A Great Light for Those in Darkness
When Jesus Christ entered the world, a great light dawned over a world darkened by sin. Today, R.C. Sproul marvels at the radiant hope that accompanied the birth of the Savior.
The New Testament tells us that we are, by nature, the children of darkness. Darkness is our natural habitat. John tells us why that is. We all know John 3:16: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” And it goes on with this upbeat statement: “God has sent his Son in the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.”
But what’s John 3:19? That this is the condemnation, that men loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds are evil. From the time of the first sin, Adam and Eve sought the cloak of darkness. They fled from the brightness of the glory of God who lighted the confines of paradise. That is the nature by which we are born. God has given over the world to the foolishness of a darkened mind. That’s in view here long-term when we look at what happened on Christmas, because Isaiah tells us, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.” The phrase “walked in darkness” means lived their lives in the context of darkness. It’s not simply the darkness that comes at dusk, but the word that is used here indicates the darkest kind of darkness, when there’s not even a crack of light coming into the room. Where people are finding themselves as blind persons, groping, bumping into things, trying to find their way, because in them there is no light whatsoever. Also, if we look even closer at this text, we will see that Isaiah is talking about a darkness that is a fatal darkness, a deadly darkness from which the only escape there can be is by the intervention of God.
It’s not by accident that Christmas is celebrated around the world every year by the chief decoration of lights, because the coming of the Christ child in Bethlehem was announced first of all by an explosion of light that bathed the fields of Bethlehem. Like I say, the greatest sound and light show that the world has ever seen, that penetrated this deadly, fatal darkness where people were groping for direction. Isaiah’s looking down through time and the Word of God is coming from his pen saying, this people who grope in deadly darkness will see a great light, an exploding light, and it is linked with this statement: “For unto us, a child is born” (Isa. 9:6).
