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Light Is Way Better Than Darkness

             You pull the hotel shades tighter to keep the parking lot spotlight from glaring through the little slit.  You plug in your cell phone and flip the face upside down so no light glows.  You turn the little hotel clock-radio toward the wall so the big red “ten forty-five” doesn’t keep staring at you.  And finally, finally, you fall asleep.  But somehow, some way – Was it a siren outside?  Was it two teens running down the hall?  Was it a bad dream? – whatever it was, you’re startled and awake.  In that split second of lifting your head off the pillow, you can’t remember where you are.  It’s dark, darker than dark, and sure enough, fear reaches out its icy hand and presses on your chest.  Coming to, you realize, “Oh, yeah!  I’m in a hotel.  But where’s the light switch?  Do I get out of the bed on the right or the left?”

            Darkness is no fun.  It’s got poisonous fangs loaded with fear.  Once it bites, you can feel the loneliness, the lost-ness, and the “no one’s here to rescue me, help me, love me” start to spread inside.  Maybe you have overcome the “keep-the-light-on-Mom” phase and prefer to have it as dark as possible when you hit the hay, but in general Light Is Way Better Than Darkness.

            God speaks to us today through the prophet Isaiah and transfers the concepts and contrasts of darkness and light into the spiritual realm making the same point that Light Is Way Better Than Darkness.

Looking for light

             Those were dark days in the land of Judah around the year 700 B.C.  We might have a hard time understanding what the people living there were going through.  We all want security.  9-11 scared us.  But, other than terrorists crashing planes into skyscrapers, no foreign army has attacked our shores in over two hundred years.  Such an attack would be awful.  If it would happen, we’d run to the store for supplies and search the neighborhood for left over bomb shelters, which were all the rage in the 50’s and 60’s in the height of the Cold War.  But what if we were attacked, and an attacking enemy cut off supply lines, burned the fields, emptied the granaries, stripped the vineyards, and confiscated and slaughtered all the cattle?  That’s what the people of Judah witnessed as Assyrians trampled the country’s breadbasket sixty miles north and snatched or speared their cousins up north in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali near the Sea of Galilee.  Those were dark days!  But were they really that dark?  When God eliminated the threat of the Assyrians, most in Judah settled into comfortable lifestyles and ignored God.  They weren’t really looking for light.

            Do you think people in our land are looking for light?  OK!  Some would say they see evidence of darkness.  Sports stars get accused of cheating by bulking up on drugs.  They deny it, and fans ignore it, forking over gazillions for tickets, products endorsed, and team and player gear, and the darkness doesn’t seem so dark.  When a favorite team looses a big game, there’s always next year, and the darkness doesn’t seem so dark.  Illness hits a friend or relative.  We feel sad and sympathetic.  But they get better, and the darkness doesn’t seem so dark.  But then we hear on the news eleven days ago that there have been no murders in Milwaukee in the new year, and that night two people get killed on the Southside.  A mom drives drunk, hits a light pole, and kills her son and his cousin.  The battles in the Middle East continue.  Candidates are mixing their mud for more slinging.  That’s a lot of darkness.  But we survive and life goes on, and the darkness doesn’t seem to dark.

            But I found a place of real darkness, total darkness, horrifying darkness.  It’s not in the news or in some other neighborhood.  It’s not caused by any outside forces or the economy.  It’s not “out there.”  The scariest darkness is in me.  When I say things I shouldn’t, when I elevate my own needs over those of others, when I waste what the Lord has given me or use things for pleasure before I use them for him and others, most of the time I don’t give those wrongs much thought.  But every once in a while what I’ve said or thought or done gets shoved right in front of my eyes, and I realize that it’s not just my behavior that’s wrong but there’s something wrong deep inside.  Even if there were no one to see or hear the black marks I’ve chalked up, God knows, and he knows me, that I’ve got pitch blackness inside, a deep darkness that I can’t eliminate.  Then I get scared, and I’m looking for light – not worried about stubbing my toe in a hotel room, but scared that I’ll never be loved by God, that I’ll be all alone, and that there’s no way out.  That’s darkness.  That’s hell on earth.

            Every once in a while I hear a report from one of our members that he or she brought a friend to worship, and that friend made the comment, “I’m not sure I want to go back to your church.  They made me feel like I’m a bad sinner.”  Yes, we do.  But we have to, or we won’t be faithful proclaimers of the message of God.  We all have to come to grips with the darkness inside, or we’ll never appreciate the fact that Light Is Way Better Than Darkness – but not just any light, real light.

Seeing the light

            Where do we find this real light?  You’d think the people of Judah would know where to look.  After all, they were descendants of the nation God himself created, a people who were entrusted with God’s greatest promise – to send humans a Savior.  They were the ones to whom God has spoken through Moses so long ago, through scores of prophets, and even through their great kings, David and Solomon.  But where did they look for light?  In occult practices.  Why?  Some might say they were naïve.  Some might say they were victims of the corrupt culture around them, surrounded by neighbors who actually believed that dead people still have an impact on the living, that there is such a thing as ghosts, that good money should be paid to people who claim to be able to get in touch with the dead, which is like giving a bunch of money to people who chirps like birds.  In reality, it came down to a matter of faith.  Either you in the living God, or you your faith in someone and something else.

            Amazingly, God wasn’t ready to give up on them.  There is a better place, the only place, where they could find real light.  He called to them through Isaiah, “When people tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God?  Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?  To the teaching and to the testimony!  If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn.  Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God.  Then they will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness”.  You can try to find light among the dead.  That’s like expecting a corpse to flick on a light inside its coffin.  Can’t happen.  But the living God does speak, and he has recorded what he wants people to know about him, especially his love for them, in a book we call the Holy Scriptures, the Bible.  This book is his teaching about real light, his testimony about his love for sinners.  The bright star of this book is none other than Jesus Christ.

           One of the great proofs that what God says in this book is true is the fulfillment of predictions.  What medium or spiritist can do that?  Seven hundred years before it happened, God predicted through Isaiah that the promised Savior would bring the light of his love to people in the darkness of sin, and he would do it in the physical place where the darkness of enemy oppression had reigned.  You heard the fulfillment of this prediction in the gospel for this day.  Jesus did actually carry out much of his public ministry in northern Israel, the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, along the Sea of Galilee, a place where people had been trampled on and abused, had their food stolen, and lives disrupted.  That is exactly the place where Light walked – not on them but for them, a place where Light didn’t abuse them but diffused the darkness of sin, a place where Light didn’t steal food but fed them.

            You and I can hurt like crazy from our inner darkness, but Jesus brings light – like being trapped in a deep underground cave and seeing light at the end of a tunnel, not just a pin-prick of light, but a huge hole blasted open that bathes us in the warm glow of his mercy and says, “I know you’re scared.  I know you feel alone.  But you don’t have to be afraid any longer.  I, Jesus, am your light.  My light is the complete forgiveness of all your sins.  That bears repeating.  My light is the complete forgiveness of all your sins.  I’ve got my arms around you.  The light of my love is shining on you.  I’m going to light you up from the inside.”  The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned”.  We have seen the light, revealed to us in Scripture.  To the teaching and to the testimony!  There we find Jesus, our Light, and his Light Is Way Better Than Darkness.

Following the light

            Those in Judah who saw the light still had to deal with the realities of this dark world and the shadows of darkness that lurked in the corners of their hearts.  It wasn’t easy remaining faithful to the Lord when most others didn’t.  How could they be consistent and follow that light?  How can we?

            It’s like being trapped in a deep underground cave and seeing light appear at the end of two different tunnels – which do you follow?  If you had a map that glowed in the dark and showed one light to be an illusion and the other to be the only way out, what would you do?  Of course!  You’d follow the true light.  It isn’t easy saying “No” to sin.  It isn’t easy staying on course when the glitter of Satan’s illusions beckon, “Come this way.”  It isn’t easy using God’s light power to remake yourself from the inside out, changing how you view yourself and how you relate to others.  But it can be done.  The psalmist was right, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path”(Psalm 119:105).

            We don’t experience complete darkness very often.  Street lights, headlights, starlight, moonlight, the fire alarm’s little red light, the computer “on” button, the dvd’s clock face all give light.  But the deep darkness of sinfulness inside can still be a threat to our eternal security and safety.  Want to see the light?  Want to follow that light?  To the teaching and to the testimony!  There we see Jesus.  He will light up our heart and light up our life with Light that Is Way Better Than Darkness.               Amen.

Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (http://www.gracedowntown.org/) on January 27, 2008

Services

Sundays 7:45, 9:00 & 10:30 am

Mondays 6:30 pm

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1209 North Broadway Milwaukee, WI 53202 | (414) 271-3006

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