Vexed No.5 Hiding your Light

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day He rose again.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

Amen. Father, we come before your holy throne ever conscious of the fact that the only right we have to be in your presence is through our beloved Lord Jesus. We thank you that you have indeed spread a table before us in the midst of a hostile world.

And on that table, for those who've got eyes to see, there is a banquet of good things. We praise you for the merits of the life and the death and the resurrection of Him who, He who is your Son and is also our Savior. And tonight we want to give glory to the Father and glory to the Son and glory to the Holy Ghost for all that you have achieved for us.

And we have a burden, so many of us here, that others who at this moment are without Christ and therefore without hope in the world may respond. Those who are within our family circles, those who are within this town on this coastal stretch, Lord, we bring them to you. We bring to you the untold millions of Southeast Asia and Africa and the Americas and the whole of Northern Europe and Eastern Europe.

Oh God, hear us, hear us for the people. And as we sing our opening hymn, help us to sing with great confidence that what we proclaim in word is what will happen in deed. Amen.

So remain standing and turn to 631, this great hymn. Tell out my soul the greatness of the Lord, unnumbered blessings. Give my spirit voice.

631. Tell out my soul the greatness of the Lord, unnumbered blessings. Give my spirit voice.

631. Tell out my soul the greatness of the Lord, unnumbered blessings. Let us teach them their outright goal, the greatness of the Lord.

Teach children, children learn forevermore. Do be seated. And let's come to the Lord again in prayer.

Just a moment for you to express your own personal prayers. Confession where necessary, rededication, that's for all Christian people surely. Prayer for the person alongside you, and prayer for this week, that in the grace of God it may be a week in which you'll see him more clearly, and love him more dearly, and follow him more nearly.

Pray that God will speak to us through his word this night, and that those who will partake of bread and wine will do so in such an obedient fashion that in a very special sense our Lord will manifest his presence in the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine. Father, hear our prayers and let our cry come to you, and may this service be extra special for your honour and for your glory, amen. That last hymn that we were singing has as its final verse, tell out my soul the greatness of the Lord to children's children and for evermore.

I bring greetings to you from quite a lot of people out in India who picked up from Notes and News. I just got back the earlier hours of this morning after one of the most intense trips that I've had to the subcontinent. I'm going to claim a sentence in the Guinness Book of Records because I've been on twelve thirteen days, and I reckon that's got to be fairly high up the list for, well, unusual mode of travel.

That does not include two nights on Indian trains, which was an interesting experience. Certainly the second one was. Last Sunday at this time I was in a place called Cuttack, which is some six hundred miles south of Calcutta, a Baptist church in the afternoon, membership of something like 10,000 people.

I've never seen such a big church in India. The auditorium itself would have seated around 2,000, I imagine, and it was absolutely packed. In the board meeting to which I particularly went of Operation Mobilization, we had some remarkable times, and just preceding the board meeting, the executive council of OM came together.

These are state leaders who helped to steer the evangelistic program in so many states in the subcontinent, where there are something like 900 million people plus altogether. They've dedicated from 1996 to the year 2000, in other words to the turn of the millennium, as a special four-year period of intensive outreach amongst tribal people in India, of which there are some 100 million. And through the relaying of films, a new Indian film on the life of Christ called The Compassionate One, through radio broadcast, through word of mouth, and through literature, the hope is that many people will be contacted with the good and glorious gospel of Christ.

So many incidents that were packed into just a relatively few days. I think I've been away 13 days. It's rather difficult to know which ones to isolate, just to try and share with you.

I've been grateful for prayer, particularly that all my travel connections went well, and the good brother from Maybridge, Admar Faro, who was traveling with me, that he might appreciate the change of doing dentistry here in Worthing over against being out in India, where he didn't know, but he got some meetings lined up and he'd never preached before in his life. When they discovered he was a dentist, when he was in the back end of North India on Wednesday, there was a queue for treatment after the service. I think it was him crowning with many crowns that actually was misunderstood.

Maybe I'll say one or two more things about my trip at this time, as we come around the Lord's table and share some prayer requests, and maybe we can hear from one another too about things that have been happening in your life. Tony Ford, he was out traveling almost at the same time as I, though our paths didn't cross in India. Maybe one thing, because I was mentioning this to Tony just before I came through.

Maybe one thing I'll share right now and pick up on one or two later on, but when I was in Cuttack, I went to an Indian broadcasting studio. Rather mediocre in terms of its quality, but nonetheless, the stuff that they're putting together is obviously good enough for Fever to take and to usefully employ from Seychelles, beaming the program back into India. One of the people who heard a particular broadcast was a man who was in jail.

In jail for murder, a murder which he did not commit. Indian judiciary doesn't always get it right, but neither does the British system these days or so it would seem. Anyway, he tuned into this broadcast, confessed the Lord Jesus as his savior, and was remarkably changed.

And he's been ministering the gospel in this area of Orissa, which is one of the large states in India, to some of his fellow prisoners. And they have established a church of, I forget whether it's 16 or 20, within the prison. And this brother who made the broadcast, he was telling me that he'd actually gone to the prison to check it all out and was able to give me information about that response to the degree that it is.

And he's now written it down so that we can share it with our Fever family friends here in Worthing. So that's a bit of encouragement for all of us to continue to pray for the advance of the gospel in that country, the second largest in the world. Glory to God, glory to God, glory to God, your king is our God.

Glory to God, glory to God, glory to God, glory to God, glory to God, glory to God. Wasn't too easy to get hold of any milk in India. I don't quite know what's the problem there.

Actually, the only milk I ever got was sour. So the idols were welcome to what was available. This business of the gods drinking milk actually has more or less got the ridicule of the secular press in India.

I never saw any idols drinking myself. On the other hand, the power of Satan is such that he can cause supernatural events to happen in order to delude people. And there is no way in which we should just take lightly claims that are made as to the demonstration of supernatural power.

But we do believe in a supernatural Lord and in the gospel of Christ and its power to change men and women. So let's look at the words of our Lord Jesus as found in Mark's gospel and the fourth chapter. We're looking on a Sunday night, the first Sundays in a month, on what perhaps don't quite qualify as being described as parables in the full-blooded sense of the longer stories our Lord related, but little metaphors, things that he said that packed a punch.

And sometimes he said them on several occasions in different contexts as he tried to teach a little about his kingdom and about his own mysterious person. And in the 21st verse of Mark 4, you get a couple of phrases which our Lord uses on several occasions, both in this gospel and especially in the gospel of Luke. Jesus said to them, to the multitude who are listening as well as to the disciples, do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don't you put it on its stand? For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.

If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. On one of my visits to India, I too was confronted with a bit of a conundrum, because it strikes me that that's how you could, with respect to Scripture, describe these verses that fell from the lips of our Lord. The meaning is not quite obvious on first reading.

It needs your powers of attention to tease out what he is actually getting at. I was driving around Bangalore, and I was due to be preaching at a large church, but typical fashion, the letter hadn't actually caught up with me, so I wasn't too sure which church it was. And so I got the taxi driver to circulate around the churches in the center of Bangalore, hoping that, in typical fashion, my name would be up on one of them.

And the taxi driver slowed down outside the large Methodist church, and there was a big placard. This is no exaggeration at all, it must have been four foot by six foot depth, and it had got guest speaker, Reverend Coney Largent – wait for it – from Wordington, Padernackle. So I said, well, it couldn't be me.

There was more in that notice, really, than met the eye. They got it approximately right, and I was able to go along and have the privilege of preaching in this fairly historic church in the center of beautiful Bangalore. Well, it's this concept of having to really study the Lord's words, which these two particular verses demand of us.

Our Savior sometimes would use proverbial expressions, aphorisms, clichés. Preachers sometimes get into that sort of vocabulary without even realizing it. Our Lord did it deliberately, but we all fall foul of having particular ways to express ourselves.

The man who taught me more about preaching and ministry than ever I learned at London Bible College, the Reverend Mike Beth Patterson, I can hear him as though it was yesterday, always declaiming against the tinsel toys of time, a wonderful expression just trips off your lips. I've wanted to say that for a long time in the pulpit. And then dear Dr. Lloyd-Jones, not so much in his preaching but in his praying, he would use a proverbial expression that was common to his manner of intercession when he would pray that God would be with us during our short, uncertain, earthly life and pilgrimage.

Well, here is one of those expressions that comes from the lips of our Lord Jesus. Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? He says that several times. And what he is trying to underline in the thinking of those who are listening to him, the purpose of a lamp is obviously to give light.

And then he uses this next expression in the 22nd verse, again on several occasions. Whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open. Well, let's have a look at first of all the lamp, and as I say in other verses of Scripture, he uses the same sort of wording in Matthew 5 and 15, Luke 8, 6, Luke 11, 33.

One Jewish commentator says that we don't really know what our Lord was trying to underline in using this particular metaphor. In other words, your guess is as good as anyone else's. But really, I think that that's a very anemic way of approaching this particular passage, of approaching what our Lord is saying.

You can crack it open if you spend time. Consider it first of all logically. You don't bring a lamp and put it under a bed if it's nighttime and you want illumination.

Last Sunday when I was preaching, not at the Baptist church, that was the second service, the third service or the fourth service, I forget which, the lights went out. And it's quite an eerie experience preaching into pitch blackness and not getting any feedback from the people. But you had to continue because, well, there was nothing else to do.

Then the light came on again, then it went off again. Now, as far as Indians was concerned, that wasn't particularly unusual. Why get upset if the local electricity board can't keep a constant supply? You just keep at it and that's what they expected.

And mercifully there were one or two lights and somebody had got a lamp and all along there was sufficient illumination until the power was restored for even someone as neurotic as myself to feel comfortable. I mean, what is a lamp for but to give light? You don't put it under the bed, do you? Last Thursday I was trying to have a shower and again there was no light at all. It was a typical Indian bathroom, about two foot six by two foot six, there was no bath, of course.

There was a bucket and there was water and a plastic container. What more do you need? Well, it would have been nice to see what I was doing. And so the dear brother who was with me, this was in North India, not in Orissa in the west, this was right over in the northeast in a place called Amla Valley, he brought a torch and he just shone it through, fortunately, it's quite small and he lifted it up high so there's no embarrassment to anyone, just kept it there as I did what you would do with a bucket and water if you were dirty.

I mean, there's logic in our Lord's statement here, isn't there? The purpose of a lamp is to give light. So if you put it under a table, if you put it under the bed, actually that would probably better be translated bench because the idea I think is of a group of people coming together having a meal, you won't put it under the bench there, you'll lift it up and you put it on the table so that all can benefit from your light, or from the light of that lamp. Well, says Jesus, there's something that you've got to learn about this.

Logically, you can understand what I am saying. So let's now just go on a little bit further and consider what he has to say textually. In other words, let's be very particular, let's look at it as though we were doing the crossword puzzle of some newspaper.

You see, what he actually is saying is this, there are two clues within his sentence. He talks not about a lamp, he talks about the lamp and he doesn't talk actually in the original about bringing, he talks about the lamp coming. Now lamps do not come, they are brought.

I mean, you can stay all the time you want in your Indian bathroom and that torch is not going to move until somebody brings it. And this is the idea that our Lord is putting forward here, the lamp is brought. Not just a lamp, but the lamp.

Now remember, he's talking about himself, he's been talking about his ministry. Now who was behind Jesus coming into the world? And the answer is none other than God his Father. He sent Jesus into the world.

So you read in Mark's gospel that Jesus comes, not just any ordinary person, as this is not any ordinary lamp, there is a definite article there, the lamp. Now Jesus is known as the light that comes to lighten men and women in the world. So you're beginning to grasp now what our Lord is asserting in this little parabolical expression, in this cliche that he uses on several occasions.

What he really has in mind is the purpose behind the whole of his ministry. Why is he in the world? Well he has come as a light. He has come for the illumination of mankind.

So, that if you like, is the first clue to understanding this wonderful teaching of our Lord in terms of the lamp. But then it's not just the lamp that we've got to consider, it is the light that shines from such a lamp. Now verse 22 speaks about something being hidden.

Whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open. Now what does he mean by that? Well in a sense it would be true to say that his immediate disciples were beginning to understand a little bit as to the reason why he'd come into the world. The illumination was starting to dawn.

Not fully, that happened later on. But there were those who increasingly, if you like, were being brought into the secret of understanding that Jesus' coming into the world was indeed for their benefit. You see, divinity within Jesus is hidden.

It wasn't that obvious. I mean by that, that had he just walked by, you wouldn't necessarily have realized that he was anything but an ordinary man. Of course when he started to speak, when he started to act, when he started to perform miracles, then you asked the questions, or if you were a thinking person you did, as to what it was that made this man so articulate.

Why is he so powerful? But you see, many people who were in the company of Jesus did not have that same illumination as the disciples. In fact you would have thought that nationally, if any group of people would have responded to the gospel of Jesus, in total, it would have been the Jews. They were his own people.

And yet the Bible tells us that Jesus came to his own and his own received him not. As though when the light was released into Israel amongst the Hebrews, they were quite happy for it to go under a bowl, under the bed, under the form. But Jesus will not always be Jesus incognito.

You see, this country that I've been to that has such a large part of my heart, I think this must have been, I don't know, 15th or 16th visit to India, certainly getting on in that sort of number of visits. You mention the name Jesus to the average Hindu and he doesn't really understand. It's hidden.

He knows that Jesus is a religious man, a holy man, but the uniqueness of Jesus that you, many of you here have come to grasp, well, that's beclouded from the Hindu. He doesn't appreciate this. Now, that's not just the case with the Hindu, 800 million of them there in India.

That's the case with people in respectable worthing. Stop 100 folk on Montague Precinct on any Saturday and ask them about Jesus. You'll get some variation and some common denominator in the answers, I'm sure.

But in terms of the full-blooded revelation as to who Jesus is, they are as clueless as the Hindu. Now, it won't always be like that. What I mean to say is that when Jesus came in the flesh and as he is being proclaimed in the Christian era, there is still a great deal of ignorance about him.

But he's coming again. He is not going to come as a babe in Bethlehem. He's not going to come as an unknown personality.

He's going to come in great power, in great glory. Now, one of the key words in these two proverbial expressions is the word hidden and then the expression being brought out into the open. That which is concealed will be revealed.

Now what book in the Bible do you think would line up with a crossword puzzles clue in terms of a synonym for revealed? And of course, the answer would be the book of Revelation. And Revelation tells you about the future events. But there is more than just the book of Revelation to go on.

You take the apostle Paul writing to the Thessalonians. What does he have to say about the end time? Well, he says that Jesus will come in power and great glory. Jesus will be revealed again to our world.

We call it the second advent, the second coming. And this revelation will be obvious to everybody. To the Hindu in the East, to the materialist in the West, to our friends in Africa and in the Americas.

Every eye will see him. Every mind will register that this is none other than the Son of God. Every knee will bow.

Every tongue will confess. Will confess what? That Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Now, when you start to bring scripture to bear upon these two proverbial expressions of our Lord, when if I can use the colloquialism again, you crack them open.

You can understand why he uses them time and time again. He speaks of himself. This is the lamp.

This lamp has been brought into the world by God the Father. And it is necessary for this lamp to be put on the lampstand. It is necessary for Christian people who understand who Jesus is to say, may the light of Jesus shine through me.

When I was a kid back in Sheffield in our Sunday school, they taught us a chorus about shining like a light all over Sheffield. I must shine. This little light of mine.

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. And this is what Jesus eventually puts as a responsibility on the disciples. You men have begun to understand who I am.

Now don't let this light that you have, this mental illumination, be placed under a bowl in your psyche, in your personality. Don't let it be under a bench, under a bed. You take this light and disclose it to others.

And the interesting thing is that as in the ministry of our Lord Jesus, more and more people came to some understanding of who he was. And on the day of Pentecost, 120 affirmed that they were Christians and were baptized in the Spirit of Jesus. So, today, as Christian people take the light of the gospel and proclaim it from the stand of their own vocal organs and their lifestyle, men and women respond.

And you know, my good friend, the day will come when you will respond to Jesus. You will either respond as a result of hearing the explanation of who he is, the Son of God who died on the cross of Calvary to save you. You respond, so to speak, voluntarily, recognizing that he's the only one who can save you from your sins, that illumination coming to you gradually but firmly and your knowledge of him building up.

Or else you will confess him. When that confession will not bring you into eternal salvation, you confess him this side of eternity, and that confession will mean that you are right with God and you are prepared for his heaven. Or else you will confess him one day with no prospects of heaven at all.

You'll confess him in remorse. You'll confess him and you'll be awestruck by his power. Remember, you would plead if it were possible for the rocks to fall down upon you, for the earth to open in the chasm and for you to fall into it.

Because this Christ of God is not only Savior, he's also the Judge. So there is this revelation of him through his ministry, the revelation through his church, and then there is that great revelation of him at the end time. But before I conclude this address, let me tell you also that it's very interesting that almost the same language as you find in these proverbial expressions of our Lord is used to deal with sin.

You see, there is a sense in which you think you sin privately, and nobody knows, therefore it doesn't matter. It may have been yesteryear, it may have been yesterday, but all sin is vile. And sin that is covered up, which has not been absolved by the blood of Jesus, will be exposed.

You see, there will be two revelations when Christ comes. There will be the revelation of his power and his glory, and there will be the revelation of human infamy. All that has ever been done against the holy law of God will be declared, and it is this that will make the second advent of Christ so horrific to those who have not confessed him as Lord and Savior.

Your sins will ever speak against you, the sins that you've tried to cover up, the sins that you've tried to lose in the sea of your forgetfulness, but you have found that impossible. They will be regurgitated, they will come to the surface once more. Everything that's done in secret that was against his holy law will be revealed, and you will have to answer for it, and you will answer with no appeal whatsoever to the blood of Christ.

Oh, you see, that frightens me. I wish you had never said it. There is a sense, my friend, in which I wish I didn't have to say it, but I do.

But there is no need for it to frighten you, because you see, that which you uncover now in the presence of God can be cured by the blood of Christ. What you uncover, God will cover this side of eternity. What you cover, God will uncover the other side of eternity.

That's the more profound hint of teaching that you get in these proverbial expressions of our Lord. So I bring them once more to your attention, and then we go on further into our service for a time of more worship and preparation for coming around the Lord's table. Why was Jesus sent into the world? Well, not that so his light should be hidden, but that so the glorious gospel that he heralded should be broadcasted to more and more people.

And as our Savior's identity is disclosed, and as his achievement is heralded by the church, so it is possible for more and more friends to respond to the message of salvation that he offers. Have you done that? Have you said, Lord Jesus, here is my life and here is my sin, but there is your sinless life. I believe that you've come to reveal the way in which my sins can be removed from me on the cross.

You took them into yourself to make me completely free, whole, and forgiven. Lord, I see it now. It's not your light that's hidden under the bed, hidden under a bowl.

I see it clearly. Lord, I want you to make me your child. Let's pray.

See from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flowing down. They ask not love and sorrow only, or thorns composed so rich a crown. Word of nature lying, that love is small.

Love so amazing, so divine. He has my soul. Lord, we who are Christians here want to respond.

This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine. Help us to do that so that the light of the glorious gospel may be reflected by us as we peer into the face of our beloved Savior. And Father God, we ask that many may be brought increasingly into the secret as to why Jesus came into this world.

Amen. Thank you for saving me, what can I say? You are my everything, I will sing your praise. You shed your blood for me, what can I say? You took my sin and shame to sin I called my name.

Great is the Lord, his love for me. Know your truth has set us free. You set your hope in me.

Mercy and grace are mine, so deep within my sin. Jesus, my only hope, the Savior of the world. Great is the Lord, be kind, from death your kingdom come.

Your word has set me free. Thank you for saving me. Great is the Lord, his love for me.

Know your truth has set us free. You set your hope in me. Thank you for saving me.

What can I say?