LIGHT

R. Taylor

Genesis 1: 14–18 (to “night”); Acts 26: 13, 14; 1 John 1: 5–7

These scriptures refer to the matter of light; a great fundamental matter in the believer’s history. It is often said that light itself would not save us, which is true, but unless there is light we are in darkness, total darkness. The first thing that God did in Genesis to bring order out of confusion was to bring in light. Now that is so in soul experience, especially for the Gentiles; to us who were once afar off, without God, without hope, the light shone. You may say it had been shining for the Jews, but the light reached out to us. Its beams have penetrated the darkness of these borders that lay on the nations; light has dispelled these divisions and shone into our hearts.

The apostle Paul says, “the God who spoke that out of darkness light should shine who has shone in our hearts”, 2 Corinthians 4: 6.

In Genesis it is shining in creation, and the first thing is it divides. It makes things plain, it divides between day and night, so that we are able to name things, we are able to say this is this and that is that. That is what light does for us, it gives us to have clear vision, to be clear in our souls and to know where we are. So we get the benefit of the light, as we accept the division; it tells what is of the flesh and what is of the Spirit. We sung in our hymn about redemption; we would never know anything about redemption if light did not shine. The light of redemption has shone, to bring us from the area of bondage into the area where God’s love is known. So this division does that, it divides between day and night, and between light and darkness.

Then it says that God set the lights in the heavens; it is very good to know where the light is coming from. So we need to look heavenward and find the light. He set these two great lights in the expanse of the heavens, beyond man’s reach. It is very fine to come into light that man can have no hand in altering or dulling. These lights were set in the heavens beyond any interference, and that is where they are in our time. Paul said that he saw it shining from heaven. What circumstances there were round about him, he had been held in the darkness, and there were all these persons with him too, his companions, I suppose, and there they were with authority from the chief priests. But Paul saw “a light above the brightness of the sun, shining from heaven round about me and those who were journeying with me”. We need to come into this area and look above to get the benefit of this light. Paul had been looking round about him; looking at the priests, looking at the Jews, and there was darkness; but the Lord would direct our eyes to heaven.

John, in the Revelation is told, “Come here, I will shew thee the bride”, Revelation 21: 9.

God led Abraham out, and said, “Look now toward the heavens”, Genesis 15: 5. We need to be in the circumstances and the area where we can experience the light. If we live in these elements of darkness we do not get the benefit of it. The Lord says, “If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great the darkness!”, Matthew 6: 23. We would feel that in our own souls. These things may happen in our histories, after we have had light about things.

Peter had the light of resurrection but then he went away back to the fishing. These things are very real in our exercises, we go back into other circumstances. We know what is right but other things appeal to us, and loom large in our thoughts. It may be that even right circumstances, family circumstances, duties and other things loom large in our eyes, and they may draw us away from the area in which the light is shining. As I say, that happened with Peter, he went back to fishing. The Lord in His grace had to draw him away out of it. So the Lord brought Abraham, Moses, John and others into the area where the light was to be known.

For ourselves, that largely is in the temple, I believe. It is in our homes too, a very fine thing; the children of Israel had light in their dwellings in Goshen. In homes where the Scriptures are read, where there are prayers, where the ministry is attended to, there is light in the dwellings of the saints. We need that for there is great darkness outside. We have all to go out in the world, our young ones are exposed to it and we feel for them. They need to be nourished in the area where the light is shining in our homes, from the Scriptures and our conversations. Moses was nourished three months in the house of his father. These things help us to be fortified against these other circumstances that I have spoken about that we have to go into. So we know where to

look for the light. Paul is saying here it is a light shining from heaven; it shines in the temple; it shines among the saints, in our houses and in the meetings. The temple is a place where light shines. The priests had the great benefit of that in the old economy when they went into the holy place. There was no window in it, it was shut out from all the wilderness influences, but there was a pure candlestick giving its light over against the table, shining in the holy place.

We have often commented on how Asaph went into the sanctuary and was enlightened, even though he was discouraged as feeling the pressures of the way. He said, What is the point of it; there are other people getting on, getting better jobs; there are other people who are spared a great deal; until he went into the sanctuary, then he saw clearly, he saw all they were living in was going to finish in the grave; but his calling was a heavenly calling. He had hope far beyond the circumstances that men lived in, he said he understood their end. As he went inside he got heavenly light typically as to Christ the great centre of all God’s thoughts and promises. What a light, dear brethren, to have our eyes on Christ the blessed yea and amen of all God’s thoughts and promises. What promises have come to us in divine light, and they are not promises that can break down; they are not promises that depend on us, but they are centred in Christ. The light shining would help us to be in the joy of them now.

It affected Paul, he says, “I saw, O king, a light above the brightness of the sun, shining from heaven round about me”. It is very fine to get some sense of that light shining upon you.

There were others journeying but he says, “round about me”. You find when faith lays hold of it that the light is for you. Paul says it was shining from heaven round about me. What happened? It meant his gaze now was heavenward. It meant he came to walk in the joy of his heavenly calling. Paul was in trying circumstances elsewhere as he says, “five times have I received forty stripes save one ... a night and day I passed in the deep”, 2 Corinthians 11: 24, 25. Again he says, “seeing no apparent issue, but our way not entirely shut up”, 2 Corinthians 4: 8. He was looking to heaven. If we were to look round about we might see our way shut up and say, How are the meetings going to continue? We are not entirely shut up. Heavenly light gives us a way through the darkness, through the confusion.

That is what Paul went through. Think of him being in prison but the way not entirely shut up. Think of many others who were in confined, straitened circumstances, but the light was shining from heaven round about them.

It is a blessed thing to see you are in God’s counsels and promises of love and you have a part in them. That is what light would assure us of (Hebrews 11), a great chapter of faith but persons in faith responding to the light. They had the light of another day, and they were walking in it. That is what John tells us. The Lord Himself appeals on that basis, “Walk while ye have the light”, John 12: 35—walk while you have it, dear brethren. We need to be careful that we do not lose it. Israel lost their light—very solemn. The captivity that Israel was brought into did not happen because there was not light; it happened because they did not walk in the light. What bondage they came into under the authority of Nebuchadnezzar and others for all those years! It happened because they did not walk in the light when they had the light. The fact is that they spent thirty-eight years in the wilderness because they did not walk in the light. They had the light of the land of Canaan, the inheritance, but they did not walk in that light, so they wandered in the wilderness. We need to be careful, dear brethren, of what light we have been given! Maybe it will not be like them, but it may be, in our own histories and in our own souls, that we shall come into an area of captivity if we do not walk in the light. There is no reflection on the light, but there is the danger of not walking in it.

So the Lord appeals to walk in the light while ye have it. Now that is what John is saying here. He brings in first of all this beautiful touch, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all”. It is light in its purity and it has come in in Christ. The light shone in the incarnation.

The whole scene was illuminated, the angels were basking in heavenly light as it came in in Jesus. Paul says it has shone in our hearts. Now it says, “But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another”. That delivers us from anything sectarian, that we “walk in the light as he is in the light”. It is not a Baptist light, nor a Methodist light, nor any other kind of light, but it is as walking in the light as He is in the light, entirely apart from anything sectarian, that “we have fellowship with one another”.

May our hearts and our thoughts ever be regulated by what we have and what we have been brought into, in the way that light has shone from heaven as it says, “we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin”. Very beautiful are those things that are put together. Walking in the light, we may say is testing, but there it is in its beauty and glory. John, as it were, says, Here is the power to maintain that, “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin”. It is light, but also there is power in the blood of Jesus; there is power in the work of Christ; there is power in Him where He is as our great High Priest above to enable us to walk in the light as He is in the light.

May our eyes be lifted up! In these difficult days we are apt to lower things down, but we are to walk in the light as He is in the light. It has not changed since Pentecost; it has not changed one bit since He went into glory. There have been dark ages, but He had still His people walking in the light. We are in confused and difficult days of breakdown, but He is still in the light, and that light is shining. The appeal is for us to walk in

the light while we have it, that we may enjoy the blessedness and joy of our heavenly portion today, for His name’s sake.

Word in meeting for ministry, Kirkcaldy
12 October 1999