Embracing the Light: God's Power, Presence, and Purpose

"Jesus referred to himself as the light of the world, stating, He that follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. As the Apostle Paul shared, when he encountered Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, he said, Suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round about me." [01:00:03] (21 seconds)


"The Apostle John wrote in one of his letters, God is light. And the Bible tells us that in the new heaven, the city will have no need of the sun, neither the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God is the light, it will lighten it. And the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, will be the light of the city. It tells us in Revelation 22, 5, There will be no need for candles, nor for a sun, for the Lord will give the light. From beginning to end, the Bible talks a lot about light. The fact that God is the light of the world. And these Christmas candles, these Christmas lights, the Christmas star, all remind us of this truth. And there's four truths that I want us to think through this morning real quickly, regarding what it means that God is light." [01:00:23] (49 seconds)


"First of all, it signifies, light signifies God's power. Light signifies God's power. Think about the sun for just a moment. Around 342 watts of solar energy fall upon every square meter of earth over an entire year, which is around 44 quadrillion watts of power." [01:01:12] (20 seconds)


"Now consider the fact that God spoke this powerful source of light into existence with just his word. He said, let there be lights in the sky. And God made two great lights, the sun and the moon. God spoke this powerful, mighty light that is so bright that we can't even look up into, that is so hot, we can't even get close to it. And God simply spoke that into existence. If that sun, that light is so powerful, think of how powerful our God must be. The Bible tells us, as we saw already, that God will be the light of heaven. There will be no need for sun in heaven because God himself is the brightness and the light of all there is. God simply spoke. He spoke light into existence. That's who he is. It indicates the power of who our God is. That's what we should think of when we look at light." [01:01:53] (61 seconds)


"Another thing that light signifies is God's presence. Often throughout the Bible, God revealed himself through the presence of light. He showed the Israelites that he was with them through a pillar of fire. He showed Moses that he would be with them as he spoke to him through a bush that was on fire, but it was not consumed. He showed the Israelites, that he was in the tabernacle in the temple when down from heaven came down a fire of light. And we often do the same thing when we want to indicate that we're present with other people. When we don't want other people to think we're home, what do we do? We turn off all the lights. We don't want people to know we're home. If we want to make people think we're home when we're not, we turn on lights around the house and we leave the house and people think, oh, the light is on. And so we use it by light. And so light is an indication of the presence. You can see on this next graphic here of the world. What do all those bright lights mean? That indicates presence of people. In the darkness, that's a lack of people. There's not as many people there, but where you see light, it's an indication of presence." [01:02:15] (70 seconds)


"You know, light's a wonderful thing. Aren't you so thankful for light in our world? But a one problem that light has is that it exposes that which is in darkness. You can clean something really well in the night, but then you wake up the next morning and the sunlight is shining out through it and you go, oh, have you ever seen those mirrors that ladies use sometimes for makeup that have like million watts of light and they examine really closely? And you pull that thing up and from a distance you're like, I don't look too bad today. But you pull that thing up and it's like, whoa, what is all of that stuff? Light exposes truth. You clean something, you dust the table off and he looks really good. And then that sunlight comes shining through and it's like, did I even clean that thing? Light exposes dirt." [01:08:54] (52 seconds)


"And the light of God is a wonderful thing. But the light of God can also expose the sinfulness of our lives. And so when we compare ourselves to who Jesus Christ was, to how he lived, to how he didn't tell any lies, how he lived a perfect life, didn't get angry with people, and the closer we get to the light of God, it starts revealing the sinfulness of our own heart. And it starts revealing how lost we really are and how much trouble we have with God. Light exposes sin. And that's what Christmas is all about." [01:09:22] (34 seconds)