Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1252
“And God saw the light that it was good.” Genesis 1:4.
WE shall, this morning, leave all discussion as to the creation of the world to those learned Divines who have paid their special attention to that subject, and to those geologists who know, or at any rate think they know, a very great deal about it. It is a very interesting subject, but this is not the time for its consideration. Our business is moral and spiritual rather than scientific. We justify our present discourse by quoting that remarkable parallel text which the Holy Spirit has given us in the second Epistle to the Corinthians, fourth chapter and the sixth verse, where Paul says, “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
The creation was an instructive type of the new creation. God’s methods of forming the old creation illustrate His ways in preparing and perfecting His people who are new creatures in Christ Jesus. So we shall gather light from an analogy which is evidently warranted by the New Testament. We trust we shall not be guilty of inventing things fanciful, strained, or merely curious—our objective is edification and consolation—and not a display of ingenuity. May the eternal light of the Holy Spirit shine upon us, now, that by His light we may see light.
Man’s fallen nature is a very chaos, “without form and void,” with darkness thick and sevenfold covering all. The Lord begins His work upon man by the visitation of the Spirit, who enters the soul mysteriously and broods over it, even as of old He moved upon the face of the waters. He is the Quickener of the dead soul. In connection with the Presence of the Holy Spirit, the Lord sends into the soul, as His first blessing, light. The Lord appeals to man’s understanding and enlightens it by the Gospel. The heavenly light reveals to man his obligations to God and his forgetfulness of them. It shows him the evil of sin, his own guilt, consequent danger and the impossibility of his escaping from that danger by any efforts of his own.
That same light, also, reveals to man God’s way of salvation—shows him the Person of Christ, His work, its suitability and its freeness—and lets him see how he may obtain an interest in redemption by the simple act of believing. It is a blessed thing for any man when the Lord God says concerning him, “Let there be light.” If you keep your eyes upon the chapter you will observe that the light came into the world at first by the word—“God said, ‘let there be light.’” It is through the Word of God contained in this book, the Bible, that light comes into the soul. Let me correct myself—it is by Him who is called the Logos, THE WORD, that light is poured into the heart of man, for, “in Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”
This is that true light which lights every man that comes into the world. The Spirit, you see, is engaged in the new creation—He broods over the soul. The Son of God is the Creator, also—He is that WORD without whom nothing was made, and by whom light came. And the Father unites in the same sacred work, for it is He who speaks and it is done. It needs the Trinity to new-create a soul. Oh, Triune God, our souls which are new-created worship You with the trinity of their nature—spirit, soul, and body! The light which broke in upon the primeval darkness was of a very mysterious kind, and came not according to ordinary laws, for as yet neither sun nor moon had been set as lights in the firmament.
Can we tell how spiritual light first dawns on nature’s night? It darts upon some souls without the aid of apparent ministries, immediately from God! Indeed, though the Lord sends light by this means or by that, yet in every case the light is His own work, and the means are, in themselves, so evidently powerless that the whole glory of the work belongs to the Lord alone! How He removes darkness from the understanding and illuminates the intellect is a secret reserved for only Himself. Mysteriously, then, the light enters into the soul of man. But one thing is clear concerning it—however it comes, if it is true light, it is always God-given and comes, alone, from the great Father of lights.
No gracious light ever will or can come to any man except directly from God Himself. There was no latent light in the chaotic mass of world. There was no brilliance to be developed out of the primitive darkness. It was necessary that Jehovah should interpose and that His fiat should pour in light firm above. O heart of man, you are darkness itself, but in the Lord is your light found! The light came instantaneously. Six days were occupied in furnishing the earth, but a moment sufficed for illuminating it. God works rapidly in the operation of regeneration—as with a flash, He darts light and life into the soul.