Sermon Tone Analysis

Ministry of Darkness

STRANGE MINISTERS

Ron Dunn

Isaiah 50

 

 

        Now if you will open your Bibles to the prophet Isaiah, chapter 50.

I am going to read the last two verses, 10 and 11:

Who is among you that feareth the LORD, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light?

Let him trust in the name of the LORD, and stay upon his God.

Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourself about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled.

This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow.

There is a question asked in verse 10:  Who is it among you that feareth the Lord, and that obeys the voice of his servant?

It is answered like this:  It is he that walketh in darkness and hath no light.

Yet while he is walking in darkness without even a glimmer of light to lead him, he trusts in the name of the Lord and stays upon his God.

In the past two or three weeks I have talked with three men that I personally, and many others, would consider some of the greatest Christian men that I know anything about.

Some I would classify to be real saints of God.

They are men who know God and walk with God, men of tremendous faith and victory in the Lord.

Each one of these men, as the conversation became less casual and more serious, gave this testimony: In the past few months I have gone through the dark night of my soul.

These conversations were all at different times but they all said the same thing:  I thought I was somehow an exception when I would go through a dark night of the soul.

These men did not know the other had made any kind of comment like this.

The first one said for the past six months there has been a darkness upon my soul that I have never before experienced where I have absolutely no feelings as far as spiritual things were concerned.

I would pray and didn't feel that God was hearing, much less answering.

Another man said he wrote a book on the Christian life, and for three months after he wrote that book, he thought he must be lost because of the way he felt.

I was very interested in their conversations because this past week several of us met with people from a publishing company to talk about meeting the needs of people in the light of being filled with the Spirit and coming to know the fullness of Christ, and the abundant life.

What materials need to be written and published to meet the needs of the people along these lines?

Without exception, there was agreement among the five speakers of us, and the laymen, that there is an inevitable experience in the life of every believer, especially once he makes a commitment to the Lordship of Jesus.

That inevitable experience is to go through a dark night of the soul.

For so many Christians, it is unexpected and they do not know how to handle it.

Something must be said about what to do when the lights go out, and you walk through a dark night of the soul.

It is an inevitable experience for two reasons.

1)     The Scriptures teach it.

2)     The testimonies of Christians throughout the ages corroborate it.

This is what the prophet Isaiah is talking about, the inevitable experience of a believer walking through a dark night of the soul.

As a matter of fact, he says that the way you can tell one who really fears God and really obeys the Lord Jesus is how he acts in the darkness—not how he acts in the light.

I think it would be good to give a definition of darkness.

I've worked long on this definition, and you will discover it is profound.

Don't miss it.

Darkness is absence of light.

The picture in these two verses is of a man on a journey.

He is walking, and suddenly the light is withdrawn.

Darkness rushes in.

The Hebrew says it like this:  he walked in deep darkness without even a glimmer of light to guide him.

When there is light, you know where you are.

When there is light, you can see where you are going.

When there is light, you can read the road signs and see how far it is to the end of your journey.

When there is light, you can see if there is an obstacle in the road ahead of you.

When there is light, you can distinguish friend from foe.

When there is light, there is exposure, knowledge, and assurance.

Darkness is when there is no light, when you aren't sure where you are, when you are not certain where you are going, when you are unable to see any obstacle in the road, and when you are unable to distinguish friend from foe.

I repeat that this is the inevitable experience of every believer when there comes upon him a darkness, when there is no real spiritual feeling, when there is no light, no revelation, no knowledge given as to why this is happening or what he is to do next.

It seems as though he is enveloped as he is in absolute pitch black darkness.

What do you do when the lights go out?

I have three suggestions that the prophet has.

1)  Keep on walking.

When the darkness comes upon you, first of all, keep on walking.

A number of years ago, I was driving at night, and the lights went out on my car.

Immediately I did the safe thing, the right thing, the rational thing.

I stopped and pulled over to the side of the road to wait until daylight.

That was the smart thing to do.

That is the right thing to do in the physical realm but it is the wrong thing to do in the spiritual realm.

Probably the biggest mistake that most of us make is that when the lights go out and we come into this dark night of the soul, we stop dead still.

Yet, the prophet is saying that those who trust the Lord, fear God, and obey the Lord, are those that walk in darkness.

The Hebrew construction of that seems to say this:  it is the characteristic of one of God's people that he continues to walk in the darkness.

When the darkness falls upon him, he doesn't stop.

He keeps on walking.

The first thing I would say to you is that when the lights go out, and you find yourself submerged in darkness, don't stop--keep on walking.

Keep on praying even though it feels as though you are not praying.

How many of us find it easy to pray when there is that feeling?

Somehow in a tangible, real way we seem to be able to see God himself answering our prayer.

There is a witness within our Spirit that our prayer is rising to the very throne of God and is greeted there with the smile of God.

But I want to ask you what happens when that feeling is gone?

When the darkness falls upon your prayer life, do you stop praying to wait for the light to come back?

Don't do it.

You continue to pray.

One of the things that impressed me about one of these men that gave his testimony was that during that six months period when he was in darkness, he continued to walk.

When it seemed that he could not pray, he continued to pray.

When it seemed that God was not answering his prayers, he continued to besiege the throne of grace with prayer after prayer.

Sometimes the dark night falls upon our witnessing life.

You may go through a period of time that every time you speak to somebody about Jesus, there is good response and people are saved.

But you will go through a period of time where it appears that every word you speak in witnessing falls on deaf ears.

What do you do?  Keep on walking, keep on witnessing.

Continue to do what you did before the lights went out.

Sometimes a person is tithing—giving God what is rightfully his.

God seems to be blessing.

There are those times when the darkness comes upon your tithing experience.

It seems that none of those things that the preacher said would happen when you started tithing are happening.

Do you stop tithing?

No, you keep on walking in darkness.

You continue to do what you did before the lights went out because you must discover that there is something much more important than light.

What do you do when you are trying the best you know to live the way God wants you to live.

Perhaps there is a wife who has a lost husband.

She has heard that if she will commit herself to the Lordship of Jesus and become the kind of wife that God tells her to be, that God will use this to reach her husband.

Yet the moment she does that the darkness seems to fall.

The light is withdrawn, and things at home get much worse than they have ever been before.

What do you do when the darkness falls upon you?

He says you keep on walking.

Just keep on walking.

That is the first thing.

2)  Do not light your own fire.

The second thing is the main thing I want to talk to you about.

When the lights go out in your Christian life, and the dark night of the soul comes upon you, keep on walking, and do not light your own fire.