The Lord Our God

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THE LORD IS LIKE THE SUN

He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, like showers that water the earth. In His days the righteous shall flourish, and abundance of peace (Psalm 72:5-7).

For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory; no good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly (Psalm 84:11).

The sun shall no longer be your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give light to you; but the Lord will be to you an everlasting light, and God your glory (Isaiah 60:19-20).

Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge Him. As surely as the sun rises, He will appear; He will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth (Hosea 6:3, NIV).

He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust (Matthew 5:45).

And [He] was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light (Matthew 17:2).

[John's vision of the Lord on Patmos] His face was like the sun shining in its strength (Revelation 1:16).

And the city [New Jerusalem] had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it, and the Lamb is its light (Revelation 21:23).

And there shall be no night there: they need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light (Revelation 22:5).

The Sun is not the Lord Himself... (Divine Love and Wisdom 86).

In the Word "sun" symbolizes the Lord in respect to Divine love, and with people the good of love to the Lord...is evident from the following passages. In Matthew: "When Jesus was transfigured before Peter, James, and John, His face did shine as the sun, and His garments became as light" (Matt. 17:1-2). Because the Lord was then seen in His Divine, He appeared in respect to His face "as the sun," and in respect to His garments "as the light," because the face symbolizes love, and "garments" symbolize truths. And "His face did shine as the sun" because Divine love was in Him and "His garments became as light" because Divine truth was from Him. For the light in Heaven is Divine truth proceeding from the Lord as a sun.... In like manner the Lord appears in heaven before the angels when He presents Himself before them, but He then appears out of the sun. He was therefore seen in like manner by John when he was in the spirit, as appears in Revelation, where it is said that: "The face of the Son of man was seen as the sun shineth in his power" (Rev. 1:16). It was evidently the Lord who was seen (Apocalypse Explained 401:3).

In the spiritual world there is a sun, in the midst of which is the Lord; from that sun the Lord flows in by means of light and heat into the whole spiritual world, and into all who are there. All the light and all the heat of that world are from this source. From that sun the Lord also flows with the same light and the same heat into the souls and minds of people. That heat in its essence is the Lord's Divine love, and that light in its essence is His Divine wisdom. The Lord adapts that light and that heat to the capacity and quality of the recipient angel and person (True Christian Religion 641:2).

OUR RESPONSE TO THE LORD CAN BE LIKE THE SUN

Let those who love Him be like the sun when it comes out in full strength (Judges 5:31).

[The Lord said to David] He who rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be like the light of the morning when the sun rises, a morning without clouds, like the tender grass springing out of the earth, by clear shining after rain (2 Samuel 23:2-4).

He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun (Psalm 37:6, NIV).

[T]he righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father (Matthew 13:43).

In the Word those are called "righteous" who love the Lord, that is, from love do His commandments; and in respect to their faces they shine with an effulgence like that of the sun, because the Lord's Divine love is communicated to them and received by them, whereby the Lord is in their midst, that is, in their interiors, which manifest themselves in the face (Apocalypse Explained 401:7).

Angels turn their faces continually to the Lord as the sun for the reason that angels are in the Lord and have the Lord in them, and the Lord inwardly guides their affections and thoughts and turns them continually to Him (Divine Love and Wisdom 130).

The rising of the sun symbolizes the Divine Love of the Lord, because the Lord in the angelic heaven is the Sun, and the Lord appears as the Sun from His Divine Love (Apocalypse Explained 422:1,18).

The Lord's presence is unceasing with every person, both the evil and the good, for without His presence no one lives; but His coming is only to those who receive Him, who are those who believe in Him and keep His commandments. The Lord's unceasing presence causes people to become rational, and gives them the ability to become spiritual. This is brought about by the light that goes forth from the Lord as the sun in the spiritual world, and that people receive in their understanding. That light is the truth, and by means of it people have rationality. But the Lord's coming is to those who join heat with that light, that is, love with truth for the heat that goes forth from that same sun is love to God and love toward the neighbor. The mere presence of the Lord, and the consequent enlightenment of the understanding, can be compared to the presence of sunlight in the world; unless this light is joined with heat, all things on earth become desolate. But the coming of the Lord may be likened to the coming of heat, which takes place in spring; because heat then joins itself with light, the earth is softened, and seeds sprout and bring forth fruit. Such is the parallel between the spiritual things which are the environment of a person's spirit and the natural things which are the environment of his body (True Christian Religion 774, emphasis added).

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