaker, you don't have your house burned down. So you
got to do all that and it will go wrong. Just ask those people
in Japan how wrong it can go when that nuclear plant went
wrong. But then you got to have bulbs. You got to have incandescent
or fluorescent or mercury vapor. You got to blow the glass. You
got to mine the tungsten, stretch the filaments. It goes on and
on and on. You get the point? And finally, if it's all set
up just right, you can walk in that room, the dark room, and
go, and you can say, let there be light. And there's light. Now folks, that is a massive,
monumental, Herculean effort so that man can flip one artificial
light to natural man, enlightened, it seems such an accomplishment.
And listen, I'm thankful we got lights. However, it is so puny,
so as not to be worthy to be compared with what God did. God
said, let there be light. And there was light. God said,
let there be light. And in the darkness and the void
of whatever was here, the sun was hurled into space. This ball
of illumination that never existed was now. God said and it was
so. Now that's something to be impressed
by. And God put it precisely, 92,960,000
miles from Earth. Not so far away we'd all freeze
to death, and not so close we'd all burn up. Just right. The time it takes to get a ton
of coal from the mine to the power plant to the light switch
in your house, I don't know how long that is. Probably months. You know how long it takes God
to cover that 92 million miles? 8 minutes and 20 seconds. We're now told we're wasting
energy if we use a 100 watt bulb instead of a 60. You know how
much light God sends his people? This is amazing. Spent some time
on the internet this week. God sends a thousand watts of
light to every square meter, every second, of every minute,
of every hour, of every day, since the beginning of time. God seems real concerned about
wasting energy, doesn't he? In one hour, every hour, God
sends his people more light than the entire population of the
planet uses in a year. In one day, God provides enough
light to give every human being on the planet 25 years of light. All of us, 25 years of light
in one day. In addition to that, God put
the moon in place. to reflect the sun's light, to
remind us, even in darkness, who the light is and where the
light comes from. In addition, God hung the stars
in space. This number blows my mind. You
know, you ever pick up a handful of sand and throw it? Who can
count them, right? God hurled the stars into space. In our galaxy alone, they think,
there's a hundred billion. God just hurled them out there
for what purpose? When there's no sun and no moon,
the ambient light manifests the presence of God's light at all
times. Do we see man's, what man can
do is not worthy to be compared with the glory of our God. But
now why did God do all this? Number one, to glorify his Son,
the Light, capital L. And secondly, to give life to
his children who were born into darkness. That life is in His
Son, the light of the world, not the Son, S-U-N, but the Son,
S-O-N, the Son of God. Is there any wonder? In verse
4 here, it says, God said, let there be light, and God saw the
light. It's good. It's good. This is good. The light, little
l, it's good. If we don't have light, we don't
have life here. I'm glad for it, grateful for
it. But folks, it's all a type and a picture of the light, capital
L, which is so good. So good. Turn to 2 Corinthians
chapter 4. 2 Corinthians chapter 4. What does man do with the
artificial light that he makes? I'm afraid most of the time we
use the artificial light to better go about the dark business we
have in our hearts, even in the night time. It's not enough for
us to sin during the day time, we want to do it at night too.
For what purpose did God become the light, capital L? to save
his people from their darkness. Look at 2 Corinthians 4 verse
5. 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, has shined in our hearts to give
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. That's why God made the light.
It is by the preaching of the gospel that God enables his people
to see the light, which exposes what we are by nature, children
of darkness. And light causes God's people
to quit trying to hide in the darkness but rather to repent
before God of our actions in the darkness. To acknowledge
and confess before God, not so much what we've specifically
done, but for what we are. Begging for mercy, pleading that
he change us as only he can. He can turn us from darkness
to light. 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, see the glory, and the hope,
and the peace, and the joy, and the forgiveness, and the remission,
and the regeneration that's found in Jesus Christ, who both lived
and died in their place. You ever go to the jewelry store
and if you're looking at a stone of any kind, a precious stone,
they don't go, here, get under the counter and look at it with
me, will you? No, they don't want it in the darkness. They
want to take it over to that place where they got a special
light that comes down, they put out a black cloth, don't they?
And boy, against that black background, you put that diamond out there
and every facet starts to glitter. I tell you what, God shines light
in here so we see who He is and who we are. When God blesses the preaching
of His Word, it's even better than the first day of creation.
When God speaks to one of His children for the first time,
It's the first day all over again. The Spirit of God will look upon
a sinner lost in the dark, void, without form, and say through
his preacher, you know what he says? Look at verse 6 again.
He says, God commanded the light to shine out of the darkness
into your heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory
of God as revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. That's what
God does when he shows us the light. When he says, let there
be light, there will be light. And the sinner will agree with
God. It's good. This is good. This is good. Turn
to Luke chapter 1. And I would Tell every parent here
and everyone who has a lost loved one, don't give up on our children,
lost children and loved ones. Keep asking them to come with
you. Build up all the goodwill you
can. Feed them, be nice, do everything
you can. But when the time comes, trade
all that goodwill for one more, why don't you go to church with
me this Sunday or Wednesday. We never know when someone's
first day will occur. And at the end of Luke chapter
1, John the Baptist is called to preach the gospel. And following
that call is a very good definition of what constitutes this thing
of preaching the gospel. Do you see in verse 76, he says, concerning John the Baptist.
And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the highest. There
it is again. Capital H, that's another term.
He's the highest. Jesus Christ is. For thou shalt
go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways, to give
knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their
sins. All right, here's the definition
of preaching the gospel. This matter of giving knowledge
of salvation is when the Holy Spirit comes and regenerates
the spirit that we can see light. This business of by the remission
is the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. It pays for all
the penalty of our sin. And then it says of their sins,
that means we're ruined by the fall. He told John the Baptist,
I want my people to see my son. And he said, you go preach this
and they will. Verse 79, to give light to them
that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our
feet into the way of peace. Now, did you notice here in verse
79, to whom the light is to be given is to them who sit in darkness. Now somebody here might say,
wait a minute, you say I'm sitting in darkness? Pretty much. Pretty
much. You forget most times I'm not
up here, I'm sitting out there where you are and I know how
I got here. I came walking in out of the darkness and sat down and I brought the
darkness with me. And I so much want to see the
light. You see, Unbelievers don't sit
in darkness. They dwell in it. They run after
it. They wallow in it. And believers
who are redeemed from the darkness, we still have to sit and walk
through the darkness, don't we? But we want so much to have a
place where we can come in and see the light. God, just give
us a little light tonight. Give us a little light so I can
go back out into the darkness. and find my way back here the
next time. Hoping it will be an extraordinary
portion to lift our darkness by the light of His countenance
as revealed in the face of Jesus Christ. Now back to Psalm 36. Turn over there with me. Psalm 36. I'm sure your automobile or vehicle
is like mine. It runs on fuel of some kind.
Have you ever run out? You're going along and all of
a sudden, boy, it's a sick feeling, isn't it, when you run out of
fuel? It's not a good thing. No, not good at all. And most
of you are not Some of you here I see are old enough like me
to remember the gasoline crisis years ago. It's so far back I
don't remember. I know it was 40-something years
ago, but some of the old guys are grinning. You could sit for
hours in line to get a few gallons of gas. And some stations, they'd
open for one hour a day, and the gas would be all gone. And
let me tell you, whenever you saw a station that was open,
you'd whip in and get all they'd sell you. Can I, without disrespect
or irreverence, tell you that a gospel church is a light station? It's a light, capital L, station. Whenever it's open, we best come
in out of the darkness, praying for a fill-up. 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 to themselves is not come to the light station. It's an egregious neglect not
to bring our children. I don't care whether they want
to come or not. I'm sorry. If they're living in your house
and eating your food and using your light, bring them to the
light station. 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 this in Psalm 36, 9. For with thee, with God, is the
fountain of life. And where is that? In thy light
shall we see light. I tell you what, what that's
saying is if you want light, well, come where the light is.
Don't flee from it, come where it is. If we want life, come
to the life. If we want newness of life, if
we want our children to have life, come to where life and
light is to be found. And now Colossians 1, Colossians chapter 1. Whenever God does something such
as speaking light into existence, there's always more to it than
meets the natural eye. I mean, do you remember a time
when you took the sun for granted? You just took the light for granted.
It's going to come up in the morning. It's going to be a sunny
day. That's our nature, isn't it?
Because the natural eye just perceives it as this thing that's
always been there and always will be, and it's going to be
good. But natural light appears to be white. But do we remember
the first science teacher, I do, who first held up a prism, that
triangular long thing and shined a light through it and bam, all
of a sudden we saw the white light had all these colors. And
if that never happened to you, you've seen a rainbow. That's God's prism where he reveals
that the light is so much more than we think it is by nature.
It's a spectrum of many colors. But every artist learns soon
that there's only three primary colors from which all the other
colors can be derived or mixed. And these three colors are blue
and gold. We call it yellow now, but in
the scriptures, yellow is only used to describe the color of
somebody's hair, or one time it's used to describe the tone
of a gold. But the color is gold, and there's
a reason, stay with me. But the primary colors are blue,
and gold, and crimson, which we call red. No doubt, there's
a whole additional message about all these colors, But let me
just give you this real quick. When God's Spirit reveals Christ
the light to someone, it's not like suddenly we go, oh, I see
it all. That first day you didn't realize,
you are a long way from 2A plus 2B equals 2C to the Pythagorean
theorem. You are a long way from there.
And when God reveals the light, we don't see the spectrum of
this, the magnitude, the majesty of it. But suddenly, over time,
we realize that everything's not just black and white. I tell you, the darkness is just
black, folks. That's all it is. It's just dark.
It's never gonna change or be any better. You can bend that,
not gonna change. It's black, it's dark, it's evil,
it's wrong. But suddenly, gradually, over
time, we see the white is so much more. You see, the blue
is Christ's divine nature. The gold is the priceless, precious
righteousness of Christ. And the crimson, do I need to
even tell you what that is? It's the blood of Jesus Christ
shed as our sacrifice. As we grow in grace and the knowledge
of Christ, we see that, you know, when you get the blue and the
crimson close together, it makes this purple. And that's the color
of royalty. We find out Christ is king. He's
the king of kings. And on and on and on. I tell
you, eternity won't be long enough to take that spectrum and appreciate
Christ the light. But we can partake of some of
it right now. Look at Colossians 1, verse 12. We can partake to some degree
now. Verse 12, giving thanks unto
the Father which has made us meet, and that's qualified. You
say, how do you get qualified to be a partaker in this? God
chose you from the foundation of the world. That's all you
need. God chose you to be qualified
to be partakers of what? The inheritance. You mean we
have a legitimate claim to the light? Oh yeah, it's our inheritance
of the saints in light. Who had divided us from the power
of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of his dear
son. When did this translation take
place? Well, it happened before the
foundation of the world, but there's a time and place The world was dark, without form
and void, and then God spoke the light. And it was now different,
wasn't it? Well, we were born in darkness
and sin, but then there came a day, the first day, when God
revealed to us the light. And now we're partakers, we're
translated, verse 13, into the kingdom of his dear son, in whom
we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of
sin. Light is invisible in its true
form until it's viewed through the prism of God's Word. We want to see more light? Get
in the light book. Get in the light book. And here's
my last point. Turn to Revelation 22. This message
was It sprang from an old writer's,
I was reading an old writer and listen to what he said. I wish
I could take this to heart. We who enjoy the light should
be more grateful for it. We should be more grateful for
it than we are. And we ought to see more of God
in it and by it. And that's what got me looking
at the light. Now my parents used to receive every month and
pay for what they called the light bill. Now today that's
your electric bill, but back then we didn't have, I don't
know what appliances we had that ran on electricity. The furnace
was coal and the only thing you had was the light, so it was
called the light bill. Back then, since there weren't
many appliances, it didn't cost much money for the light. Even
today, considering the cost and effort required to get it to
us, the cost of it is a pretty good bargain, isn't it? I've
got a question for you. What is the amount that God the
Father charges His children for the light. Do you ever get a bill? Are you
ever required to do anything? Is there any fee or charge? No,
the light, the Lord Jesus Christ is from the free grace of a holy
God, a righteous God, a good God. The scientific measure of
light is a lumen, good term, it illuminates, and I don't know
how much a lumen is, but God sends untold lumens from
the sun, S-U-N, to all who receive it at no charge. And what's the
cost of that light? To you and I it's nothing, but
hear this, What does it cost God the Father? It cost Him the
life of His dear Son, who was sacrificed in the darkness. The sun refused to shine when
Christ had laid upon Him our darkness. And God freely gives us the light. at great, immense cost to Him,
but none to us. The death, the shed blood of
His priceless, precious Son, oh, how thankful we should be.
And one day we'll see this in the full light of glory. Look
at Revelation 22. This is the last mention of the
word light in the Scriptures. Revelation 22.5. This is talking
about in glory, and it said there shall be no night there, there's
no darkness there. And they don't need a candle,
and they don't need a light, little l, of the sun. For the
Lord God giveth them light, and they shall reign forever and
ever. Perhaps tonight someone will
see the light, capital L, and come to Lord Jesus Christ from
out of the darkness. Perhaps it'll be somebody's first
day. But I love, don't you love to
hear the gospel preached? It's like the first day all over
again. Seeing the sun hurled into space, had we been observers,
would not hold a candle. to when the Lord Jesus Christ
flipped the switch and showed us who He is and who we are. That's why we're here. That's
what this is all about. I pray the Lord will bless this
message for His glory and for the good of His people. All right,
Brother Duane.