Episode Details

Remsen Bible Fellowship, 10/25/2020

Introduction:

But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until the full day. Proverbs 4:18

In verses 14-19 of Proverbs 4, the Sage is giving his son warnings about the path of the wicked. The wicked, cannot sleep unless they have done wrong; they are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble. Where does this path lead? The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble. The path of the wicked isn’t only wicked, it isn’t only sinful-it’s blindness, darkness, it is stumbling around in a world full of unknowing. But piercing this warning is verse 18, which gives us a contrasting path.

But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until the full day.

Wickedness. Righteousness. Darkness. Light. 

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I wonder what you are afraid of. Are you afraid of the dark? It sounds childish, so you might be afraid to admit to it. Most of humanity is afraid of the dark. If you don’t believe me, here are a few questions: would you want to ride with someone who was driving down the road at night with the headlights turned off? How many of us would feel comfortable walking down a dark alley in a strange city? Who among us would volunteer to have our heart surgeon try working in total darkness?

Of course, it’s not the dark itself that we are afraid of. We are afraid of what that darkness might be concealing, what it might be hiding. Our fear stems from the absence of light. Light reveals, light illumines, light guides. The presence of light provides safety. 

This is simply a statement of what most of us find to be common sense: light brings safety. But if all of this seems commonsensical, I wonder if you realize that for each and every one of us, our natural state is one of walking in the dark. Living in the dark. Because we’re wicked. In John 3:19, Jesus says, And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. We all are born in this darkness, and we all resist the light. Which explains another universal fear: death.

Death is the most universal of human experiences. Even Jesus, the Son of God himself, experienced death in his human nature. King Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes 2:16, For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! We’re going to die, and be forgotten. And this terrifies us. Death is the deepest darkness of all, and most of us spend our time avoiding any thought of it. 

We look for diets, haircuts, and clothes that make us look, or at least feel, younger. We’re the society of nursing homes, senior meals, and retirement communities, so that folks my age rarely have to interact with someone visibly nearing eternity. I know people who avoid funerals for that same reason, an avoidance of the reality of mortality. And in ways, this can seem like it makes sense. Who wants to be morbid? Who wants to think about the daylight of life moving past evening and into darkness?

But what if I told you you didn’t have to think about age as fading or death as darkness? What if death could be like noon, something that takes place at the fullest, brightest moment of life, and leads us further into brighter light, fuller joy, righteousness, and life, for all of eternity? That is the reality which Proverbs 4:18 points toward. But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until the full day. 

As we think about th