Sun of Righteousness

Sun of Righteousness

Or, Jesus Is True Light, Amen!

Not only would I like you to not feel bad about what you know, I'd like you to take the whole tray of warm cinnamon rolls out of your apologetics oven and smother it with icing. You can explain, and enjoy, things that others can't. You understand the meaning, the explanation, the reasons, the realities. You can see. It's not because you are awesome, it's because—by God's grace—you are living and walking in the Light.

Darkness might be oppressive, heavy, an un-fun blanket of dankness. Darkness is powerful, but darkness can’t even talk its way out of the dark. Darkness can't make clear what it's doing. This is the nature of darkness: it doesn't see. Add the moral dimension, and it doesn't want to see. Even that invisible law is something all you Light-livers can see.

Advent is a light-party. “Proper” advent celebrations include five candles, and one by one each candle is lit on the four Sundays leading up to Christmas day and the fifth on the 25th itself. The birth day is the brightest day; all the light shines!

We've been working our way through Advent Amens. These are incarnation trues for you to treasure in your heart like Mary (see Luke 2:19). These are reasons to celebrate with feasting and giving and singing, but it all starts with being able to say, Yes! Amen!

Jesus is true God, true Man, true King, and true Light. Jesus is the "God of God, Light of lights." He is the one who created all things, who upholds all things, and therefore the one in whom all things make sense. Jesus reveals, like light, true God. Jesus shines on true man, with true authority as King, and He is the light of the world. He is certainly the light of Christmas. It doesn't matter how many watts are wrapped around your Christmas tree, without Christ, all is chaos not calm, all is dark not bright.

When you follow Jesus as the light of the world, you have the light of life (John 8:12). You have the light that reveals what’s what and who’s who. Christmas is not just plundering the Egyptians, it's plundering the Egyptians while explaining to the Egyptians that they didn't know what they had anyway.

Sun of Righteousness - Jesus is True Light

There are three verses that are critical to the star on the treetop of our series, a few that you would even say are glowing.

Start with the gospel in John 1:5 and 1:9.

In Him (the Word/Logos) was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:4-5 ESV)

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. (John 1:9 ESV)

So Jesus is true light. That He was coming into the world connects light to the incarnation. It's just a few verses later that we read "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14).

The life was the light of men means what? His light makes visible the life of men and is also the activating power of men. You could just as well try to live in this solar system without the sun as you can explain all the movements of this life without Jesus.

The darkness doesn't get it. The ESV translates verse 5, "the darkness has not overcome it." Other translations emphasize that darkness doesn't "comprehend" (KJV, NASB) or grasp it. Even though He was the light coming into the world, and though He was in the world, yet the world did not know Him. They couldn’t make sense of the one who makes everything make sense.

Darkness is a metaphor for the effect that sin and evil have: they keep men from seeing reality. Reality is there, just as the furniture is still there though the lights are off, it just isn’t seen. Sin keeps men in the dark.

The light was only good for those who were born of God's will, and then, they saw the light and see by the light.

Jesus said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life" (John 8:12). He said, "I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness" (John 12:46).

Paul witnessed to what Jesus told him personally, "I am Jesus...I have appeared yo you for this purpose...delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles--to whom I am sending you, to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light" (Acts 26:16-18).

This is why we give "thanks to the Father, who has qualified (us) to share in the inheritance of the saints in light" (Colossians 1:12). So we are "a people for his own possession, that (we) may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called (us) out of darkness into His marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9).

The last chapter of the Old Testament anticipates the rising of the Sun.

But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. (Malachi 4:2 ESV)

Those who heard Micah at first might not have realized how personal the Sun would be.

So we sing with Charles Wesley’s help:

Hail! the heav'n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail, the Sun of Righteousness
Light and life to all He brings,
Ris'n with healing in His wings….
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the new born King."

Jesus is true light, amen!

Strongholds Destroyed

By the Light we see that most of the Man-isms cannot stand; when it comes to lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of God (see 2 Corinthians 10:5), the darkest thoughts of men are that there is no God.

Materialism cannot stand in the Light. The Logos made the things. He was eternal, what He made was not eternal. So the world consists of things visible and invisible, but He is before all things, in Him all things hold together, and in everything Jesus is preeminent (Colossians 1:16-18). Stuff is not the meaning.

So Secularism cannot stand. There is no sphere in the world that isn't answerable to the Light, just as there is no spot in a planet’s orbit that isn’t dependent on the sun.

Likewise Humanism cannot stand. Human beings, while truly in a privileged position on the planet, are privileged by a given, not by their own bootstrapping. In their "wisdom" men did not know God. Even the Jews, who had been given special revelation to help them see, did not recognize the sent One (John 1:11). Men are not the meaning.

And Nihilism is proven as meaningless as it claims meaninglessness is the meaning. The Light reveals value and purpose. The Light itself will be praised, and so we learn to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Trues Defended

Abraham Kuyper argued that a comprehensive world-and-life-view must be able to do three things: 1) explain man’s relationship to God, 2) explain man’s relationship to man, and 3) explain man’s relationship to the world.

• Jesus is true God! And He is the mediator between God and men, so that we know God and have direct access to God.
• Jesus is true Man! He affirms the image of God in our embodied souls by taking on flesh, and not only shows us love but enables forgiveness and reconciliation and blessing between us.
• Jesus is true Light of the world and its true King!

Last Sunday we rejoiced that the King was born! It was fun to reread in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe this past week, after Father Christmas had given his gifts his parting shot is, "Merry Christmas! Long live the true King!"

For that matter, the last words of David, the anointed of the God of Jacob, celebrated how a great king is a great light.

The God of Israel has spoken;
the Rock of Israel has said to me:
When one rules justly over men,
ruling in the fear of God,
he dawns on them like the morning light,
like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning,
like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth.
(2 Samuel 23:3–4 ESV)

Jesus is, and will be on earth, the great dawn, and darkness will scatter. He is the Sun, shedding warmth and light. He is the one in whom all the planets of our lives revolve. We crash without His gravity. We stumble without His illumination. In Jesus our Life-operating System is oriented and calibrated for truth and joy.

Advent Implications

We are not just aiming to remember Jesus on Christmas, which of course is good. See everything in Jesus’ light! You can take down your Christmas lights and store them in your garage for 11/12th of the year, but that doesn’t stop the Light.

Jesus is not just a historical figure to remember at Christmas, but the fundamental source of understanding reality itself. Without Him, there is only spiritual and intellectual darkness, but in Him, we find the illumination that makes sense of God, humanity, and all of creation.

Conclusion

The good news does not offer men something better than what they already have, though sometimes we act (evangelize) as if men have a life, like they “have” a car, but Christianity is a nicer life, a cleaner life, a life that gets better milage, that is better for the environment, that has a longer warranty, and all we need to do is convince them to trade up. The hard part is not getting someone to trade up, it’s getting them to give up the lie that they have any sort of life in the first place.

This isn't just about having a "better" way of seeing things, but rather the only way to truly see reality as it is. Believe! Behold! Receive your King! Turn to the light!

I have said before that apart from Christ, Christmas is hell. In Christ, all are yours. “In your light do we see light” (Psalm 36:9).

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