The Light of Christmas

I love it when we get a different pastor at our Wednesday evening service because most often the message they share is a powerful one and this last Wednesday was no exception. It was our assistant Pastor Brian who is heads up the Missions at our church. As the worship and praise part of our service ended, the lights dimmed until no lights remained. At first we sat there thinking it was a temporary power outage until we saw a flashlight come up the podium and the lights were brought back up.

Being a corporate trainer the use of visuals is bound to make the message stick and this was designed as a powerful opener of just what light means when surrounded by darkness. He asked us the question of how powerful light is when surrounded by complete darkness. The darkness that must have been present not only at the formation of the world found in Genesis but also the darkness that was present before Jesus was born. The darkness that fills us with loneliness and confusion. A world without hope and without end. A world of uncertainty and fear.

He spoke of places in the remote villages of Africa where he visits on mission work and tells of how truly dark the world can be where the only light is just a simple candle or lantern. How powerful that little bit of light can be and how people are drawn to it. In fact in the remote villages of Africa the light is where people gather. In the darkness no people, but around the light, people gather together. That is the message Jesus brought by being the Light of the world. He was spoken of in prophecies throughout the Bible even as far back as in Genesis before the creation of the world.

Some of those scripture references from the Bible include most notably Isaiah 9:2 " The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned."

We pick back up in Isaiah 9:6 as to the answer of just what the light is, "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

You can find more such references of light and darkness in Isaiah 7: 13-14, Matthew 1:23, Isaiah 42:5, 49:6.

However "light" is a concept that we take for granted kind of like water, until we don't have it anymore. The world is depicted in the Bible as darkness and the church is commissioned to be the "light." Even in Genesis 1:3, "And God said, "Let there be a light", and there was light. God saw that the light was good and he separated the light from the darkness." This also depicts our spiritual life without Christ til Light came like the Spirit of God into our lives and changed us.

Even as far back as Numbers 20:17 which states that a "star" shall come from Jacob, a scepter out of Israel which refers to the coming of Jesus Christ into the world.

When the three wise men followed that star to find the Christ child, they bestowed upon him three gifts of great significance and symbolized who He was and the life He would live. Gold is given to kings as a gift and speaks of the kingship of Jesus Christ. Frankincense was given to a priest, given as a way to intercede to God as an atonement for our sins. We even see in Revelation 8:3-4 " Another angel, who had a golden censer came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel's hand." And finally myrrh was given to the one who would die, a Savior born to die. Myrrh is used as a pain reliever and was mixed with wine and given to Jesus as he hung on the cross to help with the pain, but He refused it. It was part of the burial spices used by Joseph of Arimathea who brought myrrh to prepare the body of Jesus for burial.

The symbol of "Light" is for the world, brought to us, given as a gift to us through the birth of Jesus Christ.

May every light you see remind us all of a Christ-centered Christmas and the light that entered the world to save us from darkness. In closing I leave you with a beautiful music video that closed our own church service from Barlow Girl, Hallelujah (Light Has Come). Hope it becomes your favorite as it has our families!