His Light and Fullness: (In Darkness And Void)

By Dustin Fields

When we look around, we see dark days and empty souls. Interestingly enough, when we look in the mirror, we often see the same thing: our busy days can feel futile, our attempts at worship can feel vain, and the end goal of heaven can seem like a distant mirage. These vain and futile "mirages" are exactly what they appear to be. Why?

What else would we expect to see when we have our eyes set upon the ways of sinners? What else would we expect to feel when we gaze into the dark, cavernous depths of depraved men and women? Conversely, the mirror of the world can be an easy way to look good for most Christians when we see what everyone else is doing. The hard part is facing the darkness and void of our own souls, both before and after getting on our own cross.

His Light and Fullness (In Darkness and Void) is a way to set our eyes where they belong: on the perfect Word of God. The Word of God is the light and fullness that illuminates our dark souls and fills our empty hearts. It is the pages of Holy Scripture, breathed out from the mouth of the Most High, that we get all light and all fullness.

His Light and Fullness (In Darkness and Void) is a deep dive into more familiar and less familiar parables, miracles, apostolic anecdotes, and works of our God to invoke wonder, awe, and worship of our infinitely Holy God. From the Spirit of God hovering over the void of the deep in Genesis to the glory of God being the only source of light in the Revelation, this work is simply an exaltation of the majesty of His Light and Fullness within the pages of Scripture. Come be enlightened and filled.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9798886850307

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His Light and Fullness

(In Darkness And Void)

Dustin Fields

ISBN 979-8-88685-029-1 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88685-030-7 (digital)

Copyright © 2022 by Dustin Fields

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

His Light and Fullness in Darkness and Void

Our Souls Are Empty and Void

The Empty Fishing Nets of Simon (Peter), Andrew, James, and John

Pruning of the Saints

Psalm 91:1

Matthew 6:26

John 1:5

The Fullness of His Word Revealed in Psalm 119

The Revealing, Restoration, and Redemption of Peter in John 21

The Empty Womb

The Empty Tomb

No Lamp, No Sun…No Darkness, Only Him

Closing Remarks

About the Author

Dedicated to the woman with whom the Lord has forever joined me. I am daily astounded at the fruit you bear in and for Christ. My wife, my best friend, amazing mother of our children, and a precious light in this dark world. Praise the Lord for long ago choosing you for me. There is truly no one else with whom I could be one flesh. Honey, I love you. You're my home.

If God is for us, who can be against us?

Preface

The indication is made at the end of this book that I only planned on sitting down to write maybe twenty t o thirty pages on what I thought was an interesting paradigm from which to look at the depth of Scripture: His Light and Fullness. What I did not plan on or expect was to write over two hundred pages that include over three hundred verses and passages of Scripture. I sat down and began to look at creation in Genesis and how He to ok nothingness—emptiness and void—filled it with His glory, and how He brought light into the darkness. Then something happened, and kept happening for about a year. I was immersed in the Word of God in a way that was truly transformative and sanctifying for me. He did a work in me by studying, which can only be attributed to His Spirit. He turned on His light and shined upon His Word; and He filled my mind and heart with passion, understanding, and childlike excitement. I began to see things, interpret things, and apply things at a depth that was previously unknown to me. The Spirit-led illumination of Holy Scripture that is spoken of had now become more real than ever. He has, since He regenerated me, always illumined His Word to me; but this was different.

At the inception of penning this book, I was only two and a half years old in the Lord, but the Father took me as a toddler into His arms and showed me things far too great for any sinner to see. He let me into the treasury of His Word and showed me gold, silver, and precious stones from which all the fruits of heaven grow. There is no arrogant oblivion here, as I am aware that in comparison to the eternality and immensity of His Word, I have only but dipped my toes into the water. The thing about studying the Word and living the Christian life is that the more you learn, you seem to always be given an axiomatic reminder of, Now I know how little I know. With that said, I do see a Christian walk in this nation that appears as more of a stumbling, obligatory stagger. It appears to me that nominal Christians are covering their eyes, putting on sunglasses, and turning their heads, or, worse yet, turning their backs on the light of the Word. American Christianity is emaciated and starving, resisting the fullness of food set on their laps and stopping by the drive-through once a week to grab a quick, topical sermon on how to love themselves more. Pastors and youth group leaders have become the husband, father, and spiritual leader in homes while wives and children long for a godly man to lead them and shepherd them. What's more concerning is the general lack of biblical zeal and knowledge, not just in men sitting in pews acting interested but in pulpits. So-called men of God are giving twenty- to thirty-minute motivational speeches that are sending goats away thinking they are sheep, and the true sheep are led astray. They've traded sermons for self-help, exposition for anecdotal story time, worship for entertainment, convicting messages for comforting lullabies, and the fullness of His Light for a plug-in night-light. The Sword of the Spirit has been wielded as a sign of virtue as it sits in its sheath off to the side. People have come to watch their pastor read from a fully charged tablet, instead of the heavenly-inspired book. America has not come humbly to the House of God to repent but to multimillion-dollar social-club resorts to relax. People are not coming to drink in Living Water, but they have come to sip Frappuccinos and energy drinks as they try to not fall asleep. You will read my genuine brokenness and great struggle with sin in my life, but I just pray that people would come to His Word more excitedly and be filled. I pray this because I can't imagine what my walk would be like without His words breaking me, making me, and awakening me daily. I pray daily for Him to continue to keep the fire burning for His Word as it does not come from me. We cannot create this passion. It is brought down from the throne of He who wrote it, and He wants to radiate and fill His children. It is truly the most powerful gift outside Christ that we have received. It is my earnest prayer that this book simply shows you, with the illumination of His Spirit, the riches of knowing Him through Scripture and how profound His Light and Fullness is.

His Light and Fullness in Darkness and Void

As we step into and begin to truly study the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit graces us with illumination and interpretation, we begin to see very clearly that the Holy Trinity, the Godhead, performs the most miraculous work, redemptive transformation, and blessings from nothing, out of emptiness, and through darkness. There is an inevitable void that existed before the foundation of the world in eternity past. There was only the Godhead and nothing else, but even then there was need of nothing else as the Godhead needs not anything or anyone else. He—They—are self-sufficient, self-sustaining, self-evident and eternal and perfect in and of themselves as three yet One, as separate yet unified, as Creator yet not created, as love yet just, as Spirit able to be revealed through theophanies. The world was created by God ex nihilo (out of nothing), which is an indescribable incomprehensible miracle, in which we cannot fully rest our minds to satisfactory understanding. However, let us look at the regeneration by the Holy Spirit of a soul, not just a soul but that soul we hear described in Genesis 6:5 , which says, " Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually ." Like it o r not, our soul and our hearts are pretty bad and destitute of good. Further proof of this would be Jeremiah 17:9, which says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" One more proof text of this would be Romans 3:10–12, which says, "There is none righteous, no, not one, There is none who understands There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one." Our Lord tells us in Mark 7 that it is what comes from within the heart that is evil and defiles a man. So that is the soul that God regenerates and changes when someone is converted and born again of Spirit, as is told to Nicodemus in John 3. In John 3:8, Jesus tells Nicodemus, "The wind (Pneuma) bloweth where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is every one that is born of the Spirit (Pneuma). God does what He wishes, and we can see His mighty works, and we can discern fruit in ourselves in others. But we may not always see where He has worked, where He is working, or where He may be leading to work from next in our lives. This type of knowing takes careful and fervent prayer and obedience to the Scriptures. This type of knowing involves exhaustive use of the breath of life, and even when we cannot seem to hear" the Lord, He is always breathing life and Spirit into us. Thus, the changing of a heart of stone—an evil, empty heart set in direct opposition to the things of God—is even more miraculous than the creation of the world. The creation of the world was done from nothing; the regenerating of a soul was done from evil.

So what about those who say that certain people, most people even have a heart of gold? Well, if the previous texts weren't enough to refute that flowery notion, then perhaps we will get to the heart of the matter. The best source of knowledge and wisdom would be the book of Proverbs, so let's start there.

Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the hearts. (Prov. 21:2)

With flattering lips and a double heart they speak. (Ps. 12:2)

These people draw near to me with their mouth, and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. (Matt. 15:8)

If that doesn't provide adequate refutation to the heart of gold premise, perhaps the apostle Paul's blatant, Spirit-led self-assessment in Romans 7:18 will clarify. It is where he says, "For I know that in me, nothing good dwells." So hearts of gold? Sure, but more like iron-sulfide, more commonly known as fool's gold. Remember, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. It is only when Christ takes up full residence in us that any good thing or pure motive can manifest and proceed from us. To placate or patronize those who maintain that we and they are good people and do good things, even those not born again from Christ's blood, here is perhaps a beautiful picture of this dichotomous, paradoxical, incongruent harmony that only God can hear and know:

If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children; how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? (Luke 11:13)

So yes, we can do some good things. But let's also take a deep breath, heed the conviction, and readily admit that, yes, we are also evil by nature. The psalmist was well aware of how empty everyone is prior to being touched and filled with God, and just how wicked man is in Psalm 28. We read both humility and imprecation in verses 3 and 4. The psalmist writes,

Do not take me away with the wicked and with the workers of iniquity, who speak peace to their neighbors, but evil is in their hearts. Give them according to their deeds, and according to the wickedness of their endeavors; give them according to the work of their hands; render to them what they deserve.

David begins verse 3 with a desperate plea to the Lord to not take him away with the workers of iniquity, and why would he say this if he too weren't one of them? He is, and he knows it. But he is also gifted with clarity to see his emptiness, but more importantly, he has been given the unmerited gift of being filled. Why do I say that he is gifted with seeing his own emptiness? Simply because it is only when we are placed squarely in front of the mirror of God's law that we see our great need for a Savior; and without Him thrusting us in front of His mirror, the law, we will be lost in self-deception as we gaze into our fabricated beauty and piety through a broken lens. The psalmist is aware that he cannot fill himself, but he is willing to be filled. To be filled implies that the filling is done by an outside agent, and in this case, it is done by the only agent that can truly fill, and that is the Holy Spirit of God. An agent is described as a person who acts on behalf of another person or group or a person or thing that takes an active role in producing a specified desire or effect. God acts on our behalf because we cannot act for ourselves, for we are empty and only evil, and the desired effect or cause we are incapable of attaining on our own. It is only when He fills us that we are able to then be led unto good works and seated in the heavenlies to be hidden with Christ in God, reserved and sealed unto that Day.

Our Souls Are Empty and Void

Think of your life prior to Christ, or if you are hearing this and you are honest enough to admit that you have yet to receive the gift of genuine salvation through Christ alone. Prior to Christ, we were void of true happiness, true fulfillment, or true love. And if you have yet to receive Him and you are aimlessly wandering and meandering through day-to-day life with seemingly no purpose and no real sense of acceptance, then that , my friend, is emptiness. It is only when Christ has come upon a soul that a person experiences a newness that can otherwise never be known ( If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, behold all things are new [2 Cor. 5:17] .) Before Christ, there is an inevitable, inescapable death that resides within a person, a corruption that we are all born with, and it is called sin . We all have it, and we are all dead in it prior to Christ reviving us and making us alive again (" And you, He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins " [ Eph. 2:1 ]). This sin holds within it a deceitful lie that is easily bought and carries with it the appearance of completion, satisfaction, and fulfillment. The lie is that, doing certain things, living as the world and society lives makes you happy and normal and cool and worthy and even moral and good. This is a lie because all of the world's offerings are vanity. All is vanity, and we are told this in Ecclesiastes 1:2 , in which God tells us through the pen of Solomon that basically everything done outside of the fear of God and His glory is futile, meaningless, and without fulfillment. In 1 Corinthians 15 , the glorious chapter on the Resurrection, we must look at verses 21, 22, 54, and 55 to see a short summation of the gospel and the victory over this emptiness and death and sin. In verses 21 and 22, we see that by man came death , that man is Adam. But then we read of another Man, and this Man is the God-Man, Jesus Christ, in which we read, " For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive . Then in verses 54 and 55, we see a powerful proclamation and a rhetorical question respectively: Death is swallowed up in victory and O Death, where is your sting? " See, the emptiness we carry with us in our souls can only be overtaken and won by Christ.

Genesis 1:2

The second verse in the Word of God, states, "The earth was without form and void. The void" here was no doubt used by God to tell us that there were not yet plants, animals, and humans. However, let us not think that this is a similitude to there being no life, because there was indeed life in the heavens. There was the Bread of Life, Everlasting and Eternal Life, the Breath of Life, Life Abundant, the Word of Life, Water of Life, Blood of Life, the Crown of Life, the Way/the Truth and the Life. It is only when we understand who He is and how immense and without need He is that we can begin to see that despite the earth not yet having form and being void of life as we know it, the earth was full of Him, and this is a fullness that we will only know on that glorious Day when we are changed for eternity. Usually, the last line of a song is conclusive in a manner that is intended to put into summation the entire song and its meaning as well as provide a strong statement as to what the whole song was about and why that is so important to the songwriter. Well, the psalms are songs, and the psalmist may have written the songs, but the true lyricist and composer is both the voice and the inspiration. God Himself penned the last psalm, Psalm 150, and in the very last verse of that last psalm, we read, "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord." This is beautiful. Think of a comforting drawn-out note, and then that final return to the original key of say G, and we hear the voice of the greatest singer imaginable singing this last line. This is why God removed the void and emptiness from the earth and filled it with life—so that His name would be praised mightily and so that the Gospel would be preached and the firmament be filled with His praise and His Word. We should get to singing and preaching!

Job

Job lost it all, and extraneous to his mountainous faith in God, his life otherwise appeared empty and void. I think perhaps the biggest reason we shy away from studying this particular book out is because once we learn that Job was never given a reason why he lost it all, we don't want to face the fact that God can take it all away from us without revealing His plan and purpose for doing so. This is scary, and this is seemingly unfair. But we also forget too easily that He is in charge, He is just, He is righteous, He is the Creator, He is the Potter; and we are but clay prone to dry out and harden. He is the one who breathed into us life in the first place, and every breath from birth is a gift. Whether we know Him or not, whether we praise Him or not, we are debtors, and whether we serve Him or not, He is Lord (Greek, kurios, Master). The slave (Greek, doulos) has need not of knowing the Master's purposes for commanding certain tasks or carrying out certain decrees. Let's look at how Job finishes his life though. Despite never knowing why he was made empty and void and having all but his wife taken from Him, he completed his life, or should I say, the Lord ended his life much differently than we may expect. First, why not his wife? Why did the Lord spare Job's wife while removing all his cattle and his beloved children? Let us go to Genesis 2:24 and Mark 10:8, "And the two shall become one flesh…so then they are no longer two, but one flesh." In Job 1:12, Satan, while getting permission and instruction from the Lord (Master) on how to carry out this tragic yet divinely sovereign plan, is told by God, "Behold, all that he has is in your power; only do not lay a hand on his person. Neither Job nor his wife were killed for two reasons: God had ordained their marriage, joining them as one flesh, and simply because God said it, and that is why it comes to pass exactly how He says it will. Even when Job was covered with boils and his wife told him to curse God and die, God was orchestrating His plan to glorify Himself and strengthen the faith of Job, and through this bolstering of faith, it was the emptying of Job's self that was needing to first take place. As a matter of fact, the very next verse after his wife tells him to curse God and die, we hear Job saying to her, Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity? The Bible then says, In all this Job did not sin with his lips…" The Sword of the Spirit has just pierced my own soul, for in reading this and thinking about this, I know that I cannot say with certainty that I would not sin with my lips. Furthermore, in His emptiness, trial, persecution, and unspeakable suffering, Job blessed the name of the Lord, and he did not charge God with wrong (Job 1:21–22). We should not create an image or narrative of a superhuman man here who did not grieve and who was not distraught. It says he sat down for seven days and nights, not speaking a word, for his grief was very great. And then in chapter 3, Job questions why he was even born in the first place, ostensibly wishing he was never born at all as a result of such intense grieving. The loss of all he had, including his children, would definitely make Job appear void and empty, without hope of filling. Was this tragic loss irreparable though? We are told in chapter 1 that Job had seven sons and three daughters, and then in chapter 42, we are told that he was given seven more sons and three more daughters. I submit that due to his faithfulness, and the grace of the Almighty, upon his death, he was ushered into heaven by twenty children as they all sang, "Holy, holy, holy, Daddy, the Lord is full of glory! In the end of the book, Job was emptied one last time before the Lord made him to overflow with blessing. He cries to the Lord, But now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. It is only when we truly see the Lord that we can become empty and void of self, thus rendering us available for the Lord to both fill us and use us for His kingdom purposes. The last verse of Job tells us of just how blessed an otherwise difficult life was. It says, So Job died, old and full of days." So Job was in complete darkness and emptiness, as the Lord permitted the unspeakable loss he went through, but we must persevere and know that all things work for good to those who love God and are the called according to His purposes (Rom. 8:28). In the end, Job was filled to overflowing.

Ezekiel 37: Dry Bones

I think it would be fair to postulate the correlation between that which is empty or void and that which is dry or dead. The valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37 is symbolic of salvation, but not just a salvation where one thinks they have been saved by praying a prayer and going to church once a week and trying not to swear or abstaining from drinking alcohol. This is regeneration, and it precedes true faith, and it can only come when the breath of God breathes into us, and when the blood of Christ cleanses