when the lights go out. The words of our text were addressed to the Jewish remnant at a time when they did not really know what God was doing in their lives. But they have an application to God's people today who may be facing a similar thing. One writer said, and I quote, we seldom learn anything new about God except through the darkness. That's quite a profound statement. Alexander McLarnon, a very well-known preacher of the past said, every affliction comes with a message from the heart of God. Yes, there are times that we call the dark night of the soul. There's no doubt about that. However, the prophet here reminds us that even in those times of doubt and darkness and despair, somewhere standing in the shadows, you'll find Jesus. And you'll always recognize him by the nail prints in his hands. Now, three simple things that I want to highlight from our text tonight, especially about the people that are addressed here in this particular text. In the first place, we have the testimony of these people. In verse 10, the prophet asks, who is he that feareth the Lord and that obeyeth the voice of a servant? Now, there are two features here or two characteristics of the people that he is addressing. And this question implies that there were not many such people among them. There wasn't a great majority of people who were fearing the Lord and obeying the Lord. That was the sad thing in his time. And some things just never change. That's the way it is. Now that word feareth speaks to us of living in a constant state of reverence or respect for a supernatural being. And in this case, of course, I'm referring to the Lord Jehovah himself. The Bible does say that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. I read in Psalm 36 today in verse one about the transgressor. And the Bible says there is no fear of God before his eyes. So obviously the people that Isaiah is addressing here are God's people. He's not referring here to the transgressor or the godly. This says a word exclusively to those who have been regenerated by the Spirit, redeemed by the Son, and received into the family of God. So that's the first thing. These people feared the Lord. And then he says, who is among you that obeyeth the voice of a servant? And that word obeyeth is an interesting word. It means one hearing with intelligence. And it could be used of a soldier giving complete attention to what his superior has demanded of him. So the order comes from the high command to do a certain thing. The faithful soldier who has given his attention to his commander will seek to obey that command implicitly. It's a wonderful picture we have here. And so this is directed to those who have yielded themselves to the will of God, they have been mindful of the heart of God, and they are attentive to the voice of God. Now someone said, you can never go wrong when you choose to obey God. You can never go wrong when you choose to obey God. There's an old Chinese proverb I read a while back. And it says, no man is a successful commander who has not first learned to obey. So this command or this question is put to these people who feared the Lord. Now, if you fear the Lord with all of your heart, and if you have submitted yourself to him, then following on from that, there will be the obedience to his command and his will and his word. So we have a fear of God in our hearts then, it will naturally follow on that we will obey his word and trust in his leading. So he is informing us, that is Isaiah, to these particular people who will face times of trial and difficulties. Yes, they fear God and they obey his word, but at the same time, Along the pathway of life, they're going to meet with trials and troubles and tribulations. So that's something we need to keep in mind. The testimony of these people, they fear the Lord, they obey the Lord, they're walking with Him, they're right with God, they're well-pleasing in His sight, there's no sin in their hearts. Well, we never get free from the burden of sin, but there's nothing here that is wrong with these people who fear and obey. They're trusting in the Lord. They're seeking to please Him. They're walking with Him. So to fear the Lord and obey Him is to show reverence for Him that we may do all things pleasing in His sight. So that's the testimony of the people. But then we have the trial of the people. For in the middle of the verse, Isaiah graphically depicts the trial being faced by these believers that walketh in darkness. You wouldn't expect to read that of a people who fear God, of a people who are obeying him, but they're walking in darkness at this particular time. And the picture he portrays is of a man on a journey. And we all have gone on a journey at some point of time. And as he walks, suddenly the light is withdrawn. Shortly after I was ordained, I had to preach at the next ordination service, or installation service. And it was the Reverend Ali Chambers was being installed in Antrim Church. It wasn't a new church, so they had to go to an orange hall. And all the leaders of the church were there, Dr. Paisley was there, and so on, and I was the preach first. And I just got up to the podium, I read the scriptures, I was trembling, I was afraid. Read the scriptures, I began to preach and the lights went out. I hope these lights stay on all night, I can't see my notes, if that's the problem. So there was a hush, I didn't know what to do, I couldn't preach the message without seeing the notes that I had before me, I was trembling. And so it seemed an eternity before the men got things sorted out and the lights came on, but that was the end of the night for me. I couldn't get back my train of thought after that, and I had to go on. I'm sure the people had to endure me for a wee while anyway. The lights were out. And so the light is suddenly withdrawn, and darkness rushes in, so that they walk in darkness, though children of the light, they're in darkness. And just like Paul and his company in Acts chapter 27 verse 20, they saw no sun or stars in many days and all hope that we should be saved was gone. Out in the sea, no sun, no stars, no light, they're in the darkness. Well, they had to trust in God. Now the Hebrew text indicates he walks in deep darkness without a glimmer of light to guide him. That's what it literally means here. So when there is light, you know where you are. You can see where you're going. You can read the road signs. If they're clean enough, you can see the road signs, and you know how far it is to the end of the journey. You can see the obstacles in the road. A cat may run out, a dog may run out, whatever, some other kind of animal. You can see an obstacle in the road. You can distinguish a friend from a foe. You can see these things. But in the darkness, you have none of these. You feel alone. You feel abandoned. You feel forsaken. So you can imagine the situation. The lights go out. You don't know where you're at, where you're going. You can't see the obstacles in the way. And so you're in the dark. You feel abandoned. You feel alone and forsaken. Now Richard Foster calls the experience, this experience, the Sahara of the heart. Another writer describes it as the dark night of the soul, when no light is thrown on the why or the suffering, when the usual means of grace and prayer, the word and worship and singing have no effect upon your driven spirits. The lights have gone out you see. No light has been thrown upon your pathway. Why this? Why that? Why the other thing? Why am I suffering this? Why am I going through this? And it can be very difficult. Oh, I read. I pray. I try to pray. I want to sing. I want to praise the Lord and do all of these things. I've tried that many a time too. And still the darkness remains. The darkness mentioned here is a darkness of discipline. sin for discipline. Oswald Chambers said in one of his sermons, God sometimes would draw his conscious blessings to teach us to trust him more perfectly. And it is this darkness that God often uses in the lives of his saints. It's the dark time of trial and testing, of purging and proving, of learning and leaning and trusting in God. The gold must be put into the furnace. Thomas Watson said of trials, God's rod is a pencil to draw Christ's image more distinctly upon us. Isn't that a wonderful thought? This is what the Lord's doing with our trials and troubles and tribulations. It's the pencil of God drawing a more perfect image of Christ. upon us. Do we know what this darkness is? It's the absence of light. Now for years, and I've read this and I had a smile on my face when I read it, I read the story. There was a time when beautiful singing canaries The best singing canaries in the world were imported from Hatz. It's actually spelled H-A-R-Z, but it's pronounced as far as I can make out, Hatz, H-A-T-Z. This was the Hatz Mountain in Germany. However, during World War I, because of the war, they couldn't import these birds. They couldn't obtain these birds. So there was a wise guy, a dealer from New York, and he thought about this idea by which he hoped to train ordinary Canaries to sing as sweetly as the ones imported from Germany. So I'm smiling now at the story, and I'm reading it a little bit more. And then the bright idea was he had the songs of the German canaries recorded, and then he played these songs to the canaries that he had raised himself locally. I'm really getting into a giggle now when I'm reading this story. This can't be true. This can't be right. So he has recorded these canaries singing, and then he plays them back to these domestic birds. And at first, he met with a little success. I'm still laughing. Then he made a discovery. If he covered the cages of the canaries with the dark cloths completely, shutting out the light, the birds soon learned to sing like those famous canaries from Germany. Oh, when the light was removed and they're in the dark, they began to sing like the German canaries. And many times we find that God seems to place the cloth of darkness over the windows of our life, shutting out the light. It's a hard place to get to, or be in, rather. It's a hard place to stay in. And there appears to be not a ray of light at the end of our spiritual tunnel that's hidden, that cannot be seen. These are difficult times. These are trying times when there seems to be no hope. Samuel Rutherford, a great Scottish divine, said, I bless the Lord that our troubles come through Christ's fingers and that he casteth sugar among them. He sweetens our trials. Isn't that amazing? You found out yourself. He always knows how to sweeten our trials. Affliction makes the Bible a new book to us. I've discovered that. When you're on your knees in desperation crying to God, and you're having the Bible in front of you there on the chair or the stool, you're on your face before God calling upon him, oh, the book becomes a living book, a fresh book. You see things you never saw before. They begin to live to you. Why? Because you're in the darkness. You need light. You've got a burden, you need to lift it. You've got a care that needs to be cast upon him. And so that's the way he ministers. He puts the dark cloth over the cage. He lets us stay for a time in the darkness. Not a ray of light at all. And it seems hopeless. And then he brings us to our knees. And we bow and bend at him and begin to cry to the Lord. We begin to sing like those home-grown canaries, if you like. We can sing sweetly to the Lord. And another quotation from Thomas Brooks. He said, afflictions are a golden key by which the Lord opens the rich treasures of his word to his people. It's also a hand made to prayer, to lead us to a neglected mercy seat. I wonder, has the mercy seat been neglected of late? Has the mercy seat been neglected of late? Are we failing in our duty? Are we failing in our responsibilities to the Lord? It weans us away from this present evil world. His voice says, arise ye and depart, for this is not your rest. Make it two, verse 10. That's the word of God. It discovers the plague of our own hearts to humble us, to teach us to lean heavy on the beloved. Some Christians never shine so brightly as in the midnight of sorrow, Acts chapter 16. Paul and Silas, they've been beaten. They're not feeling good physically. They've been incarcerated in the prison there, the inner prison of the cell in Philippi at midnight. Oh, they can't sleep. They're in pain. Their backs are aching. It's cold. Maybe the rats are crawling over their bodies. Who can tell? There, in the midnight of sorrow, they began to sing. They began to praise the Lord. And the Lord turned the situation around. So you have the testimony of the people. Who is he that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of a servant? Then in the second place, the trial of the people. They're walking in darkness. It's hard to take in. And then finally, there's the trust of the people from our text. Thank God the verse doesn't end with the darkness. And hath no light, let him, this is what we're exhorted to do, let him trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon his God. And that word Lord there is in capital letters, small capitals, that simply means Jehovah. Jehovah, literally the one who is who he is. It's Jehovah. and we are to rest our trust in Him. Now some folk treat God as a lawyer, like a lawyer. They only go to Him when they're in trouble. Oh, we miss so much when that's the case. The best time is to praise Him when you're feeling well, on top of the mountain, drawing the eye into His presence to give Him all the praise and all the glory. Yes, we find relief in our dark times and times of distress, Normally, naturally, we should be praising the Lord for all his goodness and mercy shown to us. Hudson Taylor said, all great saints have been weak men who did great things for God because they believe that God will be with them, even in dark times. Maybe you're experienced in darkness and you're not holding on to him. The Lord's holding on to you. He's undergirding you with His everlasting arms. He's holding you up, keeping you afloat in the sea of life, drawing us back when we fail, lifting us up when we fall, drying away the falling tear when we're sad, bringing comfort to our hearts when we're lonely and defeated and distraught and distressed. He has never lost his grip, and he never will. We're told here, let him trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon his God. So Isaiah says that the one walking in darkness is to rely on God. Robert Murray McShane said he was a great man who died in his 30th year from Dundee in Scotland. This is what he said. A dark night makes Jesus bright. Now, the wise men, they saw a star that was bright. It's described as his star. Saw his star on a dark night. And Christ is described in the Bible as the star. He's our star. And he makes a dark night bright. Amen. Praise be the name of the Lord. Now the word stay that is used here is an interesting word. It means to lean for support. to lean for support. It's a root word from which we derive our word staff. It may not mean as much to us nowadays, but in the days of our tax, the staff was widely associated with the shepherd. It was something he used to guide his sheep. You know, a little lamb falls over the precipice. He takes the staff and and he reaches down and hooks onto the legs and maybe lifts it out of a pit or from over the precipice. It's used for that. But then there are times when he's walking along, my rod and my staff, they comfort me. He's a shepherd and he leans upon the staff as he walks through the fields or the rocky ground or wherever it is. He's leaning upon the staff. Jacob worshipped God leaning upon the staff. leaning on something. So we have this thought of the staff and the shepherd used it to tend to the sheep and to use it for support. He leaned on that staff and that staff kept him from falling. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thy rod and thy staff. They comfort me. There's the staff again. They comfort me. They support me as the meaning of the word comfort. It reminds me of Proverbs 3, trust in the Lord with all in heart and lean not upon thine own understanding. In times of darkness we need to stay in God, to lean on him for support. You get the idea? There's the stealth, we're leaning upon him. The bride coming up out of the wilderness in the Son of Saul, leaning upon her beloved, leaning upon him, casting all your care upon him, leaning on the beloved, believing in Christ for support. In a book called God's Power to Triumphant, it tells of a woman who all her life had been sheltered and somewhat pampered by her family. She was the youngest of five children. She had never known what it was to be alone because the family did everything together. They worked together, they played together, they sang together, they worshipped together. But she found herself at a time in life when her parents and her brother and her three sisters had all been taken from her. And the last two, there was only about a month of difference between their deaths. She suddenly found herself alone. in an empty house. She'd never had a key, for there was always someone there in the house to let her in when she returned home. Always someone there. Now there was no one. For a few weeks a niece came along to stay with her, but then that had to come to an end. So she drove the niece down to the station, left her there, and then she returned home. She pulled out the key for the first time, by the way, to open the door, for someone was always there to let her in. So that's the first time in life when she walked into that house all alone. And as she walked up the steps, she prayed, oh God, help me. Oh God, help me. The first thing she did was to go to the closet. She walked to the closet. And as she did so, she switched on the radio so that there would be some music or some sound in all the empty rooms. So you get the picture. She's praying, oh God, help me. She's heading to the closet. It's on the radio. She hangs up her coat there. And just at that particular time on the radio, she heard the words being sung. No, never alone. No, never alone. He promised never to leave me alone. Never to leave me alone. It was the old fashioned. revival quartet singing. And she said, this is what she said, I quote, to me, it was the voice of God and answer to the cry of my heart. I realized this never before that my Lord was there with me and that he would never leave me alone. Isn't that a wonderful book? Never alone. And from that moment, she said, I'd been depending upon my family all my life, but from that moment on, I learned to depend on Him, to lean upon Him. That's the answer. As the redeemed of God, we're going to face times of trial and doubts and whatever. But always remember that somewhere standing in the shadows, you'll find Jesus. and stay upon his God as a vine. I've got this little illustration as a vine doth upon some support. Now faith has a catching quality, a quantity, quality, and whatever is nearby it lays hold on, like the branches. of the vine, it windeth about that which is next to it and stays itself upon it, spreading further and further still. Christ is the vine, we are the branches, we are in union with him, we stay upon him in the times of need. So let me just finish by quoting the verse again. Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light? Let them trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon him. There's the testimony of these people. There's the trial of these people. They're walking in darkness. And then there is the trust of these people. They're to trust in the Lord. Let's bow for prayer.