Nobody Here Commands the Morning

The rock at the end of the headland has a hollow in the top of it that holds rainwater for about two days after it rains, and there is usually something living in it, and everybody who comes up here checks.

First light. Three of them. A blanket over the rock because it is cold at this hour in this month and nobody is pretending otherwise. Flasks.

His cousin is doing an impression of somebody from the store and it is a good one.

He has been coming up here most mornings for years. He is not a mystical man and he would be embarrassed by that word. He comes up because the light comes over the water and it is worth seeing.

But there was one morning. About fourteen months ago. He was up here on his own and something happened that he has no vocabulary for, and it lasted maybe ninety seconds, and it changed the temperature of his whole year.

And ever since he has been trying to get it back.

He comes earlier. He tried coming alone again. He tried the same rock, the same angle, once even the same flask, which he is not proud of. He has been standing on a headland for fourteen months attempting to reproduce a sunrise.

Cousin, sit down and take a corner of this blanket. Because God asks a man a question in Job about mornings, and it is the right question for you this morning.

Have you commanded the morning

At the end of Job, God speaks out of a whirlwind and asks about sixty questions in a row. Almost none of them are answered. They are not that kind of question.

This is one of them.

Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place?Job 38:12

Hast thou commanded the morning.

The answer is no. It is obviously no. Nobody has ever commanded a morning, and that is precisely why He asks it, because Job at that point in the book is trying very hard to run something that is not his to run.

And the second half is even better. Caused the dayspring to know his place. The dawn has a place it knows to come up in, and it knows it because somebody taught it, and the somebody was not any of us.

You have never commanded a morning and you were never given the job, and the question in that chapter is asked so a man can hear his own answer. That is not a way of shutting you up; Job 38:12 asks it directly and expects the obvious no, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a question out of a whirlwind and lays it on a headland at first light with a blanket over a rock. Fourteen months of trying was work on somebody else's account.

Now the ninety seconds, and I want to treat them seriously because they were serious.

Something happened. I believe you. I am not going to explain it and I am not going to reduce it, and I am not going to tell you what it was for.

But look at what you have done with it. You have taken a gift and converted it into a specification, and then you have spent fourteen months trying to meet the specification. Same rock, same angle, same flask.

That is not devotion. It is reverse engineering, and it is the natural response of a practical man to something good, and it has quietly become the thing standing between you and every morning since.

You have been reverse engineering a gift, and a gift is the one category of thing that cannot be manufactured by the person who received it. James 1:17 says every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes cometh down a direction of travel rather than a nice phrase, because things that come down are not built from underneath.

What the mornings since have been

One more thing, and it is the one I actually came up here to say.

While you have been trying to reproduce that morning, you have had about four hundred other mornings. Real ones. With light coming over water and people beside you and something living in a hollow in a rock.

You have been present at almost none of them, because you were checking each one against a specification.

The mornings were not withheld. They were handed over and inspected and found not to be the right one.

You have been handed four hundred mornings and have been checking each one against a specification, and every one of them was a real morning while you did it. Psalm 118:24 says this is the day which the Lord hath made, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes this mean the one you are standing in rather than one you are hoping to reproduce.

And here is the last piece, because you have a mouth and it works at first light on a rock.

Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 that faith the size of a mustard seed, spoken to a mountain, is enough to move it. The smallest seed there is. Not whether you can get a particular ninety seconds back. That a person opens their mouth and says what God has said. You have that standing because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and speaking is the appointed way this works. We flip the switch. He sends the current.