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declaration of God’s love in Leviticus. “To be sure it is in Numbers!” It is not in Numbers. In Deuteronomy there is an unfolding of God’s love almost as in the Book of John. It comes like a flash of light from the heaven. “Well,” I said, “I will make up for lost time when I reach the New Testament. I will preach a sermon on the love of God as declared in the "Gospel of Matthew.” I read it through without finding it. There is no declaration of God’s love in the Gospel of Matthew. You know it; He does not have to tell you. Every thing in it whispers love, without His mentioning it, and all the more em phatically. “Well,” I said, “my ser mon must be on Mark.” It is not in Mark! “Well, then I must go to Luke.” There is only one incidental reference in Luke, “Judgment and the love of God” (ch. 40:42), just inci dentally. If it overwhelms you, as it did me, it will bring you to tears—the first declaration, not intimation, and not inference, but the first declaration of God’s love in the New Testament, is John 3:16, a sun-burst upon mid night, a revelation at one stroke of God Himself. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begot ten Son.” Then we have the glory of Sacrificial Light “I am the light of the world.” Light tends to display itself, of course, but the glory of light is in its sacrifice. These beautiful mountains are sacri ficed light. The sun gives off its light as upon an altar, and the light is taken up into leaf, and flower, and grass, and forest. If the sun should' cease to be sacrificial, there would be no more light, and no more beauty, and no more fertility. And, “if the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness.” What is light? How did we get
it anyhow ? Geologists tell us that during the carboniferous era the great forests took in the sunlight and wove it into the fibre of branch, and trunk, and roots of the trees. Then there came convulsions, and these forests were buried out of sight, and the coal beds were formed, imprisoned light. We dig out the coal, and we put it through a process of combustion, and "the fire lets the light loose that the forests took in from the sun. That is the way the Lord Jesus becomes light, not by the Sermon on the Mount, but by Calvary, by the process of combus tion on the altar, ablaze for us. Then He turns round and says, ‘Ye are the light of the world,” I made a little sermon once, taking that text, on Christians as reflectors of light, and it was a cold sermon! Reflection is a cold process. You cannot raise a crop by moonlight; you must have it warm from the sun. It does not say, “Ye are reflectors of light” ; it says, “Ye are the light of the world.” How do we become ligljt? “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God.” We take in from the Sun of righteousness the rays of light, as the forest took it in from the sun in the heavens; and then, by a process of combustion, by the sacrificial spirit on God’s altar, we are light as Jesus was light, and that is the glory of the Christian’s life. Then we have the glory of Sacrificial Truth “I am the Truth.” Truth carried a sword; truth has to fight. The Lord said in a sense He sent a sword. “My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” The world gives peace by compromise or surrender, as Napoleon got it at Wat erloo. The Lord Jesus Christ gives peace by victory, as Wellington got it
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