The Bright Side of

Close your eyes. What do you see? Nothing. You see nothing because there is no light entering your eyes. Now open your eyes. Everything that you are seeing now, you can see because there is light entering your eyes.

Light strikes an object and bounces off it. That reflected light enters your eyes and strikes your retina, where it triggers photo-sensitive cells and produces a chemical reaction in those cells. In that chemical reaction, the light energy is converted into electrical energy. Those electrical signals are picked up by the optic nerve and carried to your brain, which interprets them.

It’s an amazing, almost miraculous process. But without light, it cannot happen.

What do you know about light? Well, it’s bright. It shines. It’s powerful. No matter how much darkness you have, that darkness always has to flee in the presence of just a tiny bit of light. Darkness cannot overcome it.

In the state of New Mexico, there is a huge underground cave system known as the Carlsbad Caverns. You can go down into the caves with a guide and see the fantastic rock formations. At one point in the tour, the guide will turn all the lights out. You cannot even see your hand in front of your face. You are several hundred feet underground; so the darkness is total. It is very disorienting.

But then the guide will light a small candle, and a whole cavern full of darkness will retreat. That tiny bit of light is more powerful than the blackest darkness possible.

Light is very fast. There is just one physical constant in the universe and that is the speed of light. According to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, three-dimensional space can change, and even time can change, but the speed of light always stays the same: 186,220 miles per second.

How fast is that? The sun is 93 million miles away from our planet. It takes light just 8 minutes and 27 seconds to cross that distance. If you were to try it in a Boeing 747, it would take you over 21 years.

Light is incredibly strong. It can travel for hundreds of millions of miles through space, and not get tired or worn out. For example, the distance that light travels in one year is 5.8 trillion miles. That is called one light year. A Boeing 747 would take 1.3 million years to travel that far.

The light you see from the star Betelgeuse, in the constellation Orion, left that star one hundred years before Columbus discovered America. That’s because Betelgeuse is 600 light years away.

But that is nothing. You can see the Andromeda Galaxy with the naked eye, and it is 2.1 million light years away. It’s the most distant object you can see with the naked eye.

But that is still small potatoes. Astronomers are receiving and measuring light from quasars - the most distant objects in the universe. They are 14 billion light years away. And the light still shines from them, because light is incredibly powerful.

But light is also very mysterious. We’re not exactly sure what light is made of. At times, it appears to act like waves of energy. But at other times, it appears to be more like little parcels of energy called photons.

Even though we don’t know exactly what light is, we do know that it works. One of the things that light does is that it reveals things as they really are.

Every now and then, I have to tighten up the screws on my glasses. But when I take off my glasses, I’m as blind as a bat, especially for seeing small things, like glasses screws. But there’s one solution. I have found that if I hold my glasses right under the lamp on my desk, the light helps me see those little screws that need tightening. The light overcomes the limitations of my eyes, and helps me to see things as they really are.

Another thing about light - it is self-revealing. You don’t need a light to see a light. Light reveals itself all on its own.

Well, you didn’t come here today for a physics lecture. You came here to learn more about the Word of God. And I have news for you. The Bible says that the story of Christmas is a story about light.

When the Bible speaks of Christmas — the story of how God became a man — over and over again, it describes the event as that moment in history when a great light came into the world and shone into the darkness. Christmas is a story about light.

Last week, I told you that there was a dark side to Jesus’ birth. There was fear, and darkness involved in the Christmas story. But I want you to know that there is a bright side to Christmas that is even more compelling than the dark side. Christmas is about how God’s light conquered the darkness and turned the night into day.

The prophet Isaiah, speaking of the coming of the Messiah, said…

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.

And when that Messiah finally came into the world 700 years later, the first people to hear about it were the shepherds. They were sitting out in the dark, watching their flocks at night. But suddenly, “the glory of the Lord shone around them”.

When the wise men from the east came to search for the new-born King of the Jews, they said “We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.” A new light in the heavens was what brought them to Bethlehem. Jesus’ birth was announced by a bright light.

When Joseph and Mary took Jesus to the Temple, old Simeon took the baby in his arms and said “Now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel. Simeon knew that Jesus was the light.

When Jesus became a man, and began his public ministry, he went around saying things like: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life. I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.” (John 8:12; 12:46)

When his disciples wrote about Jesus, they said things like “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” (1 John 1:5-7)

When God created physical light, that wonderful energy that scientists are still trying to understand, He did it to communicate to us something about Himself. It was as though He were saying “Do you see what light is? Do you see how it works? That’s just like me.”

How is God like light? He is powerful - so powerful that anywhere He is, the darkness has to flee. We live in a dark world. A world full of hatred and bloodshed and tragedy and suffering. And it’s like that because of our sin. God didn’t create the world to be that way; we made it that way by turning our backs on God and going our own way.

How many people have ever lived on this earth? About 5 billion? That’s a lot of people! And that’s a lot of sin. How many Messiahs did it take to die for the sins of all those people? Just one. One Son of God is all it took to overcome a world full of sin and darkness.

And God is strong. Sometimes you feel as though you are a million miles away from God. But you’re never so far away that God can’t reach you, because he just never wears out - he never gets tired. He is, in the words of one author, the Hound of Heaven, relentlessly pursuing his prey.

And God is fast, too. He’s right there when you need him. He can cover large distances in just the blink of an eye. You can pray about something or someone on the other side of the world, and find that God has answered that prayer immediately, even as you’re still praying it. Distance is no problem to Him.

And God is constant. Other things may change, but God always remains the same. He is the Universal Constant.

And God is penetrating. When he looks at you, he sees you as you really are. There’s nothing hidden from him. He is like a searchlight, shining into dark corners, uncovering your hidden secrets, piercing the darkness. He sees all things, He knows all things, but He loves you anyway.

The Christmas story is a story that is full of light, because God is light. And Christmas is when God became a man. Christmas is when God personally brought His light into this dark world in the person of Jesus Christ.

There are three great Christmas truths about God’s light that I want you to remember:

1. If you want to know God, you have to know Jesus.

1 Timothy 6:15-16 God, (is) the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see.

That verse tells us that you and I cannot even look upon God. He’s too bright. So how could we ever come to know a God we cannot even look upon?

Hebrews 1:3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being…

John 14:9 Jesus (said)… “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.”

When Jesus came, He showed us what God is like. In Jesus, God reveals Himself to us in terms we can understand. He filters his blinding light and glory in such a way that we can see it. Jesus is the exact representation of his being, but in human form — in a form we can look upon.

So if you want to get to know God, you need to get to know Jesus Christ. There’s no other way.

2. Spiritual blindness keeps you from seeing Jesus for who he really is.

What happens when you shine a searchlight into the eyes of a person who is totally blind? Nothing. They don’t recoil from that dazzling light; they don’t even squint. They’re blind. They cannot see the light. It doesn’t register.

In the same way, when Jesus came into the world, most people did not even recognize Him. The Negro spiritual says “Sweet little Jesus boy, laid in a manger… Sweet little holy child, we didn’t know who you were.”

And that was true not just back in the first century when Jesus came. It is true today. People don’t recognize Jesus Christ. They don’t know who he is.

Suppose you were to go over to the Lehigh Valley Mall this afternoon, the last shopping weekend before Christmas. Suppose you were to conduct a survey asking the shoppers “What is the real reason for Christmas?” What sort of answers do you think you’d get? Would many people even mention the birth of Jesus Christ?

John 1:5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

The reason for that is given to us in the Scriptures…

2 Corinthians 4:4 The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

The Bible teaches that every one of us has been born with a devastating spiritual handicap. We are spiritually blind. Our spiritual eyesight is impaired. But that blindness is not total. God makes it possible for us to see little glimmers of spiritual light. Romans chapters 1, 2, and 3 tell us that man can know certain truths about God without knowing Him. We can see some light, in other words.

But seeing those little glimmers of light is a long way from having your spiritual eyesight restored.

3. God cures spiritual blindness when you follow the light

Have you ever wondered about that first Christmas why some individuals accepted Jesus, while the rest of the world rejected Him? For example…

- The shepherds in the fields around Bethlehem sought Him out, but the learned scribes and theologians in Jerusalem ignored him.

- Simeon and Anna at the Temple welcomed him into their arms, but the priests and Levites who led the religious services in that same Temple weren’t even aware that he was there.

- the wise men, who were not even Jews, welcomed him and came hundreds of miles to worship him, but Herod, who was the king of the Jews, and lived right next door, tried to kill him.

Why? Well, it wasn’t because the shepherds, Simeon, Anna, and the wise men were born with better spiritual eyesight than anyone else. It was that they each followed, by faith, the glimmer of light they had been given, and God gave them more light.

The shepherds saw the light of the glory of the Lord. It shone all around them. In fact, it scared them out of their wits! But what did they do when the light went away? Did they go back to tending their flocks? Did they have an all-night discussion on what this angelic vision might have meant? Did they pick up their routine where they had left off?

No. They acted on the angel’s words. They dropped what they were doing. They went into Bethlehem. They searched for the child. And their going was an evidence of their belief in what the angel had told them. They responded to the light they had been given, so God gave them more light. He brought them to the manger where the Savior of the world lay.

Simeon and Anna were senior citizens who lived in Jerusalem. Simeon was an old man nearing death. Anna had been a widow for over sixty years, and she was now eighty-four years old.

What had they been doing with their lives? They had been reading the Hebrew Scriptures. They had been studying the Old Testament promises about the coming Messiah and believing them. They had been waiting, hoping, and praying for the Messiah, the consolation of Israel, the one to whom the Scriptures pointed.

Simeon and Anna had spent their lives following the light that God had given them — the light of God’s Word — so God gave them more light. And since they couldn’t go to Bethlehem to see the Savior — they were too old — He brought the Savior to them.

The Magi lived anywhere from 500 to 1,000 miles away from Bethlehem. They were Gentiles. It is doubtful whether they had ever seen a copy of the Old Testament. They might possibly have heard legends about the Jews, and about a great king that the Jews were waiting for to come and deliver them.

But they certainly didn’t know a lot about the Bible. What they did know was astronomy. They were the scientists of their day. They were experts in the stars. So you can imagine their excitement when they looked up into the sky one night and saw a brilliant new star which hadn’t even been there before.

What did the wise men do? They took what little they knew about the Scriptures and put it together with what they did know about one aspect of God’s creation — the fact that there was this remarkable new star — and they moved out in response. They followed the light that God had given them. So God gave them more light. He brought them to Bethlehem. He brought them to the Savior.

In each case, these people followed the light they had been given, so God gave them more. God gave the shepherds light while they were in the course of doing their mundane daily work. God gave Simeon and Anna light as they read the Bible. And God gave the wise men light in the area of their professional discipline.

In these various ways, He brought them to Jesus. In the words of Colossians 1:13, he “rescued them from the dominion of darkness and brought them into the kingdom of the Son he loves.” All because they followed the light.

And that is the bright side of Christmas. It is the story of how the God of light shines into the lives of people and brings them to the Savior. And he still does the same today.

In spite of the fact that we live in a world made dark by sin, God’s light is all around us. It’s in the midnight sky, and it’s in a baby’s cry. It’s in the love of family and friends. It’s in the security of home and fireside, but it’s also in the searing loneliness of pain and grief.

The truth is, you cannot get away from God’s light. Wherever you are, and whoever you are, his light is shining on you.

Are you praying for your neighbors and friends and relatives this Christmas? Are you praying that God will open their hearts to the light that is shining on them? Are you praying that they would follow that light… follow it to the Savior?

And are you committed to shining for them? You see, when you come to Jesus, God puts His light in you. So you become another point of light in this dark world. You become the angel, you become the Bible, you become the star for the people around you. You shine for them.

How are you shining? Will your shining lead them to Jesus?