Divine Light
I. Introduction
A. with our sign this evening being the healing of the man born blind I thought about turning out all the lights in the building so that we can experience the darkness of being blind. But no I thought why repeat old tricks.
B. Instead tonight I’d rather focus on the opposite of the darkness of blindness. The brightness of sight.
C. Jesus in our gospel today healed a man who had been born blind. Now Jesus gave sight to many people in his earthly ministry, but this one is different.
D. This time we hear the debate of the disciples, concerning the reason for his blindness.
E. and they asked a question many people have asked when facing hardship, “what or who’s sin is responsible.” To which Jesus responds, this is not the result of blindness, but so that the glory of God may be revealed.
F. With this answer Jesus opens up a whole new dimension to this healing.
G. Because as John writes earlier in the Gospel the Son of God is the light piercing into the darkness and here we now see Jesus as the light piercing the darkness of man struck blind.
Transition – All the while, we too were blind but have had our eyes opened by the same divine light.
II. Opens our eyes
A. Just as Jesus healed the Blind Man, he heals our own blindness.
1. Oh, if you use glasses to see like my wife, you are still gong to need them because this is not the kind of healing I am talking about.
2. Jesus heals our eyes so that we can see God.
3. Before Jesus heals us we are as blind as can be stumbling in the dark.
4. But Jesus the divine light opens our eyes.
a) we aren’t alone in needing our eyes opened the disciples needed a little eye opening themselves.
1) Luke 24:44-48 Then Jesus said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.
2) Jesus opened their eyes and he opens our eyes so that we may witness God’s Love because in Sin we are blind to God’s love
B. Blinded by sin we have no hope of seeing God and His Love
1. One of my favorite shows as a kid was Scooby Doo
2. One of the characters on the show was Velma and well Velma was absolutely blind without her glasses. Inevitably, she would lose her glasses and of course, that would be when the bad guy would show up. Many times, she would mistake the bad guy for a good guy and think he was a friend when in reality he wanted to hurt her. This is how it is for us when we are blinded by sin; we mistake the bad guy for the good guy. And we end up following the bad guy rather than following the good guy who created us.
C. But we are not left in our blindness Jesus the divine light opens our eyes to the truth and though we as Paul says we see but dimly now we will see him fully on the day of the Lord.
Transition – For, the divine light will guide us and give us hope.
III. Light that guides us
A. Like a lighthouse guiding the ships to safety the divine light guides us safely through life to our heavenly home.
B. Christ knew that our life is not easy and it would in some ways become even worse because of him setting you free.
1) In the gospels he warns us through his disciples that things will happen to us because of Christ and that in the last days life in general will be hard.
2) Unlike others, we do not have to face the harshness of life with brittle stoicism or despair, but with hope. Because we have the divine light.
3) In light there is hope, in darkness only fear.
a) a quick glance at the principles of interior design can show us this principle. They have noticed that bright and open rooms generally make us feel more cheerful than a dark and closed room.
b) Christ the divine light gives us that bright and open feeling by giving us hope in the promise he sealed in his own blood.
c) and because of that blood we now walk in the divine light.
4) and like the proverbial lighthouse he guides us through the turmoil and rocky seas of life.
a) without his light we would be run aground on the jagged rocks that litter our path.
b) but we have his light guiding us safely
C. And like the disciples before us we can now see the truth.
1) seeing the truth we no longer need to fear the attempts of the blind to drag us back into the darkness.
2) some of you may have heard of the recent James Cameron docudrama The Lost Tomb of Jesus where Simcha Jacobovici seeks to cast doubt on the resurrection and perpetuate the mistakes of the Da Vinci Code
a) I am not going to spend our time going into detail about the errors that were made, I will just simply say it was a lot of conjecture built on what ifs.
b) if you would like a complete run down check out Dr Paul Maier’s and Dr Jeffery Kloha’s response on the LCMS website.
c) such things as Jacobovici’s claims are no threat to us because we have already seen the truth in the resurrected Christ, our divine light.
d) so while I watched the show so I could answer people’s questions, I never even seriously considered that they found Jesus’s body and that he was married
3) because of the truth we can stand against the on slot of Satan as he tries to live up to his name as the accuser when he tries to accuse us of evil.
a) we like Luther who came before us can remind him that the divine light has opened our eyes and made us his fellow heirs in his blood.
b) and Satan will run because he as a lover of darkness can not stand being in the light. And our divine light, Jesus Christ, has shattered and bound Satan’s power over us.
4) and we can see all of this because Jesus the divine light has opened our eyes.
IV. Closing
A) now we live as those who can see because we have been given sight by the divine light.
B) Our eyes now open we press on towards the goal because we a have seen the truth that Jesus is the Christ the son of the living God.
