Light 1975

1 John, chapter 1, verses 5, 6, and 7. This is the message we have heard from him, and proclaim to you. That God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him, while we walk in darkness, we lie, and do not live according to the truth.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin. Once upon a time, I was the guest in the house, I should really say the palatial mansion, of five brothers who at one time had been extremely rich. Now, of course, the mirror-lined ballroom and the marble halls were completely empty of furniture.

Times have changed for these men. Most of the mansion had been kind of closed off, and we were living in a few rooms near the kitchen, and we all had to wear sweaters to keep warm. They were rather fine-looking middle-aged men, who treated each other with considerable courtesy, and were extremely gracious to me.

But after we were there for a while, together, a strange thing began to happen. Each of these five brothers found an opportunity to take me aside, and say to me the same thing. Each said, now young man, I know you think that my four brothers are very fine, they look that way on the surface, but I want to warn you, don't trust them.

Don't trust them. First I thought they were joking, trying to pull one on me, but as time went on it became quite obvious that that's exactly how it was. Each of the five brothers claimed to be the only one who was honest, the only one you could trust.

What happened was that some years prior to this, in a room a hundred feet down in the rock beneath the mansion, they had a room full of gold. Enough gold to keep them living in splendor for a hundred years. But then, one bag at a time, the gold was taken away, it was stolen.

Until there was nothing left, no gold, the room was empty. And then they began to sell their paintings and their furniture in order to get their fuel and get their food. And by the time I was staying with these men, you know, we were down to nothing, everything was absolutely bare.

One night, as we were having our supper of thin soup and dry bread, there was a knock on the door. And there in the snow stood an old man shivering with cold, who asked if he might have a little something to eat and a few hours of shelter. The five brothers looked at me as if I had to make the decision.

And then it dawned on me, of course, they couldn't make a decision like this because they didn't trust each other. So I said, let him in. So the brother who was standing at the door said, come on in, take off your coat and hat, sit down at the table, and we'll share with you what little we have.

Then I noticed as the old man was eating, he would look up from his bowl of soup every so often and fix his eyes on one or another of the five brothers. And every time he did this, the brother to whom he looked became agitated, nervous, you know, unsettled for some reason or other. And he went on eating.

And finally, when supper was over and we were all finished, the old man just sat there looking so sad down at the bare table. Nobody said a word. Things were utterly silent for a long time.

And then I looked around the table and I noticed that every one of these five brothers looked as if he were sentenced to death. Then the oldest of the five got up and left the room and came back shortly with two great big bags of gold and plunked them down on the table. He went back and got some more, went left again and got some more until that table was just piled high in front of the old man.

And then he just sat there sobbing with relief. Then the next brother went out and did the same thing. And the next and the next until all five brothers had brought enough gold into that room to half fill it.

Then the old man got up and with the most kindly smile on his face, shook hands with each of the five brothers, put on his coat and hat and walked off into the snow and was never seen again. As I went back to bed that night, these men were still embracing each other and weeping. And needless to say, the next day that palace came back to life.

No more poverty. Now in the Kolech, which is a word for prayer as far as I know, the prayer that John Hutchinruther prayed at the beginning of the service, written by a saint of God centuries and centuries ago, the words begin, Stir up, O Lord, we beseech thee, thy power, and come. And in this prayer, we're not necessarily asking the Lord to come back in glory and bring the world to an end.

But in this prayer, we're asking the Lord to come in whatever way he chooses, but to come now and to come with power so that those things that have been hindered by our sins may be speedily accomplished through Jesus' mercy and satisfaction. When we pray a prayer like this, it's important for us to keep in mind exactly what we're asking for. See, because if the Lord takes us at our word, when we ask him to stir up his power and come, the first thing he's going to have to do is put his finger on those things in our hearts that are hindering the free flowing of his grace.

It's all very well to say Jesus Christ forgives sins. Indeed, he does. But in order for those sins to be forgiven, the first thing that has to happen is that they have to be exposed to the light.

See, we think, oh well, that's not going to hurt me. You know, I'm okay. And the reason we think that way so quickly is because we have no conception of how our sins still lodge in our hearts and what damage they're doing.

We have come to take our sins quite for granted, you know. We can see everybody else's sins except our own. We've learned to live with our sins and think of them not as sin at all.

We have no conception of how these sins of ours have destroyed our fellowship with each other and have ruined and ripped off and robbed and impoverished our relationship with God. For instance, why aren't we truly in unity with each other as brothers and sisters in this little flock we have here? Not to be comparing ourselves with this group or that group or some other group, but to compare ourselves with God's word. God wants us to have a unity with each other which approximates heaven.

Now, not after we get to heaven, but right now. He wants us to have a closeness and an openness that really brings His power into our midst. And why isn't this happening? Is it because we don't have coffee hours? Or is it because we ought to be spending more time with each other? Or is it because we should be singing prettier songs? You know that's not the case.

The truth is that unity with brothers and sisters begins when we truly become open. We're not even open with the people we live with. We're not open with each other.

We're not. We're afraid to take that risk and really open up. What we've done is take that gold refined by fire, talked about in Revelation 3, and stolen it.

And each of us has grabbed a bunch of bags and hid them someplace. Until we've impoverished our fellowship with each other down to the place where we're just living behind masks like everybody else in the world. And what we need to do is take the gold bags, the gold that's been refined by fire, those sins that we have been told have been forgiven, and bring those bags back and put them on the table in front of Jesus.

Bring our lives right out in the open so that we are really living out there and able then to have unity with each other and experience the peace that comes through the blood of Christ. If we truly mean it when we say, stir up thy power, O Lord, and come, then he comes to us as light. And that light will expose what's in our hearts.

We're going to be laid bare before the light of the living God. And then what we do with that light that shines on us determines which way we go and what happens to us. What do we do when the light comes on? In him was light, and the light was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out.

If I say, surely the darkness shall cover me, even the light, night, shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth even as the day. Now the reason for the ineffectiveness of the body of Christ almost everywhere you look, including here, the reason for our ineffectiveness as ministers of the living God, all of us, is because, in fact, we are living our lives in the main the way everybody else in the world lives their lives, behind a mask.

We're living in deceit, we're hiding things, we're covering things up. Now the first thing that's going to happen if Jesus truly answers that prayer, to come with power, is that suddenly the lid is going to come off everything, every kettle we have. And the closets are going to automatically start flying off our doors, and the covers are going to come up off those things that we've hidden.

When Jesus began his ministry, he goes into Capernaum, into a synagogue. And there in the synagogue in Capernaum, he begins to teach. Now there's a man sitting back in the corner, who's been going to that synagogue every Sabbath for who knows how many years, and he would always sit there solemnly without a word ever coming out of his mouth.

But suddenly on this day, that man just blows his top. The cover comes off, and he screams at the top of his lungs, and it becomes obvious that this man has been inhabited by a demon. And the Lord casts the demon out of the man, and he's set free.

And we notice as we follow our Lord's ministry through those Gospels, that this thing happens again and again, everywhere he goes, the lids come off, people's fronts are exposed, they lose their composure, they're no longer able to maintain a mask in front of themselves. We see Peter on his knees, shaking like a leaf before Jesus, confessing his sinfulness. We see Zacchaeus the tax collector coming clean.

We see this woman at the well, with her whole past exposed. And this is always the way it works. When the Lord comes among us, if we ask him to do this.

Now, it's one thing for the light to come on, and for me to acknowledge before God, yes Lord, that's true, thank you for showing me that hidden gold. Yes indeed, I do have that hidden sin. But it's quite another thing for me to now do something about it.

See, what we're called to do is not just acknowledge that the light has come on, but to walk in the light. For instance, if those five brothers, you know, had just sat there at the table and wept and sobbed for their sin. You know, for five days they're just sitting there and sobbing and weeping, and then one of them says, isn't this a wonderful revival? Oh man, my heart just feels so good.

But they never go up and get the gold. You know, then they leave and they say, we had a revival. Marvelous, the Spirit came, we had a revival.

That's junk. See, the Spirit came, and the Spirit turned on the light, but they never got around to doing what the Spirit showed them to do. And so many times this happens among believers.

We shed a few tears, and then we think we have a revival. But after the tears, if we don't get up and get the gold, nothing is accomplished. See, then this would simply mean that when the little man got up and put on his coat and hat and left, he would leave not with a blessing on that house, but a curse, because the light came to that house and they didn't walk in it.

If we say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth. But if we walk in the light, walk in the light, as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. St. Paul says, let us walk honestly as in the day.

Notice he doesn't say, let's sit around and talk about our sins and shed a few tears. He says, let's walk, let's live, let's come out and do this thing. And so there are two particular things that we can do right now, each of us.

As the light comes on, if we want it to come on, and it will surely come if we ask it to. First, we can decide that right now we're going to not only acknowledge that the light has begun to shine on something in my heart, something in my life, something that needs to be changed, but that I'm going to right now go and get those bags of gold, and bring them back and put them on the table in front of Jesus. Now, you know what it is that's hindering the flowing of God's grace in you.

If you don't know what it is, then you're off the hook. God will show you. That's his problem, but those things that he has made known to you, they're your problem.

And it may be some simple thing, some lie that everybody thinks is truth, some deed that nobody has seen, and many of us will have to demolish a whole structure, a superstructure of deceit with which we cover our lives. That has to come down and really come out in the open. That's the first thing, to bring those bags of gold back.

And the second thing is to make up our minds that from now on, we ain't going to keep that gold hidden anymore. The gold is going to be on the table, it's going to be out there. It's going to be seen.

And then we'll be able to trust each other. And then we'll begin to really have fellowship. You know, we'll be out in the open.

Many of the public buildings downtown, they'll have, let's say, a little booth where a blind person will be selling candy and cigarettes and magazines and so forth. Now, it's possible that you could go up to somebody and give them a one and say, this is a five, and get away with it. And how often that's what we really try to do with each other.

You know, there are all kinds of things where your brother is in the dark. He doesn't know whether you're telling him the truth. Whether it was really because you had a headache that you didn't go to see him when you promised you would.

Or it was really because of all those things you never got around to writing that letter. You know, we have our brother in the dark, and there's no way he can know for sure whether what we've said is the true reason. Or whether we didn't exaggerate something.

See, but when we put our brother in the dark in that way, what we're really doing is not putting him in the dark. We're putting ourselves in the dark. And that's what we're doing all the time.

Putting ourselves in the dark and walking in the dark. Because there is an eye which sees what's really going on. You know, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, from whom no secrets are hid.

And to walk in the light is to walk with Jesus in front of that eye all the time. May the Lord, indeed, this day, among us, stir up his power and come as light. And may his spirit give us the liberty right now to be like those five brothers and go and get the gold that we've stashed, wherever we've stashed it, and put it on the table in front of us.

That we may no longer hinder the flowing of his supernatural power in our lives by our sin. That we may walk in the light, truly have fellowship with each other, and begin to know, as never before, the peace that is brought to us through his jeopardy. Let's wait upon him right now in prayer.

Again, Lord, we're asking that by the power of your spirit, you enable us to get hold of whatever of the words that have been spoken, that have come from you, and apply them in exactly that place in our lives where they need to be applied. And we're asking again, Father, that you give us the wisdom to get our eyes off each other and get them on those things that you'd have us take care of in our own lives, those things that need to be made right in our own families, or where we work, or among brothers and sisters in the flock, or attitudes that we may have toward other believers or other fellowships, or wherever it may be. And we pray, Lord God, that every shadow may just be dispersed as we honestly and truly bend ourselves to the doing of your will and the ferreting out of these things that have truly hindered the supernatural flow of your spirit and grace in our hearts.

We pray that before this service comes to an end, this kind of business may be accomplished in each of our lives. And we ask it, Lord Jesus, for your mercy's sake. Amen.