Kingdom of God: Great Light/Paul’s Concept Challenged” 

Jesus, the Christ, is God’s great self-disclosure to the world.

Many, many times I have said this, and will probably say it a great many more times: Jesus, the Christ, is God’s great self-disclosure to the world.

And, probably more so today than at any other time in history, this fact and truth has become the main issue in the  theological world. 

It will probably become more so since the current Passion movie has been released.

‘Jesus Christ’ is today’s topic of conversation.

The question is, always has been, and will be: ‘Is this  truth-commitment to Christ universally valid for one and all?’

Since ‘religion’ has become a ‘matter of personal preference’, modern man is reeling in his answer to this question.

And - if ‘religion’ is simply a matter of choice, culture, or just a surviving enterprise, what, then, can be the ‘conclusion of the whole matter?’

In the heat of all the discussions to come, we will find - if we have not already - we will see that the ‘Divine Logos’ is still holding man - even ‘modern man’ - answerable to God about His ‘Great Light’ of Christ to the world.  

Nothing has changed since Jesus’ day when there were those who grappled with this self-same issue.

A new thing had happened upon the earth!

God broke into the world in a new way! It was His creative action being revealed.

The Divine Logos had kept His Word given to the prophet, Isaiah, and the ‘Great Light’ was here!

Man was being brought to the recognition of God’s personal presence in life that sets hearts toward discovering more of Him and His love not known before. 

Now - the question was: ‘Do we believe God and His Word given to His prophet, Isaiah?’ 
 
Or do we dare distort that Scriptural revelation, as those in Jn 8 tried to do?

Looking upon Jesus as they did, Jesus saw the obscuring of the fundamental issue of spiritual ‘truth and light’. 

The Old Testament revelation of God Who bore witness to the sending of His great Light in the Person of Christ was being falsified. 

And Jesus had to say to those men, in vs 42-47: ‘If God were your Father, ye would love Me: for I proceedeth forth and came from God: neither came I of myself, but He sent Me.

Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear My word.

Ye are of your Father, the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.

He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.

When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

And because I tell you the truth, ye believe Me not...He that is of God heareth God’s Words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.’

They were strong words and a hard saying to follow - were they not?

Yet, they are just as strong today for all who take issue with Jesus Christ.

But Jesus did not stop there and leave them all to their own devices and concepts.

He kept on, trying to draw out from their consciences the acceptance of Who He was, The Great Light of God.

He started His ‘drawing-out program’ for the sake and glory of His Father at that time.

And He has continued to do just that down through the centuries, right down to our day.

He is always seeking to lead man out of himself into that deeper nature that keeps raising man higher and making him determined to be true to the Light Christ is.  

We see this continual ‘drawing-out principle’ illustrated in Paul’s life, which will be our point of concentration tonight.

If there was anyone who was falsifying the Scriptural revelation of God bearing witness of Himself in Jesus Christ, of obscuring the ‘truth and light’ in Him, it was Paul.

He was loyal to his concept of ‘God’ but such loyalty proved to be harmful.

Why? because it made his mind impervious to the glory of Christ. 

In spite of God’s disclosure of Himself in Christ, Paul defected from the truth of God in Him and devised cunning
ways to keep men from God’s revelation and redemption.        

He was a man known to be ‘breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord.’

He overtly, and unscrupulously, ‘played God’, defending God to the last degree. 

But, were he alive today, he would probably be the first to admit that what Jesus said to those in Jn 8 applied equally to himself.

He was ‘of his father, the devil, doing the lusts of the devil.’
He was not ‘abiding in the truth: the truth was not in him.’

However - it was a ‘light from heaven’ that stopped Paul and it was the voice of Jesus he heard.

The bright Light, which God Himself is, fell like a glaring beam on him that day.

‘...the Lord, even Jesus, appeared unto’ him. (Acts 9:17)

His question to Paul was: ‘Why are you persecuting me, Saul?’

And - from that earthshaking encounter, Paul’s heart was changed. ‘What wilt Thou have me do, Lord?’

‘And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God.’ (Acts 9:20)

Why the sudden change?

This all arose in Paul because of God’s divine operation that drew him, that opened Paul’s conscience to the acceptance of God’s Great Light. 

God had promised in Zech 12:10: ‘I will pour out upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplications.’

It was not in Paul to renew his own heart to God’s ‘new thing’ that happened upon the earth.

It is not in fallen man to do that!

As long as a man is self-righteous, which Paul so stoutly believed himself to be, that man is still on the grounds of self-merit.

That man needs the Spirit of God’s grace to give grace in order to receive grace.

And - Paul certainly was a “graceless” man. 

His heart wanted to move in the right direction but he was impotent to even accept God’s grace until God gave ‘grace for grace’ - grace to accept grace.

That is, grace had to clear out a space in his heart for grace to enter it and carry on its work.

‘The power to make the rock of our nature flow with rivers of repentance is not in the rock itself.’

So - God acted on his behalf: the Spirit was timely in giving him life and light to make his heart ready to receive Christ. 

It is He Who works regeneration in man.

‘By the might of His Word, order comes out of chaos and He annuls the chaos of our natural sinful state and brings it to light and life.

He Who made us can make us over again!’

It was no longer Paul’s desire to keep men from knowing about Christ as God’s Light to the world.   

In fact, he had a divinely-appointed work to complete in his life, a work in which he was in need of God’s Spirit to fulfill. (Acts 9:15-17)

So that, one day, he could say: ‘No man, speaking by the Spirit of God ever says ‘Jesus be cursed!’, and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.’ (1 Cor 12:3)

You see - his mind had been just as blinded as the minds of those who refused Jesus as God’s Light in Jesus’ day.

So, in speaking about the people of Paul’s day, Paul could say: ‘Their minds were hardened; for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.’ (2 Cor 3:14)

His desire was changed from shunning the issue of Christ to a full acceptance of His Light as God’s disclosure of Himself.

Hear what he said in this regard, in 2 Cor 4:2-6: ‘We have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways; we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing.

In their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, Who is the likeness of God.

For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.

For it is the God Who said: ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, Who has shone in our heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’

The mercy of God had saved him, had drawn out from his own conscience his concepts of God by opening his eyes to the truth about Christ.   

He could never walk in darkness again!
 
No longer was he tampering with the Word of God, falsifying God’s revelation of Himself, obscuring His light and truth, to fit his idea of God.

Nor can we do that, in deference to current views and popular opinions.

We cannot blunt the edge of the message of Christ as the Light of God to the world.

It was on this same token, that Paul appealed to every man’s conscience, in the hope that the gospel of God in Christ was being proclaimed honestly and truthfully.

Wherever the message was opened to God’s Light in Christ, he appealed to ‘every man’s conscience.’ 

And this is the wonderful aspect of conscience: the sincere conscience of the person who accepts the truth about God’s unique revelation in Christ will open to the message of the gospel of Christ - of that, we can be sure.

And how can we be sure of that?

There is no more powerful luminary than the face of God that is seen in the strong light of the face of Jesus.  

With the one whose conscience is open to the Lord, there is an honesty of mind and a love for searching out, what he perceives as, ‘truth’.

Yes - I am aware that there are those who ‘do things’ in the name of ‘religion’ just to soothe their own consciences.

But the two characteristics - an absolute honesty and a seeking - are the key words here as the antidote to the corrupting power of the way man by himself looks at God. 

He wants to believe in God and that takes a measure of faith. 

And it follows that - because of his singlemindedness in searching out ‘truth’ and because of his intense desire after it - the light of Christ eventually does rise in darkness.

And, eventually that small measure of faith opens more and more fully into following His Light of Life.

‘Seek, and ye shall find...’, Jesus said.

So - when Paul described his gospel, the person of Christ became the sole subject of his message.

Fixing his reliance upon God’s faithful Word, he saw an absorbing desire for more and more of His Light which alone negates the darkness of fear and guilt and sin.

He explained the divine glory by the fact that Christ is the likeness of God and it is He Who reveals His nature and character.

He made clear that what Christ taught, and even what He did, sprung from Who He was and is: the divine living center of power and love given unto men to live life.
 
I will close for this tonight.

But - before I do, let me leave two more thoughts with you.

First, to those who grapple yet with the issue of the universal truth commitment to Christ, please remember: each one of us is still answerable to God about His ‘Great Light’ of Christ He sent to the world.

And - in that regard - I pose this question: ‘My case - your case - do you honestly believe it is beyond the power of God to solve it?

Is anything too hard for the Lord?

Is the Spirit of the Lord limited or confined that He cannot save every single person to whom He is able to reveal His Son, no matter what that person claims his ‘religion’ to be?’

Let me remind you: when God deals with the human heart by His secret and mysterious ways, He purposes to fill that man’s heart to the fullest with Himself.

Do not fall short of believing that to the very end of things!

‘God maketh my heart soft,’ Job was able to say when God was dealing with him in God’s own tender, loving ways.

God is able to melt the icebergs of every human beings’ heart - to make the soul yield up its hardness toward His Son and the insensibility to the sin of rejecting God’s will in Him.  
 
And when He works, He purposes to complete His work to the finish.

And, the second thought, to those who have squarely faced the issue of Christ, I give this reminder. 

Once again, today, mankind - as a whole - is being brought face to face with this issue.

We are in a very blessed hour of the world’s history - this very day - when the Spirit of God has come to man as the Spirit of grace given to accept Christ, His Son, the Great Light.

I hope we are able to discern and perceive this.

To those who know Him, Jesus said: ‘Lift up your eyes...look on the fields...they are white unto harvest...reap ...and gather the fruit unto life eternal.’

May the Lord give grace to follow on in Him - to be part of communicating His ‘Great Light’ that fills the whole earth - by a life of holiness unto Him alone. 

Amen. 

Let us pray.