(3rd in a series)
"Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." (John 8:12)
In the first message in this series, we looked at the method that God uses to revive saved people: Brokenness! We saw how very SIMPLE it is. In the next message, we saw the method that God uses to keep "Cups Running Over": The peace of God! And we saw how very SIMPLE it is to stay revived.
Remember, that if the Lord Jesus is to bless you at all through these messages, then you must be willing to let him satisfy that deep hunger in your heart. You must be willing for God to begin with you first rather than the other person; and expect the LORD to meet your need, now, not later, NOW!
When man fell and chose to make himself, instead of God, the center of his life, the effect was not only to put man out of fellowship with God, but also out of fellowship with his fellow man. The account of man's first quarrel with God in the 3rd chapter of Genesis is closely followed in the 4th chapter, by the account of man's first quarrel with his fellow: Cain's murder of Abel.
"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." (John 8:43,44)
The "fall" is simply "we have turned every one to his own way" (Isaiah 53:6p). If I want my own way rather than God's way, it is quite obvious that I will want my own way instead of the other man's. You don't assert your independence from God, just to surrender it to a fellow man (if you can help it.) But a world where every man wants his own way, is a world full of tensions, barriers, suspicions, misunderstandings, clashes, conflicts and warfare. Satan's Song says, "Have It Your Way!" (No. The Lord Jesus is the way, the truth and the life! His way, not my way!)
The work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary was not only to bring men back into fellowship with God, but also into fellowship with their fellow saved brethren. Indeed, the cross cannot do one without the other. If there is a barrier between us and the brethren, no matter how small, it's also between us and God.
"[There is] therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." (Romans 8:1)
On what basis then, can we have real fellowship with God and our brethren? John gave the simple answer in his first epistle:
"This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." (1 John 1:5-7)
What is meant by light and darkness, is that the light reveals and darkness hides. When anything reproves us, shows us up as we really are -- That is light. But whenever we do anything or say anything (or don't say anything) to hide what we are or what we've done: that is darkness!
The first effect of sin in our lives is always to make us try and hide what we are. Sin made our first parents hide amongst the trees of the garden and it has had the same effect on us ever since.
Sin always involves us in being unreal, in pretending, duplicity, window dressing, in excusing ourselves to blame others -- and we can do all that as much by our silence as by saying or doing!
"For ye were sometimes darkness, but now [are ye] light in the Lord: walk as children of light: (For the fruit of the Spirit [is] in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove [them]. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light." (Ephesians 5:8-13)
With some of us, the sin in question may be nothing more than self-consciousness (anything with -I- in it is sin) and the hiding, nothing more than an "assumed" heartiness to cover it. (darkness!)
In contrast to all this in us, 1st John 1:5p tells us that "God is light", that is, he shows up every man as he really is. And "in him is no darkness at all", that is, there is absolutely nothing in God which can fellowship with the tiniest bit of darkness or hiding in us.
Quite obviously, then, it is utterly impossible for us to be walking in any degree of darkness and have fellowship with God. While we are in that condition of darkness, we cannot have true fellowship with the brethren either, for we are not real with them, and no one can have any fellowship with an un-real person. A wall of "reserve" separates!
"This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.But ye have not so learned Christ;" (Ephesians 4:17-20)
The only basis for real fellowship with God and our brethren, is to live in the open with both. "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another..." (1 John 1:7p) To walk in the light is the opposite of walking in darkness.
In one of his sermons, Spurgeon defined this as "the willingness to know and be known." As far as God is concerned, this means that we are willing to know the whole truth about ourselves, we are open to conviction. We will bend the neck at the first pricks of conscience. (It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks!) Everything that he shows us to be sin, we will deal with as sin, and we'll hide or excuse NOTHING!
Such a walk in the light will discover sin increasingly in our lives, and we shall see things to be sin, which we never thought to be such before. For that reason we might shrink from this walk, and leave "Fellowship Road", and be tempted to run for cover "amongst the trees"! But the verse goes on with the precious words: "and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." (1 John 1:7p)
Everything that the light of God shows up as sin, we can confess and carry to the fountain of blood and it is gone: gone from God's sight, and gone from our hearts. By the power of the precious BLOOD, we can be made more stainless than the driven snow; and therefore, by continually abiding in the "light" and cleansed by the "blood", we have fellowship with the Lord Jesus.
But the fellowship promised us here is not only with God, but "one with another"; and that involves us in walking in the light with our brethren too. In any case, we cannot be "in the open" with God, and "in the dark" with the brethren. This means that we must be as willing to know the truth about ourselves from our brother in Christ, as to know it from God.
"The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple." (Psalms 119:130)
We must be prepared for him to hold the light of the pure word of God to us (and we must be willing to do the same for him) and challenge us in love about anything he sees in our lives which is not right.
"My zeal hath consumed me, because mine enemies have forgotten thy words. Thy word [is] very pure: therefore thy servant loveth it." (Psalms 119:139,140)
We must be willing not only to know, but to be known by him for what we really are. That means we are not going to hide our inner man from those with whom we ought to be in fellowship; we are not going to window dress and put on a white-washed "appearance"; nor are we going to excuse our faults. We must be honest about ourselves before God, and not try to maintain some kind of spiritual privacy where fellowship with our brethren is concerned.
"I beheld the transgressors, and was grieved; because they kept not thy word." (Psalms 119:158)
Are we willing to pocket our pride and risk our reputations for the sake of being open and transparent with our brethren in the Lord?
"Rivers of waters run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law." (Psalms 119:136)
It means too, that we are not going to cherish any wrong feeling in our hearts about others, but we are first going to claim deliverance from it, from the Lord, and put it right with the one concerned. And as we walk this road, we'll have fellowship with one another and we won't love one another less, but infinitely more!
"As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, [so] walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving." (Colossians 2:6,7)
Walking in the light is simply walking with the Lord Jesus and those others that are with him, our brethren. Therefore, there need be no bondage about it. Like the woman at the well we say to everyone: "Come, see a man, which told me all things which ever I did!" (John 4:29) This is the Lord Jesus Christ my redeemer!
"O give thanks unto the LORD, for [he is] good: for his mercy [endureth] for ever. Let the redeemed of the LORD say [so], whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy;" (Psalms 107:1,2)
It is not necessary to tell everybody everything about ourselves, but to acknowledge those things about ourselves of which they are aware and point to the redemption in the blood of the Lord Jesus.
The main thing is our attitude of walking in the light. Are we willing to be open with our brethren, and be so in deed when God tells us to? This is humbling, but it will help us to a new reality with the Lord Jesus, and to a new knowledge of ourselves. We have become so used to the fact that God knows all about us, that it does not seem to register with us, and we end, by not knowing the truth about ourselves.
"For to be carnally minded [is] death; but to be spiritually minded [is] life and peace. Because the carnal mind [is] enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." (Romans 8:6,7)
Let someone begin to be absolutely honest about himself with others, as God guides, and he will come to a knowledge of himself and his sins that he never had before, and he will begin to see more clearly than ever before where the redemption of Christ has got to be applied progressively to his life. Even James says to "Confess [your] faults one to another, and pray one for another..." and he gives a reason: "...that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." (James 5:16)
In 1st John 1:7, of course, the purpose of walking in the "light" is that we might have "fellowship one with another." And what fellowship it is, when we walk this way together! Obviously, love will flow from one to another, when each is prepared to be known as the repentant sinner that he is at the cross. When the barriers are down and the masks are off, God may then make us really ONE. And there is also the added joy of knowing that in such a fellowship we are "safe", for the blood of Jesus Christ has cleansed us! We are accepted in the beloved!
There is no fear now, that others may be thinking thoughts about us, which they are hiding from us, for we are walking together in the Light!
In a fellowship which is committed to walk in the light beneath the cross, we know that if there is any thought about us, it will quickly be brought into the light, either in brokenness and confession (where there has been wrong and unlove), or else as a loving challenge, as something that we ought to know about ourselves.
It must not, however, be forgotten that our walk in the light is first and foremost with the Lord Jesus. It is with Jesus first that we must get things settled and it is his cleansing and victory that must first be obtained. Then as God guides us to open our hearts with others, we come to them with far more of a testimony, than a confession (except where that is specifically due) and we then praise the Lord together!
"Awake, psaltery and harp: I [myself] will awake early. I will praise thee, O LORD, among the people: and I will sing praises unto thee among the nations." (Psalms 108:2,3)
The LORD wants you to begin walking in the light on "Fellowship Road" with him today! NOW! Be honest first with the Lord Jesus, and by his grace, you will have the POWER to be honest with your friends too.
Join with one other -- your Christian friend, your saved wife, or your saved husband. Drop the MASK! God has convicted you of one thing, more than another that you have got to be honest with them about. Start there! Be a team of two to work for Revival!
As others are broken at the cross, they will be added to your fellowship as the Lord leads. Then get together for fellowship in complete oneness, and pray together for others, and go out into the highways and hedges with fresh testimony and witness for the Lord Jesus Christ, to this lost and dying world, of his wonderful grace.
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: [it is] the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2:8,10)
As God begins to work through you, sinners will be saved and your fellow saints will be blessed in a vital way, as you live and work together. And this can continue until the whole of our land will be covered with new life from the risen Lord Jesus Christ: BEHOLD! He stands at YOUR door and knocks! OPEN the door of your heart and walk with HIM on Fellowship Road with Cups Running Over in blessed Revival NOW!
Wonderful grace of Jesus, Greater than all my sin;
How shall my tongue describe it,
Taking away my burden, Setting my spirit free;
For the wonderful grace of Jesus reaches me!
Wonderful the matchless grace of Jesus,
Deeper than the mighty rolling sea;
Higher than the mountain,
All sufficient grace for even me!
Broader than the scope of my transgressions,
Greater far than all my sin and shame,
O MAGNIFY the precious name of JESUS,
May this wonderful grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you in these last final hours before the Lord himself descends from heaven with a SHOUT, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God to catch out his body, the true saints of JESUS, wonderful LORD Jesus. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. AMEN!
Shout for Joy: Jesus is
(Please see On The Highway next. Thanks. :)
URL of this page: http://www.avbtab.org/revival/03walk.htm