The One who is our Christmas light!

Advent in 3-D
Sunday December 11, 2005

Introduction:

• One of the best things about Christmas in our early years of marriage--- going to Christmas Tree Lane in San Marino and seeing the big trees lit up! People from all over So Cal would come to see the lights…some of my happiest memories of Christmas center on the lights: how mom used “angel’s hair” to magnify and soften at the same time the warm glow of those lights.

• Christmas lights remind us of the star of Bethlehem that announced the birth of Jesus, our messiah--and led wise men to worship him. Every Christmas light can remind us that even today that wise men and women still seek to find and worship him

• Each Advent candle in our wreath represents one of the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—as they progressively reveal and unfold the fullness of Jesus Christ during this Advent season—until, on Christmas day, we add the one large white candle to symbolize the fullness of the coming of the Messiah in the birth of Jesus Christ

Let every Christmas light be a reminder…

“That God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ!” 2 Cor. 4:6 NIV

• And that’s why we’re here today: if there is anything that characterizes Christmas, it’s light—the Light of Jesus and the lights we use to decorate as a testimony to him. We’re is a series right now called Advent in 3-D, looking at the ways each Gospel writer unfolds the fullness of Jesus Christ, and the glory of God in his face!

• Last week we looked at how the Gospel of Mark signals the Advent of Jesus as the one who is more powerful…next week, we’ll see how the Gospel of Luke signals the advent of Jesus as the one who overshadows us, just as he overshadowed Mary through the Holy Spirit

• Today, we look at how the Gospel of john signals the Advent of Jesus as our Christmas light—the light the darkness cannot put out! There is a way God wants to speak to us about receiving that light as it bears on our lives and circumstances. For those who have never known the love of God in Jesus Christ, it will be receiving the Light into the darkness of your soul. For others, receiving the light will bring hope for something you are facing right now; for others, it will bring light that will begin to dissolve confusion as you allow that one true light to enlighten you!

But first, let’s be clear what John is saying in the Gospel today. When John talks about that Christmas light, he is not just taking about a symbol. The light of Christmas is…JESUS! Let’s read this out loud, together:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…in him was life, and that life was the light of men…There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John…He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.” John 1:1, 4, 8 NIV

• If you’re like me, when you think of everyday lights you think of the streetlights that try to regulate traffic in NoVA. And too often in this Christmas season the only lights we pay attention to arte the internal traffic lights that say GO! ... the vast number of lesser lights that will cry out for our attention in the next few days—another trip to the Mall, another task to cross off our list, another batch of Christmas Cards prepared and sent, yet another conversation about the frustration and frantic pace of the holiday schedule

• So here’s the question: Will we pay attention to that greater light?

• We all face the temptation in this season of reverencing “the lesser lights”—memories of Christmas’s past, the giving of gifts, the warmth of relationships that are rekindled in this season with parties and gatherings and reunions of old friends

• CS Lewis and others have called these relationships, experiences, philosophies and other religions “lesser lights” because they are GOOD, and they have the light of truth and goodness and beauty to them all… and in some LESSER way than Jesus Christ they all point to the goodness of God.

• BUT JOHN SAYS “DON’T BE BEGUILED BY THE LESSER LIGHTS”-- Don’t stop there! Don’t worship those lesser lights= let them point you to the real thing! AND THE REAL THING ISN’T JOHN THE BAPTIST EITHER! He came simply as a witness to the light. John says “come and experience the real thing—the light of Jesus Christ” because in this Christmas season, and at all times,

JESUS’ life was--and is–light in our darkness… Let’s read this together:

“Through him all things were made; without him nothing has been made that was made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” John 1:3-4 NIV

• One of the first things John does is to tie the light of Jesus Christ to the light at the beginning of creation (see Genesis 1:1-5…). Darkness is the condition of of chaos and disorder, formlessness and emptiness in the beginning of Genesis before God moves upon it…and when God himself moves upon it, the first act of creation is LIGHT: God says “let there be light”, and the first act of creation is the separation of light and darkness. John says Jesus was there when that happened! “Through him/Jesus all things were made”

• Later, when the Israelites were escaping from their bondage in Egypt, crossing through the Red Sea, and finding their way through the wilderness to God’s promised land, God moved again and gave them His light in a pillar of fire to guide them

• John is saying THAT SAME DIVINE LIFE IS IN JESUS TO BRING LIGHT TO YOU AND ME!! To bring creation out of the chaos in our lives, to bring order and beauty out of the disorder and pain of our relationships, to bring purpose out of our purpose-less-ness, and to bring us his personal direction whenever we are coming out of places of bondage—delivered from destructive habits and things we know are wrong…Jesus comes to give us his light, his personal direction through Red Sea passages where any hope and future seems impossible when we compare it to the past that is still pursuing us… and the light of HIS Direction in those wandering times when we feel we too are in a wilderness, or when we feel as if we are in some night season, where we have not yet come to possess the promises of God

• Illustr: Conversation this week with an old friend who has suffered incredible loss in the last year: the death of a spouse, a child almost killed in an automobile accident, and troubled at school, the loss of his job and the chaos that has followed in the wake of those losses His question in the darkness of his grief and loss: WHY has all this happened to me??? So I shared about some of the losses and chaos in our own lives, some of the wanderings and red Sea passages we have experienced, in which God has taught us to stop asking ‘Why?’ and to start asking ‘Where...Where are you LORD?” My friend begain to think a minute: he began to share how the loss of his wife had brought him and the children together like never before, how the one child had matured in character and wisdom through the adversities, and how God was opening doors of new job possibilities… and he began to see the light of Jesus shining in his tunnel

• And I love how the other of Hebrews says it in Heb 1:8-9-- BUT WE SEE JESUS… even in our darkest darkness and despair, his life and light still shines

• I’m sure that’s the spirit Charles Wesley had when he wrote the last stanza of Hark the Herald Angels Sing: “Mild he lays his glory by/born that we no more may die/born to raise us from the earth/born to give us second birth/Risen with healing in his wings/light and life to all he brings/Hail the sun of righteousness/hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace…”

“Light and life to ALL he brings”… You see, Jesus is the one true light for ALL people! Let’s read this together:

“The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world…” John 1:9 NIV

• When John says that Jesus’ light is the TRUE light, he means that it is really real—it is the one genuine thing, the real thing… Yes, there may be other lights, other religions and philosophies that reflect that light…But it is only by the TRUE light that is in Jesus Christ that we can recognize what is genuine light elsewhere

• CS Lewis put it this way: “I believe in Christ as I believe in the sun—for I not only see the sun, but by it I see everything else.”

• By the light of Jesus Christ we see every other light, everything else that is good and true and noble and excellent and worthy of report wherever it may be found…”But among all the claims to wisdom, revelation and truth, John is claiming that in Jesus Christ we have received the real thing, the truth from which all truth flows and the criterion for recognizing truth wherever it may be found.” (Whitacre, Rod John, IVP, pp. 54-55)

• At the heart of Christianity is the “scandal of particularity”—that JESUS CHRIST ALONE is the true light who gives light to every one, every culture, every people.

• One Sunday I preached on that in our first year at SRC, from Acts 4:12 which says of Jesus name “There is no other name under heaven and earth by which a person can be saved” That scandalized someone who decided to leave the church because preaching that there is salvation in no one other than Jesus “just wasn’t Episcopalian!”

• You know, he may have been right—it probably wasn’t a very Episcopalian thing to preach: But it is certainly ANGLICAN! All you have to do is read Article 18 of the 39 Articles that says “Of Obtaining Eternal Salvation only by the Name of Christ.” Citing Acts 4;12, and the fact that we cannot find God by the light of our own reason and nature—only by the light of Jesus Christ.

• And more importantly, that’s exactly what Jesus himself claimed! Let’s read this together: Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 8:12 NIV

• When Jesus said that, the lights of the temple were being extinguished: he was making the astonishing claim that in contrast to these flickering lights, He ALONE can show us the way to God! He ALONE is qualified because HE ALONE has laid down his life for your sins and mine—only his one, true light has shone through the darkness of all our sins as he triumphed over them in his death and resurrection!

• But there is also a wonderful invitation in the middle of this claim: ALL may come to him because he is the light OF THE WORLD… “whoever follows Jesus will never walk in darkness…”

AND WHY NOT—For His light SHINES in the darkness!

“The light shines in the darkness…” John 1:5a NIV

• It is the very nature of light to shine: and up to this point, John has spoken about the light in the past tense exclusively…”in him was life, and that life WAS the light of men.” But the light, he says, SHINES: John uses the present participle of the verb “to shine” to show that the shining of Christ’s life and light is a continuous action

• Even as John writes this Gospel, 70-80 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, “..the light shines on in the darkness…” John 1:5a Amplified It never goes out!

• It shines in the darkness of human injustice and suffering, wherever followers of Jesus Christ shine the light of his life and love and truth…in terrible places of hostility and persecution, like the Sudan, where followers of Jesus Christ gather by the thousands in the dead of night to worship and dance and sing so they won’t be bombed from the air…The light of Jesus shines in the gutters and cesspools of Calcutta where Mother Theresa’s sisters of charity lift the dying and take them home to a place where they can spend their last moments in the light of the loving and caring hands of Christ followers

• Jesus light shines in the darkness of our own hearts: Wherever there is anything dark and hostile to God; wherever we live in the darkness of ignorance about who Jesus is and the high hopes he has for us—His light shines to dispel the confusion and bring us truth and hope! Jesus’ light shines in the darkness of our own self-centeredness and self-seeking that leaves us insensitive to others and unable to see the difference between right and wrong

• ILLUSTRN: Charles Colson, in his autobiography Born Again: Counselor to Pres. Nixon, said he would walk over his own grandmother to serve the Pres, Watergate co-conspirator—so caught up in power he consciously disregarded right and wrong and found himself morally adrift and lost…convicted and sent to prison…led to Christ by Christ-followers across all political spectrums in DC who reached out to him, shone the light of Christ, and led him to turn his life over to Christ… Now Colson shines Christ’s light into the darkness of prison cells and prisoners hearts through Prison Fellowship Ministries!

• We never really see ourselves honestly and truly until we see ourselves by the light of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ light is not flattering: it reveals us for who we are. But even in those uncomfortable lights he drives us right into the grace and the love of God…

• How many people came to Jesus asking “What am I supposed to do with my life?” And when Jesus shines his light into their lives, there is no m ore guessing or groping in the darkness. To the Rich Young Ruler he says… To Nicodemus the religious teacher he says… When Jesus Christ comes into your life, the time for trying to “find God” or trying the latest spiritual technique or fad is over… because we no longer walk in the darkness: we walk ikn the light of him in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and SHINE

The light SHINES>>And the darkness can NEVER put out his light!

Let’s read these together—the same verse, in multiple versions:

“But the darkness has not overpowered it..” John 1:5b NIV

“For the darkness has never overpowered it– put it out, or has not absorbed it, has not appropriated it…” John 1:5b Amplified

“The Life-light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn’t put it out!” John 1:5b The Message

• What John is saying is that there has never been a single instance when the light of Jesus Christ has been overcome or extinguished! He uses a verb that means literally when Christ’s Life-light blazed out of the darkness, and when he came among us as a human being, the darkness did not grasp, or master the light. The darkness never overcame it. Although the world has done everything possible to eliminate Jesus Christ, even to the point of crucifying him…and although the world has done everything to remove him from the marketplace of ideas, from the public square, from the Academy…although the world has done everything it can to obscure and mock and extinguish the light of God in Jesus Christ… STILL HIS LIGHT SHINES, AND THE DARKNESS CANNOT OVERCOME IT!

• William temple, ABP of Canterbury, writing during WW2, put it this way: “The darkness may be greater than the light in the sense that there may be more of it—but wherever there is light, there is no darkness at all!”

• That is the nature of Christ’s blazing Life-light: no matter how small it seems at times, just a match flame shining in deep darkness, the darkness must give way. Wherever his Life-light blazes, the darkness disappears!

And that is why, in the end, Jesus’ light calls us to a choice:

“And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.” John 3:19-21 KJV

OR

“But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus , his Son, purifies us from every sin.” I John 1:7 NIV

• Jesus’ light says to us, “Stop and consider what you are doing”. Are you walking in the light, or are you walking in the darkness?? The Bible says there is such a thing as condemnation—But it doesn’t come from Jesus Christ (see John 3:17; Romans 8:1)

• Condemnation comes from choosing ourselves to walk in the darkness of a reckless disregard for Christ and his truth… or in the darkness of willful sin and self-centeredness and self-seeking…or in the darkness of a deliberate choice to dwell in ignorance and confusion and resistance to anything that challenges your own self-will.

• But you and I have a choice! We can walk out of darkness and into His blazing Life-light at any time… (see John 1:18-19..believe and receive…for the first time, for a greater release of His Light in your life, this Christmas and always!)