07.02. The Night is Far Spent, the Day is at Hand

II "THE NIGHT IS FAR SPENT, THE DAY IS AT HAND"

Romans 13:11-14 To this passage Augustine attributed his entire conversion and emancipation. "Behold," he says, "I heard a voice from a neighboring house, as a boy or a girl, I knew not whether, saying in a singing note, and often repeating, ’Tolle lege, tolle lege (Take up and read).’ Whereupon, the course of my tears being suppressed, I got up, interpreting it to be nothing less than a divine admonition that I should open the book and read the place I first lit upon. Therefore I returned in haste to the place where I had laid down the book of the apostle when I arose from thence. I caught it up, opened it, and read in silence the place on which I first cast mine eyes: ’ Not in revelings and drunkenness, not in chamberings and impurities, not in strifes and envies. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscences.’ I would read no further, nor was there need. For with the end of this sentence, as if a light of confidence and security streamed into my heart, all the darkness of my former hesitation was dispelled." May similar effects accrue to each of us! As we ponder these words, may light stream into our hearts! For us, as for Augustine, there is always, in the earlier stages of the re­ligious life, some perplexity as to the method of treating the evil habits which have grown with our years and cling to us with grim tenacity. Shall we leave them behind us in the course of time? Will they relax their hold? Is there any way of providing for their gratifica­tion within fixed and defined limits? Is it to be a perpetual struggle between us and them, in which sometimes we and sometimes they shall conquer? To all these questionings a sufficient answer is suggested in the aorist tense of the apostle, by which he insists on the definite, sudden, and entire abandonment of the works of darkness, and the immediate, final, and irrevocable accep­tance of the armor of light. It can be done, or the Holy Ghost would not enjoin it. Here, now, and before you have laid down this book, you may once and forever have put away, as concern­ing your former manner of life, the old man, which waxeth corrupt after deceitful lusts, and you may have put on the new man, which, after God, hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth. The works of darkness are enumer­ated in three classes, with two specimens in each. First, indulgence in sensual acts; secondly, indulgence in unholy thought and desire; lastly, indulgence in anything which is not perfectly lov­ing and lovely. Surely none who read these lines are guilty of the sins of licen­tiousness or drunkenness; possibly a very few may be given to chambering and wantonness, harboring thoughts and imaginations which corrode and corrupt the soul; but many may be prone to strife and jealousy. You per­mit yourselves to enter into the lists, contending for the priority, and are jealous of those who excel. These things are condemned by the love of God; they savor of the darkness of the unregenerate heart, and must be put away. Even if they have been per­mitted as the habit of years, they may be cast away as swiftly and entirely as the sleeper puts off his night-robe and prepares to gird himself for the day’s duties, engagements, and conflicts. The night is far spent. Here the comparison of night is used of Christ’s absence from His church and of the brooding darkness which overcasts the world. The night is the emblem of indolence and lethargy; and are not the majority of men sluggish toward God, however keen and alert they are toward the concerns of this world? Night is also the time of illusion. Laban imposes the blear-eyed Leah on Jacob in the darkness. Ugliness and beauty, gold and stone, friend and foe, are all one when night has drawn her curtains. Are not most men mistaking the coun­terpart for the real, the false for the true? Again, night is pregnant with danger, whether to the traveler across the morass, or the ship feeling her way along a rock-bound coast. Darkness is danger. He that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth, because darkness has blinded his eyes. For vast tracts of time, darkness has covered the earth, and gross darkness the people. How great the relief, then, to be told that the night is far spent and the day at hand! The night of Satan’s reign, of the power of darkness, of creation’s travail and anguish, of the absence of Jesus from His church-it is far spent. The day is at hand. In connection with the temple ritual, we are told that the morning sacrifice had to be offered at a point of time between the first indications of dawn and actual sunrise; and during the last hours of the night a party of Levites, known as watchmen for the morning (Ps. cxxx. 6), used to take their stand on one of the higher pinnacles of the temple, watching for the first indications of the approaching sun. Meanwhile, at the altar of burnt-­offering, everything was ready and the priests stood waiting. At last the signal was given in the words, "The sky is lit as far as Hebron," and, immediately that cry was raised, the morning sacrifice was slain and the daily routine of the tem­ple’s ritual and worship began.

We, too, are on our watch-tower. An increasing number of God’s people, in these last days, are joining the band of watchers up yonder, who stand in the chill morning air, looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. May we not almost say that the day is come? Certainly the light has been getting brighter and clearer with every year. The Jew-hate which is uprooting the Hebrew race in countries where Jews have for centuries been settled; the willingness of modern Jews to put aside their prejudice and to listen eagerly to methodical unfoldings of Scripture; the regathering of so many to Palestine, so that, in spite of the Sultan’s adverse edict, some eighty thousand are settled there; the agitation of the world over the great problems presented by the condition of eastern Europe-all these indications suggest the hope that the sky is lit as far as Hebron.

But, after all, the conception of this passage is classical and Roman, borrowed from the camp. Through the night the soldiery, divested of their armor, have abandoned themselves to revelry and carouse, and, as the small hours have reigned, have sunk into a deep sleep; but lo! the ringing bugle-note is an­nouncing the herald streaks of dawn, and summoning the troops hastily to put off the dress and works of darkness, and to assume their armor, free from rust and stain. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand: cast off the works of dark­ness, and put on the armor of light."

Now is salvation nearer than when we believed. Not our salvation merely, but salvation generally. Jesus is about to appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation. The bodies of the saints are to be set free from the power of death, and raised in the likeness of the body of Christ’s glory; the creature is to be emancipated from the bondage of corruption; the last remains of Satan’s rule over our world are to be destroyed; the golden ages are to return. From the watchers and holy ones the song of redemption is yet to ascend:

"Salvation to our God that sitteth on the throne, And unto the Lamb for ever and ever."

We look back to the hour when we first believed. It is a definite moment in the vista of the past, but we look for­ward to indefinite degrees of light and glory. The light shall grow ever to a more perfect day; the results of the Saviour’s death shall become ever more appreciated; the circles of influence that radiate from His throne shall reach to farther limits, and be more than ever prolific of blessing to unknown races of beings at the uttermost limits of the universe.

Let us walk honestly (becomingly), as in the day. It is nothing to us that the shadows appear to linger over moor and fell; for us at least the day is broken, for the day-star has arisen in our hearts, and we are called upon to live as chil­dren of the light and of the day. Our eternity has already begun. We have come out of the great tribulation, to rest within the silken curtains of God’s pa­vilion; we have washed our robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb; we already walk the streets of the New Jerusalem. Only let us day by day allow our light to shine. Let us live on the level of God’s thought for us. Let us walk as in the day, as we shall do when the time of the restitution of all things has taken place, in those blessed halcyon years when the sun shall no more go down, or the moon withdraw herself, and the Lord shall be the everlasting light. But to do this as we should, we must put on the armor of light. In an earlier epistle the apostle had already suggested the thought: let us, since we are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of sal­vation. And in a later epistle he carefully enumerates its successive pieces. But here he gathers up all into one comprehensive phrase, "the armor of light." It is just the Lord Jesus Christ. Put Him on-His gentleness, meekness, and humility; His purity and truth; His obedience to the will of God, and sensitiveness to every cry of weakness or suffering; and what seems soft to the flesh will approve itself to be armor of proof in the day of battle. None are so invincible and stalwart as those who are arrayed in the meekness and gentleness of Jesus.

Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Do not be content with a negative religion; be positive. Do not only put off; put on. Put off by putting on. It is not enough to doff the robes of night; you must don the armor of light. Cast away the works of the flesh, because you have become enamoured of and incased in that glistening panoply woven out of sunbeams and light. Do not only resist impurity; put on Christ as your purity. If you put on Christ as your purity you will have no difficulty in being free of the taint of impurity. Do not simply forbid wrath, anger, malice, but assume Christ’s heart of compassion, His kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, and forbear­ance; indeed, to cultivate these will make those impossible. You need make no provision for the flesh, not expecting to sin, not living in perpetual fear of its outbreak and solicitations, when once you have put on, by faith and in the power of the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus Christ. In Jesus there is supply for every need, armor against every attack, full­ness for every deficiency. Avail yourself of Him; make use of Him; appro­priate His sufficiency; go into every day, whatever its anticipated emergen­cies, temptations, and perils, as those who are incased in the very nature and character of Jesus, which they offer as their answer to every possible de­mand.

Put on the Lordship of Jesus. For this cause He died and lived again: that He might be Lord of both the dead and living. Let His authority be su­preme, His will and prompting law.

Put on the humanity of Jesus. From the day when He went back to Nazareth and was subject to His parents, to the day when He pleaded for His murderers on the cross, He presents a lovely ex­ample of holy and spotless manhood.

Put on the anointing of Jesus. He is the Christ of God. Never rest till God, who anointed Him as Head, has anointed you the member of His body, and you are a Christian (an anointed one) in deed and in truth.

Then, when the day breaks and the shadows flee forever, when the arch-angel trumpet sounds the reveille to quick and dead, when the clear light of eternity breaks in on this time of illu­sion and gloom, we shall meet the day without shame or misgiving, and rise to the life immortal, through Him who liveth and reigneth forevermore in the mystery of the perfect day.