Introduction

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Introduction Merry, Merry Christmas Today we reach the high water mark of our series, Christmas Day. In the weeks leading up to today, we have talked about this theme of light, this ancient candle that was lit long ago in history - this flicker of light has grown progressively and in Christmas it culminates in the birth of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the actual source of that prophetic light. He is not a pointer to the light. He is the light. Today we want to end our series considering this question: in what sense was Jesus light to a dark world? In what sense did Jesus Christ eliminate darkness. Now if you think about that very long, you realize that this is a pretty bold statement to say that Jesus came to bring you out of darkness. That has the potential to be quite insulting. What do you mean I live in darkness? I can see quite clearly. If I was in darkness, wouldn't I be aware of it? Well, not necessarily. A couple weeks ago I watched a documentary called No Place On Earth that re-enacted the story of 36 Jews who hid in a Ukrainian cave for over 420 days to escape the Nazis. Can you imagine this? The men would leave the cave to get food and supplies but the women and children stayed there the entire time. What would it be like to live in a cave for over a year without seeing the sun. There was a period of time in which they went a month without light because they were out of candles and they were fearful of being detected. Night after night after night after night of darkness. There's

no information about your surroundings. Now for the adults it was much harder than for the children. Parts of the movie was from the perspective of this little four year old girl who survived the experience. She entered when she was 3 and she had forgotten that there ever was such a thing as the sun. The darkness was her home. Most people her age would have felt scared in the dark but she felt safe. The Nazis were in the light so she felt safe in the darkness. When she finally exited the light scared her. She was disoriented and confused. The light of the sun was so bright and so overpowering and it revealed so much of the world it just overloaded her senses. Years later she re-entered the cave with as an elderly person. She had giant flashlights and lanterns and she couldn't recognize it until they turned off their flashlights and lit a single candle and then it all came back to them. She had a conception of the world that was framed in by her darkness. She didn't feel like she was in the dark. She felt like she understood reality. Darkness was all she had ever known. As soon as the light of the sun entered her world, everything was turned upside down. What this illustrates is that there are unique problems with people who are born in darkness. People who are born in darkness don't know what they are missing. And interestingly, the Bible says we are all born in spiritual darkness. That is a common way in which the Bible speaks of salvation, being transferred out of darkness into light.

So what does it mean to exist in the domain of darkness? We aren't talking here about information or intellect or experience. We are talking here about meaning. If you ask an atheist or an agnostic or really anyone outside the pail of Christianity, " What is the meaning of life? What brings a person true joy? What gives you identity?"

They will have a very dark answer to that question, because any non-Jesus worldview, must, if it is to be consistent, have a dark answer to this question. Christmas is all about giving us real answers to those questions. Now turn in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 9 because this is one of the best passage to illustrate this idea of Jesus the Messiah as a light to the world.

Background We talked about Daniel's prophesy as he's sitting deported in Babylon. This is Isaiah prophesying of Messiah even earlier. What’s happening is, at the end of chapter 8, we see the Israelites, as Isaiah envisions them, conquered by the Assyrians. They are starving, they’re crushed under all sorts of crushing social and psychological pressures. And they are trying to find answers to their problems. They’re looking to the great intellectuals. They’re looking to mediums and spiritualists and channelers, and they’re trying find an answer to their problems.

Isaiah summarizes all their searching by saying

Do you hear those words? "They will look to the earth" but be thrust into thick darkness. What does it mean to look to the earth?

When you are in deep trouble and have come to the end of yourself, when you are suffering in some way, psychologically, physically, emotionally, relationally

Then you look for someone to help you. You look to what this earth, and the people on this earth and the philosophies on this earth have to offer. You might look to science. What can science tell me about this problem I am experiencing. Can a scientist give me some help here? Can a doctor give me some help? What about a psychologist? Who can help me? I've concluded in some sense that I can't fix it. And so we look to the earth - and we are hopeful - BUT BEHOLD, what do we find? "Distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish. And they will be thrust into thick darkness." That is depressing. In other words. No satisfactory answers. What these particular people want is answers to the question of why they are being thrust into captivity. And while their situation is very difficult on a physical level, it's not all that much different than anyone elses situation. We all have difficulty. We want answers too. Why am I so misunderstood by my parents? Why do my parents not want a relationship with me? Why did my spouse cheat on me and hurt me so badly? Why are my kids not responding to my discipline? Why did my career not turn out the way I wanted? Why did this health tragedy come my way? Why do my children not respect me? Why did my parents die so young?

And the why questions keep coming and coming and coming. What is the meaning of it all? What is the meaning of my suffering and anguish? And this is a question that all men ask at some point in their lives. Why? What is the purpose of my life? How do these events have meaning? We are created starving for an answer to that question. And when we look to earth there is darkness, thick black darkness. The world understands its problems and analyzes them incessantly and understands them extremely well but cannot find the solution to them. That’s why the world is a dark place. If you remove God from the equation what can you say is the reason for anything? If you remove God from the equation then the bottom line is that we are chance creatures. That’s what we are. We’re the result of the accidental collision of molecules. And the real bummer part is that we have evolved into creatures with self-consciousness and this sense of right and wrong. That's a huge bummer because it creates unhappiness. For some reason we feel significant and that's also a bummer because there's no basis for that. We feel like we should be doing something meaningful and that our lives should have meaning and that's a bummer because life can't have meaning.

The reality is that we are dying and without God our life has no meaning and can't have meaning. We will die the death of the universe and then it's over and it doesn't matter. That is the darkness that Isaiah talks about. When you look to the earth that's what answer comes back. It's just darkness. And you

have a couple options: 1. One of the options is you kill yourself. 2. Now there’s another option. If really there is no such thing as right and wrong then I'm just going to go for it. I'm going to try to grab as much sex, pleasure, money, happiness as possible. So go ahead. Try it. Eat, drink, be merry, enjoy yourself.” It's not as easy as you think. The second you feel joy (and it's not easy) you need to push out of your mind that joy is just the random crashing of meaningless molecules around in your head. Love is the same thing.

They have no meaning. No matter how much you try to suppress these thoughts, they will worm their way back in on your consciousness, and like a giant heat sink, it will suck away any joy you might have had. 3. Then there’s a third way, which at first feels very noble. Sure all this stuff is unknowable and sure the world is meaningless but I will rise above it. I will have mercy. I will act personally. I'm going to live to serve other people. I will sacrifice for others.

It sounds very noble, but it doesn’t work, because where did you get this notion of nobility and sacrifice? Where did it come from? There is no God, right? If you really are just the result of the accidental collision of molecules, then these notions of compassion and humaneness are just the accidental collision of atoms under your brain and skull. Do you feel the darkness closing in? The big ticket questions of life have no answers. They can't have answers. 1. What is the purpose of life - there is none. 2. How did human beings got into the mess that they’re in - who says

it's a mess. It's all a giant accident. 3. How we can get out of it - you can't. Your will is an illusion. Your actions are predestined by the random actions of molecules in your brain and the environment you were born into.

That is a very, very dark answer. The more you look for the solutions and the more you think about it, the darker it gets. There is no light. When we talk about spiritual darkness this is what we are talking about. "And they will look to the earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish. And they will be thrust into thick darkness" (Isaiah 8:22). Nevertheless …

"But [nevertheless] there will be no gloom for her who was in

anguish. Why? What is going to change? In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. All he's saying here is that Israel was judged and the land of Israel was brought low, but he's going to restore it. How is this restoration going to happen? Through a person: The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined. We've come to a light. What is the light? What is the light doing? What is the light revealing? Well there is a sense in which their short term problems are removed. There is a sense in which the actual political problems are removed. And he talks about that in verses 35. Yes the yoke of the enemy will be cast off but then he gets to the real source of light. But it's not just political. The real light, is given next.

Do you see what's going on here? This is the real message of Christmas. Something from beyond us has entered in. Something from outside of us has entered the equation. It’s God intervening. It’s God slicing into our situation to bring light from the outside. Yes, things are very dark. There’s utter darkness. We keep looking, and we keep looking to the earth. We keep looking, and it gets darker in darkness. If you're in a cave just sitting in pitch black darkness, there is nothing you can do to illuminate it. You can't create light. The properties of your body don't generate light. You can't work harder to create light. You actually need something from outside of you. And that is the idea. God comes from outside of you to create light. This passage says the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. They haven’t generated it. They haven’t ignited it. They haven’t kindled it. The light just came. It pierced in through the darkness. They really didn't do anything. They were just sitting there

and then, bam, it just showed up. Christmas is all about light entering the world. And that is awesome. It's amazing! Christmas is a message of unparalleled hope The darkness is terrible. Nobody likes darkness. And so when the light of Jesus comes, it's suddenly very beautiful. Finally light! Jesus is a light, Jesus is a star, and that is beautiful. Stars at night are absolutely beautiful. For a moment you rejoice, you see the light. There is a sense that looking up and seeing the light floods your heart with joy. Finally a light is coming. You know it is good. But there is a second feeling that arises nearly simultaneously. It's a feeling of terror. Because just like that four year old girl in the cave, when the light of Christ pierces through the darkness, it frightens us. Can you imagine shining a light in a cave in which 36 people have been hiding for over a year? Can you imagine the filth? The excrement. The body oils. The dirty clothes and garments? It was all invisible in the darkness and then the light bursts in and you are horrified. It's always been there, you just couldn't see it. You see, it's always this way, when Christ shines his light into the corners of men's hearts, very ugly things are revealed. And just like the little girl, the light frightens us. It disorients us. We want to run back into the cave because that is what is comfortable. But it's always better to deal with what the light reveals. When the dentist turns on the light to check your teeth and exposes what the cavities we don't often like what that light reveals. We even get mad at the dentist.

But that is an irrational response. If the light reveals that your dirty, then it's better to deal with the dirt than to run away from the light. Naturally, we want to run away.

The light reveals that we are sinners. This is not easy to accept and because of this it's easier to think of Christmas in terms of angels and cute nativity scenes and Christmas lights and an unthreatening baby Jesus. That's a horrible injustice with the actual story that's in the Bible. But we need to resist this. Nearly every philosophy I am familiar with tries to solve the problems of the world by saying your not as bad as it seems. But Christianity takes the opposite approach. Christianity says, your not as you think. Your worse than you think. The coming of Jesus ought to horrify us. Dorothy Sayers in her book Letters to a Diminished Chruch wrote about something she called the Divine Drama. She said, this whole business of God coming to earth, Immanuel, God with us, is

something that ought to shock us. There is a drama unfolding in the incarnation that should send shivers down our spine. Not because it contains the elements of a magical trick such that you say, "Wow! How do you fit God into a human body. That's cool. I didn't know you could do that."Being shocked in that way is just being shocked at the aberrations, the strangeness of it in the same way that you'd marvel at the strangeness of a cat the size of quarter. No, not in that sense. We ought to be shocked at the implications of it. You see the divine drama of God coming in the flesh has some serious implications to our lives and we ought to be very careful not to cover those up in Christmas sentimentality. Here's her quote:

Do you hear what she is trying to say? There are massive implications to the fact that God became flesh. There are just absolutely massive, massive implications to that. Let’s just be right up front. Can you think of a thing that would have more implications that God coming down and living among us? How should you feel? What emotions should be right up in your throat? We can’t just stand back and be neutral. We can’t just analyze the facts of what happened and mark it down on paper and write a science report about it. This involves you. Your creator has arrived.

The light of Jesus has arrived and it reveals that our hearts are dark and dirty. It reveals that all the things we used to think beautiful about ourselves are in fact ugly. Have you ever got ready in the morning and tried not to wake anyone and got ready in the dark and

then when you get to work and look at yourself in the mirror your horrified? In the dark I looked pretty good. But look at me in the light! So why is Christmas a message of unparalleled hope. You already know why. Because not only does Jesus expose the dirtiness, he offers to clean it up. He has offered through the sacrifice of his son to pay for the penalty of those sins. Do you remember the apostle Paul? You couldn't find a man who was more educated than him. Educated under Gamaliel. He was religious in fervor. He was zealous. He was moral. And yet he was blind. And Paul talks about his conversion experience. A great light comes and actually physically blinds him.

What was the essence of Paul's darkness. Refusal to submit to Jesus. That is the ultimate darkness. Soul darkness is gripping the steering wheel of your life with white knuckles and saying, "No, I'm in control." I refuse to admit my need. I refuse to admit my sin. I don't want Jesus. That was what Paul was doing. He was kicking against

the goads. But notice this. When he finally surrendered. When he finally submitted, he then became a vessel to be light to a lost world. He was sent to open people's eyes. This is what Jesus says we are in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus says, "You are the light of the world. Do not hide your light under a basket, but let it shine into the world." We started this series with looking at the prophetic candle that was lit in ancient history. We watched that brighten into the person of Jesus Christ. And if you are believer you can testify to how Christ has brought you out of darkness and into the marvelous light. And now that Jesus has changed our hearts we are going to conclude with our calling to be lights in this dark world.