Jesus as the True Light

Our text for this evening’s Scripture meditation is just one verse, John 1, verse 9.  Let me begin reading at verse 6 so you can get the context and then after the sermon I will read the rest of John 1, 1 through 14.  Here is John 1, beginning at verse 6.

“There was a man sent from God whose name was John.”  This is John the Baptist, it’s a different John than John the disciple, the apostle, who wrote this book.  Here he’s speaking of John the Baptist, who was the voice crying in the wilderness, the forerunner for the Messiah.  “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, the true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world.” 

About 15 minutes from now, don’t hold me to that exactly but give or take a minute or two, in about 15 minutes from now this room will be dark, even darker than it is right now, except of course that there will be more than a thousand candle flickering in this room.  That moment, as we will sing “Silent Night” and the room is dark and the candlelight is passed and you’re trying not to dump wax all over the nice carpet and you’re trying to not have your children catch on fire, that moment right there, it really is one of my favorite moments of the whole year.  You almost wish you could keep singing more and more verses of “Silent Night.”  It’s actually one of my favorite moments of being a Christian in a place like this with all of you to sing that song by candlelight.  I’m sure some of you feel the same way about that moment.  It’s serene, it’s beautiful, it’s part of Christmas tradition, for many of us it’s nostalgic.

But it also visualizes the world-changing significance and reality of verse 9.  So I want you to think of that when we come to that moment in 13 minutes from now.  The true light which gives light to everyone has come into the world.

Have you ever noticed how many Christmas carols we sing talk about darkness and night?  Now, it’s true that our Christmas carols, beloved Christmas carols, sometimes take some poetic liberties.  There’s a lot of animals end up making it there.  There’s a lot of just mounds of snow for Israel.  It snows once in a while, but not that often.  It was probably cold, we don’t know exactly when Christmas was.  It’s become popular in recent years for people to say that December 25 was just the Christians copying this pagan holiday of saturnalia or celebration of Sol Invictus in the winter solstice and they just sort of Christianized this pagan holiday. 

There’s actually not a lot of good reason to think that.  The evidence for that comes many centuries later and actually prior to the conversion of Constantine at the beginning of the fourth century there is already indication that Christians had in their mind that the nativity, that the birth of Christ, was December 25.  Now that doesn’t mean that they were right about that date, but they very likely were not trying to copy some pagan winter solstice tradition. 

There’s actually a very simple reason, it may not be the right reason, but a very simple reason why they came up with that date.  There was a tradition that developed in both the eastern and the western part of the Church, which makes you think maybe there was something to it, and perhaps it comes from an old Jewish way of thinking, that the acts of creation and redemption would happen on the same day, Jewish way of thinking.  The acts of creation and redemption would happen on the same say.  So the tradition arose that Christ was conceived on the same day that He died on the cross.  So they can calculate because Good Friday corresponds with passover, so they calculated that it was March 25, ergo nine months later December 25.  They figured if He died on that day He must have been conceived on that day, nine months later He must have been born on December 25.

Now we don’t know.  Other scholars with astronomical data and the comet here in Matthew chapter 2 think it was later fall.  Whenever it was, we can __, we can at least find some good reasons it might have been colder.  But it was night and we sing about this darkness and this night, “O come thou dayspring from on high and cheer us by thy drawing nigh, disperse the gloomy clouds of night and death’s dark shadows put to flight.  O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent starts go by.  Yet, in the dark streets shineth the everlasting light, the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”  ” Lo, how a rose e’er blooming, from tender stem hath sprung.  Of Jesse’s lineage coming, as men of old have sung; It came, a flow’ret bright, amid the cold of winter, when half spent was the night.”

We just sang “It came upon a midnight clear, all my heart this night rejoices,” on Christmas night all Christians sing, and as we’ll sing in just a little bit, “Silent night, holy night.”  Have you ever thought about the difference between the songs that we sing on Christmas Eve and the songs that we sing on Easter?  Welcome, happy morning.  See what a morning, gloriously bright.  There’s an old Latin hymn that Easter day with joy was bright, the sun shone out with fairer light.  Christ is risen from the dead, glorious day we celebrate.

The songs of Christmas Eve are night and dark and the songs of Easter are bright and morning.  That’s why Christmas Eve here we pushed it back as far as we could to give you a dinner afterward, but 5:00 p.m., it’s all dark now and you’ve probably been to a Christmas Eve service sometime in your life that actually starts at 11 and goes up til midnight.  Easter service it would be strange if you gathered when it was dark.  No, you gather in the morning and most of us have been to some Easter service that is at sunrise.

It makes sense because Scripture itself places the events of Christ’s birth at night and the events of His resurrection in the morning.  We read in Luke 24, “But on the first day of the week at early dawn,” so at that moment turning from dark to light, Christ arose.  The women and then the disciples rushed to the tomb, morning.

But Luke 2 tells us while shepherds kept watch over their flocks by night, likely the angelic visitations that came to Joseph or to Mary, came when they were sleeping at night.  Easter – morning, Christmas – night.

And yet, you heard this in the songs we’ve sung, and in the familiar Scriptures that were read, it’s not just darkness and night but it is particular that on Christmas, in the night, a light shone.  Numbers 24 is a prophecy that a star shall come out of Jacob.  Isaiah 9 as was read so well already, the people walking in darkness have seen a great light.  Those who dwelt in the land of deep darkness on them a light has shown.

So Christmas has these contrasts.  The cold of winter, the warmth of God’s love.  The silence in that night and then the word and the voice of God, darkness bursting forth with light.  Do you see how the very, far from being just a poetic setting from our hymns, or just extraneous information from the Gospels or from the prophets, all of this is telling us something theologically important, that Christmas is the night when in the midst of darkness, light began to shine.

In John 8:12 Jesus says “I am the light of the world.”  The Lord is my light and my salvation.  The psalmist tells us, Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path.  There in John 8 it’s in the context of the Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast of Booths, which became associated with lampstands and light.  When Jesus says in John 8 “I am the light of the world,” He is claiming the fulfillment of the vision in Zechariah 14 where the coming day of the Lord is like that ancient Jewish festival, the Feast of Tabernacles.  He’s claiming to be the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.  He is making the astonishing claim.  He says it right there in John 8 – “if you follow Me, you will not walk in darkness but you will have the light of life.” 

Now if you’ve been around the Church for a while, you say, well, of course, Jesus said that.  But you should be shocked if someone says that to you.  If the new President or your new boss or your new coach were to introduce himself and say, “Nice to meet you.  Glad you could gather here.  Just have an announcement to make.  I am the light and if you follow me, you will never walk in darkness.”  Run from that person because it’s blasphemy unless, there’s only one person, unless it’s true.  And it was true of Jesus, that to walk with Him is to walk in the light of life, to escape the darkness of sin, the darkness of wandering like Israel had wandered in the desert, the darkness of judgment on the last day.  Light has come.  That’s what John 1, verse 9 tells us.  Come into the world.

Now it doesn’t mean that everyone now is simply enlightened.  That’s one way you could mis-read this text.  We know that’s not the case because it says later that the world did not know Him and His own people did not receive Him, so when it says light was coming into the world and lit up the world for everyone, it doesn’t mean, well, everyone gets it, everyone’s fine.  No, it means that in a brand new way, light has come into the world to show us the mess that we’re in.

This is John 3.  This is the judgment, the light has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil, for everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed.

So that’s part of what this light coming into the world is that Jesus, and then as He sends the Holy Spirit, is to turn on a light for some of the dark things that we don’t want to see about ourself. 

You ever look for something, maybe you did this during the Christmas holiday season, getting some decorations out of a closet or a Christmas tree if you have a fake one like we’re proud to have, and you get that out of the closet and you flip on that light, and some of those closets you don’t go into very often, you flip on the light and you see, well, let’s give them a very elegant name, palmetto bugs.  La cucaracha, that’s what they are.  Darkness.  You would have been better to get it in the darkness because the light shows you what’s there.

So some of Christ coming as the light of the world is to reveal to us our own sin, the nasty parts of our heart, the broken and sinful and rebellious parts of our world.  But not only that, He is the light that reveals how we can be saved.  In John 8:24 Jesus says, “I told you that you would die in your sins for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”  That is a statement Jesus makes about the need to recognize, to acknowledge, to embrace who He is as the Messiah, the Son of God. 

So it’s not just a light to show us our sin, or even a light to show us how to live, it’s a light to show us how to be saved by Jesus.  It’s the light of the glory of God in the face of Christ, the light that we see in the manger, the cross, the empty tomb, His ascension, His session, His coming again.  This promised child who was born to die.  He was born to die because in our sins we deserve to die and we cannot do enough good things to earn life.  That’s why it says in Matthew chapter 1, “You shall call His name Jesus,” and it doesn’t say call His name Jesus because He’ll be a great example for you or call His name Jesus because He will help you then to be a better person and the best version of yourself, call His name Jesus for He will save His people from their sins.  He’s the Savior who was born and born to die.

Now I don’t know that there is a deliberate connection between these two stories.  This is a true story.  But perhaps the most famous myth in the ancient world certainly among the Greeks and would have been passed down in Greco-Roman culture, that these Jews inhabited is the story of Odysseus.  I trust you had to read it sometime when you were in high school.  If you remember, Odysseus comes home disguised as a beggar to win back his bride and then to kill all of the treacherous suitors who were there because they thought that the husband was gone and would never return.  That’s the story, that’s the great Greek myth from Homer.

Well, here we have the true story.  When the Son comes home, comes to His own people, disguised as it were as a beggar, as so much less than He really is, you could not see His true worth, and He comes that He might woo and win back His bride except He does it not by slaughtering the treacherous enemies but by begin slain Himself.  He is the conquering hero who comes to His own and His own receive Him not.

The lights have been turned on in the world.  That is an objective reality, what John writes about in verse 9 has happened.  Whether you believe it or we believe it or the world believes it, it has happened.  Light has come into the world.

So the question is not whether light will shine, the question is not whether the darkness will win, it won’t.  The question is whether you will walk to the light, walk in the light, or as your sins are exposed by God’s grace, do you like a cockroach, you say did I need to come Christmas Eve to be called a cockroach?  Well, yes, for this point.  Like a cockroach scurry back into the darkness because men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.  Or will you walk in the light as He is in the light, that in Him you might have the light of life, forgiveness of sins, hope of eternal life, surety that apart from any of your good deeds you can be accepted of God and live and dwell with Him forever.  Will you receive it or will you reject it?

The light has shone.  The only question is whether you receive the light, walk in the light, and pass on that light, for to all who receive Him, who believe in His name, He gives the right to become children of God.   

Let’s pray.  Our heavenly Father, we pray that by Your Spirit now You would shine light, even as we are about to have the literal light of candles.  We would be remiss if we only enjoyed the beauty of a song and of candlelight and did not know the beautiful good news.  So work in our hearts that we might believe and be saved.  In Christ we pray.  Amen.   

Beloved, here this final reading then, the seventh lesson from the Gospel according to John.

“In the beginning was the Word, 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 any thing 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.  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.”

“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, 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.  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.”