Worship Night Devotional - 2 Corinthians 4: God Speaks Light Into Darkness And Into Us

On February 14, 1990, as Voyager 1 was making its way out of our solar system and continuing on into its interstellar journey, the mission managers gave one final command and told it to turn the cameras around and take some pictures of our solar system.

Amazing images, one of them in particular is astounding.

In the midst of all of this darkness and blackness and expanse of emptiness was one small blue dot, no larger than the head of a pen, essentially one pixel in the whole picture.

And what that was was planet Earth.

A fragile world floating in the middle of a massive expanse.

From that distance, all the noise of our earth was silent.

The rise and fall, falling of nations, the turmoil in this world, the triumphs and tragedies of humanity, all the things that seem momentous in our lives.

Silent.

Every bit of it.

And yet, from that far away, almost four billion miles away from the sun, was a picture of an earth in which we are all on, in which all of our lives are connected in some way, telling us a story that this world is part of a universe immensely larger than we can imagine.

And that our lives are a part of a story that's far larger than our moments, that started long before we came and will extend long after we end our lives.

It's a story that began a long time ago when God spoke the world into existence.

The songs that we've sung so far, and the songs that we're going to sing in a few moments, belong to this story.

It belongs to a story in which the songs we sing are not isolated statements of, but part of the ark, going from creation to new creation in Christ, and then into a new heavens and a new earth.

They trace a scripture message in three movements that we've been looking at and singing about this evening.

The wonder of creation in the beginning, the miracle of new creation in Christ, and the promise of a world made new.

I'd like for us to follow that arc a little bit before we move into the next section of our songs.

And if you have a Bible, let's go to 2 Corinthians chapter 4.

2 Corinthians 4 · chapter mention

If you don't have a Bible, you can find one in the pew in front of you, and you can turn to page 1024.

In just a few verses in this chapter, Paul reaches back to the first moments of creation, looks at the miracle of the new birth, and lifts our eyes to the day when God will make all things new.

And like I said, he's not giving us three separate ideas, but showing us one story, God's story.

It moves from the first light of Genesis to the wonder of renewal at the end of Revelation.

It's a story that we're in right at this moment tonight.

It's a story that I pray steadies our hearts, fills us with hope, and strengthens our praise.

So we're going to look at these three movements.

We're going to look at God who created light out of darkness, God who made all things new in Christ, and the God who will bring a new heavens and a new earth in the coming day.

In verse 6, we see the first movement.

There it is in verse 6 it says, For God who said, Let light shine out of darkness.

Paul reaches back to the very first moments of Scripture, inviting us to remember, to remember a universe that hasn't yet taken shape, to remember that it was only marked by darkness and the deep.

It was without form, without sound, without life.

And if we were to look at it, nothing in it would suggest any possibility whatsoever.

Nothing in it would talk of beauty or order.

It was only darkness.

And yet, into that silence and into that God spoke.

And it was there because God willed it to be.

Creation came into being because God commanded it.

The world we know it as we know it now is not here because there was raw material for God to shape, but because God called something into existence when there was nothing at all.

And Paul is not simply drawing us back to Genesis to give us a theological reminder, but he's using it to ground our confidence in the character of God and his power.

Because the God we've worshipped and the God we will continue to worship, not only tonight, but all of our days as believers, is a God who's not limited by the things that he finds.

He's a God who's not constrained by the things that are there in front of him.

He's a God who is not limited, not hesitant, not reactive, a God who can speak nothing into reality out of nothing.

He brought order out of chaos and he brought beauty out of emptiness.

And creation here is not just the opening of the chapters of the Bible, it's the foundation of who we are as believers.

Because if he can call the galaxies into existence, he can certainly put hope in places where there is no hope.

If he's a God who can bring light into a world without form, he can bring clarity into a life that's full of confusion.

If he can speak order out of chaos, he can speak peace into the places where we feel completely undone.

And so we come to a God not who simply takes what's there and reacts to our circumstances, but a God who can do exceedingly above and beyond anything that we might ask or think.

The God who began creation is a God who's at work today.

And Paul moves in that same verse to give us the second movement of these three great movements, from creation at the beginning to new creation in Christ.

In verse 6, again, for the God who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light to the knowledge of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ.

The same God who spoke light out of the darkness is the same God who speaks light in a different darkness.

But it's not the darkness hovering over all of the waters, but rather the darkness that lies in the human heart.

And the light that he brings is not the light of the sun or the light of the stars or even the reflective light of the moon.

It's the light of the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

And here we see the wonder of salvation.

That God is not simply trying to improve our lives or to polish what we can give him.

He is actually creating new life in us through Jesus Christ.

He's bringing life where there was none.

And he's doing something that only God can do.

Paul in the next chapter makes that even clearer.

He said, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old is passed away, and see the new has come.

Being a believer is not about self-improvement or moral polishing or offering God a new leaf or new promises to do better tomorrow.

The Christian life is about a resurrection into new life itself.

This God who created light out of darkness creates light in dark hearts and allows us to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

He's describing a miracle that takes place inside of people.

Paul is not simply talking about salvation here.

He's also talking about his ministry.

And he's also speaking about his ministry with a church that needs to learn something about this wonderful new creative power that's present in Jesus Christ.

He's speaking to men and women who are feeling the strain of carrying their lives along in the midst of a competitive world, whose hearts have grown tired, and whose bodies and minds sometimes feel stretched thin.

And he's speaking to them just as he spoke about himself being pressed on every side, perplexed by the circumstances that he didn't choose to be a part of, and feeling the weight of burdens that were beyond his strength to carry.

And he's saying to them, the same God who spoke life into your heart through Jesus Christ is the same God who can speak life and strength and help in the midst of your lowest, weakest moments.

Some of us are going through those kind of moments.

Some of you are dealing with medical issues that leave you with a lot of uncertainty about what tomorrow brings, what next week or next year might have for you.

Or those of you that are dealing with relationships that are strained, some that are already broken, and you feel a pain that you can't even articulate.

Some of you are dealing with a child whose choices have brought such heaviness to your heart that you actually groan out loud.

Some of you are dealing with jobs that are asking more of you than you have to give.

And some of you are dealing with private sorrows that you're not even sure you can talk about, even with your closest friends.

These are the places where we feel our limits.

Paul felt them as he ministered the gospel among all the churches and in the Roman world.

But these are the places where many of us feel like jars of clay, just like Paul said about himself.

And this is where the passage speaks to us.

It tells us that our fragility and our weakness, they're not threats to God.

These are the very places where he is going to work what is unmistakably clear that only God can do.

You see, the treasure is Christ and the jar is ours.

And the contrast is meant to be intentional for us.

That God is not waiting for us to be stronger vessels.

God is revealing his strength through our weaknesses.

He's not asking us to hold ourselves together.

He's showing us what his power is like when we don't have anything held together.

And he's not measuring our steadiness or measuring our progress.

He's shining the light of Christ in places where we're worn and where we're weary.

And this is why Paul anchors our confidence and our hope in the new creation that comes in Jesus Christ.

Because the power that's available to God's people is the exact same power that God exerted when he spoke over nothing and said, Let there be light.

And it's the same power that God spoke when he said to our dark, sinful, disobedient souls, let the light of Christ shine in you.

That power, that ability, that desire of God's part has not gone away.

Even if you're in the middle of times when you're pressed and confused and stretched thin.

Paul is reminding us that his renewing work is based upon his character, not ours.

It's based on his faithfulness.

And so when he said, Let there be light, he wants to continue to say, Let there be light in you.

And that brings us to the third section.

And peppered throughout the rest of this chapter and on into the next are statements that lift us from the beginning to the present day of new creation in Christ, on to the wonderful end of the new heavens and the new earth.

Take a look at verse 14 for a second.

He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus.

Verse 17.

This light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory.

In verse 18, the things that are unseen are eternal.

Paul began earlier in this chapter with creation, with God speaking light out of darkness.

He moved into new creation, of Christ being the light that shines within our hearts.

And now he talks about that final new heaven and new earth of eternity, which will again be God raising light.

And he reminds us that this is the same God who was at work and is at work and will be at work.

And he's telling us that our future is not vague, our future is not uncertain.

It is resurrection, it is restoration, it is renewal, and it includes all things.

And it's guaranteed by the same power when God spoke creation into being and when he spoke the life of Christ into your heart.

Notice what he says about our present day.

That our present troubles are light and momentary.

Now, when Paul says those things, he's not minimizing the weight of our present difficulties.

He's not telling us to sort of look at them and simply say to them, yes, this is excruciatingly painful, but I have to call you light.

And I have to call you momentary.

He's not saying that we simply have to speak down against the realities that we're facing.

What he is asking us to do is not to pretend that they're small, but rather compare them to something far greater.

The eternal weight of glory.

Something far heavier, more lasting, and more glorious than we've ever experienced, and far beyond what we can even imagine.

As he said in 1 Corinthians, eye is not seen, nor ear heard, nor is it even entered into the hearts of men the things God has prepared for those who love him.

He's inviting us to measure our lives against that, not against what we see in others, or what we would see in our expectations, or what we might even see in our hopes, but to measure them up against what we cannot see.

So Paul here is drawing a straight line from the God who began creation with the word, who brings new life into dead hearts by speaking a word of life, and who will look upon all of us as his children and usher us immediately into the wonder of a new heaven and a new earth by simply saying, It is finished.

And on that day, every sorrow we face will be answered, every wound that we've ever had will be healed, every longing that's ever ached within our soul will be met.

Every tear that is dripped off of our eyes and down our cheeks will be wiped away.

Today we live in a world that groans, and we groan, but that groaning is not the end of our story.

The God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead is the God who will also raise us up with him and also will bring the creation into the new heavens and the new earth.

The glory that awaits us outweighs every burden, it outweighs every care, it outweighs every trouble, it outweigh every moment of darkness.

And so here we are tonight, sort of at the end of movement two, where we've sung about the new creation in Christ, having already sung about the creation that God has brought everything into being.

And we're about to enter into that section of songs that will lead us to the hope in front of us.

And Paul is inviting us in 2 Corinthians chapter 4 to put a stamp of our understanding into the songs that we're about to sing.

2 Corinthians 4 · chapter mention

The God that we sang about, who brought life out of darkness, shines the light of Christ in our hearts, is the same God who's going to make all things new.

And there he will finish his work.

But he has never exhausted his power.

And so this evening, when we sing, we're not simply singing with wonder of a God who created and gratitude for a God who saves, but we're singing with anticipation of a God who is about to act.

And so this God calls us to sing with joy and sing with hope and sing with expectancy and to sing with celebration.

Because the God who brought you life is the God who will bring you into that future glory.

Amen.