No longer will the sun be your light by day, nor the brightness of the moon shine on your night; for the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your splendor. Sermons
Contrasts are suggested with brief days that darken into night, and cloudy days that hide the sunshining. It passes our comprehension, indeed, but it kindles our imagination, to conceive of a day that knows no ending, and a sunrising that never reaches its meridian. Yet we often feel as if we wanted life to be all sunshine; it shall be when we are altogether good. While we are encompassed with infirmities, and must be under discipline, God cannot be to us an "everlasting Light;" there must be clouds coming betwixt, Which our fearing, trembling souls fashion into his forms. In the white heavens, white souls need no sun and no moon to shine upon them, for the glory of God doth lighten them. But this is ideal glory, and the question for us is - How near can we get to it now? I. FOR US GOD MAY BE THE LIGHT OF THE MATERIAL WORLD. To let ourselves be so engrossed with business affairs that there is no room for God in thought, or heart, or life, is to lose the everlasting light - to be unable to see God in common everyday things. It is hardly conceivable that any man could wish to have this fair earth with its vales and hills, without the gilding beautifying sunshine. O poor earth, dull and dead, like sunless winter in Arctic climes! And yet thousands are willing to have this earth of material relationships without the sunshine of God. Exactly what men want, but do not know that they want, is God their everlasting Light. Common life, with him, is lived in the sunshine. II. FOR US GOD MAY BE THE LIGHT OF THE INTELLECTUAL WORLD. In our day he is only allowed to shine intermittently in this world, and there are many who would blot him out of this sky if they could. Others, who would not go so far as that, would gladly make a thick, foggy atmosphere of their own wisdom, through which he can only shine dimly. We shall never get the full glory of the treasures of the intellectual world until we let the revealing rays of the "everlasting light" fall everywhere upon them. III. FOR US GOD MAY BE THE LIGHT OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. Indeed, there is no light at all in the spiritual world if he does not shine. And the one thing above all others which they crave after who dwell in that spiritual world is the full, constant, unshaded, glowing, life-renewing power of the everlasting Light. - R.T. The sun shall be no more thy light by day. The prophet bids his people look forward to a time when even the sun and moon shall become needless to them; when in some new and more direct experience of God they shall need nothing to reflect His light to them, but drink immediately from Himself His strength and inspiration. That seems to be the meaning of the words; and so it points us to one feature which belongs to every progress, the power to do without one thing after another which has before been essential, the way in which, as we advance to higher and higher supplies, we are able to gather out, of them what we used to get from lower sources. It is like that verse in St. John's description of the New Jerusalem: "I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it." Or like these soberer words of St. Paul's autobiography: "When I became a man I put away childish things.' This life that rises to the highest helps and companies is able easily to do without the lower. () As we climb a high mountain we must keep our footing strong upon one ledge until we have fastened ourselves strongly on the next. Then we may let the lower foothold go. The lives of men who have been always growing are strewed along their whole course with the things which they have learned to do without. As the track of an army marching deep into an enemy's country is scattered all along with the equipage which the men seemed to find necessary when they started, but which they have learned to do without as the exigencies of their march grew greater, and they found that these provisions and equipments were partly such as they did not need at all, and partly such as they could gather out of the land through which they marched; so from the time when the child casts his leading strings aside because his legs are strong enough to carry him alone, the growing man goes on forever caring each help for a higher, until at last, in that great change to which Isaiah's words seem to apply, he can do without sun and moon as he enters into the immediate presence and essential life of God. () () Let us take two or three instances of those things which are valuable as symbols, but which he is able to do without who has got beyond the symbol and gained the reality which it represents.1. Take the instance of wealth. There are some men who can do without being rich — plenty of men who have to, but some men who can, can easily, can without discontent or trouble. They love comfort and respectability as much as these their neighbours. What is the difference? Simply this, that they have found that comfort and respectability, while money is their natural symbol, are not dependent upon money, and that one may reach past the symbol, and take the reality, and let the symbol go. 2. Or take another symbol. Praise is good. To be applauded by our fellow. men, to hear our ambitions about ourselves caught up by their testifying cheers, to have our own best hopes for our own lives confirmed by their appreciation of us, that is a true delight for any man. To be able to do without men's praise because we do not feel its value, because morosely and selfishly we do not care what men think, that is bad; that is a sign of feebleness and conceit. To feel it is wretched, and to affect to feel it is detestable. But to be able to do without men's praise because that which their praise stands for is dearer to us than the praise is, and it so happens that we cannot have both of them, that is a wholly different thing. Men's praise stands for goodness. Every man feels that if it does not mean that, if it is "given to iniquity just aa freely as to goodness, praise loses all its value. Praise is the symbol; goodness is the reality. 3. So it runs everywhere. The symbols of the deeper pleasures are the mere animal indulgences — eating and drinking, the lusts of the flesh. They stand for intellectual and spiritual joys. How natural their symbolism is. The Bible talks of "hungering and thirsting after righteousness.'" David says, "Taste and see that the Lord is good." Jesus tells His disciples about "eating His flesh and drinking His blood." The superficial emotions of the senses stand for and represent the profound emotions of the soul. In the, harmonious life the two will live in harmony. The symbol and reality, the body's and the soul's enjoyment, will be complete together. But when in this unharmonious life which we live the symbol and reality come into unnatural conflict, when either the soul must be, sacrificed to the body or the body to the soul, he who really knows what the soul's happiness is does not hesitate. Here is the power of true self-sacrifice; here is the secret which takes out of it all the bitterness and brutality. Always it is the giving up of a symbol that you may have the reality. In the great sacrifice of all, Christ lays down His life, but it is that He may take it again. Do you think that Christ did not care for life and all that makes life beautiful to us? Surely He did; but He cared more for that which they represent — the living purely, the doing of His Father's will, and the serving of His brethren. 4. I am very much impressed by the truth of all this as concerns the Christian Church. She has her symbols and her ordinances, and she has her true and inner life. Her outward ways of living really belong with her inward power. In a perfectly harmonious world there never could be any conflict. In heaven the outward and the inward Church shall absolutely correspond; but here and now the Church may be so set upon her symbols and her regularities that she shall fail of doing her most perfect work and living her most perfect life. The Christian may be so bound to rites and ceremonies that he loses the God to whom they ought to bring him near. Here it certainly is true that no symbol is doing its true work unless it is educating those who use it to do without itself if need be. () 1. First you will ask, How can I tell the symbol from the reality, and so know what things it is good to hold less and less, what things it is good to hold more and more indispensable? It is not easy to give the answer in a rule. But the answer no doubt lies in a certain feeling of spirituality and infiniteness and eternity, which belongs to those things which it is good for a man not to be able to do without. Those things which serve the soul rather than the body, those which serve the whole of us and not one special part, and those which can serve us longest — those are the things which we want to make more and more indispensable. Those things whose usefulness belongs mainly to the body, those things which help some part of us and not the whole, and those things whose use is temporal — it is not good for any of us to have to say, "I cannot do without these things. This is, perhaps, the nearest that we can come to rules; but he who lives in the spirit of these rules acquires a certain sort of feeling of the infiniteness of some things and the finiteness of others, so that renown, wealth, dignity, sympathy, comfort, friendship, amusement, life, stand on one side; and honour, truth, bravery, purity, love, eternity, God, stand on the other. These last he must have. Those others he can do without. The moment that he touches any new gift he can tell to which order it belongs.2. But then you say, What then? When I have felt this difference, when I know what things I must not allow to become indispensable to me, what shall I do then? Shall I throw all those things away? Shall I strip my life instantly of all that is not indispensable, and live only in those things which I cannot live without? No; certainly not. That effort to cast away the symbol as soon as it was seen to be a symbol has been the source of much religious unhappiness and failure, and of much of the wrong kind of separation between religious and irreligious life. Not to give up the symbol, but to hold it as a symbol, with that looser grasp which lets its inner reality escape into us, and at the same time makes us always ready to let it go when the reality shall have wholly opened from it, that is the true duty of the Christian as concerns the innocent things of the world. That was the way in which Jesus always seemed to be holding friendship, home, nature, and His own human life; never grasping them so tightly that their spiritual meanings might not come forth from them freely, nor that He could not give them up when a higher vocation summoned Him. 3. And that brings us to the last question. How shall I come to count nothing indispensable but what I really ought to, what I really cannot do without? The answer to that question is in Christ, who holds the answers of all our questions for us. As I read the Gospels I can see how, little by little, Jesus lifted those disciples past one conception of necessity after another, until at last they knew nothing that was absolutely necessary except God. They began as fishermen who could not do without their nets and boats and houses and fishing friends and sports and gains and gossipings. He carried them up till they were crying, "Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us." ()
People Ephah, Isaiah, Jacob, Kedar, Nebaioth, TarshishPlaces City of the Lord, Ephah, Kedar, Lebanon, Midian, Nebaioth, Sheba, Tarshish, ZionTopics Age-during, Beauty, Bright, Brightness, Eternal, Everlasting, Giveth, Glory, Longer, Moon, ShineOutline 1. The glory of the church in the abundant access of the Gentiles.
15. And the great blessings after a short affliction
Dictionary of Bible Themes Isaiah 60:9-20 4212 astronomy Isaiah 60:15-22 1235 God, the LORD Isaiah 60:19-20 1193 glory, revelation of
4251 moon
4284 sun
4835 light, spiritual
4836 light, and people of God
9136 immortality, OT Isaiah 60:19-21 1045 God, glory of Library October 16. "Whereas Thou Hast Been Forsaken and Hated, I Will Make Thee a Joy" (Isa. Lx. 15).
"Whereas thou hast been forsaken and hated, I will make thee a joy" (Isa. lx. 15). God loves to take the most lost of men, and make them the most magnificent memorials of His redeeming love and power. He loves to take the victims of Satan's hate, and the lives that have been the most fearful examples of his power to destroy, and to use them to illustrate and illuminate the possibilities of Divine mercy and the new creations of the Holy Spirit. He loves to take the things in our own lives that have …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth Walls and Gates
'Thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise'--ISAIAH lx. 18. The prophet reaches the height of eloquence in his magnificent picture of the restored Jerusalem, 'the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel.' To him the city stands for the embodiment of the nation, and his vision of the future is moulded by his knowledge of the past. Israel and Jerusalem were to him the embodiments of the divine idea of God's dwelling with men, and of a society founded on the presence of …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture The Sunlit Church
'Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. 2. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and His glory shall be seen upon thee. 3. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.'--ISAIAH lx. 1-3. The personation of Israel as a woman runs through the whole of this second portion of Isaiah's prophecy. We see her thrown on the earth a mourning mother, …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture The Morning Light
Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the LORD shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. O ne strong internal proof that the Bible is a divine revelation, may be drawn from the subject matter; and particularly that it is the book, and the only book, that teaches us to …
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 1 Marvellous Increase of the Church
The church, when she uttered these words, appears to have been the subject of three kinds of feeling. First, wonder: secondly, pleasure: thirdly, anxiety. These three feelings you have felt; you are not strangers to them; and you will understand, while I speak to you as the children of God, how it is that we can feel at the same time, wonder, pleasure, and yet anxiety. I. First, the church of old, and our church now, appears to have been the subject of WONDER when she saw so many come to know the …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 2: 1856 22D DAY. An End of Weeping.
"He is Faithful that Promised." "The days of thy mourning shall be ended."--ISAIAH lx. 20. An End of Weeping. Christ's people are a weeping band, though there be much in this lovely world to make them joyous and happy. Yet when they think of sin--their own sin, and the unblushing sins of a world in which their God is dishonoured--need we wonder at their tears?--that they should be called "Mourners," and their pilgrimage-home a "Valley of Tears?" Bereavement, and sickness, and poverty, and death, …
John Ross Macduff—The Faithful Promiser Second Sermon for Epiphany
Showeth on what wise a man shall arise from himself and from all creatures, to the end that God may find the ground of his soul prepared, and may begin and perfect his work therein. Isaiah lx. 1.--"Arise, O Jerusalem, and be enlightened." [45] IN all this world God covets and requires but one thing only, and that He desires so exceeding greatly that He gives His whole might and energy thereto. This one thing is, that He may find that good ground which He has laid in the noble mind of man made fit …
Susannah Winkworth—The History and Life of the Reverend Doctor John Tauler Rev. Mr. Nichols's Address.
The Rev. W. F. Nichols, Rector of Christ Church, Hartford, and chaplain to Bishop Williams in his recent visit abroad, spoke of the first day of the commemoration at Aberdeen: He said it would be useless to deny that there was an individual pleasure in having this welcome to round out the happiness of getting back to one's home and one's work, as there was an individual pleasure at the honor the diocese had put upon those whom it had sent with the bishop to Aberdeen, and an individual appreciation …
Various—The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary The Birth of England's Foreign Missions
1785-1792 Moulton the Mission's birthplace--Carey's fever and poverty--His Moulton school--Fired with the missionary idea--His very large missionary map--Fuller's confession of the aged and respectable ministers' opposition--Old Mr. Ryland's rebuke--Driven to publish his Enquiry--Its literary character--Carey's survey of the world in 1788--His motives, difficulties, and plans--Projects the first Missionary Society--Contrasted with his predecessors from Erasmus--Prayer concert begun in Scotland in …
George Smith—The Life of William Carey The Last Days of the Old Eastern World
The Median wars--The last native dynasties of Egypt--The Eastern world on the eve of the Macedonian conquest. [Drawn by Boudier, from one of the sarcophagi of Sidon, now in the Museum of St. Irene. The vignette, which is by Faucher-Gudin, represents the sitting cyno-cephalus of Nectanebo I., now in the Egyptian Museum at the Vatican.] Darius appears to have formed this project of conquest immediately after his first victories, when his initial attempts to institute satrapies had taught him not …
G. Maspero—History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, V 9 No More
Gerhard Ter Steegen Is. lx. 20 O past and gone! How great is God! how small am I! A mote in the illimitable sky, Amidst the glory deep, and wide, and high Of Heaven's unclouded sun. There to forget myself for evermore; Lost, swallowed up in Love's immensity, The sea that knows no sounding and no shore, God only there, not I. More near than I unto myself can be, Art Thou to me; So have I lost myself in finding Thee, Have lost myself for ever, O my Sun! The boundless Heaven of Thine eternal love …
Frances Bevan—Hymns of Ter Steegen, Suso, and Others Athanasius under Julian and his Successors; Fourth and Fifth Exiles. Feb. 21, 362, to Feb. 1, 366
(a) The Council of Alexandria in 362. The eight months of undisturbed residence enjoyed by Athanasius under Julian were well employed. One of his first acts was to convoke a Synod at Alexandria to deal with the questions which stood in the way of the peace of the Church. The Synod was one of saints and confessors,' including as it did many of the Egyptian bishops who had suffered under George (p. 483, note 3, again we miss the name of the trusted Serapion), Asterius of Petra and Eusebius of Vercellae, …
Athanasius—Select Works and Letters or Athanasius That the Grace of Devotion is Acquired by Humility and Self-Denial
The Voice of the Beloved Thou oughtest to seek earnestly the grace of devotion, to ask it fervently, to wait for it patiently and faithfully, to receive it gratefully, to preserve it humbly, to work with it diligently, and to leave to God the time and manner of heavenly visitation until it come. Chiefly oughtest thou to humble thyself when thou feelest inwardly little or no devotion, yet not to be too much cast down, nor to grieve out of measure. God ofttimes giveth in one short moment what He …
Thomas A Kempis—Imitation of Christ The Restoration of Israel is Only Made Possible by the Second Advent of Christ.
Under this head we shall seek to prove briefly three things--that Israel as a nation will be restored, that Israel's restoration occurs at the Return of Christ, that Israel's restoration will result in great blessing to the whole world. That Israel as a nation will be actually and literally restored is declared again and again in the Word of God. We quote now but two prophecies from among scores of similar ones:--"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, …
Arthur W. Pink—The Redeemer's Return The General Spread of the Gospel
"The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters covers the sea." Isa. 11:9. 1. In what a condition is the world at present! How does darkness, intellectual darkness, ignorance, with vice and misery attendant upon it, cover the face of the earth! From the accurate inquiry made with indefatigable pains by our ingenious countryman, Mr. Brerewood; (who travelled himself over a great part of the known world, in order to form the more exact judgment;) supposing the world to be divided …
John Wesley—Sermons on Several Occasions Twentieth Day for God's Spirit on the Heathen
WHAT TO PRAY.--For God's Spirit on the Heathen "Behold, these shall come from far; and these from the land of Sinim."--ISA. xlix. 12. "Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall haste to stretch out her hands to God."--PS. lxviii. 31. "I the Lord will hasten it in His time."--ISA. lx. 22. Pray for the heathen, who are yet without the word. Think of China, with her three hundred millions--a million a month dying without Christ. Think of Dark Africa, with its two hundred millions. Think …
Andrew Murray—The Ministry of Intercession The Temptation of Jesus
The proclamation and inauguration of the Kingdom of Heaven' at such a time, and under such circumstances, was one of the great antitheses of history. With reverence be it said, it is only God Who would thus begin His Kingdom. A similar, even greater antithesis, was the commencement of the Ministry of Christ. From the Jordan to the wilderness with its wild Beasts; from the devout acknowledgment of the Baptist, the consecration and filial prayer of Jesus, the descent of the Holy Spirit, and the heard …
Alfred Edersheim—The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah The Order of Thought which Surrounded the Development of Jesus.
As the cooled earth no longer permits us to understand the phenomena of primitive creation, because the fire which penetrated it is extinct, so deliberate explanations have always appeared somewhat insufficient when applying our timid methods of induction to the revolutions of the creative epochs which have decided the fate of humanity. Jesus lived at one of those times when the game of public life is freely played, and when the stake of human activity is increased a hundredfold. Every great part, …
Ernest Renan—The Life of Jesus Brave Encouragements
'In the seventh month, in the one and twentieth day of the month, came the word of the Lord by the prophet Haggai, saying, 2. Speak now to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, and to the residue of the people, saying, 3. Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? and how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing? 4. Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the Lord; and be strong, O Joshua, …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture The Quotation in Matt. Ii. 6.
Several interpreters, Paulus especially, have asserted that the interpretation of Micah which is here given, was that of the Sanhedrim only, and not of the Evangelist, who merely recorded what happened and was said. But this assertion is at once refuted when we consider the object which Matthew has in view in his entire representation of the early life of Jesus. His object in recording the early life of Jesus is not like that of Luke, viz., to communicate historical information to his readers. …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament The Extent of Messiah's Spiritual Kingdom
The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever! T he Kingdom of our Lord in the heart, and in the world, is frequently compared to a building or house, of which He Himself is both the Foundation and the Architect (Isaiah 28:16 and 54:11, 12) . A building advances by degrees (I Corinthians 3:9; Ephesians 2:20-22) , and while it is in an unfinished state, a stranger cannot, by viewing its present appearance, form an accurate judgment …
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 2 Links Isaiah 60:19 NIV
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