A Light Has Dawned: Christmas 2016 #3
This is an exposition of Isiah 9:2, 5-7. This message by Pastor Rod Harris was delivered at Trinity Baptist Chruch on Christmas Morning, Sunday, December 25, 2016.
Intro:
Christmas and lights – they just go together. As a child I remember the excitement of my dad pulling out the ladder and stringing the lights on the house. I remember going down to Utica Square for the annual lighting service or driving around town to see the Christmas lights. With our kids it was the “lights on” at Rhema and now with our grandkids the lights on the hill at Chandler Park. Of course there is those frustrating lights on the Christmas tree. There is always that one stubborn bulb the renders the whole string worthless! That of course was the beauty of our modern aluminum tree with its magical color wheel! Whether on the house or the tree, whether a star or candle, Christmas needs lights. No doubt the tradition goes back to that star that led the wise men to Bethlehem and to the glory of the Lord that set the shepherd’s field ablaze with light. But it is more basic than that. It goes back to the child himself. Our text this morning is found in the 9th chapter of Isaiah.
Text: Isaiah 9:2, 5-7
Eight centuries before Christ the prophet, moved by the Holy Spirit, wrote about hope overcoming hopelessness as he spoke of God’s anointed coming into the world. It began centuries before when God created man in His own image and likeness. As the crowning achievement of creation man was created out of the dust of the earth and fit for fellowship with God. To be created in God’s image meant to be made to interact with God. It meant to have the capacity to know God. The human family, man and woman were created in God’s image and fit for an eternal relationship of love, fellowship and harmony with God and with each other. But something went terribly wrong. Through the temptation of the Evil One Adam rebelled against God and thus sin, death and corruption entered the creation. Man was separated from God and the evil now present in man would set him against his fellow man in the days to follow. The result? A world plunged into moral and spiritual darkness. And there it would remain until God stepped in to change everything. That’s the message of Christmas. God has acted on our behalf. God has stepped in (literally) to restore what was lost.
[Read text]
As we explore this text this morning we are reminded that…
Thesis: The true beauty of Christmas is found in the glorious news that Christ has come bringing light and hope to our dark and sin-cursed world.
There are three great, foundational truths that must be understood if you are to know the true beauty and wonder of the Christmas story.
- We live in a world of moral and spiritual darkness. (9:2)
- The light of Christ has dawned bringing life and hope. (9:6-7)
- This gift of light must be received with humility and honest confession.
Conclusion:
How does this light become yours? Note again, “For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given.” A son is given. It is a gift! Like all gifts this one must be received. Some gifts are hard to receive because they demand we acknowledge a need or a weakness. I’m going to be ticked off if one of my gifts today is a gift certificate to some “weight management specialists.” Some gifts force you to admit you have a problem.
No gift is quite as humiliating is this one. To receive this gift you must admit that you are lost and that you can do nothing about. It demands the acknowledgment that you are rightly the object of God’s eternal wrath. You must admit you are a sinner. And you must trust in Christ and Him alone.
But if you will do that you are assured of life eternal and abundant. Let’s go back to John Isaiah 1 and pick up where I left off earlier. I ended with, “He came to his own and his own people did not receive him.” But listen to the very next verse, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
The true beauty of Christmas is found in the glorious news that Christ has come bringing light and hope to our dark and sin-cursed world.
Christmas and lights, they just go together.