The Light in the Night
By Harold E. Brunson, II
If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.Psalm 139:11-12 That is verses 11 and 12 of Psalm 139. In this Psalm, David finds himself in a state of deep depression because of the circumstances surrounding him. But as he thinks back from the time he was still in his mother's womb to some of the darkest night-like moments in his life, he realizes that "even there my God holds me in His right hand" (v.10).
If, for whatever reason, you are facing some serious adversity and find yourself in some kind of night, I believe this scripture will mean a lot to you.
Interestingly, God uses several different Hebrew words in the Old Testament to portray for us the idea of night. Their meanings range from the gentle tone of dusk to the darkest hues of midnight. But in all cases, night can be identified with the adversities that we face in our lives.
In this message, I want to suggest that there are five kinds of nights that frequently fall upon mankind, but that in each of these nights there are glorious lights for the saints of God.
I. The night of chaos, confusion and emptiness.
Chaos means disorder and disarray, as if everything is frazzled at the end and coming unraveled in the middle. And I think it aptly describes today's world. Madness is in the heart of the people that surround us. They go to jobs with which they are unhappy, and to homes in where there is no genuine love. In their pursuit of material things and vacuous dreams, they live lives that appear orderly and purposeful, but in reality, their hearts are failing them for fear. The modern society is dark, formless and empty.In the beginning, the earth was also void and without form, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. But God said, let there be light and there was light. The same can hold true with our lives. If your heart and mind are quickened by the Spirit of God to recognize the darkness of the world, you can then see the light that has shone into this darkness. Jesus says, "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John 8:12).
II. The night of adversity.
In Exodus 10, we have the story of Moses stretching forth his hand toward heaven, as God had commanded, and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days. That darkness was so thick, says the Word of God, that men could feel it.I don't know if you have ever felt such a darkness in your own life, where for whatever reason your heart and mind can feel the night of adversity. Think of the children of Israel. They were under bondage in Egypt, suffering from poverty and cruelty. They felt the darkness of oppression surrounding them on every side.
But look at verse 23, "They (the Egyptians) saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days: but all the children of Israel had light in their dwelling."
This world is facing all kinds of adversities. In Africa, tens of millions are threatened to be killed by famine, AIDS and other plagues. Untraceable nuclear materials throughout the former Soviet Union might explode any moment in a terrorist act in Europe or America. Meanwhile, millions of unborn babies are being brutally murdered every year.
Yet, the promise of God is that the same divine hand that has covered the land in this black night of judicial wrath has also kindled a candle in every house where the Son of God doth shine. While God is angry with the wicked world, His love for believers endures forever.
Light your candles, says Jesus, put them on a candlestick so that there may be light in your houses and that others may see as well.
III. The night of moral degradation.
The drug problem, I have learned from personal experience as school administrator, is just as bad in some of the wealthier areas of our cities as it is in the poorer sectors. Not one of us parents is free from the dark danger of our children becoming involved with them. Worse yet, your child can be deeply involved without your knowing it.Drugs are, of course, only one symptom of the moral degradation in our society. Certainly, sexual promiscuity, dishonesty, thievery, violence and any other kinds of vices you can imagine add to the list. There are those who want to attribute this moral degradation on sociological inequities, economic despair, and "political punishment" of the poor. Not so, however, says the Word of God.
The source of sin is the human heart. "Out of the heart," Jesus says, "proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." The human heart is like a den of writhing serpents full of deadly poison that strike out at men, and would strike out even at God in venomous rebellion and blasphemy were not the constraint of God and His powers so great, that He contain even the cobras of Egypt.
By the grace of God believers have been liberated from this night of moral degradation. So, let us not cast stones upon adulterers, at drug addicts or at the pleasure-seekers of our generation. Let's first dig deep into the quarries of our own heart's recesses and know for sure that the light of God shines there. Then, loving our neighbors as ourselves, let's get busy in sending forth the gospel to the lost.
"First cast out the beam out of thine own eye," our Lord says, "and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."
IV. The night of depression.
The saints of God, as well as the wicked, face dark nights of depression as a result of trials and temptations. The older I get, the more I understand the books of Ecclesiastes and Jobthat man born of woman is of a few days and full of trouble, that life is bitter even in the context of its sweetness, and that all is vanity and vexation of spirit.We live in a society that is preoccupied with mirth as a means to escape from the harsh realities of life. Yet, our mental hospitals are full, our lists of counselors long. All over the land, there are broken homes and, worse, there are broken hearts. Quite frankly, much modern religion creates a mask for its people, a mask of self-sufficiency, that covers over the sorrow of this world. False prophets freely promise health and wealth and momentary pleasure.
On one occasion, David penned these words,
O Yahweh God of my salvation, I have cried day and night before thee: Let my prayer come before thee: incline thine ear unto my cry; For my soul is full of troubles: and my life draweth nigh unto the grave. I am counted with them that go down into the pit: I am as a man that hath no strength: Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more: and they are cut off from thy hand. Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps. Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves.Those TV preachers that offer the so-called prosperity gospels would no doubt label David as unspiritual and lacking in faith.But what of the very Son of God? Throughout His ministry, He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. And in Gethsemane, we read in Luke 22:44, "Being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground."
That first statement really strikes me. Because He was in an agony, Christ prayed more earnestly. The agony of the spirit is often the means by which God moves us closer to the throne of grace. Would that the mask of mirth could be ripped from our faces so we could stare into the black hole of death and feel that darkness. And as we feel the darkness, may we grasp for the light that only God can
give.V. The night of divine judgment.
Throughout the Bible, God declares His intent to destroy the wicked. The Old and New Testaments alike underscore the surety of God's judgment. Aware of this, David once said, "There is but a step between me and death" (I Sam. 20:3).Death is the judgment of God. The message of the Bible is that ever since the first two humans rebelled against God, humanity has sinned individually. Every one of us is a sinner. Paul says in Romans 3, "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God"; and in Romans 6, "the wages of sin is death."
Death is a certainty, as certain as night, but it is blacker. Once you enter that darknessif you are without the Lord Jesus Christthere is no dawn on its horizon. The Bible describes God's judgment as the sun turning black as sackcloth of hair, the moon to blood, and the stars of heaven burning out in meteoric conflagration so that finally just the black face of nothingness looks into the hollow sockets of dying eyes.
Harsh reality. Apocalyptic metaphors in the Bible are quite terrifying, but their purpose is to make us see the horror of the reality beyond. Death is not the only judgment which God levels against humanity. The Bible teaches, in my opinion, a sudden and final apocalyptic moment, that the Day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night in the which the heavens and the earth shall pass away with a great noise.
God has promised to judge the world, and God has sworn that besides physical death and cosmic death, there is an eternal death that waiteth upon the sons of men who love darkness rather than light. Jesus Himself says in John 3: "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved" (vv. 19,20).
And Jesus describes eternal death as outer darkness, a darkness beyond the darkness of death, a darkness beyond the darkness of cosmic conflagration. Outer darkness is total alienation from God where never there dawns the morning star, much less the Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings.
So, may I remind you, that two thousand years ago, when the sun stood in full and radiant brightness at noonday, God shrouded it, and in
that darkness, slew His Son. The very Morning Star of heaven was eclipsed by the wrath of God. Him, whom we call the Sun of Righteousness, the very Light of heaven, God covered in moral degradation, with cosmic adversity, with every depth of depression and despair and test that the blackness of hell and human heart could conjure. And then He sealed it with an even darker night, His own wrath against sin. And there, in the blackest of blackness, God extinguished the Light.But the story of the Gospel is that the Light arose with healing in His wings. I exhort you, as believers of the Lord Jesus Christ, to lift up your heads and look to the East, for your redemption draweth nigh. The Dayspring dawns in the hearts of the saints of God. The feeble eye of faith may look from Egyptian night, but we can see Him in the East.
And surely, as radiant beams rise on the horizon of our lives, there is a glorious Son who shall come again, full in strength and grandeur, full in light and glory to extinguish forever the darkness from the face of His people. In fact, in that city He has promised for us, there will be no need of the sun, neither of the moon, nor of the stars to shine in it, for the Lamb will be the Light thereof.
May God speak in your heart, "Let there be Light," and show you the radiant glory of our Savior and deliver you from the darkness of night. o
Dr. H. E. Brunson, II is pastor of the First Baptist Church, 5304 East Parker Road, Parker, Texas 75002.
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