LIGHT SHINING IN THE GLAD TIDINGS

D. M. Welch

Genesis 1: 16; Isaiah 9: 2; Acts 22: 6–13

The preaching of the glad tidings is a great matter. Millions of preachings during the current time have preceded this one, and millions of souls have been laid hold of by the great light. In the opening of the Bible there are things to be taken account of even by the youngest. God is a feeling God. We are confident that the feelings of God have been in the meetings that we have had, and the feelings of God especially, I believe, are with us at the present time for the preaching of the word of God. The creation is a great matter to consider. This portion in scripture shows the result of God’s power, His feelings being expressed as the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters, but then He moved in power to make the earth, because God’s original thought had to do with men dwelling on the earth and dwelling in happiness in relation to Himself. While we do not see the display of the happiness of man, we are sure that God will not let fall any of His original thoughts. This earth will be dwelt upon by man and everything will be sustained in balance. We anticipate that day, when it will be so.

In the first scripture read, “God made the two great lights”, there is a very striking suggestion as to how great scope is expounded in a few words, “the great light to rule the day, and the small light to rule the night, and the stars”. The youngest here in the audience this afternoon can take account of things in creation and, the youngest here who has some understanding of words, would know that the sun rises in the east, and that you can see something of the handiwork of God as you gaze into the very sky itself. It is all God’s handiwork, and something of His power and divinity can be taken account of in it. At night various phases of the moon

can be seen. On some nights the full moon can be taken account of, and you know that there is light there, even though the sun is not in vision. Then there might be the half moon, or the quarter moon, or there might be an eclipse. Young persons, “remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth”, Ecclesiastes 12: 1. The Creator loves you. He has provided a place for you, here on the earth. He has given you a household. He has given you friends you can trust, persons who have you in their heart, who pray for you even in relation to this very meeting, that God in His mighty power—His feelings being behind what He would do—would work in new birth that you might know your Saviour as your parents and friends know Him.

Everything is held in relation to this great light. The moon reflects, and the stars, each having glory differing from the other, reflect something of what is held in the universe by this great light. Can you take account of that? It is my impression that the whole of scripture has pointed to this great light, and specifically the four gospels are the opening up of the personification of the great light. Oh what a great matter! I might say specifically, the gospels, especially John’s gospel, are in my mind; the small light, perhaps that is Paul’s line; and the stars, the personnel, specifically John’s line. God in His detail in the scriptures of truth would suggest these things for our contemplation and enjoyment.

So in Isaiah chapter 9, this great light is identified. God has not given up any of His original thoughts for the earth, “the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose” (Isaiah 35: 1), but it will not be until the Prince of life and the Prince of peace comes to set everything in balance.

That day has not come. So the One that we desire to speak of is this great light, identified for us in this verse in Isaiah chapter 9. The general application is quite wonderful to consider as we think of God’s feelings and His power behind His movements in this world, especially for the last approximately two thousand years. It says, “the people that walked in darkness”, and we have all walked in darkness. Do you have some sense of what

we are trying to present? The One who personifies the great light has come into the creation; the Lord Jesus is this great light. The One who is “the Sun of righteousness”, who will arise in a soon coming day “with healing in his wings” (Malachi 4: 2), has been here in manhood.

He has been your Creator and this is the One we declare and assert, “who is over all, God blessed for ever”, Romans 9: 5. A wonderful, divine Person has come into manhood. If a divine Person comes into manhood, it means that God is among men, that God has come among His creatures. Let that rest on our spirits for a moment, that God Himself has been here on the earth; a great light has been here among the people who walked in darkness, and the people saw this great light. There were people that looked upon the face of Jesus Christ as He moved in and out among men. This great light has been here, feelingly, faithfully and powerfully, meeting every need.

His feelings were behind all His movements. He met every need. Was there a need He did not meet? He could say as to one who needed sight, “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world”, John 9: 5. Then He spat on the ground and made mud of the spittle, figuring the reality of the blessed humanity of Christ, and He applied that mud on the eyes of the blind man. That would have made him doubly blind, except for the feelings of the great light, the One there before him, who in the power of God gave that man sight. Others had seen Him already but they had rejected Him, even purposing in some way to get rid of such a One as this who met every need. Oh, how different Jesus was from any other man! There never has been, there never again will be a man like Him in flesh and blood condition. He was capable of meeting every vicissitude of life in every circumstance that was presented to Him, not only in divine feelings but He could declare, I am, “the resurrection and the life” (John 11: 25), I am, “the good shepherd”. John 10: 14.

“They that dwelt in the land of the shadow of

death”, needs no explanation, for we know that we are in the scene of death. It was said of Egypt when Moses was displaying the power of God, that there was darkness in the land, such darkness that it could be felt (see Exodus 10: 21). Let me just stop here for a moment and challenge us all to be real. Just be real with ourselves and our conscience for a moment.

Death marks this scene. Moral death marks this scene, the death of the Lord Jesus proved the state in which the world was (see 2 Corinthians 5: 14). Man was helpless. Martha and Mary at the grave of Lazarus, weeping, could do nothing about the whole situation of death, but the Lord could, and He took account feelingly of all that was proceeding at that time. He would, as it were, say, I came to do something about this. Not only did He meet every need as the great light, moving in and out among men. He has met your need and mine, in suffering, death, burial and resurrection.

Do you think the Lord in His feelings did not apprehend the opposition against Him? Did He not apprehend that in the scene of death everything was contrary to God? He was a perfect Man, and so He felt things perfectly. He felt the opposition, He felt that everything was under death. He felt too what would come upon the nation by their rejecting Him. He even felt it when His disciples had fallen asleep and later fled. If you and I leave these meetings and do not have a sense in our souls of what God has had to say as to the forgiveness of sins found in Christ, and as to what is needed for the continuance of what is so precious to Himself, He would feel that deeply. He felt all that was before Him and recoiled, like no other could recoil, at the thought of His being abandoned by His God. He was a Man whose every breath, whose every movement was the delight of God. He was a Man who loved life, He was a Man whose life was precious to God. As a Man here He morally established the right to live. He alone could take up your cause and mine when the whole scene had been levelled by sin and death. This had

affected God, it affected the Lord Jesus when He was here. The only Man who had the right to live gave up His life sacrificially, as the Lamb of God, to take away the sin of the world.

He was great enough for that. But He felt the thought of being forsaken of God. His death was no ordinary death because in His sufferings and death He would bear the judgment of God. He was able, in His power, in His feelings and in His movements, to go the whole way so that nothing would fail in His hand, and that the love of God might be toward you and me.

Do we know such a One as this who laid down His life? No man took it from Him. While He was great enough to lay it down, yet He received it as a commandment from the Father (see John 10: 18). Oh, how great He was in manhood! What can we say about the forsaking of God? It was at that time the wrath of God was meted out for sin and sins. He was the Son of Man, taking up all that lay on the race, and would be the Sin-bearer for every one who would come to know and love Him; freeing such a one from that burden so as to be for God here in His absence, for the great light is no longer here, but something else is here.

That is why I read in Acts 22. There has been a transfer of things. The Lord Jesus suffered and died. He removed the man of offence from the eye of God in His burial. Everything that was required for man to come into blessing has been done through redemption. It was done by the Sin-bearer, it was done by the One who came in the likeness of flesh of sin, and for sin (see Romans 8: 3). God has condemned sin in the flesh in that blessed One. We shall never know what it was for Him to be forsaken, nor what it meant to God to forsake Him in those three hours of darkness. Nor shall we ever know what it meant to the Father to be without His Son during the three days and three nights when He was in the heart of the earth. He did not have Him as He had Him before, in the life that gave Him so much pleasure. He did not have Him in that sense. These are matters that would affect our hearts. But that great light, the

One who was here in the midst of darkness, the darkness apprehending it not (see John 1: 5).

Himself the light of life, He is out of death! Death could not hold Him, He is in resurrection, and as Man, He is the new Head now that God has established for every man. Do you accept that? Or do you go on in Adam’s race, a lost race?

The gospel of the grace of God is that God is presenting a new Head. He is not asking righteousness from you, you have none, but He has brought in His own. Two thousand years have proved that man is not righteous, proved not to God but to man. The measure of man’s righteousness would be in the keeping of the law, but in not keeping one point, the whole law is transgressed. The final test of righteousness, and the measure of man’s sin was the rejection of Christ, this great light, when He was here on earth. Man is still rejecting the One who is called the Nazaraean. He is not here any more, He has been rejected. Yet, He is the One who has overcome death and hell. Satan has been defeated, totally; the Lord has defeated every foe; He is a great warrior. Why would you reject such a One? Love and feelings were behind all that He did, but He is a warrior beyond compare, and unique. All that He did to glorify God in the very place of sin, and all that He did to bring you and me into blessing, the basis of it all is in His sufferings and death. Behind it all was God’s love.

He is now the Nazaraean in the religious world. Galilee was a place of reproach. The one who says here that a great light shone “round about me”, ended his career in chains as identified with Christ in reproach and rejection in the religious world. Think of the power of a man who would accept those chains, the power of love, based upon this experience that he had on the Damascus road, with the great light that shone upon him.

‘Blest Lord, Thou spakest! ‘twas Thy voice

That led our hearts to Thee;

That drew us to that better choice,

Where grace has set us free’. (Hymn 47)

Here was a man who was insolent and overbearing (see 1 Timothy 1: 13), like most of us, and he is subdued. Touching the law he was blameless, but now grace sets him free, because he heard the voice pointing to the great light and attracting him; he heard that voice, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” Are you on the Lord’s side? Are you trying to work out your own righteousness? The religious world has done this. The setting of this scripture is the Jewish audience, and is why the title Nazaraean is used here. We are now in the midst of what is old, a broken down profession where the first order of man has been brought back, the opposite of the Nazaraean. That is what makes it old.

But what characterises real Christianity is a subdued will and a new man. An insolent, overbearing man comes under the power of love. The One who is the great light would take up such a one as this so that the small light, the assembly, might be developed on the earth as a reflection of Himself. Saul would become a great star, but he has to meet another star first, one from the locality in Damascus. He would have to go there, where the gathering was and own God’s work there. It is there, beloved younger ones, where you are told all things appointed; not in the religious world, but accepting the reproach of the Nazaraean, with those who have no public acclaim. Are you able for it?

God believes that you are able for it. You have been in these meetings and now you are listening to the glad tidings concerning His Son. His Son has one, and only one, interest presently in this world, and that is the assembly, formed on the day of Pentecost as the smaller light to be after Christ. The body, the bride and the house were formed on the day of Pentecost by the incoming of the Holy Spirit, another divine Person. Saul could not see for the time being; he could not see except he come into right relation to what God had already established in the locality; that is an important point for us all.

I ask you, have you seen the Man in the glory? There is a Man in the glory. Wonderful truth that God has become a Man and has been here. The Lord Jesus has become a Man. He has walked here where the shadow of death was and is, and where darkness pervades the land. He has been here, but He is no longer here. He is no longer in flesh and blood condition, but He is still a Man, enthroned in glory. Would you like to see that Man? You cannot see Him without the Holy Spirit, another divine Person here on the earth. And you cannot know what God would have you to do in following the light of life, “he that follows me ... shall have the light of life” (John 8: 12), unless your will has been subdued, and you are blinded to everything of the world and the first order of things, and your eyes are opened to see another world, and another Man enthroned there.

‘Yes, we see Thee crowned with glory,

Highest honour to Thee giv’n;

But Thy glory, all transcending,

Is the light that shines in heaven.

Thou art greater, glorious Saviour,

Than the glory Thou hast won;

Thee—the great “I AM”—we worship,

Mighty God, Eternal One!’ (Hymn 181)

Do you know this One who is the great light? He is in heaven, you need the Spirit to see the Man enthroned in glory, the Man who is coming again. Oh, the greatest words that ever dawned on my soul were that God had become a Man in the person of Christ, and He has taken man up for God, and He has taken man up for Himself. Oh, what great feelings God has; what great feelings the Lord Jesus has! Have you heard that voice? Here was one on this road who heard the voice, and he was subdued. Younger person, the Lord is looking to put you under orders. Do not look for any great things to happen except in the experience of the saints. What a great privilege you and I have to be at the end of the dispensation, the vantage point of looking back over all that God has done, to see the millions that have come to

a knowledge of God, accepting that the righteousness of God is seen in the precious shed blood of Christ, that God is satisfied, that God is glorified, and that forgiveness is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything is in Christ, the second Man, out of heaven. He is the pattern for the heavenly family, He is the head of a new race, He is the head of every man. Do you accept that?

Where are you going to find that? In older ones whose hearts are touched as they think of younger ones being left. As perhaps they sense their home-going to be with the One they love, the One that they have never seen with their eyes, except the eyes of faith, and they are leaving things in your hands and mine. Are we able for this? They speak from experience, they know what the world is, they know that it is stamped with death, but they also know about the seventy palm trees, and the twelve springs of water (see Exodus 15: 27). They know that life is among the brethren and that is a place of safety, salvation being in the assembly, where the blessed Spirit is. He has not left it, and He is not hindered as we provide moral conditions, so all those feelings from older ones are upon you and upon me. Will we continue to provide those conditions so that the blessed Spirit can finish something in the experience of our souls? Do we long for that? We may not feel able for it, but in dependence on the Spirit, if we have received Him, then we are able for it. We can go in for the features of another Man; He is coming soon to take us up to be with Himself, to have His own satisfaction in having us with Himself.

God has always wanted man for Himself. We do not know why, but this is what God has purposed, to have man for Himself; and the acceptable order of man has been set out perfectly, personally, in the Lord Jesus, the last Adam, the second Man. All is made available to you and me in the glad tidings. It is made available at great cost, that we might come under His headship in a new race. He said, “I”, the Son of man, “if I be lifted up out

of the earth, will draw all to me”, John 12: 32. Have you been attracted to the One who has died for you? Are you being held in affection to the One who has given everything? He could not give more, He would not have given less. That is the Man in the glory, the great victor, the great warrior. That is the One with whom you have to do. Oh, beloved younger one, the hearts of the older ones have been engaged with you during these three days, they have been engaged with me. That has been the exercise. Are you and I able for it, to be blinded from all the things of the world and accept the restrictions of Paul’s chain in the present day of the testimony, that it might end in our affections for Christ?

I have one verse I want to read, and then close—in John 12. In the gospel preaching there should be at least two questions to answer, When the Lord said, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27: 46), that answer is left. There is another question in John 12, the last part of verse 34, “Who is this, the Son of man?” Jesus therefore said to them, “Yet a little while is the light amongst you. Walk while ye have the light, that darkness may not overtake you. And he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes. While ye have the light, believe in the light, that ye may become sons of light”. The lesser light is greatly obscured by what has proceeded publicly since the day of Pentecost. There was a full blaze of the reflection of the great light seen in the assembly in those one hundred and twenty persons on the day of Pentecost. They turned the world upside down by their testimony; one sermon, three thousand souls were converted. You do not see that today. God is looking for reality, it may be a quarter moon as far as the truth of the assembly is publicly, but there are sons of light, there are stars differing from glory to glory. Ananias was a star before Saul of Tarsus became a star, but everything revolves around the sun and centre, another Man in another world. He is the upholder and the sustainer of the universe. He does that by His power. Just as He is the Creator, He spoke and there was power in His speaking.

But He is also the Nazaraean. Young people may naturally desire physical prowess, or perhaps renown militarily or otherwise. Many young people have lost their lives on the field of battle, but the real army is made up of real soldiers who have subdued wills, who love God, who love the Man in the glory, who love the people of God, and who love the truth of God in its purity. Such are the real soldiers. That is what Paul desired in Timothy; that is what was seen in Ittai who made it clear that he was not going to go without David. That is what is seen in some of the older ones who have desired with all their desire, not only that you would find forgiveness in Christ, but that you would come to a clear, full knowledge of the truth, and go on with the true David, our Lord Jesus Christ. It is yours to take on. Will you lay hold of the Saviour tonight? Will you lay hold of the One who is the great attracting light in heaven? Will you link up with those who have received the Spirit and who love the One who is in heaven, and who love the truth? As our brother was saying in the address, not in some carnal energy, but in dependence upon the Holy Spirit; holding the brethren in your affections, as loving Christ to the end, and holding the pure truth of the testimony found in the word of God, and developed in the ministries in the recovery. Will you do that, young people? I trust that you will lay hold of the Man in the glory for your salvation, and lay hold of what His greatest desire is, that is for you to yield full obedience as committed to Him. I have often said that if we commit ourselves to the testimony we will be enjoying the fellowship to the end. May God bless the word.

Preaching at Edmonton
6 July 1997