Light of the World: by TA Sparks

The city has no need of sun or moon, for the glory of God illuminates the city, and the Lamb is its light. Revelation 21:23

Light is not a mental thing: that is to say, it is not just a matter of having a store of mental knowledge. That is not light. It is possible to have an enormous amount of doctrine and truth and never be luminaries, that is, never register impact upon darkness. Real light is experimental: that is to say, it is the fruit of experience, the experience of suffering. How have you children of God come to know what you do know of the Lord, that real kind of knowledge of the Lord which is so precious to us, which means so much and which makes you in that measure of value to others? It is through suffering, it is through the difficult way the Lord has led you, it is through the work of the Cross that He has wrought in you. “The Lamb is the lamp” – suffering leading to knowledge, to light, to understanding. It is the only way. These people at the end will be in the good of a great and wonderful revelation which has come by their fellowship with Christ in His sufferings. It is very true. It may not be too comforting from one standpoint, but it is true; and it ought to help us to realize this: that the Lord, in the way in which He is dealing with us, in the sufferings which He allows to come upon us, is really seeking our education, that we may have a knowledge of Himself which can only come that way, and which is a peculiar kind of knowledge of tremendous value to us and through us to others. We do not learn in any other way. It is the Lamb, always the Lamb-principle, the way of suffering and sacrifice and self-emptying, that brings us into the knowledge of the Lord. “The Lamb is the lamp thereof”; and, just as it is deeper death unto fuller life, so it may often be deeper darkness unto fuller light.

The Lord seems to lead us in a way where we are less and less able naturally to understand Him. He gets us altogether out of our natural capacity, beyond our capacity for interpreting His ways. We just do not know what the Lord is doing, or why He is doing what He is doing; yet it is the way by which we come to a very real kind of inward knowledge of Himself. It may not be capable of explanation in words to anybody, but we know, somehow or other we know, and that is a mighty thing, a mighty power of knowledge. It is light through the Cross.

Not One Word Has Failed: by Henry Blackaby

And you know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one thing has failed of all the good things which the LORD your God spoke concerning you. All have come to pass for you; not one word of them has failed. Joshua 23:14

Near the end of his life, Joshua took time with the Israelites to review all that God had done for them since they first began following Him. God had given them an impossible assignment: to conquer a foreign and hostile land with fortified cities and armies more powerful than their own. The Israelites were to go forward with nothing more than God’s promise that He would go with them and take care of them. Now Joshua looked back over their experience and reminded the Israelites that God had kept every promise. They had experienced numerous victories and had enjoyed God’s provision for every need.

Sometimes hindsight gives us a clear picture of how faithful God has been. We are tempted during a crisis to wonder if God will be faithful to His promises. We focus on our problems, and our trust in God begins to waver. Twenty-four years after God promised Abraham and Sarah a son, they were still waiting on God to fulfill His promise. But in the twenty-fifth year, Abraham and Sarah could look back and see that God had been faithful. As David was fleeing for his life, he may have been uncertain how God would keep His promise to make him a king. But at the end of his long and prosperous reign, David could review how God had kept every promise.

You, too, can rely on God’s faithfulness. Are you in a crisis? Hold to the promises of your Lord! He will not forget His promises to you. Look back over your Christian life and recount the many ways in which God has been faithful to His word.

God Said: by JI Packer

Genesis 1:1–3 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

We meet the word of God in its various relations in the first three chapters of the Bible. Look first at the story of creation in Genesis 1.  Part of the purpose of this chapter is to assure us that every item in our natural environment has been set there by God. The opening verse states the theme which the rest of the chapter is to expound—“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The second verse pictures the state of affairs in terms of which the detailed analysis of God’s work is to be given:  it is a state in which the earth was lying waste, empty of life, dark and completely waterlogged. Then verse 3 tells us how amid this chaos and sterility God spoke. “And God said, ‘Let there be light.’” What happened?

Immediately “there was light.” Seven times more (vv. 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26) God’s creative word “let there be . . .” was spoken, and step by step things sprang into being and order. Day and night (v. 5), sky and sea (v. 6), sea and land (v. 9), were separated out; green vegetation (v. 12), heavenly bodies (v. 14), fish and fowl (v. 20), insects and animals (v. 24), and finally man himself (v. 26), made their appearance. All was done by the word of God (compare Ps 33:6, 9; Heb 11:3; 2 Pet 3:5).

But now the story carries us on a further stage. God speaks to the man and woman whom he has made. “God . . . said to them . . .” (v. 28). Here is God addressing human beings directly; thus fellowship between God and them is inaugurated. Note the categories into which God’s utterances to them in the rest of the story fall. God’s first word to Adam and Eve is a word of command, summoning them to fulfill humankind’s vocation of ruling the created order. (“Be fruitful . . . and have dominion . . . ,” v. 28.)

Here, within the compass of these three short chapters, we see the word of God in all the relations in which it stands to the world, and to man within it—on the one hand, fixing man’s circumstances and environment, on the other, commanding man’s obedience, inviting his trust, and opening to him the mind of his Maker. The rest of the Bible sets before us many new utterances of God, but no further categories of relationship between God’s word and his creatures. Instead, the presentation of the word of God in Genesis 1–3 is reiterated and confirmed.

God's Megaphone: by CS Lewis

Psalm 86:1-2 Hear me, Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Guard my life, for I am faithful to you; save your servant who trusts in you. You are my God;

The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it. Now error and sin both have this property, that the deeper they are the less their victim suspects their existence; they are masked evil. Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil; every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt. .... And pain is not only immediately recognizable evil, but evil impossible to ignore. We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities; and anyone who has watched gluttons shoveling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating, will admit that we can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

A Relationship of Cooperative Love: by Dallas Willard

For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. 1 Corinthians 3:9

We must never forget that God speaks to us for the purpose of developing an intelligent, freely cooperative relationship between him and us, in which we are fellow workers or co-laborers with him. God wants us to participate in the governance of his kingdom. This relationship is drenched in the maturity and richness of genuine agape love.

Our primary goal, then, is not just to hear the voice of God but to be mature people in a loving relationship with God. This will result in our living a certain kind of life—one of loving fellowship with God and those who love him. Only with this in mind will we hear God rightly.

Go over the phrase “God’s fellow workers” (1 Corinthians 3:9) and personalize it. Let it sink in and compare it with the common idea that God hits people over the head with a two-by-four to get them to do what is right. Thank God that an intelligent, freely cooperative, love-drenched relationship can exist between you and him.

Limitation to the Promise: by ML Jones

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

We now note what we might call the limitation to this promise. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” In the original that is emphasized by placing “to them that love God” at the commencement of the sentence. “We know that to them that love God all things work together for good.”

The promise is definitely limited. It is not universal as to the people included. The popular idea of the love of God is the very antithesis of this. That idea says that He is regarded as promising to bless all in exactly the same way. That He does so in His providential dealings with mankind in general is true. But following that, there is a great fundamental division and distinction everywhere in the Bible between the saved and the unsaved, between those who have entered into a covenant relationship with God in salvation through Jesus Christ and those who have not, or, to use the words of our text, “those who are the called” and those who have not been called.

Salvation is the result of the operation of special grace, and there are special promises to those who have received this grace. The Gospel has but one word to speak to those who do not believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. It is to exhort them to repent and to believe. It holds out to them no special promises until they have done so. Indeed it threatens them with disaster. It does not tell them that “All things work together for good” for the reason that it tells them that they are “condemned already.” Special promises and comforts and consolations are not to be obtained directly. They are the consequences and results of salvation. They are offered only to those who “love God.”

An All-Inclusive Promise: by ML Jones

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

Let us look at the all-inclusiveness of the promise—“all things work together for good.” It is generally agreed that the “all things” has special reference to trials and tribulations. Here is one of the most remarkable claims ever made for Christianity. Here is certainly the boldest justification of God’s ways to man.

Let us observe what this verse says. Perhaps we shall best be able to grasp its significance if we approach it along the negative route. We see clearly that, as Christians, we are not promised an easy time in this world. Our Lord Himself in His teaching told the disciples that they would have tribulations and trials and sufferings. And in the same way Paul teaches that “unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake” (Philippians 1:29). The Christian’s view of life and of the world is realistic, not romantic. He does not avoid troubles and problems. Neither does he try to minimize the seriousness and the greatness of the troubles and problems. The glory of the Gospel is that it faces the whole situation without shirking anything, and yet shows the way out.

Some of the older versions bring out this feature in our text very clearly by adding the word “God” to “all things work together for good”—i.e., that “God works all things together for good to them who love him.” And that is undoubtedly what the apostle teaches. These trials are not to be ignored; neither are they without any explanation whatsoever. God uses them to our advantage in order to bring His own great purposes to pass. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” That is the ultimate justification of God’s ways; that is the ultimate answer to all our questions as to why God allows certain things to happen.