The Light Has Pierced Our Darkness! (Christmas Eve)

Isaiah 9:2-7
Eight centuries before the birth of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah foretold His coming with these words: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.”

When considering this passage, Martin Luther, the great reformer, said that darkness here refers to evil, unrighteousness, false notions about God’s Law, errors rooted in relying on human wisdom rather than God’s wisdom, and religion that wrongly believed that we can be saved by being good or doing good.

By that measure, the world is still a dark place. There are still people who ignore God’s command that we love Him and our neighbor and instead, treat others with disrespect or violence...still people who don’t understand that we are saved from sin, death, and pointless living only by faith in the Child Whose birth we celebrate tonight...still people who live in the darkness of unbelief because Christians have not obeyed the risen Jesus’ great commission to make disciples.

But Isaiah prophesied exactly what has happened through Jesus. Though we live in a world covered in darkness, we have seen a great light, the light of God has dawned on this world, bringing a new day.

Luther says that the light Isaiah is talking about here is two things.

First, the light is the Gospel, the good news that, in Jesus’ words spoken to a Jewish teacher Nicodemus in the darkness of a Judean night: “...God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” [John 3:16]

God has pierced our darkness with His Son and offered life to all who will surrender to Him. Jesus comes to us as the Light of the world.

In Him, we can see God clearly despite the darkness that so often engulfs our souls and this world.

In Him, we can see our sin and God’s willingness to forgive the repentant.

In Him, we see that God is  good and loving, that He wants to be reconciled with us for all eternity in spite of our sin.

For some, the offer of the Gospel isn’t enough to incite surrender to God or belief in Christ. They rebel at the thought of a life with God under Christ’s lordship.

In fact, that’s the inborn inclination of everyone here tonight, including, I can assure you, me.

Like our ancestors, Adam and Eve, we want to “be like God.” But, here’s the deal: When we human beings live out our desire to be like God, we can only plunge ourselves and the world we touch into darkness, absolute, dead, eternal separation from God.

And, let's be honest, part of us loves the darkness. I know many people who want enough of Jesus to be saved from death, but not so much of Jesus that they’re forced to make any lifestyle changes. They want to keep most of their lives in darkness, off-limits to Jesus and His Lordship.

If you’re doing that, please take it from someone who's been there, know that, no matter how well you may be fooling yourself, you’re not fooling the risen and living Jesus one bit!

He knows all about our love of darkness. He also tells Nicodemus in John 3:17-19: “...God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”

Jesus, the true Light of Christmas, is the Gospel, the good news of new life for all who turn from darkness and entrust their lives to Him.

The second thing that the light in our passage from Isaiah is, Luther says: the Holy Spirit.

The news from throughout our world this past week has been dark: the unchallenged Russian/Syrian slaughter of civilians has brought about the devastation of Aleppo; an ISIS-related terrorist drove a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing twelve and injuring 48; the Russian ambassador to Turkey was gunned down at an art exhibit.

Absent the power of the Holy Spirit working in the lives of believers, Christians would seem foolish for trusting that Christ will have the final say about this world, that evil will one day be destroyed, that death will be swallowed up by God.

But let me tell you something: We are not foolish for trusting in Christ! Hundreds of Jesus' first followers--disciples--risked their lives, with nothing to be gained in this world, to tell the world the truth that Jesus rose from death, conquering sin and death.

Today, the Holy Spirit, Who comes to us in our Baptism and reminds us through the Word of God, the sacraments, the fellowship of the Church, and the stubborn commitment of Christians to love and care for their neighbor in spite of everything, the Holy Spirit assures us, reminds us, and connects us to God so that we can believe, we can know, that Jesus has conquered sin, death, disease, and human savagery.

Through the Holy Spirit, God gives us the power to believe the promise of the risen Jesus: “I am with you always.” (Matthew 28:20)

Through the Holy Spirit, we can trust in Jesus and know, with the apostle Paul that “...we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” (Romans 8:37)

And because of the Holy Spirit’s witness to Jesus destroying the power of sin and death on the cross, we can share in the faith confessed by Job, that Old Testament figure who lost all of his children and property and then was afflicted by disease: “I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God…” (Job 19:25-26)

There’s a lot of unbiblical nonsense associated with Christmas. There's also much romanticization of the baby Jesus. Look, babies are wonderful. Their lives are precious. Every human being is sacred in the eyes of God and should be in the eyes of the world.

But it was for far more than the birth of another baby that the angels celebrated and praised God on the night of Jesus’ birth, singing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.” (Luke 2:14)

Of all the things Christmas is, cute isn't one of them!

Christmas, in fact, was God’s D-Day assault on this sin-imprisoned universe. Just as Europe in the 30s to mid-1940s was imprisoned by evil, so this entire world in which we live is imprisoned by the darkness of the devil and our own sinfulness. Christmas was God’s light piercing our darkness!

The baby Jesus grew to be a Man--true God and true Man--Who would face down temptation and sin to fight for the eternal lives of every person in this sanctuary, every person who has ever lived on this planet, to fight for you, so that by His death and resurrection, He could usher all who believe in Him into the pure, dazzling daylight of God and His everlasting kingdom!

Despite the obstacles presented by this world--a census, Roman rule, a jealous Jewish king and selfish religious authorities--Jesus was, miraculously, born in Bethlehem.

I can imagine the devil writhing in agony on the night of the birth. Even though He would fight Jesus all through His earthly life and fights Jesus and His people to this day, the devil had to know on the first Christmas, just as perceptive Germans knew on D-Day, 1944, that the jig was up.

This baby was God’s foothold in this world, God's beachhead among a people He intended to save.

Christmas was the beginning of a war which God would go on to win on Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.”

The Light of the world has come to us through the Gospel--the good news of everlasting life with God for all who believe in Jesus--and the witness of the Holy Spirit.

That leaves us with the most important question of Christmas.

Not “What should I buy for so-and-so?” “Can I prevent Uncle Louie from talking politics?” or “Can I take this back?”

This is the question with which Christmas presents us: “Do I prefer the darkness of the light? Will I welcome Him as my God and King or live in darkness?"

Each day, choose the Light.

Choose Jesus Christ.

Choose life.

That’s the Christmas gift God wants to give you today and always.

Take it; it’s free. You won’t regret it.

Merry Christmas!

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The Partnership

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio earlier today.]

Matthew 21:33-46
You’ve probably heard the story about a day when the pastor visited a church member who was a farmer. The farmer had been incredibly successful, against all odds turning his farm into a money-making machine. The pastor was impressed. “God has really been good to you,” he said. “Yes, pastor,” the farmer answered, “I suppose you’re right. But you should have seen how bad off this place was back when God was running it by Himself.”

Among the unique qualities of being human is that we, unlike any of God’s other creatures, have been made in the image of God. None of God’s creatures are closer to God or more like God than human beings. With that privileged position goes the responsibility of faithfully and creatively using all the gifts that God gives to us. After creating our first parents, Adam and Eve, the Old Testament book of Genesis says that God told them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” Later in Genesis, we’re told that God put the first humans in the Garden of Eden “to till it and keep it.”

God never planned on running this universe without our involvement. He always planned on showering the human race with all we needed to play our role in the universe and we were always meant to respond to His blessings with lives of faithfulness to His ways and His will.

But the human role in God’s plans—our partnership with God—became impossible to fulfill faithfully or fully when the condition of sin entered the human gene pool. The condition of sin is more than just doing bad things. It is, as one Lutheran pastor points out, “the attitude of selfishness [that thinks it] needs no God.”

The condition of sin introduced all sorts of things into life in this world that God never intended for human beings to experience. Things like suffering, aging, and death, for example. And the futility that makes it hard for us to do jobs well or on time; that make relationships challenging; and that subjects all of us to decay and illness. The Bible teaches that because of the condition of sin that has infected God’s most important creatures, the entire creation for which God has made us responsible has been “subjected to futility” and “in…bondage to decay” as the apostle Paul puts it in the New Testament book of Romans. It’s not a pretty picture.

Yet, God has refused to give up on you, the human race, or His creation! 

That’s why He has personally come into this world to plant the Kingdom of God, a new and eternal creation in which there is no more sin, death, or futility. Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, told people, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of has come near, repent, and believe in the Good News.”

Followers of Jesus believe that while this world will inevitably do its worst to us, that because we live in this world,we will die, that doesn’t have to be the end of our stories.

As Jesus put it when speaking with a grieving friend, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

The New Testament book of Second Corinthians promises: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new.”

Through His death and resurrection, Jesus makes it possible for all who repent for sin and believe in Him to live in fellowship with God now and in eternity. God grants those who follow Christ an eternal do-over! And it will be a do-better, infinitely better!

In the Garden of Eden, God asked Adam and Eve to respond to Him with trusting faith. He had given them everything already; all they needed to do was trust in Him. Those who have been reached by the Kingdom of God through Jesus are asked to daily turn our backs on the old ways of selfishness and sin and in trust to Christ.

The Bible teaches that when we repent and trust in Christ, our lives are re-oriented away from sin and self and out toward God and neighbor. We become part of the Kingdom of God and our lives are imbued with new purpose. We want to live and work with God and for God’s aims.

This is what Jesus calls “bearing fruit.”

Each day we live trusting Christ, our lives are being transformed from deserts of futility to gardens burgeoning with the life of God.

Some find this hard to understand. In 1809, the same year that Abraham Lincoln was born, a Scotsman named Robert Morrison headed for China as a missionary. While on the way, the captain of the ship was skeptical of Morrison’s dream of carrying the Good News of Jesus Christ to the Chinese. The captain derided Morrison. “I suppose,” he said, “you think you’re going to make an impression on China.” Morrison replied, “No, sir. I believe God will.”

Morrison was in partnership with God. Are you?

It’s to exactly this kind of partnership that Jesus calls us in today’s Gospel lesson. Pull out the Celebrate inserts and turn to the Gospel for the day, Matthew 21:33-46. The lesson incorporates one of a string of parables (or stories) that Jesus tells in this section of Matthew’s gospel.

You know the story: A landowner planted a vineyard. He went all out. He fenced the vineyard in, dug a wine press, and erected a watchtower. He created a perfect place--an Eden--for the tenants to whom he leased it to work, make a living, and raise their families. After that, the landowner went to another country. Time passed and the landowner sent slaves to collect his share of the vineyard’s produce. This was only right because it was his land, his vines, his wine press, his watchtower.

But the tenants didn’t want to fulfill their responsibility to the landowner. They wanted to keep everything for themselves. So, they either beat, stoned, or killed,  the landowners’ slaves, on two different occasions. 

So, the landowner decided to send his son. He was certain that the tenants would respect him. But, Jesus said, the tenants killed him too.

When Jesus asked His original listeners—members of the religious elite, priests and Pharisees—what should happen to the tenants, they were clear what the rightful punishment for the tenants would be. Each, they said, should be given miserable deaths and other tenants should be given their land and produce.

I believe that Jesus told this parable for several reasons.

First, He was telling the religious elites of first-century Judea that they were just like the religious elites of previous centuries who had killed prophets who, in the Name of God, had called people to respond to God’s love by turning from sin and trusting in God. Jesus knew that in a short time, these very elites would arrange for Him—the Son of God, the Creator of the universe—to be killed, too.

But Jesus also told this parable for you and me. It’s so easy and so tempting for us to get caught up in living and measuring our lives by the standards of this world, so easy to forget that through our Baptisms, God has made us part of an eternal kingdom, so easy to think that the God Who seems to live in “another country” is impotent in the face of all that troubles us in this country.

In fact, I think that it’s sadly true that many Christians most of the time live as functional atheists. I once heard Pastor Paul Cedar tell the story of conducting a Bible study with the leaders of the congregation he served, passionately imploring them to make prayer a regular part of their lives. He was shocked when one council member told him he didn’t have time to pray because, he said, “Prayer doesn’t work.”

Whether from cynicism or despair, we all may be tempted to feel that way sometimes. The sin of this world may tempt us to believe that nothing about our faith is true. I know that was especially true for me back when I was locked in the despair of atheism. In those days, I wrote songs and for me, God wasn't the living Maker and Redeemer of the universe, but a symbol for all that was wrong with the world. In one of my songs, I found myself singing, "Sometimes God, I feel like I'm a million miles from heaven and I can't find my way back home."

There are times, I have seen, when even the most committed Christian may feel like this. Those are good times for us to remember a few things. When our prayers aren’t answered or we’re accosted by grief or heartache, we remember that God knows our grief and heartache first hand; He understands and cares.

We remember that He died for us, a death He didn’t deserve and we remember that He did it to take a punishment that, because of our sin, you and I do deserve.

We remember that He rose from the dead so that all who believe in Christ will one day awaken to an eternal day with Him and all the saints.

When we remember the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, God will awaken faithfulness in us and we will, as Jesus puts it, “bear fruit,” living lives of dependence on God’s grace and power.

When Jesus is in our lives, we live less like the victims of sin and more like the conquerors of death Christ makes of those who trust in Him!

Jesus has brought His kingdom to you and me and He wants to forge a partnership with us that lasts for eternity. It’s a partnership He wants to have with us even now in this imperfect world.

Some of you may know that when our friend Karen Hendrickson was dying of cancer, she called me up and said, “I understand that our church council vice president has resigned. I would like to be appointed to that position.” “Karen,” I said, “are you sure you want to do that?” “Mark, I’ve decided that whatever time I have left on earth, I want to give it to God.” We appointed Karen to council and she served there effectively almost until the end of her life.

Karen bore the fruit of God’s kingdom even as her earthly body was being ravaged. Assured of eternity with Christ, she decided that she didn’t want to waste any time living the way this world says we ought to live—looking out for ourselves or those we decide to care about—and she decided instead, to live and work with God in building up the Kingdom that will live long after this universe has burned up and burned out.

Jesus wants to be a partner with you in building and enjoying the Kingdom of God with Him for all eternity. Turn from sin, trust in Him, seek to live in sync with God’s will and bear good fruit. Let Jesus be your partner in all of your life. Amen

"Self-control is the key to accomplishing anything in life and I am convinced that it only lastingly belongs to those who daily surrender their wills to Jesus Christ"

Today's installment of Our Daily Bread contains a favorite story of mine from the life of Dwight Eisenhower, who is one of my personal heroes.

The story recounted is one Ike told in his wonderful personal memoir, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends. If you haven't read this book, treat yourself and do so soon!

Galatians 5:22-23 says that self-control is one of the fruits of the Spirit which Christians receive through their relationship with Jesus Christ. Daily repentance and renewal in the Name of Christ can bring this attribute into our lives and in turn, help us to live more productively, as well as more faithfully.

The section of Proverbs on which the Our Daily Bread piece is based is a particularly favorite part of that Old Testament book for me. 

Proverbs 16:21b rings so true! We are far more likely to gain a hearing for our ideas and more apt to listen to the ideas of others when we engage in "pleasant speech." That means, I think, speaking the truth in love, as the New Testament counsels.

V. 25 is an important bit of wisdom, next to which I've written this in one of my Bibles, attempting to put the passage in my own words: "Don't rely on your intelligence, but on God's revealed wisdom." 


V. 26 makes me smile every time I read it. My margin note there says that "hunger" is the "prod in productivity." I don't know whether I read that somewhere or if it just struck me, but it's rooted in what God revealed to Solomon here in any case.


V. 28 reminds us that gossiping is contrary to God's will and that it is incredibly destructive.


V. 32 is the passage on which the Our Daily Bread piece is especially built. Those who allow the God revealed in Israel and ultimately, in the Person of Jesus Christ, to conquer their anger, are those whom God can use to make a difference with their lives. In a very real sense, the good accomplished by Dwight Eisenhower--whether it was the destruction of Nazi Germany, the passage of the first Civil Rights Law (1957) in more than ninety years (over the objections of Senators John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson), playing hardball with the US military in which he formerly served to ensure that President Truman's integration of our Armed Forces was a fact and not just an executive order, or instituting the interstate highway system--accomplished so much good because he had control of his volcanic temper and could therefore work with anybody. 

This was valued in Eisenhower; today, it seems, at least those who are the most angry and who garner the most attention, irrespective of their ideologies, prefer political leaders who give vent to their anger, rather than being persons of self-control who can work with those with whom they disagree.


Another of my personal heroes, George Washington, also learned self control over not only his temper, but also his impulsiveness. He therefore achieved great things. (In fact, I once heard historian Garry Wills say that Washington was the greatest political leader in human history.) 

Self-control did not come to Washington naturally. As a young colonial officer, he incurred justified condemnation for leading his men into a precipitate, ill-conceived battle, resulting in many unnecessary deaths. But Washington learned from this tragedy. His faith, an underestimated aspect of his life as pointed out in my favorite Washington biography, that by Richard Norton Smith, no doubt played a role in Washington's famed self-control and ability to get along with others. 

Washington could still let loose with his anger in his more mature years. But at that time, it always seemed targeted, dealt for a purpose. He needed every ounce of self-control he could find to hold the Revolutionary Army together through a long war of attrition with Great Britain, then the greatest military power in the world, for example. 

He demonstrated this same self-control when on two occasions, he squelched attempts to make him  king of the newly independent United States. The first occasion came when he went back to Mount Vernon after the war, when many in his army and not a few in the country at large, conspired to put Washington on an American throne. (When advised before the end of the war that Washington planned to refuse kingly power and instead, go back to farm in Virginia, British king, George III said. "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.") 

Again, when Washington was almost forcibly made president in order to hold the infant republic together, many suggested that he should become king. But again, Washington demurred and went back to Mount Vernon to take up private life at the end of two terms.

Self-control is the key to accomplishing anything in life and I am convinced that it only lastingly belongs to those who daily surrender their wills to Jesus Christ. 

Paul writes in Romans 8, that believers are "more than conquerors" through the God Who has loved us through the crucified Savior, Jesus. This isn't an invitation to arrogance or triumphalism; Christians know that our only boast is the goodness of God that comes to us as gift of grace through Christ. But Paul is saying that all who trust in Christ, also share in Christ's victory over our death-dealing egotism, our sin, and our death.


V. 33 may seem strange to us today. But in Biblical times, believers would ask God's guidance over particular decisions before them, then cast lots in the belief that God would answer their prayers, and tell them what they should do. Whatever the process we use to lay our needs before God and even if we make bad decisions with good intentions, the believer in God knows that in the end, God, not us, is the ultimate decider.