Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

Well, it’s hard to imagine a world without light.  But a couple of weeks ago when the hurricane blew through, we got an opportunity to do that in the Jones family because we were without power for four days, from I think a Friday to a Monday.  Some of you shared our experience depending upon where you live here in the Virginia Beach area.  And it’s not fun to be without power and thus without light the way it was in the Jones family.  Now, some of you, because of the hurricane, you had water coming in.  You didn’t lose power, but you got flooded.  And I’ll take losing, you know, power and light over the water thing.  And I hope you’re recovering well.  But we lost the power and we lost the light.  And we had a little exercise in just kind of thanking the Lord for a guy named Thomas Edison who invented the light bulb.  We just needed to get in some power, you know, for those things to work.  I also was very grateful for the Lord, who didn’t invent light but created light.  Edison invented it.  He took matter that already existed and rearranged it and created the light bulb.  But God is the only one who, out of nothing, created light.  We learn this in Genesis 1, where verse 2 tells us that there was darkness that covered the deep, complete, total darkness on the earth.  Until the Lord said these words, “Let there be light.”  And perhaps the most powerful force of physics in the universe came into being there.

0:01:53.0

Now, light in the Bible is not only a physical attribute, as we learn about in Genesis 1, but it’s also a metaphor for many spiritual realities that are important for us as believe in Jesus Christ to put into practice, not the least of which is Jesus, who came to this earth and declared, “I am the light of the world.”  We’ll come back to that in a little bit.  But between Genesis and the time that Jesus said, “I am the light of the world,” we stop off at an Old Testament place called the Tabernacle for another visit.  We’ve been in a study of the Tabernacle, this portable worship facility that God instructed Moses to build and to use as a worship facility as they wandered in the wilderness for those 40 years that we know about in Israel’s history.  And I want to invite you back to the Tabernacle this morning.  We’ve stopped off in a couple places over the last couple of weeks, places in the Tabernacle, again, that are each in and of themselves pictures of the words and works of Jesus Christ.  Pictures of spiritual realities that we understand more fully as we understand the Tabernacle through the life of Christ and through the New Testament.  For example, we walked through the only door into the Tabernacle.  And it brings us into the outer courtyard of the Tabernacle, a reminder that there is only one way into a relationship with God.  One mediator between God and man, and it’s the man Christ Jesus, the Bible says.  Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, He declared, and no one comes to the Father but by Him, illustrated by that one entry point into the Tabernacle that brings you into the outer courtyard.  And then you come to the bronze altar, a picture of the sacrifice that Jesus made for us on the cross.  The altar is where sins were atoned through the blood of bulls and goats and lambs in the Old Testament, all of it foreshadowing the day when Jesus once for all would make the once-for-all sacrifice as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  Then just beyond the bronze altar is the bronze laver, a wash basin, as it were.  And here is a picture of how we cleanse ourselves daily in the Christian life because we walk through this world and we pick up defilements, don’t we?  We sin, even as believers in Jesus Christ.  And as we’re moving toward the Holy Place, which is the Tabernacle itself, we have to stop off at this cleansing pool and allow God to use His Word and the Holy Spirit, pictured in the reflecting pool itself, to sanctify us, to cleanse us, to make us holy and to purify us.  So that’s where we stopped last time.

0:04:42.4

Now, we’re ready to enter into the Tabernacle itself.  Do you want to go there?  Remember, we’re talking about having an audience with the Almighty, because God Himself desires, He deeply desires to have a relationship with us, to hang out with us.  The probably is, how does a holy God hang out with unholy people, sinful people?  Well, He had a grand plan, ultimately fulfilled in His son Jesus Christ, but there is a picture of His grand plan in the Tabernacle.  And as we’re making our way to the Holy Place, we’re now ready to step inside the Tabernacle itself.  And there are two rooms in the Tabernacle- a Most Holy Place, or the Holy of Holies deep in there, but the room just outside of it is called the Holy Place.  You have the Holy Place, the Most Holy Place.  Are you with me so far?  As we step inside the Holy Place, you’ll notice that there are three pieces of furniture in there.  There is a golden lampstand, there is a table with bread on it, and there is an altar with burning incense.  And this morning we’re gonna talk about this golden lampstand.  What’s that all about?

0:05:55.1

It’s the only source of light in an otherwise dark space.  That’s important for us to remember starting off.  But let’s go to Exodus 25 to read the description of the architectural plan that God gave to Moses to build this golden lampstand.  Beginning in verse 31, “You shall make a lampstand of pure gold.  The lampstand shall be made of hammered work: its base, its stem, its cups, its calyxes, and its flowers shall be of one piece with it.  And there shall be six branches going out of its sides, three branches of the lampstand out of one side of it and three branches of the lampstand out of the other side of it; three cups made like almond blossoms, each with calyx and flower, on one branch, and three cups made like almond blossoms, each with calyx and flower, on the other branch—so for the six branches going out of the lampstand.  And on the lampstand itself there shall be four cups made like almond blossoms, with their calyxes and flowers, and a calyx of one piece with it under each pair of the six branches going out from the lampstand.”  Do you need to take a breath, a deep breath?  This is the place where if you’re reading this, you know, late at night you go, (snores).  Really, where is the life-changing moment?  We’ll get there.  Verse 36, “Their calyxes and their branches shall be of one piece with it, the whole of it a single piece of hammered work of pure gold.  You shall make seven lamps for it.  And the lamps shall be set up so as to give light on the space in front of it.  Its tongs and their trays shall be of pure gold.  It shall be made, with all these utensils, out of a talent of pure gold.  And see that you make them after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain.”  Now, again, God is the architect of this beautiful Tabernacle, this portable worship facility and all the furniture pieces that go in it.  And He is a detailed architect.  Now, Moses didn’t come up with this.  Man didn’t come up with this.  No, this is patterned after something in heaven, the Tabernacle in heaven.  And here is an earthly replica of it.  And so God is very specific, very detailed in the architecture of this.  Because every one of these pieces has a spiritual reality that He wants us to understand.

0:08:19.0

Now, again, the golden lampstand is the only source of light in an otherwise dark space.  Let’s just talk about some of the characteristics, the physical characteristics, and talk about maybe some of the spiritual realities that go along with it.  And then we’re gonna get down, as somebody use to say, get down to brass tacks.  We’re talking about application.  How to live out the principles that we learn from the golden lampstand.  That’s where we’re going this morning.

0:08:43.2

First of all, the physical characteristics.  I want you to notice first of all it’s a pure lampstand made of pure gold.  Verse 39, “You shall make a lampstand of pure gold.”  If you’ve ever been mining for gold, you know that gold doesn’t come out of the earth.  It’s not extracted from the earth in its purest form.  There are all kinds of other elements in there, and gold needs to be purified.  And so the gold out which they made the lampstand had to be pure gold.  But it’s a picture here of how, once again, God wants a pure vessel through which to shine His light.  We talked about the power of a pure life last week when we were at the bronze laver and how we need to be cleansed of the defilements we pick up in this world, of the sin.  We went to 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  We talked about the daily spiritual bath we have to take as believers.  Yes, we’ve come to the bronze altar.  We’ve been justified.  We’ve been made right with God through faith in Jesus Christ and through His sacrifice on the cross.  But, again, we walk through a dirty world and dark world.  And we need to be purified.  Well, it shouldn’t surprise us that this lampstand is also made of pure gold.  God is in the business of purifying us.  Purifying a people unto Himself, because light shines best through a purified vessel.

0:10:17.5

Number two, this lampstand was pounded.  Look at it in verse 31.  “The lampstand shall be made of hammered work.”  “The whole of it a single piece of hammered work of pure gold,” verse 36.  Now, imagine a piece of gold this big.  One continuous piece.  Now, gold is a very pliable, very malleable, soft metal.  And it can be hammered.  It can be pounded.  It can be shaped into, well, a golden lampstand.  And that’s how Moses was to make this particular lamp.  But it’s a picture here of the sufferings of Christ, who was hammered, who was bruised for our iniquities, who was spit upon, of whom they nailed and hammered nails into His hands and into His feet.  I mean, here was a picture of the sufferings of Christ on the cross for us.  And not only that, it’s a picture of sometimes how God purifies us and sanctifies us and shapes us into the image of Christ.  Have you ever felt like you’re on the receiving end of God’s hammer blows?  Is He pounding you into the image of Christ through some different experience that you’re going through?  This aspect of the golden lampstand reminded me of a little poem, an anonymous poem.  I don’t know who wrote this, but I’ve carried this around me for years.  It’s titled “When God Wants a Man.”  It can apply to a woman as well, but it goes like this.

“When God wants to drill a man, and thrill a man and skill a man,

When God wants to mold a man to play the noblest part,

When He yearns with all His heart to create so great and bold a man

That all the world shall praise,

Watch His methods, watch His ways:

How He ruthlessly perfects whom He royally elects;

How He hammers him and hurts him,

And with mighty blows converts him into frail shapes of clay

That only God understands,

How his tortured heart is crying and he lifts beseeching hands;

Yet he bends but never breaks when his good He undertakes;

How He uses whom He chooses,

With every purpose fuses him,

By every art induces him to try His splendor out,

God knows what He’s about.”

If you're on the receiving end of God’s hammer blows, his pounding you into the image of Christ, know that He is a loving and careful artesian.  You know the artisans had to grab this gold and, with their skillful hands, hammer it into the shape of this golden lampstand.

0:13:03.0

And it’s a picture not only of the sufferings of Christ but also of what the apostle Paul said in his letter to the Ephesians.  Do you remember this?  Paul says, “I want to know Christ.”  Does anybody want to know Christ today?  I mean to know Him intimately, not just casually.  Not just have cliché type of conversations with Him, but to know Him intimately.  That was the understanding of the word “know” when Paul said, “I want to know Christ.”  And then he lays out two ways he wants to know Him.  He says, “And the power of His resurrection.”  Don’t you want to know resurrection power in your life, to know Christ so intimately that His resurrection power flows through you?  Oh, yeah, I’ll sign up for that.  And then he adds this, and I wish he didn’t.  He says, “And I want to Him and the fellowship of His sufferings.”  Whoo!  I’m not sure I want to sign up for that one.  But, friends, there is an intimacy, an intimacy that you can enjoy with Christ and I can enjoy with Christ when through the hammer blows and the pounding and the hard experiences of life we can experience an intimacy with Him.  He was bruised for our iniquities.  They spat upon Him.  They despised and rejected Him.  They turned their face from Him.  You ever been on the receiving end of such scorn because of your faith in Christ?  A neighbor?  A worker?  A family member that turns from you because of your faith in Christ?  Paul would refer to that as the fellowship of His sufferings.  You know, we’ve been in the same battle together, Jesus, so we can talk about the same things here.

0:14:55.0

So this golden lampstand is pure.  It’s pounded.  Number three, it’s perfect.  I love this part.  Look at verse 37.  “You shall make seven lamps for it.”  Now, the number of perfection in the Bible is the number seven.  And this lampstand had seven specific lamps.  There was a main shaft, and then three branches out either side and little cups at the top in which they’d pour oil to light the lamps.  But there were seven actual lamps in one lampstand.  It’s a reminder that even when God is hammering you and pounding you and shaping you into the image of Christ through hard circumstances and you’re experiencing the fellowship of His sufferings in some way, that God is a perfect God and a perfect heavenly Father who knows what He is about.  James says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights.”  Can you embrace that hard time you’re going through?  Oh, not suffering because you're a rude person or you did something, but suffering because you simply says, “I’m a follower of Jesus.”  And some kind of suffering comes your way because of that.  Can you receive that as a perfect gift coming down from the Father above?

0:16:15.6

Number four, and let’s just keep the P’s going because it’s easy to remember that way, right?  It’s pure.  It’s pounded.  It’s perfect.  It’s also priceless.  It’s priceless.  It says here that “out of a talent of pure gold this will be made”.  Now, a talent of pure gold was a lot.  And if were to do a little calculation and estimate the value and the worth of a talent of pure gold in today’s dollars according to today’s  price of gold, this lampstand would cost approximately 1.2 million dollars.  Now, I don’t know how much you pay for a lamp in your house, but in the Jones household we don’t have 1.2 million dollar lamps.  I can just tell you that.  But here’s the idea.  What God is doing in your life is priceless.  Even the hard things you're going through.  Even the hammered things and the pounded things.  He is purifying you so that His light will shine through you even more.  And it’s a priceless thing that God is doing in your life.

0:17:26.0

Number five, it’s powerful.  And why do I say this lamp is powerful?  Because on the top of each of the seven lamps there was a little kind of flower-shaped, ornate cup.  And the priests would come in every day and they would trim the lamps.  They would pour oil into those lamps and make sure that it was burning constantly.  Again, the only source of light in a dark place.  And that oil, as it is throughout the scriptures, is often a picture of the Holy Spirit.  Now, we’re gonna run into a picture of the Holy Spirit three times in the Tabernacle.  We saw Him at the bronze laver.  Remember the laver was covered with mirrors, which was a picture of the Word of God.  Go to James 1.  The Word of God is like a mirror that reflects in our life and those areas that need to be cleaned up.  But the water was like the washing of water not only with the Word but also a picture of the Holy Spirit, who is often compared to water, a rushing river in our lives.  So that was the bronze laver.  Then we go into the Holy Place.  And here in the golden lampstand the Holy Spirit is pictured in the oil.  And then when we get to the altar of incense the prayer and the Holy Spirit is present there.  So you can’t escape the presence and the practicality of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  You can’t live this thing called the Christian life, entering into the holy presence of God, apart from the enabling resources of the Holy Spirit.  That’s why I say it’s powerful.  The Holy Spirit is the power behind this engine we call (0:19:00.0) the Christian life.  So that’s just a quick overview of what we read in verses 31 through 40.  Very practical.  But spiritual realities that the physical characteristics of this lamp point us to.

0:19:18.7

Now, as I mentioned earlier, light is a metaphor throughout all scripture.  And I just surveyed the scriptures, Old and New Testament, and just pulled together verses of scripture that talk about this and came up with four ways we can put all this into practice.  How do we put the principles of the golden lampstand on our visit to the Tabernacle today into practice?  Four simple things.  Number one, we need to grasp the light.  Reach out and grab hold of it.  Grab it like a flashlight and get ready to turn it on.  Because the Bible says in Psalm 119:105, “Your word (0:20:00.0) is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.”  Put it in our vernacular today: the Bible, God’s Word, is a spiritual flashlight.  Now, I’m not much of a camper.  My idea of camping is to go to the local Holiday Inn.  All right?  But there are some campers in our church, and they’re always trying to get me to go camping.  You know, they go into dark places.  Forest and places where there is no light.  There is no warmth.  There no warm bed.  There’s no soft bed, all that kind of stuff.  But, you know, there is no light there.  But every camper does what?  They bring a flashlight.  It’s important to bring a flashlight and maybe a lantern as well because you're in a dark place at night.  Now, here is what’s interesting about a flashlight.  A flashlight, a good one, give you about enough light to take the next step, doesn’t it?  And I find that’s the way the Word of God is.  As we grasp our light…and what I mean by that is you read it, you study it, you meditate upon it, you memorize portions of it, and you get ready to put it into practice.  You grab your light every day because we’re living in a dark world, friends.  We’re living in a fallen, sinful world.  And, spiritually speaking, it’s dark out there, and we need our spiritual light.  And my experience has been that as I get into God’s Word, as I grasp my spiritual light, God gives me just enough light to take the next step of faith.  Right?  That’s how it works.  If we don’t take the step of faith we’re not gonna get any more light.  If we’re saying, “No, I want to know what’s happening down the road 10 steps from me or 20 steps from me,” no, God says, “Listen, I’m gonna give you enough light today to take the next step.  And then I’ll give you more light and more light after that.  We’re gonna walk together.  The point of this is you’ve got to get your spiritual flashlight.  You’ve got to grab onto it, read it, study it, meditate upon it, memorize portions of scripture, and get ready to put it into practice.

0:21:59.5

Secondly, we follow the light.  We grasp the light, now we follow the light.  Listen to what Jesus said in John 8.  “And Jesus said to them, ‘I am…’”—here is this great declaration—“‘…I am the light of the World,’” He says.  “‘Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’”  Now, most scholars believe that Jesus made this declaration we know from the scriptures during what’s called the Feast of Tabernacles.  The Jews celebrated many feasts or holidays, and one of them was the Feast of Tabernacles.  This was the feast that celebrated God’s faithfulness during their 40 years of wilderness wanderings.  When God let them by a pillow of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night.  And they celebrated that time, God’s faithfulness during that time.  By Jesus’ time in the 1^st century they weren’t using the Tabernacle.  They were using a more permanent structure known as the Temple.  Same kind of architectural outline only more permanent.  And on the first night or thereabouts of the Feast of Tabernacles they would have a ceremony known as the Illumination of the Temple.  Think of a giant Olympic torch.  You know how on the first night of the Olympics they light the big torch and it stays lit throughout the ceremonies?  Well, in the Temple they had several large candelabra.  And in the Illumination of the Temple they would light up the candelabra.  Historians would say you could see the glow of the light all over Jerusalem.  And scholars believe that in John 8 it was right after the Illumination of the Temple and the lighting up of the city that Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.”  What a powerful, powerful declaration He made.  In that He was saying He is God.  In that He is saying He is truth, because light is a metaphor for truth in the scripture.  And the same Jesus who said, “I am the light of the world,” also said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father but by Me.”  So when we follow the light, we do so understanding who He is, who Jesus is.  And we immerse ourselves in the truth that He is and that He spoke and He did for us.  But right on the heels of that declaration Jesus said, “Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

0:24:48.2

Are you a follower of Jesus?  Are you?  I mean, are you really following Him?  Because I know a lot of people…and this is, you know, part of me that kind of rises up every once in a while.  I don’t want to follow anybody.  If anything, you're gonna follow me.  You know, I’m a “pull myself up by my own bootstraps” person.  Followers are weak people, aren’t they?  That’s kind of part of our culture.  That’s why we have all kinds of books on leadership.  Go to the bookstore or go to my library.  I’ve got two shelves full of books on leadership.  Not one—well, maybe one—on followership. There are all kinds of conferences on leadership.  You ever been to a leadership conference?  I’ve been to all kinds of leadership conferences.  Still trying to find the one on followership.  I don’t think very many people would go to that one.  But you can’t even be a good leader in the Church unless you’re first a follower, a follower of Jesus.  Following Jesus is at the core of what it means to be His disciple.  This is why Jesus said in Mark 1:17, “Come, follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”  These strong, fisherman-type guys like Peter and James and John, I mean, real men’s men, dropped their nets and followed this rabbi from Nazareth.  And then a little bit later in Matthew 16:24, “If anyone would come after me,” listen to this, “he must deny himself…,” not indulge himself.  The world tells you to indulge yourself.  But, “deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”  That’s what it means to be a follower of Christ.  It means self-denial and self-control.  It means going through some hard times, taking up your cross.  It means saying no to the world, the flesh, and the devil when everything in you wants to say yes to that, and following Christ.  Let me ask you again.  Are you a follower of Jesus?

0:27:02.9

Number three.  After we grasp the light and follow the light, we’re to walk in the light.  This is another New Testament principle.  1 John 1:6-7, “But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin.”  Jesus, who is light and life, is the source of all power and energy and life in the Christian life.  It’s sort of like a plant that can’t survive and can’t live out all that a plant’s supposed to live out without understanding the process of photosynthesis.  You remember that from your fifth grade?  Are you smarter than a fifth grader this morning?  You receive photosynthesis.  It’s that metabolic process where plants draw light from the sun, S-U-N.  Now, I’ve killed a lot of plants in my life.  I don’t have a green thumb.  Because I take a plant that says, you know, it needs partial light or full sunlight, and I’m not smart enough.  I put it in the shade over here.  And before long I’m wondering, does it need more water or what does it need?  No, it’s not getting enough light.  Well, there is something called spiritual photosynthesis too, where we must walk in the light.  We must draw from the Son, the S-O-N, who is light and life.  And this is how we live spiritually healthy lives.  We walk in the truth.  Okay?  We walk in the truth, who is Jesus, and the truth of His teachings here.  Spiritual photosynthesis.

0:28:55.7

Hold your place here and turn with me to Ephesians 5.  These verses are not gonna be on your screen.  These are a little extra that I tossed in after my media deadline this week, so I didn’t want to throw our media guys off by adding this in this morning.  But Ephesians 5 the apostle Paul draws upon this light imagery.  And he says beginning in verse 8, “For at one time,”—he’s writing to believers—“at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.  So walk as children of light, (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.  Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.  For it is shameful even to speak of the things they do in secret.  But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light.  Therefore it says, ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’”  Paul says there are two kinds of people in this world.  There are children of darkness, and there are children of light.  Which are you today?  If you know Jesus Christ as your savior, if you’ve placed your faith and trust in Him, if you’ve come to the bronze altar, as it were, to the cross of Christ, to the once-for-all sacrifice He made for you, and you’ve placed your faith and trust in Jesus, whether it was last week, last month or 30 years ago, then you’re a child of darkness.  You’ve been transferred from a domain of darkness, the Bible says, into His marvelous light.  And now the Bible says walk in that light.  And as you walk in that light, shine your light.  And one of the things that light does is it exposes darkness.  I was glad for that when the hurricane came and, you know, knocked out the power and our lights.  And we had a flashlight, and we had some candles.  Because in the midst of darkness, you just look for a little bit of light, a little flicker of light.  That little flicker of light will chase the darkness away and expose the darkness.  Paul talks about shining your light in a way that exposes the unfruitful deeds of darkness.  Now, remember, we walk in a dark world, a dark, sinful world.  This is not the paradise for which we were created.  We live in paradise lost.  And the sooner we understand the dark forces—the world, the flesh, and the devil—that works in darkness and that our job as believers in Jesus Christ is to grasp the light, to follow the light, to walk in the light, and, number four, to shine our light, the sooner we understand our responsibility there the better.

0:31:56.0

Now I want to go to the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5.  Jesus said to His disciples, “You are the light of the world.”  He said, “I am the light of the world, but now, as my representatives on this earth, you are the light of the world.”  We’re the light of the world sort of like the moon reflects the light of the sun.  You know, the moon doesn’t have any light source in and of itself.  It just reflects off the sun.  And when you see the moon light up at night it’s just a reflection of the sun off the moon.  So we’re the light of the world in that we reflect the light of the son, S-O-N, as we walk by light and follow the light and grasp the light.  But Jesus says, “You are the light of the world.  A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.  Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.”  In other words, it doesn't do any good to go down to Pier 1 and buy a lamp and then stick it in the closet.  No, the purpose of a lamp is to plug it in, put a light bulb in, and turn it on and let its light shine.  And that’s true for us spiritually as well.  He says, “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”  Two purposes for shining your light: So that others may see our good works and glorify God, and then from Ephesians 5, to expose the deeds of darkness.

0:33:29.0

Now, in the time that we have remaining I want to get very, very practical and talk about a way that every one of us as believers in Jesus Christ can shine our lights in the next couple of weeks, a very important way.  In just a few weeks we’re gonna go to the voting booth and we’re gonna elect the next President of the United States.  And I usually don’t make political speeches.  I’m not here to run for office or to advocate anybody in a political position.  And there are a lot of issues out there and that you have to think about when you go into a voting booth and exercise this wonderful liberty that we have as Americans to vote.  First thing I would say to you is get the polls and vote.  There is too much bloodshed in our history for you not to exercise that right.  And I know it’s a difficult election to choose who to vote for and both of…and we’re going like this to both candidates.  I get that.  I get that.  But every election has consequences, and this one consequences that I believe are grave, grave consequences.  As a pastor looking behind the veil, I think part of the reason this is such a difficult, difficult election is because of the spiritual battle that is going on for the soul of a nation.  And there is one particular issue that has just grieved my heart this week.  It always grieves my heart, but more this week than any other because it took to the third presidential debate for the matter of abortion to come up.  Third debate it finally came up.  And for the first time one of the candidates made it a litmus test to nominate Supreme Court Justices—three, perhaps, in the next four years—made it a litmus test that those Supreme Court nominees would be in favor of a 1973 piece of legislation called Roe v. Wade.  I thought we didn’t have a litmus test on Supreme Court Justices.  Now we do. Game on.  And what I heard on that debate this week made my skin crawl.  It grieved my heart.  It has been grieving my heart and my wife’s heart all week long.  Because when one of the candidates was asked about abortion, she doubled down on her support for Roe v. Wade.  And then when she was asked about a particular kind of abortion—partial birth abortion in a late term, third term—she doubled down again and said, “I will nominate Supreme Court Justices that uphold the right to do this.”  She always says “the right to choose”.  I wish she’d finish the sentence, “the right to choose to kill your own baby even if it’s just a couple of weeks from birth.”  Do you know what partial birth abortion is?  If you don’t, you need to do some homework this week.  It’s when a child in the third term is partially born.  Picture a child halfway out of her mother’s birth canal.  Just before, the doctor takes a sharp instrument, jams it in the back of the neck of that child, snips the spinal cord and sucks the brains out and then discards that child.  It is the most barbaric act that I can even possibly imagine that a nation like ours would say that it’s okay to do.  I’m not talking politics here, friends.  I am talking a moral and spiritual crisis in our nation.

0:37:28.4

For the past—I don’t know, what—40, 50 years since Roe v. Wade, we have killed how many millions of kids, tens of millions of kids.  And when I heard one of the candidates double down on that and not even balk away from the idea of a partial birth abortion, again, it just makes my skin crawl.  And then she perpetuates the lie.  Well, even in cases where the mother’s life is in danger, let me tell you something—you ask a medical expert—at that stage in the pregnancy if the mother’s life is in danger you don’t abort.  You induce labor or you do a C-section.  That’s the medical practice.  So quite perpetuating this lie of a narrative all the way to this.  It was just to me a little glimpse into the darkness and the spiritual war that is going on right now, perhaps more than at any other time in our nation’s history, with three, possibly four Supreme Court Justices.  This is a single issue for me.  All the other issues we can debate.  Maybe they’ll work themselves out.  I don’t know.  But we have one candidate, she doubled down on it.  And the imagery was not lost on me, standing there in her white suit like an angel of light talking such dark, demonic words.  I had to share my heart with you this morning.

0:39:04.5

Now, I know what some of you are saying.  “I can’t vote for either one of them.  Eww!”  Okay.  Don’t vote for the person, but there is a policy here.  A policy here that goes to the goodness of a nation.  How can we call ourselves good when we don’t protect the unborn?  How can we even say, “It is well with my soul,” as a nation?  No, our soul is sick right now that we would put up with something like that.  And we have opportunity as followers of Jesus Christ to shine our light in a very, very dark place.  You have a responsibility to vote.  And I’m saying we have a responsibility as followers of Jesus to defend the defenseless.  You want to know something that’s very, very close to the heart of God?  You get involved in work that defends the defenseless, that’s a voice for the voiceless.  And in this case, it’s time for God’s people not to stay at home to the tune of 30 or 40 million people of so-called Christians who did not vote in the last election.  You’ve got to be kidding me.  Get to the polls.  Most elections like this are won by 3 or 4 million votes; 30 or 40 million of church-going people stayed home last election.  And this is about the soul of a nation.  What she described, what she doubled down on is no better than the Nazis who gassed the Jews.  And I cannot remain silent about this.

0:40:52.8

So I beg you, be a doer of the Word.  I’m going back 3000 years, introduce you to a golden lampstand.  Shine your light in an otherwise very dark space and a dark season in the history of our nation.  Her running mate says, “I’m personally against it but I don’t think the government should be involved.”  Try that during the Civil War.  “I’m personally against slavery, but I just don’t think we should get involved in that.”  Are you kidding me?  What a cop-out.  And if you're faith doesn’t put into practice how you vote, how you live out your faith…politics is worldview, friends.  It’s worldview.  Somebody’s worldview is going to dominate.  And for too long on this particular issue, darkness and demonic forces have dominated.  Now, every time I speak out on this issue I want to be sensitive to those of you who might have made a choice at some time in your life to exercise an abortion.  I just want you know something.  You’ve not committed the unpardonable sin.  Moses murdered somebody.  So did the apostle Paul.  And the Church had a hard time welcoming the apostle Paul.  It took them a long time.  “I don’t know about him.  He kills Christians.”  If you are in Christ, hear these words.  “There is now therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.”  I’m not issuing condemnation or pouring that out on you.  I want you to feel the love of Jesus Christ.  I want you to feel the horror in your soul.  That’s called the conviction of sin.  But this is a safe place for broken people.  We’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  So don’t walk out of here feeling like the Church is condemning you.  No, we’re rescuing.  Defend the weak.  Rescue those that are weak and vulnerable in society.  There is nothing more spiritual that we can do.  Nothing more like our heavenly Father than to be a voice for the voiceless, to defend the defenseless.

0:43:25.6

And one more thing.  I hear somebody saying, “Well, the government shouldn’t be involved in that decision.”  Well, have you ever heard of Child Protective Services?  If you saw a child over here being abused by a father or a mother, we as a society say it is right for the strong arm of the government to get involved in that, to protect and rescue those children.  You can’t have it both ways.  We need Child Protective Services at conception, at conception.  Now, one of the ways we can perhaps move the needle forward is for you and I to take the truth that we’ve heard today…and I’m just offering a very practical application here to put into practice.  In a few weeks when we go to the voting booth, shine, shine, baby, shine your light.  Plug your nose.  You’re not voting for a candidate, but you’re voting of the best hope.  I know one says this.  She will do this.  I know the other one has been a little, you know, this over the years on the issue, but he says he will do this.  This seems to be the best hope we have of reversing the worst Supreme Court decision in our lifetime.  I’m not saying that God can’t do something the other way, but it would be a lot more difficult.  And it’s not often that we come to a place in our nation’s history where this many Supreme Court Justices in a Supreme Court that has turned activities, where this many of them will probably come up for nomination in the next presidential cycle.

0:45:10.6

And all that after a visit to the Tabernacle today.  How about that?  Grasp your light.  Follow the light.  Walk in the light.  Shine your light.  I can’t think of anything more practical to put into practice than this message today.  So many ways that God is calling us to live out the principles of the golden lampstand, shining light in a dark, dark place.  Let’s pray together.

0:45:44.6

Father, thank You for this time in Your Word today.  Thank You for giving us these pictures and these proclamations and these declarations.  Thank You for Jesus, who says, “I am the light of the world.”  And I thank You, Father, for a time in my life where You rescued me from darkness and You moved me from darkness into the glorious light of Jesus Christ, and for countless number of people across this room and throughout our church family who have the same testimony, the same experience.  I pray for anyone here today who is walking in darkness, who, by Your own definition, Father, is a child of darkness.  I pray that today would be a day that You would illumine their hearts and their minds, that You shine light into that dark place and give them faith to believe in Jesus, who says, “I have not come to condemn you.  If you do not believe you are condemned already.  No, I have come to give you life and to give it to you more abundantly.”  He, who is the light of the world, in Him is life, and that life is the light of the world and the light of men.  Lord, help us to walk in that light today.  And for any of us, Father, who know Christ, we give You permission to take the searchlight of Your Holy Spirit and shine it into those dark places in our heart that are still being cleansed and purified and hammered and pounded into the image of Christ.  Search me, O God, and know my heart.  Try me and know my wicked thoughts.  See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting, Father.  And I pray that that courageous prayer voiced by David so many years ago be our prayer today.  And I pray this in Jesus’s name and for His sake, amen.

0:48:00.2