The Bible is a book about Jesus, the Light of the world, and how Jesus came to conform us to his image (Rom 8:29). God’s gifted you with bright light to guide you. Are you convinced it works? Or do you secretly let yourself think it’s a duff gift? Are you secretly disappointed with its effectiveness? Could it be that sometimes, actually, we don’t really want to let its light shine in the dark corners of our decision-making? The Bible isn’t there for us to stare at, and just enjoy the glow; it’s there for us to actually use. God’s word isn’t just potentially and occasionally a lamp to our feet. It really lights up our path! “Walk as children of light” (Eph 5:8).

What guides your decision-making and daily living? How do you decide what time to get up? How do you decide what to eat for breakfast and lunch? How do you decide what to say to family, friends, and colleagues each day? How do you decide how much to spend on groceries? How do you weigh up whether to make a luxury purchase? How do you decide what to do with your evenings and Saturdays? How do you decide who to spend time with and what to spend time on? What guides your parenting decisions? How do you arrange your to-do lists? How do you decide what you’ll do on Sunday? How do you decide which church meetings to go to? How do you decide what to say ‘yes’ to and what to say ‘no’ to?
The Psalmist says: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105). In other words, the Bible helps me see the way to go. The Psalmist considers the Bible to be critical to my decision-making. In the darkness, its role is to shine and clarify the choices God wants me to make. The picture isn’t of the Bible very occasionally having something to say – maybe once a week, or once a month. It’s offering me 24-7, practical guidance. “Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it’” (Isa 30:21).
But, sadly, it’s very easy for Christians to act as though the Bible’s light-bulb has blown! We can treat our Bibles like a faint LED that offers no real guidance for our complicated, advanced modern lives.
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“God is a Spirit, and they who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). Something of the nature of God is pointed out to us here, as well as something of our duty towards Him. “God is a spirit,” is His nature; and “we must worship him,” is our duty, and “in spirit and in truth” is the right manner of doing our duty. If these three were rightly pondered, till they sink in to the depth of our spirits, they would make us real Christians.
We Need to Know Accurately Who God Is
It is presupposed for all Christian worship and walking, to know what God is. This is indeed the primo cognitum of Christianity, the first principle of true religion, the very root out of which springs and grows up walking suitably with and worshipping appropriately a known God.
In too much of our religion we are like the people of Athens, who built an altar to an unknown God, and the Samaritans, who worshipped they knew not what. Such a worship, I don’t know what it is, when the God worshipped is not known!
True knowledge of God is not comprised of many notions and speculations about the divine nature, or high and strained conceptions of God. Some people speak of these mysteries in some unique way, using terms far removed from common understandings, which neither themselves nor others know what they mean. But this only shows that they are presumptuous, self-conceited, knowing nothing as they ought to know. There is a knowledge that puffs up – a knowledge that only makes people swells up, it doesn’t make them grow. It’s only a rumour, full of air, a vain and empty and frothy knowledge, that is neither good for edifying others, nor saving themselves. A knowledge that someone has, so as to ascend on the height of it, and measure himself by the degrees of it, is not the true knowledge of God. The true knowledge of God doesn’t know itself, doesn’t look back on itself, but looks straight towards God, His holiness and glory, and sees our baseness and misery. Therefore it constrains the soul to be ashamed of itself in such a glorious presence, and to make haste to worship, as Moses, Job and Isaiah did.
 We Cannot Worship God Without Knowing Accurately Who He Is
This definition of God, if we truly understood it, could not but transform our worship.
God is a spirit. Many people form in their own mind some likeness and image of God, who is invisible. They imagine to themselves some bodily shape. When they conceive of Him, they think He is some reverend and majestic person, sitting on a throne in heaven. But I beseech you, correct your mistakes about Him! There is outward idolatry as well as inward. There is idolatry in action, when people paint or engrave some similitude of God, and there also is idolatry in imagination, when the fancy runs on some image or likeness of God. The latter is too common among us. Indeed it comes to much the same thing, whether to form similitudes in our mind, or to engrave or paint them outwardly. The God whom many of us worship is not the living and true God, but a painted or graven idol. You do nothing more than fancy an idol to yourselves when you conceive of God under the likeness of any visible or tangible thing. Then whatever love, or fear, or reverence you have, it is all but mis-spent superstition, the love and fear of an idol.
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Faithful pastors submit to God’s word and herald it boldly. And they don’t pit the Jesus-breathed red letters against the God-breathed whole (2 Timothy 3:16). They don’t pervert biblical justice or condone immorality. Brothers, labor to teach God’s word to God’s people for the good of God’s church. And as you labor to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12), serve as an example to the flock. 

He lies motionless in the living room, his body gaunt and his breathing labored. His wife of over three decades stands close by. These are sober and holy moments.
I visited him at the care facility a week earlier. A month before that, we talked at the hospital. There he gushed over his wife and how she loved him. When I walked in, he was sharing the gospel with the interfaith chaplain. But now this dear saint is unconscious, days before his death. The psalm I read may be the last words he hears before he is face to face with the incarnate Word. The hymn we sing may be the soundtrack that ushers him into heaven. I cherish this moment.
I’m reminded of a quote from Richard Baxter: “I preached, as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men!” (The Poetical Fragments of Richard Baxter, 35). Our lives, and the lives of those we minister to, will come to an end. We serve and labor to prepare our people to meet Jesus. This is our primary task. All pastoral ministry labors in light of the end.
Imminent End
We all will die. We all will stand before Jesus. The apostle John describes the great white throne of judgment, where all the books are opened (Revelation 20:11–15). All will be judged for what they have done. No one will escape accountability. The apostle Peter charges the church, “The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers” (1 Peter 4:7). In other words, live wisely in light of the end. Moses, likewise, prays for insight as he draws near to imminent death: “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).
We are dying, and so are our people. God has numbered our days. We are not guaranteed sixty, seventy, or eighty years of life. Eternity informs our labors in the present. We serve as men aware of judgment day, ready to stand before Jesus. We are dying ministers who minister to dying people.
The inescapable end keeps us sober — or it should. God will pronounce our labors as straw or gold (1 Corinthians 3:12). Will earthly ministry result in shame or commendation? Leaders watch over souls as those who will have to give an account to God (Hebrews 13:17). These are hard words with profound implications. Who is sufficient for such a task? The stakes could not be greater, nor the difficulty of the task more pronounced.
Within this sobering reality are embedded two beautiful and complementary truths: Jesus will judge, and God gives grace.
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