Have you ever been in a dark forest without a flashlight? I have. More than once I have found myself trudging cross-country (where there was no trail) on a dark, moonless night. It can be so dark. You end up walking with one hand in front of your face to block the spider webs, their lines as thick as wires, and the other hand a little lower, feeling around for tree limbs and tree trunks. Meanwhile, you pick your feet up and put them down slowly, deliberately, knowing that any minute you might trip over a fallen log, or step off into a puddle or ditch of water, or sink into a soft bed of fire ants. And there are plenty of other risks, but you can’t think about them: snakes, dangerous animals, barbed wire, the risk of becoming hopelessly lost.
I will never forget walking along on such a dark night and hearing a huge animal not ten feet away. It must have been sleeping and I woke it. Suddenly the silence exploded with noise and something huge shot up out of the brush and went crashing away through the trees and tall grass. I never saw it, but by the sound of it, it was clearly much larger than I was. If it had charged me, I might never have seen it, and might not have been able to get out of the way.
A long walk in a dark woods is an exhausting challenge, to say the least. The minute you see a familiar sight, a mercury light illuminating the frame of a cabin or a truck or a shelter that you remember from the daytime, the relief is overwhelming. You plod straight toward the light, hardly taking your eyes off it. So what if you step in a puddle now?
Spiders, ants, snakes, fallen logs—nothing is going to keep you from getting back to civilization.
Nothing is going to keep you from getting out of the darkness and back to a place where you can see.
And imagine the same scenario in the inner city, in the gang territory of some rat-infested urban ghetto where every person out after dark is a potential threat. Even with streetlights, car lights, and moonlight, that sort of darkness can be scarier than the darkness in any wilderness. And yet, we toy with darkness all the time, don’t we? We dance around the edges, tempting the forest to snatch us up somehow—it’s all fun and games until you really are lost in it.
But God does not play with darkness. Instead he warns us about it.
“God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth” 1 John 1:5-6.
So who are these people in the darkness? Peter describes them:
“Bold, arrogant people! They do not tremble when they blaspheme angels…. They always speak blasphemies about things they do not understand…. They consider it a pleasure to carouse and party in the daytime. They have eyes full of adultery and are always looking for sin. They seduce unstable people and have hearts trained in greed…. Be aware of this: Scoffers will come in the last days to scoff, living according to their own desires” 2 Peter 2:10,13; 3:3.
In his gospel account of the life of Jesus, John explains that some people love the light—but some people actually love the darkness. Why would anyone love the darkness?
“This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than Light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear his deeds will be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the Light so that his deeds may be revealed to be the works of God” John 3:19-21.
Men love the darkness because their deeds are evil. If you are a lawbreaker, you do not want that to be revealed. If you are an evil sinner, you try to keep that a secret. People who live in sin and walk in darkness, learn to love the darkness because it allows them to sneak around getting away with things.
But they don’t really get away with it. Judgment awaits.
Do you ever think about that judgment?
Most believers avoid darkness because it is dangerous and scary—whether the monster under the bed or midnight car trouble in the urban ghetto. But what about God’s judgment? Can you imagine being destined for God’s judgment?
I believe those who are headed that way get a glimpse once in a while, a warning maybe. I’m sure those visions of the future come in many different forms, but I think for some people a deep knowing settles in about the horrible, terrifying destiny that awaits their soul. Can you imagine the fear? My brother has told me that when he was young, he knew he was lost and he was scared of hell. That fear convinced him to surrender to Jesus—and the fear left that day and has never returned. But some people just learn to live with fear. Others talk themselves out of it.
But what about believers? God will judge our sin too.
Let’s turn from evil. Turn from the darkness, and learn to love the Light. “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.” 1 John 1:7
Dear God, help us to avoid the darkness. Give us a love for the Light—your Light. Fill us with your light and help us to love it more and more. Help us to love you and to love your word—to read it, study it, pray it, think about it, memorize it, and fill our minds and hearts with it every day.
ΑΩ
Household Words: 