HEAT AND LIGHT
By Pastor Jim May
Scriptures used: Mark 8:22-25; Matthew 4:16; Luke 1:79; 1 Peter 2:9; John 3:19-21; Ephesians 5:13; 1 John 1:7
Some years ago I spent a little time as a motivational speaker in the world of business. On a number of occasions I was also a part of a stage crew for other motivational speakers. One of the hardest things to get used to in those situations, besides standing before some large audiences, is the fact that you can only see a few people in the crowd because of the bright lights that are glaring in your eyes.
If you have ever been involved in stage productions of any kind you will know what I mean. The focus of the whole arena or auditorium must be centered upon the stage area in general and on the speakers or performers specifically so that everyone in the crowd will be drawn to that point. The larger the stage, the more light that is needed, and the more light that is directed at the stage, the more heat they will generate.
If you’ve ever been in a situation where the auditorium is warm, just remember that it’s always much warmer on the stage. And that counts for the platform in the church as well.
God has foreordained that whatever produced light would also produce heat. Why? To give you a very simplified answer, reactions that produce heat will cause a release of energy that is often transformed into a light. Brighter intensity also means more heat!
To give you a few examples:
Pick up a string of 7 volt Christmas lights and hold them in your hand while they are burning. While they may be hot, or at least warm, you can usually hold them for a few minutes before they will burn too much. But, if you pick up a 100 watt bulb that is burning, you won’t hold it but a split second before it will leave a mark. There are some projector bulbs that will burn as high as 800 degrees and more. Of course, the ultimate source of natural light, the sun, burns at a temperature that has been estimated at 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface and 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit near its center.
Now, what does all this have to do this sermon? The fact is, that what God has ordained for natural light, also applies for spiritual light.
When we are first born again by the Spirit of God and the Blood of Jesus, we suddenly begin to understand the things of God just a little more. As time goes on, the Word of God – “that lamp unto our feet and light unto our path” – begins to reveal more and more of who God is, what God is, and what God expects of us if we are to serve him as profitable servants in the Kingdom of God.
At first we only know that we are saved and that God has somehow, miraculously, washed our sin away and given us a new heart that desires to serve Him. The old man has passed away and all things are brand new – we have a new lease on life. But as we mature in our walk with Christ and we learn more about Him, we begin to realize more and more, the shortcomings that are evident in our own life.
In other words, as we are given more and more light, more and more revelation, of who Jesus is and what His Word has to say to us, then we can also sense the intensity of the heat of conviction that the Holy Ghost puts upon us to help us conform and be transformed into the image of Christ that we see in His Word.
I am convinced that a large part of the Christian world today has ceased to see more of the “light of the gospel”. It’s as though they have seen all they want to see and they don’t care to know any more than they know right now.
I am reminded of the scripture in Mark 8:22-25 where Jesus touches the blind man, "And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought. And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly."
The blind man received some “light” in his eyes that were only filled with darkness before. I’m sure that the blind man was excited and happy about just being able to see light and to see that there was a world out there, but he needed much more than just a blurred vision. He needed to see clearly, and that required a second touch from the hand of the Lord. That second touch gave him more light so that he could see clearly.
How many of us have only received enough light to know that Jesus saves, that the Love of God feels so wonderful, that Heaven is real and Hell is real, and that the Word of God is living and powerful? We have received a little sight, a small vision, into the realm of the spiritual things around us and we see the things of God like “trees walking”? Thank God for that light! Thank God for bringing us out of gross darkness into his marvelous light!
Matthew 4:16, "The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up."
Luke 1:79, "To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."
1 Peter 2:9, "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light…"
It’s wonderful to have even a small vision of Jesus. But people of God, we need more than a small vision. We need to ask God for a greater vision of who Jesus is. We need to have a greater understanding of God’s Holy Word. We need a second touch of God to open our understanding more, and to help us to see more, that we might walk perfectly in the light of God!
Looking back at what I said in the beginning of this message concerning God’s ordained methods of producing light, let’s look at what it’s going to take for you and I to have more of the light of God in our life!
If we want to have more of the “True Light”, Jesus Christ in our lives; if we want to have more of the “light of the gospel” in our hearts; and if we want to walk as Jesus would have to walk, then we must be prepared for God to “turn up the heat” in order to produce that light within us!
How does God turn up the heat? He uses trials, tests and trying circumstances. He also sends us teachers, preachers, pastors, evangelists and prophets to help us “see more light”. But everything that God does to produce more light in us always requires one thing! That thing is called conviction of the Holy Ghost in our hearts!
There’s nothing like a good old, heart felt, sin revealing, white hot, convicting power of the Holy Ghost! How long has it been since you felt that kind of conviction?
How long has it been since your heart burned, not because of some food you ate, but because the Holy Ghost was dealing with you about some problem in your life?
How long has it been since you were convicted in your heart concerning a sin in your life while the preacher was preaching?
How long has it been since you felt the convicting power of the Holy Ghost trying to make you get on your face before God in the altar and make things right with God?
How long has it been since the convicting power of the Holy Ghost revealed to you just exactly what you needed to do to grow a little more in Christ?
When I look at the church world today, and I watch Christian television programming, and I visit in some of our churches, I can’t help but notice that there just isn’t enough convicting power of the Holy Ghost in most of Christianity anymore to convert a gnat!
Most churches won’t preach against sin anymore because the preacher is too afraid that he won’t get his salary when all the people bail out of the church!
Most preachers won’t preach against sin or preach a message that causes people to get under conviction because they don’t want to lose the support of their board members.
Too many ministries, if you can call them that, won’t do anything to bring conviction upon the hearts of their members because they are too concerned about paying the note on their new church facilities!
Let me tell you friend – we don’t need new buildings; we don’t need all the latest gadgets; we don’t need pastors and preachers that are nothing more than hirelings – we need the convicting power of the Holy Ghost! People won’t be saved with the conviction of the Holy Ghost for sin! People won’t grow in the Lord and in their understanding and obedience to the Word of God without the convicting power of the Holy Ghost! We need conviction in the church more than ever before!
There’s only one reason that Christians don’t want to come under conviction for sin anymore!
John 3:19-21, "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light; that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God."
God wants us to have more light but we won’t budge out of the darkness because we love the pleasures of sin. Don’t thing that sin isn’t fun or can’t be pleasurable. If it wasn’t fun, nobody would be doing it! If it didn’t feel good, we would shun it. But sin is fun, for a little while, until the price of that sin begins to seek payment for what we have done. Then the fun is gone, but we are trapped.
The old saying is so true, “Sin will take you farther than you wanted to go, make you do what you never thought that you would do, and keep you longer than you ever dreamed that you would stay.”
God knows that most people won’t change their ways just because they see the light, so He has to turn up the heat through the convicting power of the Holy Ghost!
If you look at the sequence of events that happen in the life of a criminal in our society there is a pre-determined course that must be followed. The criminal commits a crime; then most of the time the criminal thinks that he has gotten away with it for a while until the law catches up with him. Then he is arrested and brought to trial where the heat of judgment is applied to his life. Finally, the verdict is given, guilty as charged, the sentence is passed and then executed for the debt of the crime to be paid.
That’s the same sequence that we see in operation in the life of every man on the earth, whether saved or lost. Here is how it works for those who are lost.
First, the Bible says that we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God. We are all spiritual criminals in the sight of God. We live for a while as though everything was just fine and we don’t even think about our crimes against God until one day, a preacher stands and delivers the Word of God, revealing to us the law of God and how we have broken it. The Law has caught up with us. The Holy Ghost arrest us and forces us to face up to the courtroom of God’s holiness. We are all found guilty, the sentence of death for sin is passed, and our soul is pronounced eternally dead, to be buried forever in the Lake of Fire which is the second death.
For the Christian, there is a difference. We first follow the same course as the lost until we are saved by the blood of Jesus and He becomes our advocate, our lawyer, in the courtroom of Heaven. We still continue to fail God’s Law and are arrested by the convicting power of the Holy Ghost. We might still think that we can get away with sin for a little while, but sooner or later we know that our sin will find us out and we must give account for the way we live. The heat of judgment is brought to bear as that conviction power of the Holy Ghost burns within us. Then we have a choice to make. We can brush off the conviction, and eventually die in our sin, or we can ask for forgiveness and be made clean through the blood of Jesus once again. Our sin is judged but Jesus takes it upon himself and we are set free by the mercy and grace of God.
It’s the heat of judgment that brings us to the realization that we need Jesus in the first place. It’s that same heat of judgment, administered by the convicting power of the Holy Ghost, that brings us back to Jesus in repentance when we sin as a Christian.
First, Ephesians 5:13 is applied, "But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is light." The light of God’s Word shines upon us, revealing our faults, and sin. Wherever light shines, we can see more clearly.
You can walk through your home in the dark and stumble over everything, but just turn on the light, and you can see more clearly, what obstacles are there, how to get around them, and what to do to get to your destination safely.
When the light of the gospel is turned on, we can see the way to Heaven more clearly. God then turns on the heat to make us change our walk and avoid some of the obstacles, and overcome the rest, so that we can make it to Heaven safely.
The more we allow the heat of conviction to work in our hearts, the greater the light will shine in us, and we are brought into a closer relationship and a greater knowledge of Christ.
1 John 1:7, "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."
The point of this message is this: Do we really want to know Jesus more? Do we really want to be more like Him? Do we really want God’s best for our lives?
If your answer to any, or all, of these questions is “yes”, then get ready for God to turn up the heat!
God is going to turn up the heat of conviction in your life so that you will know what is not pleasing to God. He will turn up the heat of conviction in your life so that you will have to respond by either falling on your face seeking His will, or you will have to turn and walk away to avoid feeling uncomfortable all the time.
Every time you come to church, the preacher will preach a message that turns up the heat and reveals a little more of what we need to work on. The light will get a little brighter, the Word of God will become a little clearer, everything in our life will be a little easier to see, but the heat of conviction is going to be ever stronger because you never “arrive” at the place of perfection in this life.
Those who refuse to allow the heat of conviction to affect them now will have to suffer the heat of the Lake of Fire for eternity.
Those who allow the heat of conviction to work on their lives now will be able to enjoy Heaven forever.
Either way, the heat of conviction must continue to work. Either God is going to produce more light in your life to shine for Him, or he is going to force you into a deeper darkness to avoid being exposed for what you really are by the light.
Let us pray as we come to the close of this message:
Father in Heaven, help us to realize that the heat of conviction is your way of helping us to have more of the light of Jesus in us. Help us today to not spurn the convicting power of the Holy Ghost when the heat is applied. Help us to know that your love is ever trying to reach out to us and bring us into a closer relationship with you. Let your holy conviction fall upon us right now. Let your holy conviction fall upon our family and friends who are lost without God. We ask that you send a powerful anointing and a holy conviction into every service and into every heart that we can all draw closer to you. We don’t want to experience the heat of the flames of that lake of fire, so let us feel the heat of holy conviction right now instead. Bring us into the place where we need to be in you and help us to have all of the light of God that we can have, to be all that we can be in you. In the precious name of your Son, Jesus, we pray. AMEN
