Darkness at Midday

By Rob Forth

‘… this is the message we have heard from Him and announced to you that God is light an in him there is no darkness at all’.  (1 John 1:5)

God dwells in an unapproachable light. (1 Tim 6:16)  This light is an expression of the relational way in which the Members of the Trinity love and give toward One another.  This is the harmony of life in which They live.  The good news for us is that we are being called to participate in this same life and light. 

God’s desire is to bring us into His light, into relationship with Him, so that we can live just as He lives! Can you imagine a world living just as God lives? Can you imagine a world where people truly love, truly give, who genuinely have a heart for one another and actually share?
The verse in John 1:9 has this wonderful hope in it. ‘There was true light, which coming into the world enlightens every man.’  This true light is Jesus Christ for He declared Himself to be the ‘light of the world’.  His heart’s desire is to enlighten every man as to why he truly is here, and what God has in store for him.  Jesus declared, ‘he who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life’. It is clear, then, that light is associated with relationship, life and living. (John 8:12)

Light is not just an aura that one gets in a mystical encounter upon a mountain top somewhere.  There are some who seek a religious fantasy, as though coming together in Church ought to be a mystical experience - that we should somehow seek a feeling of God’s presence.  I do not know how much Paul felt God’s presence when he was in a prison with rats running over him in the half darkness as he was trying to write letters to the different churches. No!  God wants to reveal a light which brings us life – a life source within us which is not ours but His.  What a joy it is when we live in His life.

Pause for a moment and think about darkness. The Son of God is coming to enlighten every man.  What does that indicate?  If He is coming to enlighten every man, then every man is in darkness and needs light!

When people are in darkness there is no sense of God with them to help them and to enlighten them. In describing mankind in his dark disobedient condition the Old Testament says, ‘you shall grope at noon’. The sun is usually shining at noon, but here are people groping at noon as the blind men in darkness.  The prophet Isaiah said a similar thing. ‘Therefore justice is far from us, nor does righteousness overtake us; we look for light, but there is darkness! For brightness, but we walk in blackness!  We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes; we stumble at noonday as at twilight; we are as dead men in desolate places.  We all growl like bears, and moan sadly like doves’.  What a clear description of spiritual darkness!

However, in the sad and sorrowful condition of people who feel the world owes them something, there is still hope. There is a way forward, as we reach out, and as we trust in the Lord.

To the educated Greeks Paul said God ‘has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth … so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us’. (Acts 17:26-27)  Paul depicts people groping around in bright sunlight!  There is a darkness in which people are locked in their own self-centred world - the world of their own expectations and assessments, a world that each is trying to make for himself.  Each one is groping as a blind man and stumbling.  The good news is that the heart’s desire of Jesus is to enlighten each one, to bring light and life so as to gather him out of darkness, and draw him to Himself amongst God’s people.  That’s good news!

For some who have been Christians for many years, the darkness of law and rightness can still stop this true light flowing.  We must put these things off so we can proceed forward in the light, life and relationship that God has prepared for us.

When we are in darkness the first point of making our response to God is to hear and receive this word of hope.  We cannot live God’s life on our own.  We all need God’s help.   His help comes to us through a word that is preached, and it enables us to believe.  We must be connected in a fellowship of God’s people who are learning to live as God lives, sharing and walking together transparently, being honest and true about who we are and how we live.  That is what the Bible calls ‘walking in the light’.  As we hear this good news we can be drawn into such a life together.  Then we will experience what the psalmist meant when he wrote, ‘Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my pathway’.  (Psa 119:105)  
(Extract from a message by Rob Forth at the Chapel Hour, 25th May 2008)