The Treasures Of Darkness

THE TREASURES OF DARKNESS

I will give thee the treasures of darkness. Isa. 45:3.

He discovereth deep things out of darkness. Job 12:22.

God has assured us that there are treasures in the darkness. He has promised us "He discovereth deep things out of darkness"……but still

I. DARKNESS IS DREADED BY MOST PEOPLE

Most children are afraid of the dark. Young people who are full of life and vitality often times fear darkness also. Older folks often fear driving in the dark ….

1. Wicked individuals up to no good operate in the darkness of night

Men and woman are robbed and beaten in the dark

No one likes to be in a gang infested part of town after dark

2. We have all heard the expression Woman of the night…

Wayward daughters and wayward sons roaming the streets under the cover of darkness

What's the first thing you do when you go camping? You build a fire for comfort

and safety! What's the first thing you do when you get home at night….turn on a light.

3. Storms are even more dreadful if they comes in the darkness of night.

Sickness that torments a household is worse if it comes at night. An earthquake has its horrors intensified and multiplied if it comes, swallowing up houses and cities, in the night.

War, with the sound of whizing bullets and mortars, grenades and airplanes roaring overhead is made more terrible when it takes place in the darkness of the night.

Man has always dreaded the darkness from the garden until today

4. Jeremiah the prophet of old puts it this way in Lam 3:6

"He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old"

The Psalmist says the same thing in different words in Psalm 74:20

"For the dark places of the earth are full of the habitants of cruelty

5. Job declares in Job 24:16 how evil men carry out their wickedness in the darkness of night

"In the dark they dig through houses, which they had marked for themselves in the daytime: they knew not the light"

6. Solomon shows how shameful deceit works under cover of the darkness.

In Prov 7:8,9 And he went to her house, In the twilight, in the evening, in the black and dark night"

But something you may not have thought about is this…………………

II. DARKNESS HAS IT'S GREAT TREASURES.

Listen carefully as I read the following scriptures:

"Thou hast visited me in the night" (Psalm 17:3).

"In the night, his song shall be with me" (Psalm 42:8).

"At midnight, I will arise and give thanks" (Psalm 119:62).

Acts 16:25 informs us that Paul & Silas prayed and sang at midnight

They probably sang the 119th Psalm (if they did ….they shouted out vs 62 loud and clear

In the middle of their darkness both physical and spiritual THEY FOUND TREASURE IN THE DARKNESS…So…..what are the treasures of darkness? Let us SEE

I. FIRST UNDERSTAND THAT DARKNESS SYMBOLIZES SIN FOR US

Job 5:14 says "They meet with darkness in the daytime"

For sinners, even in noonday ……the brightness, is as darkness.

Sin is,….and always has been ……and always will be darkness…..and not light.

The person on drugs is walking in midnight …..at noonday, meeting with darkness in

the daytime. The obsessive gambler is walking in the black of night …..at noonday.

The adulterer walks in darkness at noonday. The liar walks in darkness in the

daytime. The cheat and the fraud walk in the darkness at noon-time.

Every worker of iniquity meets with darkness in the daytime.

How true it is that "the way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not" (Prov.

4:19).

Someone is surely thinking "Where is there any treasure in the darkness in respect to sin?"

Let me ask you something…. is it not a priceless thing to know that darkness symbolizes sin and thus warns us against yielding to sin? …Is that not treasure indeed? ….

You look into a dark alley and you are warned of danger…You toss a rock into a dark crevasse and you listen as it bounces for minutes downward

If I were a sea captain, I would consider as treasure the lighthouse, that warned me of danger. Lighthouses are not placed on our rocky shores for adornment, but to warn vessels of danger. Buoys are ugly, but they tell us where the rocks are along the coast.

Years ago I was hunting and almost walked on a rattle snake …..He got my attention in a hurry. The rattle startled me …but it gave a timely warning as to something more dreadful. When I thought of his poisonous fangs, I was glad for the buzz of his rattles.

So, one great treasure of the darkness ….is that in what it symbolizes as to sin ……it is valuable.