God's Promise and Provision

Introduction

This past Saturday, we had our Blue Christmas service...which, if you are not familiar, is a quiet service of healing and hope...acknowledging that this time of year is not all candy canes and cookies for everyone...but can be difficult for many.

The truth is...for some of us...this year has been exhausting...and we are weary. Some of us are in pain...physcally...mentally...emotionally...

Some of us can’t wait to put this year behind us...

The world is often a dark place...with pain and brokenness.

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Last year my famiy and I went to Mammoth Cave...and we warned our boys that there would be a point in the tour of the cave...when the guide would tell us he would turn out all the lights...to demonstrate just how dark it is in the cave and how difficult it was for those first cave explorers to see what they were doing.

Sure enough, that time came...we held our boys a little tighter to reassure them they were not alone. The light came back on and we finished the tour. The boys admitted to beign a little scared...and I had to admit it too.

Total darkness is disorienting.

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The prophet Isaiah spoke God’s words of hope to a people who were in their own kind of darkness...they had been overrun and overwhelmed by a more powerful nation and wondered if God had abandoned them. God...through Isaiah...gave his people a word...a promise...that no matter how dark it seems...light was coming.

...not only coming but was already there...God himself was promising to be with them.

Isaiah says a child will be born...a son given.

As Christians, we believe that this son...is the Lord Jesus...born not into a royal, wealthy family...but into two poor, younger people who were not yet officially married...

John’s gospel calls Jesus the light of the world. John 1:9-10

John 1:9–10 ESV

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.

Why didn’t they know him? John tells us a little later...

John 3:19 ESV

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

Closing

When the lights are turned out on us...whether due to something that happened to us or someone we love...whether we choose the darkness or the darkness overtakes us...the promises of God are the same.

God is not afraid of the dark. God is not afraid of the darkness of your life or mine...or the darkness of the world.

God promises the light. God is the light. And the light has come into the world.

On this Christmas eve night...we remember that God himself...became part of his own creation. God...who is light and love...came into the darkness of our world...to be our light.

Angels pronounced his arrival not to kings and dignitaries but to shepherds in the field. J

God promised his people in Isaiah’s time...in Jesus’ time...and in our time… that though we may walk in darkness...the light of God has come.

Jesus...the babe in the manger...the son of God...fully God...fully human...is the light of the world.