"When the Messiah Comes, There Will Be Light"

Isaiah 2:1-5

 Dear Friends in Christ,     

   I came across an amusing story recently about a man with a rather odd name.  His name was Charlie Stink.  As you might well imagine, from early childhood poor Charlie found himself on the receiving end of a lot of ridicule as people seemed to take a great deal of delight in poking fun at him because of his unusual name.  But when Charlie became an adult, his friends encouraged him to have it changed which he finally agreed to do.  So one day he went to court to take care of the legal requirements that were necessary for such a change, and when all was said and done, he walked out of that courtroom a new man with a new name.  The next day when his friends asked him what he had his name changed to, good ol’ Charlie Stink who wasn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer replied, “I changed my name to George…George Stink, but for the life of me, I don’t think it’s going to make that much of a difference.”

   Well, I think we could safely say that Charlie Stink missed the point of having his name changed, right?  Not at all unlike what happens so often with this special season of the year that we embark upon today.  People often miss the point when it comes to Advent and Christmas.  For some, this season of the year is simply an opportunity to exchange gifts, to socialize and attend parties, to eat, drink, and be merry.  For merchants it’s a time to salvage a lackluster year of retail sales in the midst of a faltering economy.  For consumers it’s a period of dread as we look over our bloated Christmas gift lists and contemplate the crowded stores and the maxed out credit cards with which we so often leave those stores.  And while what we’ve just talked about is what this time of the year means to so many in our mixed up, messed up, and misguided culture today, it misses the point of what Advent and Christmas are really all about. 

   So to keep our focus in the right place, over the next few weeks we’re going to be listening to one man who definitely understood what this season was all about and who wrote about it under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  His name was Isaiah and even though he lived 7 centuries before that first Christmas, he had some important and memorable things to say about what it would mean for the world when the Messiah comes.  In fact, those 4 words – “When the Messiah Comes” – will serve as our theme throughout this series of messages that I will be bringing you this Advent season and Christmas Eve.  So today we consider: “When the Messiah Comes, There Will be Light.”

   Listen once again to the words of our text from Is. 2:4-5 where it is said of the coming Messiah: “He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. Come, O house of Jacob, let us walk in the light of the LORD.” 

   Now if there is one theme that is appropriate for this season of the year it is light.  How many of you here today already have your lights and other decorations up for Christmas this year?  Some of you will perhaps light up the entire inside and outside of your house while others of you might even go hog-wild this year, planning to win the Salem lighting contest, straining the local power companies with your desire to achieve that goal.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.  I enjoy looking at those beautiful Christmas lights as much as any of you do.  But let us not fail to understand what Isaiah meant when he said: “Let us walk in the light of the LORD.”  And what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote in Rom. 13:12: “The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.”

   And to help us understand this whole theme of light better I want you to go with me on a journey right now – a journey that 33 miners went on earlier this year on Aug. 5, a journey that took them more than 2000 feet underground.  It was business as usual for them that day as they descended to the place where they made a living for themselves –  a copper-gold mine near Copiapo, Chile.  But then the unexpected happened.  The mine collapsed, leaving their families and friends above ground clinging to the tiniest thread of hope that those miners had survived.  Finally after 17 days of waiting and wondering and worrying, the miners managed to get a note to the surface that said all of them were alive and accounted for and that they had all made it to a shelter where they were safe.  Then began an intense rescue effort to bring them out alive.  And when that effort reached its climax on Oct. 13, those underground captives emerged from their stony prison to see the sun for the first time in 69 days.  And if you’ll remember, they all came out wearing what?  Sunglasses.

   Just think how eager they must have been to leave the darkness of that mine and see the light of day again.  Well, that’s the kind of anticipation I hear Isaiah describing in our text for today when he says, “Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”  And we see it a few chapters later as well when he writes in the 9^th chapter of his book,  v. 2: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”

   So why all this talk about light?  What’s the big deal?  Or to put it another way, what’s so attractive about light?  I can think of 3 things.  First of all, darkness, the opposite of light, is a very potent symbol of sin and estrangement.  Author Bruce Larson tells of driving on a highway near Scranton, Pennsylvania years ago in the middle of the night. As he was driving along, he took the wrapper off some candy. Finding the ashtrays in the car full, he absentmindedly opened the car window and threw the wrapper out onto the ground. Suddenly he realized what he had done. He had littered, something he had always detested in other people when they did it.  He also realized that he would never have done it in the daylight. Somehow, the very darkness had encouraged and enticed him to do the one thing he absolutely deplores. Then he says, “There is something about light that reminds us of our responsibility to other people and helps us to do the responsible thing.”

   The Apostle Paul captured this contrast between light and darkness so well in Eph. 5:8-11 where he says: “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.  Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.”

   But not only is darkness a potent symbol for sin and estrangement from God, it is also a symbol of God’s judgment.  Remember the 10 plagues that God brought upon the Egyptians through Moses?  It started with turning the water in Egypt into blood.  Then came the frogs and the gnats and the flies and the locusts and other natural disasters, each one of which was designed by God to show the utter powerlessness of the gods of Egypt against the God of Israel, the one and only true God.  And perhaps no plague demonstrated this better than the 9^th plague, which was the plague of darkness.  One of the chief gods of the Egyptians was known as Ra.  He was the sun god and they firmly believed that he had complete control over the sun because Egypt is known as the land of perpetual sunshine.  It very rarely rains there.  But for the 9^th plague, the God of Israel, Yahweh, demonstrated how totally powerless Ra was against him as he allowed a deep, thick darkness to cover the land for 3 full days.

   So darkness symbolizes God’s piercing and penetrating judgment.  Perhaps we so no better example of this than in what happened while Jesus hung on the cross.  In Matt. 27:45 it says: “From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land.”  Then it says in the very next verse: “About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’"  Why did Jesus say that?  Why was we feeling abandoned by his own Father?  Isaiah gives us the answer to that question in the 53^rd chapter of his book, the 6^th verse where he says: “and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”  While Jesus hung on the cross he bore your sins and my sins and the sins of all mankind upon his shoulders – every sin that had ever been committed; every sin that ever would be committed.  And he received in his body the hellish judgment that we deserved for those sins, a judgment that was signified by the darkness that covered the land during his final 3 hours.

   So light is attractive because its opposite, darkness, symbolizes sin and estrangement from God, as well as God’s judgment.  But then a 3^rd reason why it’s so attractive is because light is a symbol of God’s love and blessing.  What do I say at the end of every one of our services?  It’s called the benediction.  Benediction simply means blessing.  Did you know that that benediction that I pronounce upon you each Sunday comes straight out of the Bible?  It can be found in Num. 6:23-27 where God says: “Tell Aaron and his sons, `This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them:  ‘The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.'  "So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.”  The idea of God turning his face toward his people and shining upon them was a symbol of him looking with favor and blessing upon them.  We see God doing this in the land of Egypt with his chosen people Israel.  Remember that plague of darkness we spoke of earlier?  Well, not everyone in Egypt experienced it.  In Ex. 10:23 we’re told: “So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and total darkness covered all Egypt for three days. No one could see anyone else or leave his place for three days. Yet all the Israelites had light in the places where they lived.”  That light symbolizing God’s divine favor and blessing.  And the same thing will hold true for us in the new heavens and the new earth that all of God’s believing people will one day inhabit in eternity.   For Rev. 22:5 says: “There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light.”

   So when the Messiah would come, there would be light: light that would dispel the darkness of sin; light that would deliver from the darkness of God’s judgment; and light that would demonstrate and bring God’s blessing upon his faithful and believing children.  All of which takes us to one more point that I want to finish with today.  And that is that as people of the light, we need to make sure the light of Christ shines ever more brightly in this world of darkness.  And how do we do that?  Simple – by sharing the light with others.  And what better time of the year to do that than this time of the year?  Have you ever noticed how people at Christmas time are more open to the light than they are at any other time of the year?  So why not take advantage of that openness, that receptiveness, that vulnerability? 

   I think we could all learn a lesson from a little girl named Jana who was to participate in her church’s Sunday School Christmas program and who was so excited about the part she was playing that her parents thought it had to be one of the main parts, though she had purposely not told them exactly what it was that she would be doing.  She wanted it to be a surprise.

   Finally the night of the pageant arrived and all the parents were eager to see what their children were going to do.  One corner of the stage had been made to look like a field where the shepherds were.  Mary and Joseph stood solemnly behind the manger.  In one of the wings three young wise men waited impatiently for their entrance.  But there sat little Jana all by herself, no costume, no special outfit.  Then the teacher who served as the narrator began: “A long time ago, Mary and Joseph had a baby and they named Him Jesus,” she said.  “And when Jesus was born, a bright star appeared over the stable.”  At that cue, Jana got up from her chair, picked up a large tin-foil star, walked behind Mary and Joseph and held the star up high for everyone to see.  When the teacher told about the shepherds coming to see the baby, the three young shepherds came forward and Jana jiggled the star up and down excitedly to show them where to come.  When the wise men responded to their cue, she stepped from behind the manger and went forward a little to meet them and lead the way, her face as full of light as the original star might have been.

   Finally the play ended and everyone went into the fellowship hall for refreshments. On the way home Jana said with great satisfaction, “Did you see me, Mommy and Daddy?  Did you see that I had the main part?”  “You did?” her Mom asked, secretly wishing her daughter had had a bigger part.  “Yes,” she said, “’cause I showed everybody how to find Jesus!”   

   And ultimately that is what it means to walk in the light.  It is to show the world how to find Jesus.  It is to live in such a way that people see in us and hear from us year round the love of God that the Bethlehem babe brought to our world 2000 years ago. That is our part in God’s great drama that we call life, and, as Jana put it so well, it is the main part.

     Amen.