The Breaking of the Day
“Until the breaking of the day.” — Gen. 32: 24.
This text is really a part of the verse which has gone before in the preceding chapter, but it so fitly describes the experience of very many Christians that I suggest it to you now as the heading for this meditation.
There is really no better illustration for the Christian than the story of Jacob. By nature a supplanter and a cheat, and by grace Israel the prince, his life was eventful, his death was a victory; yet we never really appreciate Jacob until he comes to the end. Just as we have seen the scaffolding about some great building, and never appreciated the fine point of its architecture until the scaffolding was removed, so with Jacob, as we come to the close, and the weeks, months, and years slip away from him, we see him as he really is, a prince of God, and a man of power.
There are differences of opinion as to which is the best story of his life. Some prefer Bethel, where Jacob saw God face to face. If this be the story, you will notice that it was when he was asleep that he had this vision; and you will remember that it is when we are insensible to the world about us that we catch the best glimpses of God. Paul was lying at the gate of a certain city, and they had left him for dead. They had stoned him with stones, and he was bruised and bleeding, and when he writes of it himself he says, “I knew a man fourteen years ago, who was caught up into the heavens, and heard things that were not lawful for him to utter.”
But of all the stories of Jacob’s life, I prefer the Jabbok’s ford. It was a very solemn place, but it was the place where the day broke upon him. For one to have a heart-searching time is an exceedingly solemn matter; but, if you will but submit to it, a day of peace and blessing will break upon you, the like of which you have never seen in your fellowship with the world.
One’s conversion is really the breaking of the day, and there is no reason in the plan of God why, from the point of conversion, peace and blessing may not be multiplied every hour of every day. Some people make one horizon of their life their conversion, and the other horizon the return of their Lord, and all that stretches out between is a dreary waste and a constant struggle. But this is not God’s plan; he means that every day shall be filled with brightness, and every hour should be overflowing with joy. “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” And, if he should lead us for a little time in the night, he gives us songs in the night that would drive away the power of the darkness. Paul’s words are an illustration of the subject, — “And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me. And I said. What shall I do. Lord? And the Lord said unto me. Arise, and go into Damascus; and there it shall be told thee of all things which are appointed for thee to do.” (Acts 22: 9, 10.) “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (a Cor. 4: 6.)
I. If you are a Christian and your life has been entirely unsatisfactory, let it be remembered that there are three things that will make the day for the child of God to be darkest of nights.
I. Unconfessed sin. If you have allowed any sin to go without quick confession, whether that sin be against your nearest and dearest friend, against yourself, or directly against God, rest assured that the sun will seem to be obscured in the heaven of your life, and you can have no light until that sin is put away. Did you ever notice Paul’s catalogue of sins which the Christian must guard against very carefully if he would keep from grieving the Holy Spirit of God? Read Eph. 4: 29-32. “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” Then by the closest examination see whether any one of these sins has found lodgment in your life.
2. If self is allowed ever to be in the way, the light of the presence of Christ will surely fade away from you. So long as Paul is in the seventh of Romans and is constantly using the personal pronoun as you will find he does, he is forced to the expression, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” and it is the old figure of a Roman prisoner tied to the body of a dead man and compelled to endure the bondage until death releases him. But, when he comes into the eighth of Romans, and exalts the Spirit instead of himself, it is a chapter full of joyful exhortations, the keynote of which is, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”
If I turn my back on the sun, my shadow is before me; if I face the sun, my shadow is behind me; if I stand just underneath the sun, my shadow is completely out of sight. If I so turn my back upon Christ in any way, self
THE BREAKING OF THE DAY. £1
is exceedingly prominent. If I face Christ, self is in a measure put away, and, while I may not be conscious of it, others frequently are. But if I stand just beneath Christ, with him above me in everything, the old selfish principle is for a time overthrown, and I am a free man in Christ Jesus.
3. Any fellowship with the world will bring the darkness.
A little boy was asked his name by a guest in the house, and said that sometimes he thought it was “Don’t,” for they were always saying it to him. This is certainly true of the child of God, for in the sixth chapter of Romans, the thirteenth verse, we find Paul saying “Don’t be yielding yourselves to sin, but do yield yourselves unto God,” and in Galatians the fifth chapter, sixteenth verse, “Don’t walk in the flesh, but do walk in the Spirit;” and in
Romans the twelfth chapter, the second verse, “Don’t be fashioned like the world, but do be transformed unto the image and likeness of Christ.”
In each case we have a choice we may make. The one means fellowship with the world; the other, fellowship with God. To live in touch with the world is ever to be shorn of power; to live in fellowship with God is ever to be receiving of his fulness. Whatever it may be that stands between you and him to-day, put it away, and the day will break.
II. Night is a very poor time for discernment. God made everything to be seen in the sunlight; and, when one as a Christian is living in this place of darkness, three things are true.
I. Bible-reading is most unsatisfactory. No man really ever can begin to understand the Bible until he begins to live the life of God.
2. God’s will is a mystery. He does not reveal his will to the one who lives out of fellowship with him.
3. Service is drudgery. If ever you find a Christian objecting to Christian service, you may put it down as a rule that he is a Christian living out of touch with Christ.
III. V/hat will bring the day?
I. Quick confession of sin.
At a meeting of the college men of the Christian Associations of the State of Ohio, when I was speaking of the deadening influence of unconfessed sin upon the life of a Christian, one of the students fairly sobbed aloud in his distress, and at the close of the meeting went to his room in the hotel and wrote this letter: — Dear Father, — Last summer I went to your private drawer and took out twenty dollars. I am not able now to return it, but I write to you to ask your forgiveness, as I have already asked it of God.’’
When the letter was signed and sealed and dropped into the post-box, the burden of sin rolled away from the heart of that man, and he entered upon a career of Christian service he never had even dreamed of before. Testimonies received concerning him have revealed the fact that God has simply led him from one place of power and victory to another since that time of sharp struggle when the day broke upon him.
2. If we knew how to pray, we should ever be dwelling in the light instead of in the darkness. In Genesis thirty-second chapter, ninth to the eleventh verses, we find Jacob using a form of prayer which it would be well for us all to copy. He said first, “Thou saidst it, O Lord.” If you would have God’s blessing, seek a promise and hold on to it.
He said again, “I am not worthy.” You, too, must learn that every visitation of God’s pardoning grace or his uplifting power is due entirely, not to anything in ourselves, but only to his great goodness and love “wherewith he hath loved us.” He said in the next place, “O Lord, deliver me.” Such a cry as this from a heart weighed down with sin is always met with a ready response. This is God’s word, and it cannot fail.
3. Keep constantly in touch with God by the reading of his word. “The entrance of thy words giveth light,” the Psalmist has said; and it is no more possible for one to keep
God’s word throbbing in his life and to keep unconfessed sin there at the same time than it is to keep light and darkness in the same room at the same moment.
These three steps will bring the day, however dense the darkness may have been. I appeal to you to ask God to search your heart at this moment, that he may put away the evil thing.
IV. It is a glorious light that thus breaks upon us.
One of my friends travelling in the South noticed a gentleman opposite him in the car who seemed very nervous. When my friend spoke to him, he said: “I have just been down to
a Southern city,” giving its name. “I have had my eyes operated upon; and, while I went down a blind man, I am going home with power to see, and I am almost at my home station, and my wife and children will be there to meet me.” He described the beauty of his wife, whom he had never seen but with his finger-tips. My friend said that, when the station was announced, the man bounded to the door and down the steps; and then, said my friend, “I saw him clasp his wife and his children in his arms, and above the roar of the departing train I heard him shout, ‘ Glory to God; I can see, I can see.’”
If you will but reach the place where you will ask God to put away from you every sin, you will come to the time when God will give you the power to say, “I once was blind, but now I see, once dwelt in the darkness, but now all is light about me.”