Driving in the Dark Sermon

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My son was driving home from work one evening, about a month ago.  It was a moonless night, and he was traveling down an unlit country road.  He was about 600 yards from the main highway when a deer crossed his path.  He didn't see it until it impacted the front end of his truck.  Thankfully he was not injured.

By the time he got out of the truck to inspect the damage the deer had fled into the adjoining woods.  He exited the truck with flashlight in hand to began to pick up the shattered pieces of his front end.  As he lay them across the bed of his truck, he heard another vehicle zooming up the road.  Immediately he began to wave his flashlight so that the oncoming car could see not only him but his disabled vehicle.  Only God knows what would have happened if he didn't have that flashlight in his hands.

After two weeks in the shop, Joe's beloved S10 pickup was returned to him.  It arrived just as we were heading out for vacation.  He parked his truck in the garage, and we enjoyed a week of R&R. Three days after our return, Joe drove his perfect truck to the theater in Schererville and went in to enjoy a movie.

When he exited the theater, he was greeted by a Lake County police officer.  It seems that a young lady was attempting to park her car in the under lit parking lot and plowed into the back end of Joseph's perfect, bright red, truck.  Not only did she do damage to the back quarter panel, but she also punctured his tire. With no spare, Joseph was once again forced to wake up his father for a ride home.

What these two incidents have in common besides damage to Joseph's truck is that both incidents occurred because someone was driving in the dark.  And before I go any further, I want to say for the record that we are talking about a believer here. Someone who loves the Lord, belongs to a church, reads his Bible and witnesses to others.

Open your Bibles to Genesis 1

2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.”

It's interesting to me that v. 4 says that the light was good and that the light had to be separated from the darkness.  Now, does that infer that darkness is bad?  Let's see. 

Jump down to 1:16

16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.

17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good.

While that doesn't say that darkness was bad, but it does say that light is a governing agent. Light not only governs the day but also governs the night. 

Have an idea where I'm going? 

Let's look at a couple more verses of Scripture. 

Genesis 15:12

12 As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him.

For the record, Abraham is a believer. This verse is taken from the passage that describes God's covenant with Abraham.  God has told Abraham, what he will do for him and the generations that follow if Abraham will follow him. Now covenants are generally confirmed by both parties.  Each party in the covenant is obligated to carry out the intentions of the covenant.  Yet at this crucial point in the covenant making process, God chooses to put Abraham to sleep and then accepts responsibility for both himself and Abraham.

And notice too that while Abraham was asleep, a dreadful darkness came over him. In the King James version, it says

        “and lo, an horror of great darkness fell on him”

So despite the fact he was sound asleep, his spirit was conscious of the great darkness surround him.  That is the same kind of darkness that we read about before God created light.

In both the creation passages and the covenant passages we can see a direct correlation between the heaviness of God’s presence and the feeling of helplessness we experience in total darkness. Why would that be?

Turn to Exodus 20:

God has called Moses up Mt. Sinai to receive the law. For the record, Moses is a believer. The people are at the base of the mountain and they can see a huge dark cloud in front of them. For the record, they are all supposed to be believers. There is lightning flashing and a sound like thunder coming from the darkness.

18 When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance           19 and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

20 Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.”

21 The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.

How could hearing the voice of God cause them to die? Surely they knew it was the same God that had brought them out of Egypt & parted the Red Sea. Was it his voice they were afraid of? Or was it the darkness? I don’t think it was either.

If you jump over to Joshua 24:6 we will discover that the Israelites knew that the darkness couldn’t hurt believers.

6 When I brought your fathers out of Egypt, you came to the sea, and the Egyptians pursued them with chariots and horsemen as far as the Red Sea. 7 But they cried to the Lord for help, and he put darkness between you and the Egyptians; he brought the sea over them and covered them. You saw with your own eyes what I did to the Egyptians.

If the Lord put darkness between the Israelites and the Egyptians then darkness is only a tool, something God uses. God is not darkness, but God can be in darkness.

The passages we read got me to wondering why would God choose darkness as a covering?

I have a couple ideas:

1.   Hebrew tradition teaches that if you see the face of God, you will die. So if God covers himself in darkness, you cannot see his face.

2.   If you were blindfolded and could not see where you were going, you would have to be led. You could not rely on your eyesight to get you where you need it to be. It's the same with God, we cannot see him, but we have his Holy Spirit to guide us.

3.   God is bigger than our understanding.  If the prophets who received visions of heaven could only describe it as “like this” or “like that”, because they couldn't comprehend what they were looking at; isn't it probable that our finite minds wouldn’t be able to comprehend all that God is?

4.   There are times when not seeing the big picture is a good idea, times when God feels we are not ready to see the big picture. These can be times when God wants us to trust Him or times when we look at ourselves and doubt that we can do what God is calling us to do. At those times it’s good to be “in the dark”.

5.   I don’t know about you, but when I pray, I often close my eyes. This enables me to shut out what’s going on around me and focus on my conversation with God.

But it’s not always good to be in the dark. God wants us to be able to see where we are going. I understand this. I am at that age, where I need to turn on more light to read, to sew, to cook, to see the numbers on the remote control -- all right, I turn on lights a lot of the time just to see where I'm going and what I'm doing. Without the added light, I find myself fumbling around.

We read earlier that God said light was good. He also said that he created lights to govern the day and the night. Without those lights we couldn’t see what was going on around us.

In John 12:35 Jesus identified himself as the light.

35 Then Jesus told them, “You are going to have the light just a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, before darkness overtakes you. The man who walks in the dark does not know where he is going.       36 Put your trust in the light while you have it, so that you may become sons of light.” When he had finished speaking, Jesus left and hid himself from them.

Jump down to :46

46 I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.

The darkness he is talking about here is not the opposite of light, the darkness Jesus is referring to is a life without relationship to God. We in the church call it salvation.

Flip over to 1 John 1:7

5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

In the same way that God is not darkness, but can be in darkness, Believers are not darkness, but can be in darkness. Believers can be in physical darkness like Joseph was when he hit the deer, or spiritual darkness when they don’t have understanding of all God is or can be in their lives. Let me share a truth with you. A believer in darkness has light. God is with them. God is their light.

When Joseph hit the deer, with his truck God was there.  God protected Joseph from getting hurt in the accident.  God protected Joseph from the oncoming vehicle as he picked up the broken pieces of his front end off the pavement. God was in the darkness.

When Joseph's vehicle was hit in the parking lot, God had Joe safely tucked away in a movie theater when his vehicle was hit. God was there in the darkness.

Let me encourage you this morning, when you find yourself in darkness, be it physical or spiritual, tap into the Holy Spirit abiding within you. Let him be your navigator, and you may just be surprised to discover that you can drive in the dark.

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