This Little Light: Is It Really Mine?, Part 2

Today from Chuck Swindoll. Just after graduating high school, Chuck Swindoll traveled with his family to the Carlsbad Caverns. And on yesterday's program, he described what it was like to stumble down the dark path that led to the depths of the cavern.

When they reached the bottom, the guide turned off all the lanterns and they stood in abject darkness. Well, today on Insight for Living, Chuck embellishes this stark metaphor to help us understand the power of light when it breaks through the night. Chuck titled his message, This Little Light, Is It Really Mine? What word pictures did Jesus use to drive home the point He wanted to make about letting His message out? I'll give you the first one and you'll guess the second. You are the salt of the earth and you are the light of the world.

Isn't that interesting? Left with any word picture He could have used, He talks about salt and light. Now, you don't dump a pile of salt on something to make it tasty.

You sprinkle a little. But how about the light? How about the light?

Nobody takes a light and puts it under a bushel basket. He puts it on a hill so that everybody can see it because it's going to dispel the darkness and it's going to attract attention. It's that great word picture that Paul in Ephesians chapter 5 turns to.

And once you get the picture in your mind, you don't need much help with anything else. He starts with darkness and He moves to light. In verse 6, Let no one deceive you with empty words for because of these things the wrath of God comes on the sons of disobedience. Ephesians 5 verse 6. Therefore don't be a partner with them. What are you, this bright shining mirror, what are you doing running around in dark caves? That's not your habitat. That's not what life is about for you. You're about reflecting. You're about shining.

Do not be partners with them for you were formerly darkness. See that keeps you from feeling proud. The sun could never be proud. He got its light from God. The moon certainly can't be proud.

All of the light it gets is from the sun. He says to us, here you were formerly darkness but now that's where the cross comes. Before, you didn't even have anything to reflect. There was nothing in which God could work and you realize that in the cross of Christ there was a sufficient payment for sin offered once for all. And if you'd come to Him for your righteousness and shining He could transform your life and so He turned you a dark and miserable person of evil into a shining reflection.

Still just a slab of glass and a smear of mercury but with Him there can make all the difference in the world. So don't be a partner with those in darkness. You were formerly in darkness but now you are light in the Lord and so walk as children of light. Isn't that great? We're children of light.

What's it like in the darkness? Well, stop and remember. Remember. You and I were ignorant. We didn't know the way out, say nothing of the way through. We were shallow, superficial. We were selfish.

Our world revolved around us. We wanted our way and demanded it, expected it. In secrecy we did a number of things we were ashamed of, disappointed in ourselves as we think back, but we didn't have any power to change it no matter how many New Year's resolutions we stated didn't take but a few hours we were already breaking them. We couldn't change. We were powerless. We were helpless.

We were hopeless, lost, lost. And then Christ came and He turned this darkness into a reflection, something that would reflect to other people living in the cave that there's another way to live. And the difference now, verse 9, is goodness and righteousness and truth. That's not the fruit of me. That's the fruit of the light.

That's what the light provides. By reflecting off of my person there is, for the grace of God, goodness in place of badness, righteousness in place of emptiness and self-will and truth in place of dishonesty, secrecy, as we try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. So He says don't be a partner, verse 7. In fact, He says in verse 11, don't even participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness. Please observe He's coming down on deeds of darkness, not doers of darkness. Note that. Don't spend your life participating in the deeds of darkness, but you've got to spend your time with the people of darkness or you're totally out of touch.

Useless. What good is a Christian living in a walled-up building away from the real world? Get out there. The light belongs on the hill. Let it shine. Let it shine. But don't participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness.

After all, good night. It gets confusing to people in the cave when they see that you live just like them. But when they see the shining, they see that there's hope.

There's a way to get out. I like the way one man describes this. These are the ethics of light. When the light of Jesus is refracted through the prisms of our lives, there will be sanctifying shades of life for others to see. Isn't that good?

Sanctifying shades of light of life for others to see. Now that's the negative. Don't do that.

Here's the positive. Instead, verse 11 closes, expose them. Expose them.

I should just hear some people say, oh, that's all I needed. Boy, am I going to preach in that cave. I'm going to expose all that stuff that's going on because they shouldn't be doing it. Don't talk like that. Don't live like that. Don't smoke that stuff. Don't take that dope. Don't sleep around. Don't do that. Quit it.

Stop. And we expose it. Is that what expose means? Can this mirror talk?

You wonder what life is like? Look, it reveals. It shines. Doesn't yell. Just shines. It shines, shines, shines.

Turn on the light. I mentioned being raised in Houston. We lived in Houston so long, I thought everybody's shoes mildewed.

Really, I did. Houston back then was a place where men sweat and women had huge hair, and roaches had big wings. They were really big.

My mother, who was as clean as she could be, never believed we had roaches in our house. I used to get bored. Fun out of that. One Friday night, I said, Mom, come here. Come here. We went into the kitchen and I go, look like a Fort Worth rodeo.

We had roaches going over there. She said, turn the light off. Turn the light off. Don't do that.

Okay. She kind of thought the light brought them out. The light just exposed them. It just exposed them. So finally, before I left home, I finally got her to admit, maybe on Friday nights, we had roaches in our house. You know, they were there all the time.

They were there before we got there. But the light exposed them. When you live honestly, you expose dishonesty to a point of uncomfortability. When you live with integrity, you shock the person who pads his expense account, because you don't pad yours. You don't announce it. You don't walk around the big sandwich board saying I'm the only honest person in the company. You don't pass around little tracks that talk about how pious and great you are. You expose the darkness by shining the light. I mean, this isn't rocket science, is it?

We make it complicated. You say, well, you mean you never talk? Don't go there. Don't use never. You will sometime have a marvelous opportunity and they'll be laid right at your doors. This is your moment.

Talk. But you don't have to beat the door down. I've never known anybody who lost a fight and said I therefore gave my life to Christ. He beat the snot out of me and I just gave my life to Jesus. I just couldn't fight it any longer. Just such an attractive life, I just had to turn my life over. You know, when you were one, you were one by the goodness and righteousness and truth.

You were one by the grace that was demonstrated to you. You know what? I'm surprised everybody doesn't cuss worse than they cuss. I'm surprised everybody isn't sleeping around who's living in the cave. I'm surprised everybody doesn't communicate in the gutter.

I'm surprised everybody doesn't cheat. That's the way it is in the cave. They can't help it.

They can't change it. They need your shining. They need to know by the reflection that there's another way to live. There's light. There's a way out of this cave. I can get out. I can get out.

I can make it. Look at that light. Eugene Peterson rendering part of the Sermon on the Mount does a wonderful job. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this. As public as a city on a hill, if I make you light bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand.

Now that I put you up there, shine. Keep open house. Be generous with your lives. By opening up to others you will prompt people to open up with God, our gracious Father in heaven.

Isn't that grand? Open up your life. Let it shine. Let it shine. And when they start to give you the credit, you have the perfect opportunity to say, you know what? I don't get any of this credit, but I can tell you how to get the light, and I'll tell you how you can get your mirror shined, but I can't give you light. That's God's job.

All things become visible when they're exposed by the light. For this reason it says. I like the way that reads. I've looked all over to see where it says this. The closest I can get is about four or five verses from four or five chapters out of Isaiah. I think it was in first century chorus of worship. I think it grew from a statement that Isaiah the prophet had penned back in chapter 51 or 52 or 60 or one of those where a similar statement is made, but it is probably a well-known chorus like this little light of mine today. Awake, sleeper!

That's the way the chorus begins. Wake up, you who buried your light under the bushel because you're not ordained, because you're not a mature Christian, you who think that because you don't know all there is to know from the Bible have decided to just forget the whole thing, to leave it to the preacher. Awake, you who have allowed the darkness to invade and begin to emulate that life you once lived. Arise from the dead. I would say get out of the coffin.

You don't belong in there, you're alive. Shine, shine! Christ in fact will shine on you. You can't shine on you if you're down there in the place of the dead. There was nothing that would shine if there was no light in the caverns, even if I was surrounded by mirrors. I had to have light from another source.

And let me give you a little piece of comforting advice. Those you don't reach and can't reach, God will reach through someone else after you. If they're reachable, He'll reach them. Before Alexander Solzhenitsyn became a household word in many homes around the world, before he became a mirror, his world was a cave, dark and barren and lonely and broken. He was an atheistic mathematician, socialist to the core, in fact a captain in the artillery of the Russian army on the front lines in World War II. Following the war he continued to think more like a philosopher than a mathematician and he began to probe the depths of the socialist world in which he lived. And in one piece of personal correspondence he wrote a sentence, one sentence against Joseph Stalin, whom he criticized.

Remember that line, one sentence. When the KGB was presented with this sentence, they immediately imprisoned him in an arctic wasteland for eight years, living where even rats could hardly survive. His world got even darker. His parents were dead, his wife now divorced him, but the redemptive effect of this barren place began to work its way out. The once embittered victim of mistreatment existing in the darkness of the Gulag came face to face with eternal issues. The Lord began to work on his heart through an interesting chain of events I don't have time to go into, but suddenly there was light in the cave. Instead of growing in resentment, he began to realize all the good reasons why he should have been imprisoned. Putting to death his vanity, his superficial selfish existence, the man finally condemned himself with far more conviction than the KGB ever could have. Broken, forgotten, alone, the Lord reached him. Solzhenitsyn began appreciating the marvelous effect this living hell was having on him. Listen to this true story. That's why he would often say when referring to it, bless you prison for having been in my life.

I love that line. He began to shine the reflection of God's handiwork in a marvelous display of grace toward fellow prisoners, even toward his guards. But there would be one final blow before his term, his sentence would end.

Right there in that house of horrors he discovered through medical advice that he had terminal cancer. Rather than raging against his final misfortune, he decided even this is part of God's plan. And even if I'm gone, God's work will continue on through the reflection of others.

Like A.W. Tozer puts it, when a man of God dies, nothing of God dies. Released, you know, he began to write. Did he write? Interestingly, dating all the way back to his conversion in 1971, of all places, Vogue magazine in America got hold of a prayer that he wrote at the time of his conversion. It's one of the greatest prayers you could hear.

Listen. How simple for me to live with you, O Lord, how easy to believe in you. When in confusion my soul bears itself or bends, when the most wise can see no further than this night and do not know what the moral brings, you fill me with the clear certainty that you exist and that you watch to see that all the paths of righteousness be not closed. From the heights of worldly glory, I am astonished by the path through despair you have provided me, this path from which I have been worthy enough to reflect your radiance to me.

All that I will yet reflect you will grant me, and for that which I will not succeed in reflecting you have appointed others. Amen. Amen.

May we bow our heads together? God has built into our system a way to illustrate darkness. Just close your eyes.

The eyelids work. They close out the light. If it's been so long since you were there in the cave, try to imagine what it's like to live in that blind darkness, in a world that's lost its way, awaking every morning hoping for light and finding nothing, and you will realize the power of your life shining light. Just in the shining there is an exposing of the things done in secret.

While you're sitting there, I want to make sure that you know the way out. It's not through your mother or dad or a Christian friend or relative. Remember, they don't have the light in themselves. The light giver is the life giver. He does it through Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us, once for all, paid in full. The only thing that keeps you in the darkness is your own determination to resist, to refuse, to take the light. The choice is yours.

All my pleading won't make it happen. This is now God's work. I leave it with Him. Come today.

Do what's smart. Follow the light today. Our Father and our God, thank you for your grace in finding us. We weren't even looking. We didn't even care.

We thought that the cave was a great place to live because everybody around us seemed to find a way to make it. But down deep inside, there was emptiness and ignorance. There was anger and resentment. There was lust and greed, and we hated it.

Our own gulag, that's where we were. And you lit the light, and you won us over. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Amen. You're listening to the Bible teaching of pastor and author Chuck Swindoll. He titled today's message, This Little Light, Is It Really Mine? And this is Insight for Living. We'll hear a personal comment from Chuck in just a moment, so please stay with us.

And to learn more about this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org. Well, 2020 started with a global pandemic and has resulted in unprecedented social unrest. And we've seen the escalation of this emotional response over the past year. But these unwanted forces of fear and uncertainty have given us a choice. We can either choose anxiety and resentment, or we can walk in the light. To guide you through the new year, we recommend a desk calendar that will bring a small beam of light for your journey. It's a flip calendar called Quotable Chuck, Daily Insights from the Pulpit.

Psalm 119 105 says, Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path. By displaying this calendar on your desk or kitchen counter, you'll be reminded of your freedom in Christ every single day in 2021. To purchase the flip calendar called Quotable Chuck, call us.

If you're listening in the United States, dial 1-800-772-8888 or go online to insight.org slash store. In addition to your purchase, we invite you to add a voluntary donation so others can have access to the same authentic Bible teaching you've come to rely upon as well. Insight for Living Ministries is not subsidized or underwritten by a large church or organization. Instead, we rely on devoted friends like you to provide Chuck's teaching. So thanks for giving generously so others can embrace the true freedom in Christ that Chuck described today. By now, all of you know that I'm not predisposed to a doom and gloom outlook on life.

God just didn't wire me that way. But without question, I've never witnessed the level of cultural chaos confronting all of us today. The forces of evil are dramatically at work, working overtime to create confusion, distraction, and fear. Frankly, the escalation of these battles has ignited a greater personal passion to preach and to teach the truth while there's still time. At Insight for Living, we're not winding down.

In fact, we're ramping up. We're completing one of the most powerful of the most productive years in the history of Insight for Living, and we're positioned to accomplish even more in this new year that's ahead. As we approach December 31st, I'm calling on you to personally invest your resources in Insight for Living so that people will hear the clear and calming message that God is still very much in control. Remember, your gift today not only brings insight to you, but your year-end gift delivers insight to others.

You see, it's your partnership that determines what we can accomplish together. So let's band together as a family to make sure the truth of God's word breaks through the noise so that people far and near can benefit from Insight for Living. And I look forward to hearing from you today. And here's how to respond to Chuck Swindoll right now. To give a donation today, call us if you're listening in the United States, dial 1-800-772-8888 or by going online to insight.org. Join us again Thursday when Chuck Swindoll presents a helpful message called The Christian Life 101. Be listening Thursday to Insight for Living. you