Proverbs 4: 18
The Growing Light of God's Salvation

This verse in Proverbs is speaking about this as the Sun came across the Arabian Desert where the sun rises are said to be especially brilliant and then as it moves toward the west, it comes across the Mount of Olives and, suddenly, the whole Holy Land is bathed in light.  I believe that this is a first-hand description of the life of the child of God in O.T. times and is still the description of the normal Christian life.  I spoke on December 30th on a related theme from Philippians 3: 13. Consider that this is Part II, which there was no time for on that Sunday.  And, besides, the Homiletics Police would never stand for 6 point sermons.

It is a description of the normal Christian life on 3 levels:

I. FIRST IT IS A TRUE DESCRIPTION ON THE LEVEL OF SALVATION.

1. In one sense, salvation is a one-point-in-time event. That, of course, is justification and regeneration when a person is forgiven of sins which are charged to the Lord Jesus and when the person become righteous by right of Christ's personal righteousness charged to the person's account; and when regeneration takes place where the individual is spiritually reborn.  This is beautifully depicted in the coming of dawn over a darkened territory because of the powerful light of the Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

2. But salvation, as you know, is not just point-action.  It is also progressive.  The Apostle Peter commanded:  "Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."  Therein we learn that the Christian life is like that dawning light gradually and more and more becoming brilliant when the morning sun that floods the person's life and soul with the light of God's grace. 

Is it true in your life in my life? -- especially those of us who have been Christians for a long period of  time? Are we growing in appreciation for our salvation and experiencing its effect on our lives.  The Bible sometimes even calls into question the factuality of a salvation experience that, colorful though it may have been, is only a beautiful show, of perhaps a fire on the other side of the hill and not the effect of the glorious sun that God has given to the earth.  Is it true in your life that your path "is like the light of dawn which shines brighter and brighter until the full day?

Do you see not just the effect of the light?  Do you see it "growing more and more until the full day?"  In fact, you may not be able to see the point of your salvation because clouds obscure it but you know it has happened because of this growing light that shines forth.  And you too, grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: take advantage of the means of grace: prayer, the Word of God, fellowship with the true people of God; the sacraments correctly administered. And seek the growth by faith in the gracious work of the Holy Spirit.  We who have been Christians for long periods of time need to keep tabs on our own following the Lord and show seriousness about our life of discipleship.  We are called to grow.

II. THE SECOND LEVEL ON WHICH THIS ANALOGY IS TRUE IS IN A THEOLOGICAL AND BIBLIOLOGICAL SENSE

1. It is charming when a small child shows a knowledge of a truth or a verse of Scripture revealing great naiveté but it is very disturbing when a person who has professed to be a believer for a decade, not to say, one who has been a believer for 4 or 5 decades does so.

The normal Christian life that began when the person received the light of the Son of God's love in the sunrise of his experience will be that truth will shine brighter and brighter until the high point of the day.  God calls us -- even those who do not pretend to be teachers or leaders -- to grow in our understanding of the truth.  "Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

2. Theology isn't just an exercise in philosophical thinking for someone who never made it into a philosophy class at the college level; it is the systematization of God's truth.  And Christians ought to have a voracious appetite for theological truth and for the text of Scripture.  These are things which are the starting place of  the growth spiritually that I was talking about  in the former point.

Do you have any sense that you have grown in your understanding of the truth in the years that you have been a Christian?  Has this growth been continuous?   I know many instances in which this is true and I think it is a depiction of serious N.T. Christianity.  Continue letting the light of God's truth flood into your life.  There is a disturbing trend even in evangelical churches for the love of sophisticated Christian truth to become weaker and weaker as our culture debases spiritually and culturally.  And these churches that are doing this are the ones people are flocking to and which, eventually, are becoming super churches.

III THE THIRD LEVEL ON WHICH THIS ANALOGY IS TRUE IS IN THE VOCATIONAL SENSE.

1. Now, when I say "vocational" don't think I primarily mean being a doctor, lawyer, or a window clerk at Tasty Freeze.  We often think of the word like that but its use in the theological realm is based upon its Latin root vocare.  The word means "to call;" your vocation is your calling. Our society thinks that your calling is how you make your living.  But for the Christian that is only one aspect of it.  Vocation is what God has called you to do with your life.  And to think that is only your profession as a window clerk at Tasty Freeze is a great mistake.

2. Christians often start out with a very childlike but well-intended understanding of their vocation.  Early on a person might have the idea that he was going to be the Apostle to the Taliban through whom they all would be converted.  But later on he might get a much more realistic goal and one less tied to the sensational aspects of the nightly news.

Vocation is about the strong sense you should have that, if you are a true Christian, your life in its totality belongs to God and your every choice should be made prayerfully with a sense that the thing you choose is likely God's will for your life and involvement.  Most of us do not do this with ear cocked as if we were going to hear a voice but it is essential that we be listening with our heart and with our intellect and with the input of our experience and theological training. 

3. This vocation has to do with the sense that God is sovereign in your life and the circumstances of your life are either specifically -- in themselves -- God's will or are the beginning means to the end of God's will.  "The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord," this book of Proverbs says.

4. And one should see with ever greater clarity the hand of the Lord in circumstances and in ever more spiritual comprehension of what God is doing in his life and what God intends to do in the future.  The ideal Christian perceives this in a very beautiful but limited sense at the time of sunrise; but as the day goes by and the sun rises higher and higher into the sky, he sees it with every increasing clarity.

"The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not
know over what they stumble.  But the path of the righteous
is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter 
until the full day."