CHRISTMAS LIGHTS – CHRISTMAS LIGHT
Notes
Transcript
CHRISTMAS LIGHTS CHRISTMAS LIGHT
John 8:12
December 18. 2011
Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett
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Introduction
Christmas lights have come a long wayfrom candles on window sills or wired to the ends of Christmas tree branches to the more modern incandescent bulbs, miniature bulbs on strings to icicle style lights festooning the rooflines with holiday cheer. To that long list of progress we moderns now add the LED light.
I recently looked into these enough to learn their advantages: they are as attractive as the incandescents, but use up to a third less electrical power; they last quite a bit longer, burning some 4,000 hours; though not quite as bright as incandescent, they are significantly cooler; and finally, they only cost a little more.
Whatever your style: minis, LEDs, bulbous lights or candles in the window, there is one light that outshines them all, is of infinite value and this light will not fit on your tree. It is Jesus. He boldly identified Himself as the Light of the World.
I invite you to reflect on the historical occasion of that audacious pronouncement. You will find it in the 7th and 8th chapters of the Gospel of John. Jesus had for some time been ministering in the northern region of Galilee, avoiding the hotbed in Jerusalem where His ministry had roiled the religious establishment.
It was mid-October and just about time for the Jewish festival of sukot, otherwise known as the Feast of Tabernacles, or Feast of Booths. This ceremony documented in the books of Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, occurred every year at the time of harvest, and at this point in history was celebrated in grand style at the Temple in Jerusalem.
The Spirit stirred Jesus, prompting Him to attend this festival, and He went to Jerusalem. Part of the week-long event was the symbolic forward look to the Age of the Messiah referred to in Isaiah 60-61 and other key passages in the Old Testament. In two dramatic demonstrations involving water and light, the gathering of the Jews were given reminders that their difficult lives would one day give way to the era of Gods fuller blessings.
Zechariah had depicted a union of light and living waters, a perfect prophetic synopsis of the feast: Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him. On that day there will be no light, no cold or frost. It will be a unique day, without daytime or nighttimea day known to the Lord. When evening comes there will be light. On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem, . . . The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one Lord, and his name the only name. (Zechariah 14:5-7)
Throughout the feast the people in attendance live in quickly built temporary structures of sticks, leaves and grass in remembrance of the days of wandering in the wilderness with no permanent home. The first grand production was the drawing of water which occurred each of the seven days. Water from the revered Pool of Siloam was poured out each morning, calling on everyone to come to the Lord to receive the life-giving blessing of the Spirit.
John 7:37 reports: On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, If a man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him. By this he meant the Spirit, who those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.
This, of course, greatly aggravated those who already hated Him. Their hatred, the gospels tell us, was born of jealousy at His pure and powerful teaching and healing ministry. But it would get worse, because later that same day, the festival of lights would occur for the seventh and final time that week. As you can imagine, the finale would be the most spectacular.
For the festival four huge lampposts were erected in part of the outer courts. Each one was 75 feet high, with four bowls, each filled with 10 gallons of flammable oil at the top. Huge wicks were fashioned from the used garments of the priests.
When these 16 huge lamps were lit, all of Jerusalem was awash in their light. It was a glorious scene, and every Jew knew the significance of those bowls of light. They represented the presence of God among the Israelites in the wilderness when the miraculous pillar of fire lit up the whole camp with the Shekinah glory of God. The Shekinah means the dwelling or presence of the Lord. To be in His presence was to be in His glory.
Imagine what it was like on that final climactic evening, when those massive lamps burst into fiery light! The glory of the Lord must have been palpable. I can remember shortly after becoming a Christian I had the opportunity to attend a massive Christian convention where some 15,000 Christians met in the stadium of the Cincinnati Reds. There we lifted songs of praise and gave attention to powerful preaching from Gods Word.
You could have convinced me we were all in heaven that nightso spectacular was the sense of worship and wonder as with one thousands of us sang and prayed and responded to Gods grace. What would it have been like in Jerusalem as believers gathered, some traveling by foot up to 80 miles to be there?
Right in the midst of that rapturous experience, as the Lights blazed and the people praised, Jesus stood in the middle of the Temple court and declared He was the fulfillment of that very light. John 8:12 says, When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
The question I want us to consider this morning is not what that might mean to us, but What did that statement mean to the Israelites gathered in Jerusalem that festive night? Those devout followers of Yahweh heard Jesus say He was God in the flesh. That is precisely what He communicated as He claimed to be the very Shekinah glory of God.
Well, the effect was very strong in several ways. First, it was shocking to hear a mana powerful preacher and miracle worker, but still a mere manannounce that He was the One that the shekinah lights of Sucot were all about! This would be the height of presumption unless it were true. Jesus claimed to be God. Thats the long and short of it. To borrow the words of C. S. Lewis, we are forced to conclude this man was either a lunatic, a liar or the Son of God.
His pronouncement was dramatic, all right, and it was divisive. The religious leaders who were already so adamantly opposed to Him that they were already considering how they might have Him killed, went from disturbed to furious. Immediately they tried to pin Him down and expose Him as a heretic in order to arrest Him.
His declaration was also provocative in that it was also a call to God-followers to follow Him. Whoever follows me, He said, will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. Jesus was not saying Follow me instead of God, but Follow me for I am God. Furthermore, He was saying, What I have I can give to you and, once you have this light, you will never walk in darkness again!
He was clearly speaking of the Holy Spirit again. He was filled and directed by the Spirit of God, and promised that those who would follow Himwho believed in Him and obeyed His teaching would also be filled and led by the Holy Spirit. Chapters 7 and 8 of Johns gospel teach us clearly and unmistakably that Gods plan has always been to resurrect people who are spiritually dead in their sin, forgive them as they repent, and then to come and live within them by His own Spirit in their lives. And the best illustration our human language can handle for this is LIGHT.
The first thing God created was Light. As he did that, the formlessness and emptiness and darkness that was on the face of the deep was instantly overcome. All of chaos was in that moment brought to light and order. Lives of people in this sinful world who come to Christ and surrender to His holiness and salvation, are instantly changed. Why? Because the Light of Life has invaded and forgiven and healed and recreated real life!
Think about it: God created Light before anything else, not only because light is the natural source of life for all living things, but it would serve His purposes throughout all human history to illustrate what He can do in a persons life.
Listen to the words of hope in the prologue to this gospel. John writes in chapter one: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. (Jn. 1:1-5)
He links this life-giving light to Jesus, as he writes, The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world, referring to the incarnation of Jesus. (John 1:9)
The Christmas story is about the divine Light of God coming to our world to bring men and women to that Light for salvation. When Jesus was born, no wonder the heavens burst forth with light before those shepherds! No wonder the Light of that awesome star led eastern wise men to His Bethlehem home!
Hark! The herald angels sing, Glory to the newborn King! Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled!
Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness! Light and life to all He brings, Risen with healing in His wings.
The Word became flesh and lived for awhile among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)
Light: it is purity, it gives direction, it is the source of life. Ecclesiastes 11:7: Light is sweet and it is pleasant for the eyes to behold the sun.
Light shines, it brings warmth and protection from threatening Egyptians near the Red Sea.
Light reveals: when the light of God comes near our sins are laid bare, calling us to repentance.
Light provides clarity, guidance and illumination.
Light when concentrated in the beam of a laser brings healing.
Jesus words, I am the Light of the world, shatter the darkness of our sinful lives and, like the lamp beckoning the moth, they call us to move toward Him in faith.
There is, finally, one more aspect of this declaration of Jesus, that I dont want us to miss: He said, I am the Light of the World. Jesus is the merciful answer of God to the darkness of our world and our lives. When He said the world He meant every person born into this world was part of the reason for which He died. That is to say, He died for you.
The little village of Rattenberg is the smallest town in Austria, and getting smaller each year. The town has lost 20 percent of its population in the past two decades, and as of 2005 had only 440 residents. The reason? Darkness. Rattenberg is nestled behind Rat Mountaina 3,000-foot obstruction that blocks out the sun from November to February. But thanks to some clever new technology, the town's situation is about to get a little brighter.
An Austrian company called Bartenbach Lichtlabor came up with a plan to bring sunshine into the darkness by installing 30 heliostat mirrors onto the mountainside. The mirrors would grab light from reflectors on the sunny-side of the mountain and shine it back into the town.
The project was not cheap$2.4 millionbut if successful, it would bring hope to the 60 other communities scattered throughout the Alps that endure the winter darkness each year. Markus Peskoller, Lichtlabor's director, has also committed to paying for the $600,000 cost of planning the project because of its potential for other markets. "I am sure we will soon help other mountain villages see the light," he said.
In the same way, we celebrate Christmas as the time when God sent his own light into our world, through Jesus, and offered relief from the darkness of our sin. And Christians all over the world who have experienced that forgiveness are called to reflect his light to those who still need it.But before we go to the ends of the earth and Go Tell It on the Mountains, perhaps we should deal first with the Light of God here within these walls. Each of us should consider the offer of Gods gracious light to us.
Every animal on earth can, to one degree or another, see the environment around it, and some animals sight far exceeds ours. Humans can perceive only thirty percent of the range of the sun's light and 1/70th of the spectrum of electromagnetic energy. Many animals exceed our ability to see. Bats detect insects by sonar; pigeons navigate by magnetic fields; bloodhounds perceive a world of smell unavailable to us.
Perhaps the spiritual or "unseen" world requires an inbuilt set of correspondences activated only through some sort of spiritual quickening. "No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above," said Jesus. "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned," said Paul. Both expressions point to a different level of correspondence available only to a person spiritually alive.
Christian teaching, however sound, is not enough by itself. It brings light, but it cannot impart sight. The assumption that light and sight are synonymous has brought spiritual tragedy to millions. The Pharisees looked straight at the Light of the World for three years, but not one ray of light reached their inner beings. Light is not enough. You must believe. The inward operation of the Holy Spirit is necessary to saving faith. The gospel is light but only the Spirit can give sight.
The Bible teaches that it is the god of this age who has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. And it is the Spirit of God Who reveals the Light of the gospels truth.
That is part of the reason it is easy for the believer to see the truth than the unbeliever. But if you dont believe and you wish to, ask God to reveal Himself to you through the gospel.
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