J. Brereton
I. Genesis 2:8-9 and 3:1-9
Tree of life = type of Christ; a source of life = it was in the midst of the garden. He is also light. “In him was life; and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4).
God’s standard = Christ
Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil = typifies our responsibility
II. Genesis 1:1-5 and 2 Corinthians 4:4-6
“For it is the God (who spoke that out of darkness light should shine) who has shone in our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
“God created. God acted. God spoke, and light was. But then it tells us specifically that God divided light from darkness. What is morally pictured to us here is a scene where there are no, what we call, gray areas!”
III. 1 John 1:5-7, Ephesians 5:8, and 1 Thess. 5:5
Light is the character of God (in Him is no darkness at all)
There is no fellowship between light and darkness. God has divided light from darkness.
If you belong to Christ, you are in the light, and you walk in the light. It is a question of what God has done.
“For ye were once darkness, but now light in the Lord … for all ye are children of light and children of day; we are not of night nor of darkness.”
IV. Genesis 1:14-19 and John 8:12, 9:4-5, 15:22-24
Two great lights (the Sun and the moon) :
- To divide between the day and the night; and to be signs, and for seasons, and for days and years
- The great light (to rule the day); The small light (to rule the night)
The Lord Jesus divided between the day and the night. He divided between the light and the darkness. He was a Great Light. It set the pattern for those who were to be identified with the Light. God had done it in the power in the sovereign act of creation. In John’s gospel, when the Lord was here, there was no confusion about light and darkness — no confusion about what was sin. What was suited to His presence was light. What was not suitable to his presence was darkness.
The moon reflects the light of the Sun, and it shines in a time of darkness. The Sun and the moon, the greater and the lesser lights, should have the same testimony — “to divide between the day and the night; and to be signs, and for seasons, and for days and years” — the effect and the character of the Sun to rule and to divide the light from the darkness — our testimony should be the same.
“…And as is the heavenly [One], such are they also that are heavenly [ones]” (1 Cor. 15:48).
V. Ephesians 5:8-15: What is Morally Suited to the Presence of God?
“Every exhortation of scripture is founded upon what you possess, and never on doing something to get it.”
–Anon.
But now you are “light in the Lord” — walk then as children of light. “And do not have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness!” There are no gray areas.
The Lord Jesus looks for you and I , beloved brethren, to divide the darkness — so that every moral decision that is made by you as the parent, by you as one of the young people at school, those who go to work, the decisions that must be made in the assembly — they must always divide between light and darkness. What is decided must always be in accordance with the holiness of the One who is in the midst. Remember in the midst of the garden was the Tree of Life (not just the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil).
May we all be cast upon the Lord such that everything we do, everything that we allow, every decision that children see us making — (by the grace of God) divides between light and darkness. And what is done, what is said, what is decided, be suited to the light into which we have been brought by grace.