1. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our
Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The message from God’s Word this 3rd
Sunday after Epiphany is taken from Isaiah 9:1-4 and is entitled, “Jesus
Lights Up Your Life,”
dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. Isaiah 9:2 says, "The people who walked in darkness have seen
a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light
shined." Dear fellow
light-loving people. Have you noticed
it? Can you tell that it's happening? I'm referring to the amount
of daily daylight that has been increasing day-by-day since December 21. That's
when the winter solstice occurred … the smallest amount of daylight (longest
night of darkness) in the year. It's
amazing that we who suffer from Seasonal
Affective Disorder can discern the very smallest increase in
daylight! That's how starved for it we are due to our SAD condition.
3. Today, we focus our
attention on a text that's largely identified with Christmas. It's the Holy
Spirit inspired prophecy that Isaiah recorded about what Immanuel would do when
He entered this sinfully dark world clothed in our human flesh some 700+ years
later. To the Israelites then who were languishing deep in the dismal
darkness of their Babylonian captivity, God communicated gracious
reassurance. He does the same to us today as we trudge through the
doom-and-gloom darkness of this sin-filled life. That merciful message is
none other than … Jesus lights up your lives.
4. Through our Lord
Jesus the gloom of our anguish is dispelled.
Isaiah 9:1 says, “1
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, but in the
latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the
Jordan, Galilee of the nations.” For many people life is all about just coping
and surviving. Physical, emotional, mental, relational, and, especially,
spiritual issues threaten to drown us in the abyss of this seemingly
God-forsaken world. Sin along with its consequences abounds as is evident
by ugly things such as physical sicknesses, accident injuries, and increasing
age that damage our bodies; emotional stresses and turmoils that bruise and
break our hearts; mental illnesses and breakdowns that disturb us; relational
disagreements that disconnect wives and husbands, parents and children,
brothers and sisters, other family members, friends, and acquaintances at work,
school, and church; and spiritual confusion and denial of God's holy truth that
separate many from Jesus Christ.
5. When you’re in the
darkness of sin, when you can’t see where you’re going and are stumbling around
in the dark, this can be a frightening thing.
Consider this situation. Jane got lost while driving home
in a blinding snowstorm. Then she remembered what her father had once told her,
“If you are ever lost in a snowstorm,
wait for a snowplow and follow it.” Pretty soon a snowplow came by, so Jane
pulled behind it and followed it for almost an hour. Then the driver stopped,
got out of his truck, walked back to her car, and asked what she was doing. She
explained that her father had told her to follow a snowplow if she was ever
lost in a snowstorm. “Okay,” he said.
“I’ve finished with the Wal-Mart lot. Now
you can follow me over to Kmart.”
6. You see, Jesus lights up your lives in the midst
of the darkness all around you. Your
situation in life isn’t as bad as your think.
Jesus says in John 14:6, "I
am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father
except through me." Jesus is
the light about whom King David pleaded in Psalm 4:6, "Lift up the light of your face upon us, O
Lord!", and Psalm 27:1, "The
Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?" and the
Substance of what His disciple, the Apostle John, wrote in John 1:9, "The true light, which enlightens
everyone, was coming into the world."
7. So it was with His
beloved Old Testament chosen Israelites, whom God allowed to be tormented and
humiliated by world pagan powers in an effort to turn them back to Him. So
it is with us His New Testament baptized Israelites, whom He allows to
experience sin-broken devastation in an effort to turn us back to Him.
And, so it will be when that same God who allows those seemingly bad things to
plague us also securely carries us to future glory.
8. The promise of God is
a promise of light. A promise that Jesus lights up your lives. Light
for those who walk in darkness. Light for those who dwell in the land of
the shadow of death. This light, Isaiah says, will come upon Zebulun and
Naphtali. This light will come to Galilee. And by God's grace, this
light will shine upon you and me and all the people of God.
9. About 700 after
Isaiah makes his prophecy, Christ comes to live in Capernaum, precisely in the
region Isaiah had foretold here in Isaiah 9. And in his coming, Christ
brings the Light of God to Galilee. Matthew 4:14-16 says, “14 That it might be fulfilled which was
spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, 15 The land of Zabulon, and the land of
Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles; 16
The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the
region and shadow of death light is sprung up.”
10. Jesus is the light
that lights up your lives. Jesus says of
himself in John 8:12, “I am the light of
the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the
light of life.” As the Light for all
who follow him, Jesus calls disciples to follow in his light. "Follow me," he says to Peter and
Andrew, "and I will make you fishers of men." "Follow
me," he says to James and his brother John, and they leave their nets and
follow him. "Follow me," says Jesus to each of us today,
"and I will give you light. Light that the darkness can’t
comprehend. Light that the darkness can’t overcome. Come follow me,
and I will make you children of the light." So St. Paul says of us
in 1 Thess. 5:5, “You are all the
children of light, and the children of the day; we are not of the night, nor of
darkness.”
11. But we do like the
darkness, don't we? We may have a fear of the dark, but we all have that
deep, dark place within our souls where we harbor the sins which we can’t, or
will not cast off. Physical darkness provides us with cover to do the
things we know we ought not do. And spiritual darkness hides our secret
sins deep in souls. These sins of darkness are common to us all.
Maybe the particular sins differ from person to person to person, but we all
have our dark secrets. Look in your own soul. Down deep. What
sins hide in the darkness there? You have yours. I have mine.
And just as Christ came to shine light on the darkness of Zebulun and Naphtali,
today, through his word he comes to shine light on the darkness of our sin-sick
souls.
12. This light of Jesus
isn’t intended only to punish us. Christ shines his light upon us to
expose our sins, and remind us of their presence. He shines his holy
light into our sin-filled lives and says to us what he said to the folks of
Capernaum and Galilee: Matthew 4:17 says, “Repent:
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
"Repent," he says,
"of your works of darkness and
follow in my light. Repent of your sin and walk in the light of the
kingdom of God. Repent and believe the gospel. Repent and receive
God's forgiveness. Repent and be saved from the darkness."
In response to such repentance, Christ pours out light the likes of which the
world has never seen. In our Gospel today we Jesus teaching in their
synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of
sickness all manner of disease among the people. . . and they brought unto him
all sick people that were taken with diseases and torments, and those which
were possessed with demons, and those which were lunatic, and those that were
disabled; and Jesus healed them.
13. Jesus brings light
into your life. He forgives our
sins. He heals our sickness. He releases us from our captivity to
Satan by the great and glorious light of God, shining its heavenly brightness
everywhere he goes. And yet, the darkness is still there. Opposing
him. Threatening him. And in the end the Devil, that Prince of
Darkness seems to have his way. As Jesus hangs upon the cross, bearing
the dark sins of all the world, great darkness, black as night engrosses the earth.
St. Matthew tells us in Matthew 27:45, “from
the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour, as
Jesus was crucified.”
14. But Jesus is Light
that can’t be overcome. The Prince of Darkness can’t win the day.
And on the third day after his death, our Lord rose from the grave, victorious
over the powers of darkness and the devil. Risen from the grave, Jesus
shines his heavenly light on the people of Judea. He shines his light on
the people of Galilee. And today, Christ shines his holy light on us.
Christ's light is the light that flows upon us from the reading and preaching
of the Word, opening our eyes and our hearts to receive God's grace and peace
through His Word and Sacraments. By his light, Jesus heals our diseases
and cures our illnesses. By his light Christ relieves our pain and
delivers us from the power of this dark world into the light of the brightness
of the glory of God. Jesus lights
up your life! In this light we now
live. And in this light we will live forever. Amen.
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