The Nature of Darkness and Light
Live from the Mecca of Mormonism, SALT LAKE CITY, Utah. This is Heart of the Matter – and I’m your host, Shawn McCraney. Let’s keep learning together about walking as Christians in the age of fulfillment.
Understanding Dark and Light
Show 25A Dark and Light. Taped June 2nd 2020. Aired June 8th 2020. Last week we talked about the end of Satan and how his whole reign over sin, death, and hell are over due to the victory of Christ. But we also talked about there continuing to be darkness and evil on earth. We noted that dark is always an option in the realms of free will beings – as is light. That in fact the very presence of God (whom scripture says is light) could perhaps produce what is essentially non-God or darkness – somewhere in the universe.
This view would help us comprehend Isaiah 45:7 where we read YHWH said:
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.”
Some believe that our Good God, because of this passage, is the literal author of evil (meaning he created it purposefully) but I tend to see the passage as meaning that as an indirect fact or reaction to his existence (as fire and light and good) there is an opposite – a dark cold empty dearth. And last week we suggested that the tool called Satan actually succumbed to this force or power – whatever and wherever it may be.
Darkness in the Material World
In the material world darkness is typically a breeding ground for evil doings, nightcrawlers, intruders, robberies, and growing mold. It is no mistake that creatures like rats and cockroaches and other creeping things love the night and stay out of the light. And there is no mistake that in the human experience hiding, secrets, obscurities, lies, false information, snuffing out, deception, evil, murder, misinformation, feigning, and the things like them are akin or synonymous with the dark with a capital D.
The Jews knew this relationship with the Dark as God said through them in various scriptures.
Psalm 74:20: For the dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence.
Proverbs 4:19: The way of the wicked is like darkness; They do not know over what they stumble.
Psalm 35:6: Let their way be dark and slippery, With the angel of the Lord pursuing them.
Ecclesiastes 2:14: The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I know that one fate befalls them both.
Psalm 82:5: They do not know nor do they understand; they walk about in darkness.
Psalm 91:6 speaks of “pestilence that stalks in darkness,” and
Job wrote of 24:17: “For the morning is the same to him (evil ones) as thick darkness.”
Isaiah 29:15 says: “Woe to those who deeply hide their plans from the Lord, and whose deeds are done in a dark place, and say, “Who sees us?” or “Who knows us?”
Jesus certainly spoke of Satan as he was “about in that day knowing that his time was short,” but he also articulated many things about the Darkness. For instance, to the religious leaders of his day he said in Luke 22:53 when they came to take him: "While I was with you daily in the temple, you did not lay hands on Me; but this hour and the power of darkness are yours.”
He also taught in Matthew 6:22-24:
22: The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
23: But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
24: No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
To have an eye single is to have all of your priorities on Him and His will – not on anything else, and when you do, your body is full of light. But try and serve two masters (like God and Mammon) and you will be full of darkness. Sobering, I know.
Paul added in Ephesians 5:11: Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them (with the darkness being personified and capable of producing unfruitful deeds).
Exposing the Deeds of Darkness
How do we expose these unfruitful deeds of darkness – by bringing light in!! Shine Him into every situation and there is never a need to call people out. Be filled with light and expose the dark.
Understanding Darkness and Light
Him and His light will reveal all things! Paul reminds us of this when he says in Ephesians 6:12
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
The way to take darkness out of a room is not to try and cup it in your hands – it's to turn a light on!
The Armor of Light
Paul said in Romans 13:12: The night is almost gone, and the day is near. Therefore, let us lay aside “the deeds of darkness” and put on “the armor of light.” John the Beloved talked big about the darkness beginning with 1st John 1:6 when he said:
“If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” Then in 1st John 2:9: “The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now.” And then adds two verses later: But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.
The Power of Deeds
Earlier in his Gospel John quotes Jesus as saying:
John 3:19: This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.
Don’t you experience this in your soul? That when you are dabbling in the dark and the light exposes it, you cringe, maybe even get angry, because you are loving the darkness more than the Light at that moment? I’ve gotten that way and I still can get that way – in those moments when “I am loving the dark more than the light.” This is the draw upon us here on earth – the dark. The covering, the shadow, the shade, the lie, and the lies.
You can almost feel it rise up in you when you are dabbling in it and someone shines a light upon you. It can be blinding, shocking, and even annoying. Like when we choose to speak evil of someone and another steps in and chooses to speak well of them in return? Or if I’m getting drawn to looking at porn and someone talks about its evils – which my flesh doesn’t want to hear. Or if I’m developing and nurturing an unforgiving attitude and I read about forgiving all people all the time? These are all examples of our flesh loving the darkness more than the light.
I’ll never forget going to the supermarket with my mom when I was only about three or four, I guess, and I stole a piece of what we called, Penny candy. This one was a lemon disk in a celophane wrapper. I can still see it in my mind's eye. I distinctly remember that when I took the candy from the wire basket in the store angling my body to hide my hand sneaking it in my pocket. Then I remember climbing all the way into the far back of the car on the way home to hide from my mom, and I distinctly remember trying my damndest to open the square of cellophane wrapper quietly to get it into my mouth.
My mom heard the wrapper, pulled over, stopped the car and came around to the back where I automatically went into another mode of darkness – it was a defense, an attempt to hide, a natural “lie mode” which all fell apart when she demanded I open my hand to reveal the stolen goods. I had no idea cognitively why I was being so stealth – all I knew is that I wanted to have what I wanted to have and I must have sensed that she was an obstacle to my getting it.
And so it goes with the dark – it always recedes from the light, seeks to obscure, hide, feign, pretend, lie, cover, and do all it can to exist unexposed. Therefore, it HATES the light. Jesus seemed to particularly detest religious feigning – which was first manifest among humans in the garden of Eden when Adam and Eve made aprons of fig leaves to hide their nakedness. This imagery is woven throughout the biblical narrative in the words and actions of our Lord, Paul and others.
It is no mistake that in that day Paul said that Satan could “disguise himself as an angel of light.” Or that Jesus cursed the fig tree covered with
The Contrast Between Light and Darkness
Many beautiful leaves but bearing no fruit, and that he described the Pharisees as being like whited sepulchers but full of dead, dried bones. These are all cases of the dark parading about as light – not a good thing. It caused those religionists to appear as light, but to in reality be black in the heart.
Jesus said something unnerving in Luke 11:35. He said:
“Be careful that the light in you is not darkness.”
He was speaking of the light that never warms, the light that cannot burn or sanitize, a light that does not give life, eternal life, or reveal the ways, and will of God. It is a dark, dark light, and it thrives in the hearts of the children of this world, including the worst of them – the religious hypocrites who feign, obscure the truth, hide behind their robes and doors and pulpits but greedily make the lives of others desolate, restricted, dark and hollow.
Contrary to the cold hollow dark, which in my estimation has its fans, friends and inhabitants and will continue to exist in the afterlife realms far outside the New Jerusalem, there are the Sons and Daughters of the Light. You. You who love and seek truth – no matter the cost or price. You who humbly love and serve others.
Wisdom and the Children of Light
Commenting on the children of this world and their wisdom here, Jesus said something interesting in the story of the unjust steward in Luke 16:8. He said:
And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely, saying: “for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.”
He told his disciples in John 12:36:
While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.
And Paul, speaking of our past lives in the shadows of dark wrote in Ephesians 5:8:
For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:
Adding in 1st Thessalonians 5:5:
Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
Seek the Light
And so to the application – seek the light that warms, illuminates, clarifies, is therefore true, good and holy. Be the light that says things as they are (unless they are rude and mean); and shine with the light that reveals God, Jesus and your heart to others. Never ever allow yourself, though we will do sometimes, to obfuscate the dark that you love. Be authentic. Say what you really mean seasoning your words with humility, wisdom and love.
And above all – above all – be honest and forthright with God. Tell him your cares, your fears, your desires, and your faults. Hold nothing back. And bring light into your life – more of it (if it's already there), and some of it if you are abiding in the dark. It is powerful. It has a draw on our carnal fleshly natures but it cannot abide in His Light. The two are mutually exclusive.
In conclusion, the Apostle James said this:
James 1:17 Every good thing and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
Just like God has creatures that abide in the night and thrive in the dark, His Son’s and Daughters are not so. Choose light. Be light. And lovingly leave the dark to those who love it more than Him. Jesus did.
(BEAT)
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