“Kingdom of God: David/Light of Christ”  

We go on tonight with the ‘great light’ of humanity.

Just in a short review, let me remind you of Isaiah’s prophecy of the coming of a great light in chapter 9, verse 2: ‘The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death upon them hath the light shined.’

And Matthew saw the fulfillment of that prophecy when he said of Jesus: ‘The people which sat in darkness saw a great light and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up.

From that time Jesus began to preach and say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ (Mt 4:16-17)

And, of course, we know that Jesus confirmed this fact about Himself as He was preaching the kingdom of God when He said: ‘...I am the Light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness but have the light of Life.’ 

To help us in seeing the power of this ‘great light’ of Jesus Christ, I used the example of the sun and its role.

It has poured out its strength every hour of every day exerting its tremendous effect on the entire universe for as long as it has been in existence.

Without it, all would be total darkness - no life. 

But - in spite of all of its life-giving might and strength, the sun’s power still only dimly illustrates the power Christ is in His relationship to humanity.

When He said of Himself: ‘I am the Light of the world...I am the Light of Life’, He was indicating humanity’s capability of being filled with His divine righteousness and truth - to be man as God intended man to be.

To the people who ‘sat in darkness and in the region and shadow of death’ His Son, as the Son of man, would be Who and what Light and Life really is.

‘In Him was life, and He was the light of men. He is the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world’, John wrote in Jn 1:4 and 9.

We saw this illustrated in John 8, of the adulterous woman brought to Jesus to give His judgment of her according to the law of Moses which meant stoning her.

To this incident, Jesus, the ‘Light of the world’, was ‘light’ both to the accused and the accusers.

To the accused, He said: ‘Go, and sin no more.’

To the accusers, Jesus said: ‘Whosoever is sinless among you, let him cast the first stone.’

And, being convicted by their own consciences, they left, one by one.

God’s moral law was being confirmed by man’s conscience that endorsed the existence of God’s moral law.

Guilt overcame them, a guilt that could not be absolved nor cleaned away on man’s own power.

It would go on haunting and troubling them as they looked upon it in the light of their own sin and darkness.

So, Jesus, the ‘light of men’, was just lighting up their consciences.

It was to be a springboard into His divine illumination and life, if men chose to follow Him.

That is what made the difference between their own consciences and the Light He offered.

When the Light of Life invades man’s moral conscience, it leads to following Jesus and to repentance, to change.

His light pierces through the darkness of man’s own understanding and knowledge of God.

And it causes the light upon their consciences to surrender to the will of God.

For Jesus said, ‘This is the will of My Father Who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes on Him, may have everlasting life.’ (Jn 6:40)

So, if a man claims to know God, and, if that conscience is perfectly honest in the face of God, the man will follow Christ, the Light of his life, as he surrenders to God’s will.

So - to all who were within hearing and seeing distance of this incident in John 8, Jesus offered both the Gift of His Light and the Gift of His Life.

He said to them: ‘I am the Light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the Light of Life.’

With this short review, let us go on now to how David viewed God’s light and what it did to him.

We start in Ps 43:3-5.

There he said, in speaking to God: ‘O send out Thy light and Thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me into Thy holy hill, and to Thy tabernacles.

Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God, my exceeding joy: yea, upon the harp, will I praise Thee, O God, my God.’

Then he asked the question of himself: ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise Him, Who is the health of my countenance and my God.’

There is the picture here of David’s intense desire to be flooded with the light of God’s mercy and the truth of His faithfulness.

‘O send out Thy light and Thy truth: let Thy light lead me; let Thy truth lead me; let Thy light bring me; let Thy truth bring me - closer to You’, he was saying.

David found his hungering faith exerting itself, even in the midst of all the overwhelming forces that were against him. 

If you read the previous psalm, you can see how deep that sting of his pain reached. 

There was no way he could squirm out of his troubles. He found no release from the clutches of his enemies.

His soul was bowed down. He was disquieted within.

And to be so far from the sanctuary of God was no comfort either.

For it was there that he realized there was no joy equal or comparable to that which came from God.

He knew no higher aim for his longing than to be where the fountainhead of his ‘exultant joy’ was, and from where it flowed forth in streams.

As he assembled together with the Lord’s people in the Lord’s house, he judged the joy he experienced there to be the very highest.

‘The joy coming from the Lord is my strength’, he could sing, for that joy issued directly from God Himself.

Light came with this joy and - that God should be his light and truth, appeared to be the one reasonable, natural, certain thing in the universe.

And - so it was!

He wrote about it in Ps 36:8-10, where he literally lost himself in a profound depth of adoration and praise to God.

To him, to be hidden in God like this was the most unspeakable blessedness.

It was there where divine righteousness and truth emanated forth.

And the more he drank and saturated himself with this spiritual draught of life, the more of life flowed forth into his innermost being.

Outside of God, he saw only darkness. 

In the flood of God’s light, David was illumined by divine knowledge and was lighted up with great, spiritual joy! 

Listen to it carefully and see how he worded this in that psalm, Ps 36:8-10.

‘How precious is Thy mercy, Elohim, that the children of men find refuge in the shadow of Thy wings!

They become drunk, they are abundantly satisfied, with the fatness, with the plenteousness’, of Thy house, Thy vast reserves, and Thou givest them to drink of the rivers of Thy pleasures, Thy delights.

For with Thee is the fountain of life, and in Thy light do we see light, are bathed with light.’

The joy was light, and in it, David praised God for God was his ‘exceeding joy’ - his ‘exultant joy’ - and his salvation.

No wonder he hungered, he longed for, he thirsted for God to send His light and truth to be fulfilled in himself.

He fully expected to be led onward by it in order to enjoy the blessings of God’s holy hill and altar.

In him, there was a steady reliance upon the promises of God, of those things that could not be shaken from him.

And, the answer to his prayer and to the determination of his heart to be saturated with the light and truth he asked God to send out, we find over in the New Testament in Acts 2.

There, Peter showed how David indirectly became the prophet of Christ Who sealed this prophecy by the historical fulfillment of it.

Peter told his audience, starting in v 25: ‘For David speaketh concerning Him, [i.e., Jesus] ‘I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for He is on my right hand, that I should not be moved:

Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope:

Because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.

Thou hast made known to me the ways of Life; thou shalt make me full of joy with Thy countenance...’.

And, then, Peter reminded his audience of how ‘...God hath sworn with an oath to him, [to David] that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, He would raise up Christ to sit on his throne;

He [David] seeing this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption.

This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.’

David’s faith had advanced: he saw his soul being raised up in the knowledge of Christ.

And it was Christ Who was kindling and calling mankind forth into the possibility, not only of actual continuance, but also of looking into God’s face with the full joy of life with Him, from Him, and in Him, the living God.
 
That his body would not die was only part of David’s hope.

On its inward, unseen side, he saw a living, changed nature in the whole man which, when it continued going onward, was an actual walking in the ‘light of life’. 

‘Thou [that is, the Lord] hast made known to me the ways of life; Thou shalt make me full of joy with Thy countenance.’

Looking into the face of God, he was looking into the ‘Light of lights’ that made him full of joy.

God brought David into this light of Christ: with it, his soul was diffused with joy in seeing the face of God.

He perceived God as granting him a knowledge of Christ that concerned the whole man.

David faltered, David reeled many times in his life.

But God showed him Who would be the hope and mainstay of a man’s life!

It was Christ, the Path of life, the Way to life, leading slowly and gradually onwards to continual Life.

And - it is ever so!

David saw it! We can see it! For - to every human being there has been given the open door to see it! 

In the current affairs of our day, the waves of men’s consciences blow this way and that way all the time! 

There is much talk about ethical and unethical codes and conduct, and rightly so.

But - much is superficial, surface talk. The gutter of life is always beckoning man to join the crowd of smut and trash.

But - how different Christ, the Light of Life, is!  

In His light, the Christian sees embodied in himself a far deeper nature that keeps drawing him, keeps raising his soul higher.

Christ is always drawing us out of ourselves into that true nature and making us determined to be true to God’s light and truth.

He keeps bringing us into that one, free, unhindered expression of the divine will.

For - once the hand of man has touched the Light Christ is - that man’s heart can never, ever again be fully satisfied until his whole frame has been drawn up out of every wave of darkness, of superficiality, of surface shadows - and he stands firmly on and in the Light of Life.

It is then that the righteousness of Christ within becomes as natural as breathing is to our physical beings!

And - so for the Christian, sin should naturally become an aversion to him. 

He loathes it: he hates living in the anguish, the torture, the 
distress, and agony of it and in the haunting conscience that goes along with it.

He ought to feel it deeply and be surprised he has the capacity to stoop so low into the horror and misery of it.

Christ takes the conscience to make man to know himself in order to light up his innermost being and know how much, much better the glory and the beauty of Christ in him is!

On Him, the man can stand firmly and live!

Thus - Christ said it, and very much meant it, when He said: ‘...I am the Light of the world: he who follows Me shall have the Light of Life.’

I will close here for tonight. 

May the Lord bless this to our hearts as He keeps making us His will, as we ‘...keep the conviction that we had at the first unshaken - unshaken to the very end.’

Amen. 

Let us pray.