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And we begin our study this evening by reading certain selections from the Word of God, the first of them in the book of Genesis, chapter one. Genesis chapter one and verse one. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was waste and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
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. God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light day. And the darkness called he night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, let it divide the waters from the waters.
God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so. And God called the firmament heaven. There was evening and there was morning, a second day. God said, let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, let the dry land appear. It was so. God called the dry land earth.
Gathering together of the waters called he sea. God saw that it was good. And now a commentary on those verses from the Gospel by John and chapter eleven. Gospel by John and chapter eleven. We begin to read there in verse seven where our Lord is speaking.
Then after this he says to the disciples, let us go into Judea again. The disciples say unto him, Rabbi, the Jews were but now seeking to stone thee, and goest thou thither again? Jesus answered, Are there not 12 hours in the day? If a man walk in the day, he stumbles not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbles because the light is not in him.
And finally, some words from chapter twelve, Chapter twelve, verses thirty five and thirty six. Jesus therefore said unto them, Yet a little while is the light among you. Walk while ye have the light, that the darkness overtake you not. He that walketh in the darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While you have the light, believe on the light, you may become sons of the light.
God write his word upon our understanding and upon our heart. The Word of God calls us each one this evening to stand still a moment and stare at some of the glorious wonders of God's creation around us. It is a pity that the thousand and one duties of our daily life, the myriad modern devices, artificial and sophisticated, very frequently so fill our lives and sight, that they leave us very little time for the virtue of wonder.
And we lose the sense of the excitement of just being, and the glory and the marvel of the world and universe in which we live. And it is a wonderfully refreshing thing, now and again to sit still and let life go rushing by, while we regain the wonder of a child's vision of the world, begin to fill our hearts with a sense of awe and delight at its magnific- magnificence. Let us sit still then this evening and stare at things that we have seen and known for many years.
Tonight, let's try and empty our ears of the Babel of the thousand and one voices, most of them saying nothing in particular, that normally we listen to every day. Let us hear those far more important mess- messages that nature herself daily relays to us from God who made her. And the first wonder I call your attention to this evening is the way that Almighty God has arranged the lighting system of our world.
We take it very much for granted. When we get up in the morning, the light is there or very soon comes thereafter. On average, we get twelve hours of light a day and then twelve hours of darkness. It's been doing it ever since we were one year old, and we're now sixty six and a half, and we have lost the wonder of this extraordinary mechanism. But consider it, as God himself has called attention to this thing, the way in which he has arranged the lighting system of our world. I need not tell you how important our lighting system is.
It is necessity number one for all human existence and animal existence and plant existence. We need the light. Without it, we cannot see to work, but without it we should not even live. The humblest green plant needs that light to set going the mechanism in its leaves that make life possible. Were we left too long in the darkness, life for us too would become extinct. But for this number one necessity of life, our daily ration of light.
Let us think how God has arranged. If you would perceive the wonder and the message in God's organization, perhaps you better stop just a moment and see what kind of a lighting system you would have arranged if you had been God. I don't know if you've ever tried it. What would you have done? Please don't say that the way God has done it is the only possible way, because God being almighty, he could have done it a thousand and one ways. He could have made you like a fish that inhabits the deep, deep under ocean ground.
A little bit of phosphorescence in the forehead, perhaps, so that you should have your light within yourself. Hasn't done it that way. It is told us here in Holy Writ that God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God divided the light from the darkness, and God called the light. Must provoke in us the question, and why did God call the light day? And why did he go on to call the darkness night? Because even the children here could tell us that light and day are not exactly the same thing, are they?
Why, the child knows that when he puts his head down on the pillow, and as mum draws the curtains back and he looks outside, it's all dark. The child knows that the light, uh, is still there somewhere up in the sky. The light hasn't gone off just because day is finished. And the child knows likewise that night and darkness are not exactly the same thing. For when night is over and the sun's beams begin pouring again on our side of the planet, it doesn't mean that the darkness has gone out.
Darkness remains. For space is largely dark. Could we get out like the astronaut into space this evening? We should at first be overwhelmed with this colossal sense of vast darkness everywhere. Broken only by pinpoints of light, almost lost in the vast recesses of space, permanent dark. Except then we look in one direction, and there our sun shines with its tremendous force.
What then does God mean when he called the light dead. He's meaning to call our attention to the lighting system and the way he has done it. Our schoolboy doesn't know how the thing works. It's no switch that somebody puts on in the electricity headquarters that turns the sun on and switches it off at night. It is that our little planet is constantly revolving in space and carrying us with it as it revolves.
For roughly twelve hours in each day of twenty four, we are twizzled round into the light of the sun, and we see the light, and we call that bit of experience day. Then, whether we will or not, whether the gardening is done or the football game finished or whatever it may be, whether we will have it or not, willy-nilly, our little planet carries us out again, way round into the dark, and the light is lost. And there we sit or lie, utterly helpless to do anything about it.
Cannot make our world jog along one tiny knot faster. Just wait. Till the planet twizzles us gradually round once more into the light. It is not that the light ever went out. It is that God Almighty has rationed us for light. We have learned to follow his, uh, description. So in one sense, we use the word day to cover all twenty four hours. We say to ourselves, uh, what day is Aunt Sally coming?
And you say, oh, she's coming on Saturday. I see. Well, that's the day she's coming. We mean the period of twenty four hours that goes by the name of Saturday. But then perhaps somebody says, is she coming by day or by night? Oh, we say by night. Last flight from Heathrow. Oh. So we have learned that little bit, that in one sense, day is twenty four hours, but in another sense, day isn't twenty four hours. For in a day of twenty four hours, we are allowed twelve hours of light, and we call that bit especially the day.
Now, with the other twenty four hours, the bit that we're put in the dark, we call that now. What weak creatures we are. I'm sure it is good for us, as we all know, that there should be twelve hours of darkness. It is a reflection on our weakness and frailty, is it not? As one man put it, we are such weak creatures, he says, that, um, for eight hours out of every twenty four they have to go take us, put us in a dark room, and lie us down on a shelf so that we recover from it. What a curious system, I say, of, of, of, of giving us life.
Our Lord Jesus himself has commented upon this bit of organization. He has pointed out to us the simple but exceedingly important and deliberate matter that even to the physical light that we all need for living our lives, the light you must have to stay alive.
The light you must have, sir, to do your farming. The light we all must have to see our way around this world, that light that is one, a number one necessity, the light is not in us. The light is not in our little world either. The tremendously impressive fact is that this light that is our basic necessity is no less, so we have discovered, than round about ninety nine million miles outside us.
We sit upon our little planet twizzling in empty space. We are helplessly dependent for life's basic number one necessity on a source that is millions of miles removed from us and completely out of our control. Man has invented marvelous things. In nineteen seventy five, he is still as helplessly dependent on this external source as ever, he was.
That is a very simple observation, but now I want to ask you, would you not ponder the matter and ask the question, why has God done it that way? I think for two reasons. He has done it at the physical level. Daily, once in every twenty four hours, every man, woman, and child that has eyes to see. I'd be reminded.
We are dependent on things outside our world, utterly dependent. That is good for us, particularly for us who are younger, who are rightly impressed by the thousand and one marvelous inventions of modern technology. But it would be a bad thing if, like the builders of the Tower of Babel, we became so impressed by human technology that we forgot that when we've done our most brilliant wonderful by our technology, still remain like babies, helplessly dependent on the vast lighting system ninety nine million miles away.
You see, we didn't make our world. We didn't make our universe. It is good if modern man remember it. It is not we who made us. are Our cre- creatures of God, and he's written across our daily experience one large reminder, live at all. We are dependent on him. For the physical life that nature provides, not only preaches her message at us at the physical level, but by very easily easy steps proceeds to apply that lesson at the spiritual level.
If it be true as to physical light, that the light is not in us. How much more abundantly true is it at the spiritual level that the light which we need, which we need to see our way through life, the light is not in us. Our Lord Jesus, I say it was, who made that lesson. For he was the creator incarnate.
Hear him then as he applies nature's lesson to those of us who are believers in him, have already come to him as the light of the world, and know the light and joy of his salvation. But listen to the lesson our Lord applies to us who are already believers. The occasion was the death of a friend of his and a friend of the disciples. A man named Lazarus of Bethany had died. Says our Lord Jesus to the disciples, let us go into Judea again. Oh no, said Thomas with all the disciples, Lord, not into Judea, for the Jews of late sought to stone you.
If you go to Judea, you'll scarce get there, but you'll fall into their debt. They are eager to arrest and to execute. So, with what little wisdom they had, sinking with their own unaided human powers, walking in the light of their little mind and brain, they said, no, Lord, not to do dear, that would be most unwise. But our Lord replied. Gently. Are there not twelve hours in the day?
Well, yes, there are. In the Middle East, round about exactly twelve hours. And if a man walk in the day, he stumbles not because he sees the light of the world, that's the sun up in the sky. But if a man walks in the dark, he stumbles. Why? Because the light is not in him. Go out into your garden one of these days or nights.
As many times as you kick your toe against the brick, against the bin, against the garden fork that somebody left, ah. Pain will remind you that the light we need to show us our way through life, to that goal to which we all desire to come. That light too is not in us.
The light that we need to guide us through life is the light of God. Eyes we have to see it and brains to understand it, and the light isn't in us. That light comes from God and the will of God. And so long as we are content to walk in the light of the will of God, with his plain direction shining on our path, so long will life make sense. So long shall we see our way. We shall not stop. Now, if I come to a point in life where God very clear me, clearly shows me that life's path should run this way.
But I, for reasons of my own, decide that, no, Lord, I don't want to walk down that pathway. There are things down that pathway I don't like. I fear them, maybe. No, Lord, I think it would be better for me to walk over here and walk another way, not the way you have said, but the way I think is better. Be warned, says Christ. If you do that, you will inevitably stumble. Because the light is not in you.
Walk another road, other than the will of God, is to take ourselves out of the light, into the darkness, a darkness that will get deeper every step we take. I speak with great sympathy. I wonder, do I speak to some believer here this evening? Friend, there is a sense in which you are lost.
A believer lost, you say? Oh yes. There are many believers lost. Not lost as to their final destiny. For they came to Christ, and Christ received them, and none shall ever pluck them out of his hand, as far as their security goes. There is and never will be any condemnation to them, for there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. Yes, they have received Christ, have with him eternal life, and they shall never in that ultimate sense perish. Yes. But in another sense, as to living their life and making some sense of it.
There are many believers that are lost. I don't know quite where they are. They've lost sense of purpose. They've lost their Christian zeal. They've lost their spiritual momentum. You will not find them gathering regularly with their church. You will not find them vigorously pursuing the work of the gospel. You will not find them clearly witnessing for the Lord to their fellow men.
Their Bible has ceased to mean much to them. Their prayers have become ragged and desultorated, and there fills their hearts a certain sense of aimlessness. They are believers. They're lost. Why are they lost? Very probably this way round, that they came across a part in life where the will of God said, this way. They said, no, not that way.
I want to go this other way. They went the other way, only to find that the light which they had when they walked in the will of God seems no longer with them. You see, the light is not in them. I am the light of the world, says the Lord Jesus. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness. Then I allow myself to diverge from him and walk another way that I prefer.
The further I get from him and his will, the more I find that the light is not in me, and I go deeper into darkness. Do I speak to such an one? Say, what must I do? My dear Christian friend, you must repent. You say, I can't. Oh, yes, you can. You say, but I don't feel I want to. That's, that's irrelevant, my dear good friend. You are to repent. You say, I can't.
Oh, but yes, you can repent. Another way that I prefer. The further I get from him and his will, the more I find that the light is not in me, and I go deeper to dark. Do I speak to such an one? Say, what must I do? My dear Christian friend, you must repent. You say, I can't.
Oh yes, you can. You say, but I don't feel I want to. That's, that's irrelevant, my dear good friend. You are to repent. You say, I can't. Oh, but yes, you can repent. God isn't asking you to change your feelings. You can't change your feelings. You still have power to change your mind. Oh, my dear believer, this is serious. You go on like you are, you'll, you'll waste your life.
Can't you turn round? Can't you at least admit the fact that the light is not in you? You would, uh, see that light once more, like the planet that turns round on its axis, you must turn round. And face the light. That light is Christ. You must calm and say, Lord, yes, you are right. I am wrong. There is no light in me, and life without you makes no sense. Lord, I do repent of my folly and of my foolish disobedience and my independence of your will.
Lord, I'm willing for you to find me, and I'm willing to be made with you. Come and walk in the light as you are in the light. Our world's physical lighting system preaches its message, doesn't it, to those that have never yet trusted crowds. Tells them to... that without God, there is nothing ultimately but God.
You watch the atheist scientist at work. Thank God not all scientists are atheists. But suppose a scientist that is an atheist. Yet he can make sense of the daisy if he just looks at the mechanism within the daisy. When he starts asking himself why the daisy exists, well, it exists, uh, to make, uh, daisy chains with or to beautify the meadows. But why do the meadows exist? Well, they exist for the cows to to eat the grass so that we can drink the milk. Oh, and why do we drink milk? Well, so that we can live. And why do we live? Man who's decided that there is no God, faced with life's ultimate question, has no answer and is obliged to say that there is no reason why we live.
There is no logic, there is no purpose, it is all one mess of blind chance, ultimately insignificant, and going out into darkness. Listen to him. I am no atheist myself, but listen to your atheist tells you that for you. Ultimately. Eternal dark. Oh friend, that is true. For without God, there is no reason, ultimately. Without God, this universe is irrational. Without God, it is meaningless. See it, will you not?
Every time our little planet twists round and takes us out into the dark, we peer out some distant stars, yes, but the rest? Dark. Yes, sir. The whole of life without God, and the whole of eternity without God is darkness. Yet we humans were made with eyes to see and brains to think. Just as our eyes crave light, so our minds crave the light of reason and purpose and sense in life.
Friend, we go on without God. We should not cease to exist. Go on without God will bring us, when Earth has done its little twizzles, bring us to what Holy Scripture calls the blackness of darkness. Or. Oh, there is literally no sense in it. To consign yourself, friend, to ultimate irrationality, to ultimate purposelessness.
To ultimate senselessness. You who are made to see the light of reason, and reasonableness, and purpose, and sanity. Oh, why will you not turn to the light that shines? Hear him again who says, while I am in the world, I am the light of the world. While therefore the light is with you, believe on the light. May become son of the light. Other two lessons can be done much more quickly.
Second of the lessons I asked you to consider is the way Almighty God has arranged our atmosphere. Again, it is a matter that is absolutely fundamental, is it not? We are told that God made a firmament by which he divided the waters from the waters. In other words, in one of the early stages of his creative activity, he provided our planet with an atmosphere. Otherwise, human life would have been impossible. Though it is such an elementary matter, I ask you again to sit back, to wonder at it.
We take it for granted with every lungful of air we breathe. We only notice the air when Belfast smog takes it from us. But it's not the usual thing, not even in our planetary system, is it? It is very speculative indeed whether there might possibly be one planet with life on it, but certainly most of them have no life. But they haven't got suitable atmospheres, and it is a thing to be wondered at, ceaselessly wondered at, that our little planet should be so wonderfully constructed, not too small and not too big, that its gravity can keep just enough atmosphere on it to make human life possible.
Not only does God provided our planet with an atmosphere, but he has done something else very wonderful. In giving us what the Bible calls a firmament, he has put a great belt of radiation around our world so that harmful rays from outer space that otherwise would destroy our planet, or at least destroy life upon our planet, cannot penetrate in large quantity. And if that protective layer were not there, life would fast become impossible. That seemingly beautiful blue sky hides hostile forces beyond description.
Keeps them from us. It is a thing of surpassing wonder, the atmosphere that God has given. Please notice that when God gave us this atmosphere, he labeled it. He said, do you know, we will call this firmament, not firmament, we'll call it something else, shall we? We'll call it heaven. I wonder, did his eye carry a twinkle of a smile when he informed Adam what the name should be? Heaven, you say? Call the atmosphere heaven, or where the dicky birds fly, call it heaven. Well, why not, says God?
It's a good word, isn't it? Well, you say, but, but heaven, isn't that what the theologians use to describe the presence of God? Well, it is, yes, indeed. And God himself uses it to describe his presence. Well, you say, then why call the atmosphere heaven? Well, why not? You see, God has arranged it this way, friends. We want our very atmosphere to preach us a lesson. I wonder if you've looked at yourself just recently. Then, of course, it's a little difficult to do unless you're a spaceman, isn't it?
To see what, if you saw it for the first time, must look indeed a little bit comical. We live on Earth, and Earth looms so tremendously large in our vision. Earth is everything, we say. If we could get a few miles out into space and have a look at ourselves, we're mostly not on Earth at all, are we? You notice that? Our Earth is round, yeah? And so when you stand up on Earth, the only bit of you that's on Earth is your feet. The rest of you is standing in the atmosphere, and God calls that bit Eden.
This is not a curious way of making the world. It is curious, isn't it? How would you have made it? Would you have made us like rabbits, like mites in, mites in cheese, living in the middle of the Earth? Well, if you would, God didn't. God has made us a world to live on, but we're only just on it. Anchored there by the force of gravity, but actually our heads sticking out into space, you know. Are they? And the most of us, as we stand or sit, the most of us in this technical sense, in heaven. God says, observe it, and as you grow up and you can begin to measure it with your scientific instruments, and you perceive how that this thing that I'm pleased to call heaven is absolutely, absolutely vital to your existence.
Know this, man. Earth isn't big enough for you. Earth is all you had. It wouldn't be big enough to support life by him. How forgetful we can be, plowing our feet, running our businesses, with our noses down to earth until earth becomes Come everything. everywhere. Let the fact that even for our physical survival we need this atmosphere that God calls heaven remind us of some deeper lesson.
To fulfill ourselves as human beings, we need another dimension beyond our earth, beyond our little planet. We need that bigger heaven, the very abode of God. Earth may support for a little while our physical lives. If you would know life indeed, then must you walk daily with the God of heaven, in spiritual fellowship with him, and know that life that is really life. That is.
What God is offering us is not merely a safe seat in heaven when this world is done. What God is offering us is a dimension of life here and now, along with the physical life. Another higher dimension, a spiritual life that is eternal life, that is heaven in its spiritual sense, already begun. This little world that we call Earth won't last forever, will it? One day its little twizzling shall cease.
When the earth departs from our feet. Where shall we be? Let God in his kindness, let nature, that grand old building that God has said to look over us, let her tell us. There is a bigger heaven. Man was made for it. Let nature illustrate it. That just as the physical heaven, the atmosphere is necessary for your life even now, and is the bigger part of it.
So there is waiting a larger heaven when this life is done. I have to think about it. Even this earth we live on is a tiny place, isn't it? We call the whole globe Earth, and rightly so. But then in another pla- another sense, we can only call part of it Earth. But God, to make us a bit of dirt to stand on, swept the seas aside and made heaps of them, so that we humans should have somewhere to put our feet.
Even this world isn't ours altogether, is it? Look at those vast oceans. Scientists tell us that the amount of water on our planet is just about rightly balanced with the amount of dry land. If the balance were upset one way or the other, again, life would become impossible. It is just nicely balanced. Something we can't control. The mighty ice caps of the North Pole were suddenly to be melted, many of our modern civilized cities would immediately be submerged. The vast forces of the ocean that God keeps in their place.
Immediately destroy us. Earth's axis were to be tilted just a bit. So that we have dry land to walk on. Can't see it? Not by our own efforts. We may build our breakwaters as high as they could be. We couldn't stop the sea. And we did. God in his mercy and love has set to the sea his decree. What lessons these are, for men and women that are creatures of time and yet traveling to eternity.
They tell us that if we would be realists, we must face the fact we are utterly dependent I'm on gone. God alone. Again. Tragedy of human existence is this, that we all of us, all of us, like sheep, we have gone astray, turned each one to his own way, trusting in our little brains and in our little thoughts, thought we've known better than God, grasp with independence.
That way, we've only done. Then, let the thought of tomorrow's sun stir your imagination. Make you think of that greater Son of Life, Jesus Christ. Our Lord. He that followeth me, said he, shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. Oh friend, the God that made this world and put you on it, that God meant to bring you at last to his glorious heaven when this temporary world is finished.
He would be broken hearted, were you to miss the way. Perish. Therefore, he stands waiting to save us. Save us with an almighty salvation. Not a salvation that we procure by our effort or produce by our merit. Poor little frail creatures of dust, how could we save ourselves? We who cannot save ourselves have a God that stands with almighty power and infinite love waiting to save us.
Look unto me and be ye saved, he said, all the ends of the earth, for I am God, and there is none else. Oh, from where we sit, we have considered the marvels of his world. Let us bow our hearts, turn ourselves again to look upon the face of God in Christ, and let's call upon him. Find us where we are, and give us light, and give us salvation. For whosoever should call on the name of the Lord shall his name.
Oh God, now we turn to thee. From the vast and wonderful nature that thou hast made, we turn to thee, nature's Lord. We thank thee for life, all its interest and wonder. Lord, as we perceive that life here on this planet is but temporary, we turn our hearts to thee. Without thee, we have no light. Without thee, all is ultimately dark. Lord, in our hearts there are other darknesses, darkness of grief and darkness of disappointment, darkness of the sense of guilt of sin.
O Lord, we indeed die. We praise thee then for Jesus Christ, thy son. Humbly ask us now, ask thee now, that we may one and all deliberately turn ourselves again to thee and seek the Lord while he may be found. While he is in the world. While the one and all of us shall believe on him, we may become sons of the Lord. Hear us then, we beseech, through that same Lord Jesus Christ.
