Light in the Darkness
Transcript
Good morning. My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. This is the first week of our Give Series. I'm always excited about this time of year, love this time of year. This past week, our church got to, kind of led by the Kitty Wake Group, and Charlie Earp got to go to the Gentle Pines area with Turner AME, and was able to, on Thanksgiving Day, give out about 150 to 200 meals.
And so that's a really cool thing that gets to happen this time of year. And we get to start our Give Series this time of year. It's just a good time of year. I like Christmas. I like that it's cold. I like Christmas lights.
I like that all the food this time of year turns into meat and carbohydrates. Like, that's it. Like, if you play your cards right, you won't have to eat a vegetable again until the New Year. I mean, and if you do, it'll be like sweet potatoes, and they're going to put some, like, you know, pecans and brown sugar on top of that thing. So just eat the top and, you know, smush the rest of it around.
Like, it's going to be good. So we, in our Give Series, always try to rally our church towards generosity. It's what Spencer was saying earlier, that we're gospel people, that Jesus has changed us, and therefore we ought to live with a gospel generosity. That it's how he has given to us and how he has sacrificed for us, and that Christmas is this picture of him giving up heaven so that we might be welcomed in, and so that we get to join in that at this time. So grab your Bibles.
Go to Isaiah chapter 8. What we're going to do today is we're going to talk through some stuff, and then we're going to intro what our gift project is for this year, how we're kind of joining together and rallying together to give our money away for the purposes of seeing God work and seeing him work in us to change our hearts, because it's so easy for us to get caught up in consumerism and to get caught up in what I have defines me and that what I own is what brings me joy, and the Bible says none of that is true, but that our money is tied to our hearts, and so it's helpful for us to send some of our money away to help change our hearts. When I was about four or five, I was at my grandmother's house. My grandparents' names are Iya and Baba.
They were missionaries to Nigeria, and those are Nigerian grandmother and grandfather in Yoruba, and so I was at my Iya and Baba's house, and they had a fairly large house. He was a doctor, and we have a fairly large family, so it was all my aunts and uncles and all my cousins. There's like 13 of us. I was like four or five, so we were all over the place and running around, and at some point I went into their pantry, and their pantry is underneath a stairwell, so it's kind of like the thing that Harry Potter lived in, and so I went kind of into the back of the pantry. I don't know what I was doing.
My guess is trying to swipe some food, and the door closed behind me. I didn't have the light in the pantry on. I was just using the light that was coming in from the doorway, and so the door closes behind me. I don't know if somebody walked through that. It was kind of in the hallway under a stairwell, so I don't know if somebody walked through and just closed the door because why it shouldn't be open, or if I, being four, didn't know that it was just going to close behind me, but it closes behind me. It's pitch black.
They did have a light bulb with a string, conveniently adult height, and so there was no getting to that, although I tried, and then went to the door, and it was locked, and so I began to handle it really well as a four-year-old, scream and cry and bang on the door and yell for help, and nobody could hear me because they were all having a festive time two rooms away enjoying their Christmas shenanigans, and so I was in a closet in the pitch black with the inability to turn the light on and no ability to get out for an extended period of time until they... My mom doesn't remember how long I was in there. She said it was long enough for them to count up children and go, wait a second, we're missing one, which in this house, while everybody's running around playing, was a fairly long time. I was four, so it was ten years.
I was in a closet for ten years because that's how time works when you're four. I almost died in there. I didn't have a can opener. There was no way to get to the food that I was looking for. It was pitch black. They finally come around looking.
They hear me yelling. They open the door. I'm red-faced and crying, and they were like, did you yell? I was like, yeah, yeah. You know, intelligent, helpful four-year-old things. And what the Bible tells us about the state of humanity is that without Jesus, without God at work on our behalf, all of us are as effectively trapped as a four-year-old in a closet, that we are in the dark with no ability to fix our situation, no ability to turn the light on on our own, no ability to open the door on our own, no ability to do anything, but fumble around in the darkness and eventually die.
That is the beautiful beginning of the story to Christmas. It starts off very bleak and very dark and very painful and very hopeless, and then we get the hope and the joy and the peace that comes along with Christmas. Now, culturally, it's a little weird because if you remove Christ from Christmas, and I'm not just talking about putting an X on your sign at your store, I'm talking about if you remove Jesus as the centerpiece and the hope of Christmas, you don't actually have the hope anymore. It's flimsy. It won't hold the weight of the darkness that surrounds it. It can't fix the problem.
If you replace it with, you know, goodwill towards man, or peace, or just some generosity, or Santa Claus. Like, it can't handle the amount of darkness, the amount of hopelessness. That's why this time of year is collectively all of us kind of locking arms and saying, okay, be good to people, be kind to people, because we all realize that we're not. We don't have it together. We're not. This isn't, the world doesn't work the way it ought to, and some people get very, very depressed at this time of year because they can see the hopelessness, but no real reason for hope.
Isaiah 8. Isaiah is a prophet. He's speaking into a similar time where there's just rampant sin, there's darkness, there's hopelessness. He's in the bottom kingdom. He's in Judah at this time. So the kingdom of Israel was one kingdom for Saul, David, Solomon, and then it broke in half after Solomon.
You had the top kingdom of Israel with the top ten tribes, and then you had the bottom kingdom, Judah, with two tribes. Judah had some good kings. Israel had no good kings. They never got it together. Judah had some, but this is Ahaz, is the king now in Judah, and he is not a good one. The way 2 Kings describes him, it says, he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord, his God, as his father David had done, but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel.
He even burned his son as an offering according to the despicable practices the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree. That's what it says in 2 Kings about King Ahaz, that it's the king at this point, that there was worship, it's rampant everywhere. Worship was all over the place, under every green tree they were worshiping something. He even sacrifices his son as an offering. And this is what Isaiah is speaking into this climate, into this time, with this king leading them in utter darkness.
Isaiah 8, verse 11. Let's look. It says, For the Lord spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying, Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy and do not fear what they fear nor be in dread, but the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, let him be your dread, and he will become a sanctuary. All right, did you hear that?
He says, Don't go along with these people being afraid of everything they're afraid of and calling everything that they call a conspiracy. He says, Let the Lord be your dread. Doesn't that sound like a nice invitation? God's like, I'll tell you what to be afraid of. Me. And you're like, Okay, that sounds a little heavy-handed.
That's a little crazy. And then he says, Then I'll be a sanctuary. Because when we have God as the most fearful, most holy, most revered being in the universe, everything else is so much smaller. Everything else is so less fearful. My dad, when we were little, and we'd be like, Dad, there's a monster in my closet. Dad, there's something scary in here.
He'd come in. He would look. He'd go look in the closet. He'd look under the bed. He'd say, No, there's not. He'd go, Watch.
It's just because it's dark. You're scared. He'd turn the light off. And then he'd go, Oh, wait. No, it came back. Oh, no.
It's huge. It's got a closet. It's getting right. Oh, it's right near your face. And then he would turn the light on and go, Oh, no. It was dark.
That was our imagination. There's no monster here. He would come in a couple of times to check. You know, you keep saying, No, it's back. It's scary. Whatever.
Eventually, he would come in and say, Look, I am the scariest thing in this house. And you need to be way more afraid of coming and telling me one more time to look in this room because there is nothing in here that is scary. And I'm down the hall and I'm very scary. And then we would go to sleep because our father was scarier than the monster we were sure was there. And that's what God's saying. He's saying, If I'm dreadful, then you're free.
But that's what happens in culture. That's what happens in life. When God gets removed, everything else becomes scary. And I love that he says, Don't call everything a conspiracy. These people call it conspiracy because it wasn't just before YouTube. That conspiracies were everywhere.
YouTube just helps us find them better. But haven't y'all seen this? It's not YouTube, y'all. It's CNN and Fox News. Do you remember when Barack Obama was president and how many things you heard about what he was secretly trying to do? And what he was going to, what was going to happen around election time and what was going to happen and he was going to do this and there was something with the military and you had to...
Anybody in on those? Anybody in on the new ones about Trump? All his secret plans? Trump is either, he's pitched to us as either a buffoon who cannot put on his own pants or some evil mastermind. But no matter what, he's going to tear the country down and there's going to be the Democrats that are working at this and the Republicans that are going to do this and suddenly, all of a sudden, the Green Party is going to rise to the top.
Nobody believes that one. But... We hear things about the Russians and the Chinese and there's just going to be... And he's saying, look, don't join in. Not everything's that fearful when I am most to be feared. He says, I'll be a sanctuary and...
Pick up verse 14. And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both the houses of Israel. A trap and a snare to the inhabitants of it, Jerusalem. And many shall stumble on it and they shall fall and be broken. They shall be snared and taken. Eventually we're told that Jesus, ultimately the gospel, is the ultimate stone, the ultimate rock of offense.
The stone of... The rock of stumbling, the stone of offense. But there's this idea that God will either be a sanctuary or you'll fall completely over him. You won't be able to stand before him. Verse 16. Bind up the testimony.
Seal the teaching among my disciples. I'm sorry. I've got to pause for just a second. I should have said this earlier. We're going to read a lot of scripture today and we're going to move fast. A lot of times when you read the Bible, it's like a wine tasting.
You take one verse. You swirl it. You smell it. You put it in your mouth. You swish it around. You spit it out.
You put it back in. I think that's how they taste wine. You soak it in. It's like hard candy. You just hold it in there for a long time. Other times, reading the Bible is like jumping in a pool.
You just jump and you're like, whoa, it's cold. It's just you get the feeling of the sense that's what we're doing today. We're just going to move kind of quickly and we're going to get a lot all at once to try to paint one big picture for help us to understand and see this idea of darkness and light, hopelessness and hope. And so we're going to keep going and I should have said that earlier and I'm sorry. 16. For those of you with ADD, you're tracking.
Let's go. Bind up the testimony. Seal the teaching among my disciples. I will wait for the Lord who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob and I will hope in him. So this is Isaiah talking.
Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are signs and portents and Israel from the Lord of hosts who dwells on Mount Zion. And when they say to you, inquire of the medians and the necromancers who chirp and mutter. So a medium would speak in between those and necromancers would speak on behalf of the dead and he says, they chirp and mutter. He says, should not a people inquire of their Lord? I love that he mocks them. He says, I speak clearly and they chirp and mutter.
They don't have a clear point. They're not helpful. Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? Verse 20. To the teaching and the testimony. So he's saying, go to what's written.
Go to what we know. If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. Meaning they have no light. They're in the dark. They have no wisdom. One of the ways the Bible talks about darkness is that it's this lack of wisdom, lack of understanding that you would fall and stumble.
He's saying they have no light. Verse 21. They will pass through the land greatly distressed and hungry and when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will speak contemptuously against the king and their God and turn their faces upward and they will look to the earth but behold distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish and they will be thrust into thick darkness. Okay, so when God is most fearful, everything else isn't as scary. And when you remove God, everything else becomes a conspiracy. The Republicans and the Democrats are coming for you.
Like everything else becomes spooky. Everything else becomes unstable. And then what it says is when everything starts to fall apart, they'll look upward enraged. This is a global thing. But that we would push away God, that we would not worship God and then as soon as everything goes bad, we go, see?
If there was a God, this wouldn't have happened. They look up enraged and then it says they'll look to the earth. This is verse 21. They'll immediately then say, we've got to figure out the problem. We've got to work it out. We'll look to the earth.
We'll solve this. And what they'll find, they'll look to the earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish, and they will be thrust into thick darkness. That without the Lord, all we have is darkness, hopelessness. There are a lot of good things that people are pushing for. There's a lot of good charities and things that are going to happen around the holidays where people are going to say, we need to do this, we need to do that. There's some good things that are godly things.
People will say, we've got to, we've got to, we've got to, the problem is ignorance. We've got to educate people. Or the problem is this, and we've got to fix it. And some of those things are right and some of them, but ultimately, if we say those are the, that's the only problem, that's the only thing we have to fix. If we fail to see that God is holy and that we are sinners and that sin is at work everywhere, we won't fix the problem. Ultimately, it will fail.
There are going to be people who tell you, look, the problem is this political party and this other one needs to rise up. The problem right now is men. They need to sit down. Women need to rise up. The problem is this skin tone. They need to sit down.
This skin tone needs to rise up. The problem is this political ideology, this economic ideology, but the issue is ultimately that we're sinners and we're in darkness and we're hopelessly trying to fix a problem that we cannot fix. We are thrust into deep darkness without God and that is a global problem. That without Christ, there is no fix and without Christ, as messed up as this world is, this is as good as it gets because one day we will face Christ and stand accountable for our sin. chapter 9. But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish.
In the former time, he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. That's the northern part of Israel. But in the latter time, he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. Matthew quotes this, says this about Jesus. He calls it Galilee of the Gentiles. What he's saying is this promise of hope isn't just for the people of Israel, but the promise of hope is for everybody, for the Gentiles, for the nations, that there's going to be hope.
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shone. That's the hope of Christmas. Some of you see the darkness. You know it. You feel it.
You listen to emo music. You watch independent film. Some of you know about the darkness. You know about... Some of you work in fields where you see it all the time. In social work or in police work.
Where it's in everybody. Everybody. You feel like everybody lies. Everybody cheats. Everybody. I got a speeding ticket this past... about a week ago.
I'm part of the problem. Because I am one of the reasons why we need police officers. Because if they weren't there, I would be doing whatever the heck I want on I-95 on my vacation. I would just be driving as fast as I possibly could. And I was until he pulled me over. And then I slowed down.
And I tried to tell my wife the odds of me getting two tickets in the same day are very slim. But the truth is we're all part of this problem. And he says there's hope. Light will shine. Verse 3. You have multiplied the nation.
You have increased its joy. They rejoice before you as joy at the harvest as they are glad when they divide the spoil. I love that. The joy of the harvest that when... If some of you have a... Your work is seasonal and there's a harvest time.
There's this... Oh man, this is when it's booming. My parents... I grew up in a family where we sold swimming pools in the summer. We could do whatever we want. And then as soon as the fall hit...
Because my parents didn't budget, y'all. They just kind of... They just rolled with the cash we had, you know. As soon as the fall hit they were like, Alright. No more happiness in this house. Every year.
The joy of the harvest. This hope. This... And then he says when they divide the spoil that means you've won the battle. The relief. And the joy.
Clemson thought they were just going to roll over South Carolina. And they eventually did. And they felt relief and joy. South Carolina was like, We got some punches in and we feel good about it. This is when they divide the spoil. It says, For the yoke of his burden and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken.
As on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle, tumult, and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. For... So he says, The staff of the oppressor, the warriors, everything is gone. For... For...
To us a child is born. To us a son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Now I want to show you all something interesting that happens here. He says a son will be born and immediately we're thinking, Okay, somebody, somebody's going to come along and they're going to fix this problem. And that's good news.
When Isaiah is... When he was prophesying this to the Israelites, they're like, Okay, we're going to have some kind of a Messiah. We're going to have somebody. But then he immediately says he's going to be called Mighty God. He's going to be called Everlasting Father. So this can't just be a regular person.
Can't. That wouldn't flex well with the God of the Hebrews who's the only God and does not share that. Remember how he's dreadful? He talked about it earlier. So he's saying this is going to be more than just a person.
Ultimately we know that this is Christ. That he comes who is God, joins us. He is Emmanuel, God with us. Prince of peace. Of the increase of his government, of the peace, there will be no end. On the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
All right. Jump to John chapter 1 because he picks up with the same idea. He's talking about Jesus coming and this idea of light entering darkness. And we're going to read through this pretty quickly. I'm going to point out a few things and then we're going to try to draw all this together to help us understand what's going on as we intro our gift series. So there's going to be someone born who's going to fix this problem.
This is Jesus. This is the hope of Christmas that everything was terrible, everything was dark, everything was awful and then somebody opens the door. Okay. At some point, I think we're going to teach through the book of John and when we do, we will approach this the way that John wrote it. He holds off telling us this is Jesus until way later. I'm going to ruin the surprise.
He's talking about Jesus the whole time, you guys. Okay. In the beginning was the Word, Jesus, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. all things were made through Him and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
I love that verse. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. There are, for some of us in this room right now, we feel, see, wake up with darkness. We go to bed with darkness. We feel it in us. We see it at work in the world.
We feel like we're in a situation that is just darkness. It's just hopeless. It's just sinful. It's just broken. And He says, the light shines into the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. That's how light works.
I think when He built the world, He just said He did, He was like, I'm going to make light and darkness work like this and then later I'm going to say, I'm light. It's going to work perfectly. You ever turned a light on in a dark place and the darkness was so dark it just covered it up? No, because that's not how darkness and light works. Light always wins. Darkness is just the absence of light.
The absence of light. The sun does not timidly creep over the horizon. Before you can even see it, it's already lit everything up. It's not even there yet. Everything is perfect like I can see as far and then it's like, oh, there you are. Because light just wins.
And that's what it says, that Jesus is light and then He shines into the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. That is worth singing about. That is worth celebrating. That is good news. Because without Christ, we have nothing. We're fumbling around in the dark with no ability to fix it.
Let's keep going. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light but came to bear witness about the light. So, John the author is writing about John, another John, John the Baptist. He's talking about Jesus and then John just kind of interrupts.
He's like, okay, so there was this guy who talked about the light. He wasn't the light but he came to bear witness about the light but he wasn't but he talked about him a lot and he thought everybody would believe through him. Then he goes right back to talking about Jesus. Verse 9. 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.
He came to his own, that's the Jewish people, and his own people did not receive him but to all who did receive him who believed in his name he gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God. You ever heard someone say well we're all God's children? John chapter 1 says no. To all those who receive Christ and who believe in his name he gives us the right to be called a child of God. We're all created by God we're all God's creatures but those who trusted in Jesus Christ as King and Savior and Lord are brought in not by lineage not by effort but by Jesus and his work.
And the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory glory as of the only son from the father full of grace and truth. John interrupts again. John bore witness about him and cried out this was he of whom I said he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me for from his fullness that's Jesus's we have all received grace upon grace for the law was given through Moses grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Christ. Okay. The story of Christmas and the story of the gospel is such overwhelmingly good news that I don't want us to miss it. when we're told here's a cataclysmic eternal problem and then you're told but a son will be born that's why it's grace that's why it says grace came through Jesus the law came through Moses see Moses showed up and he gave the law he gave rules he gave here's what God wants from us and we can't do it we can't I kind of was trying to pay attention to what the speed limit was but there was something I just couldn't I couldn't do it I could kind of eventually there's something to us when we see God's law it's like we're a part of the problem but Jesus shows up and he does it for us and from Christ we receive grace that he's the light that shines into the darkness and he does the work for us that we have a manger a cross a crown a throne all of which are are filled by not us Jesus was the son who was born Jesus is the son and the servant who goes to the cross and Jesus is the son who reigns as king and that's good news because it doesn't have to be you you're not the one who has to fix the problem I did not have to MacGyver my way out of that closet I just wailed and cried and fumbled around and then here I am you guys I'm not still in the closet that's that's what gets to happen for us as Christians that you should when you see a manger scene when you see a nativity you should be so overwhelmed by the fact that he came to solve this problem that he rescued us so the question is that's the hope we have at Christmas that's the darkness and the light the true darkness that overwhelms the world and the true light that overwhelms the darkness that's what we get at Christmas but the question is what do we do with that how do we respond to that well first we believe we trust Jesus we get welcomed in we get rescued the darkness in us gets banished we get free and then we do what John did and I love that he can't keep his mouth shut even while it's in the middle of this it's like he's talking about Jesus but John the Baptist keeps showing up because he it's almost like he's interrupting the story to proclaim how good the light is and I love verse 6 7 and 8 it says there was a man sent from God whose name was John he came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him he was not the light but came to bear witness about the light John who are you going to tell about the light all of them all of them are going to believe through me that's what John the Baptist is saying I'm going to so aggressively loudly constantly point to Jesus that all of them will know about the light because of me you ever had such good news you just wouldn't shut up that's what John is saying this light that shines into the darkness is that it's such good news so beautiful we can't not share it okay I have to take a second and talk to the people who might be listening to this on the internet later before I intro our gift project if you are listening to this on the internet you are not going to get to hear what our gift project is because some of the information is sensitive and we are not going to post it online have a nice day to decir you