Night is Coming

These are the words of Jesus; heavy words, words that should trouble us, words that should cause us to prepare for the night.

John 9:4 …"We must work the works of Him Who sent Me and be busy with His business while it is daylight; night is coming on, when no man can work."

The night is coming … Christ is the light. When the light is withdrawn, night comes, when no man can work. Night is coming for each of us. No man can do any thing toward working out his own salvation after this life is ended. Yet Christ can still work in us today through His Holy Spirit. But He was not to work upon the earth forever, only during the day or season which was appointed for Him.

John 12:35-36 …"So Jesus said to them, You will have the Light only a little while longer. Walk while you have the Light, so that darkness may not overtake and overcome you. He who walks about in the dark does not know where he goes. While you have the Light, believe in the Light, that you may become sons of the Light and be filled with Light."

Jesus before His death encourages and urges His disciples to follow His light while He was among them. It is true that His Spirit would always be with them; but He would not always be visible to them. When He leaves, the light as they have known it … will leave with Him. What was this light that was going to leave with Jesus?

As John pinned the first few sentences of his book he told us just what the light was. "In him (Jesus) was life; and the life (that was in Jesus) was the light of men. And the light (the life in Jesus) shineth in darkness …"

I believe what the disciples were going to miss more than anything else was "the life" that Jesus had within Him. They would miss the real man, the real person they had come to know.

It was true that darkness was to come upon the Jewish people when they rejected Jesus as the Messiah; and it is also true that God leaves a sinner in the same darkness he was in when he has rejected the light of the gospel.

John 12:37-40 …

"Jesus said these things, and then He went away and hid Himself from them.
Even though He had done so many miracles before them, yet they still did not trust in Him and failed to believe in Him …
So that what Isaiah the prophet said was fulfilled: Lord, who has believed our report and our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been shown?
Therefore they could not believe.
For Isaiah has also said …
He has blinded their eyes and hardened and benumbed their hearts, to keep them from seeing with their eyes and understanding with their hearts and minds and repenting and turning to Me to heal them."

Verse 40 is taken from Isaiah 6:9-10 … and perhaps refers more to the judgments which God determined was going to come upon Israel as a nation after they rejected Jesus than it does concerning their salvation. To suppose that this means that God was unwilling that they should turn to Him for salvation is unsupportable by scripture.

When it says … "He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart" … it must be stated that God did not blind or harden them by any act of His own; but it was done by leaving them in the blindness and hardness of their own personal hearts, and by denying them the grace for them to see.

Remember, God is not obligated to give His grace to anyone; which was the very reason the Jews as a nation was never to see the light and be converted.

After Christ's death, the Gospel was preached to the Jews first; but as history has shown, the Jews rejected the Gospel and so the apostles as they were ordered, brought the light of the Gospel to the Gentiles.

John 12:46 …"I have come as a Light into the world, so that whoever believes in Me, may not continue to live in darkness."

Man without knowing it lives in darkness and will continue to live in a state of darkness unless he receives the light of the Gospel of Jesus.

Even after being with the light, Jesus gives His disciples a warning that we should also heed … "Walk in the light … so that darkness may not overtake and overcome you …"

You may have a good part of your journey yet to travel. We cannot travel safely except in His light … and if you look at the world around us today, it seems as though His light is almost gone. Therefore run to the light … so that the darkness cannot overtake you; for if it does … and you are caught in it … you will stumble and fall.

The Apostle Paul also gives a warning to the church in
2nd Timothy 3:1-5 …

"BUT UNDERSTAND this, that in the last days will come perilous times of great stress and trouble, hard to deal with and hard to bear.
For people will be lovers of self and utterly self-centered, lovers of money … proud and arrogant … They will be abusive, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy and profane.
They will be without natural human affection … they will be slanderers, intemperate and loose in morals and conduct, uncontrolled and fierce, haters of good.
They will be treacherous betrayers, rash, and inflated with self-conceit. They will be lovers of sensual pleasures and vain amusements more than and rather than lovers of God.
For although they hold a form of religion, they deny and reject the power of it … Avoid all such people … turn away from them."

Many years ago Adam Clarke made this plea in his Bible commentary …

"Reader, is thy journey near an end? There may be but very little time remaining for thee. O, run to Christ, lest the darkness of death overtake thee, before thy soul has found redemption in his blood."

Darkness is coming again … maybe sooner than you think.