Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.
2 For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.
3 And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.
Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.
We see two things over here: one is the Lord is telling us to arise and the second thing is God is telling us to shine. When we go in and tell somebody arises that means obviously they are either sitting down or they are lying down, so they are not standing up. So the Lord is coming and telling to those people who are sitting or lying down, because of sorrow, or because of what they have been going through they didn’t have the strength to get up and their legs are feeble and their soul is weak, emotionally they are drained and they saying Lord I am seeing darkness after darkness after darkness, my whole period is like that, going through a tremendous dark period and the Lord is saying, “Arise and Shine because Jesus Christ is the light of the world, He has come, He has come and He is shining!” And the most beautiful thing over here is the glory of the Lord is not just around, He is not just beside. The Lord is saying, “The glory of the Lord is upon you.” That means Lord is upon, the brightness of the Lord is upon us, people who are in darkness, the Lord is saying this month my glory has risen upon you, it's not future tense like He is saying it Has risen upon you, I am there, I have risen on you and my brightness is there. We can say If the Lord’s glory is on me, how am I not able to see it? If we are able to see it, God will not say,” Arise and Shine for the Glory is on you, obviously, we are not able to see it, it’s an act of faith when the Lord comes to us and He tells us Arise and Shine Glory of the Lord has risen upon you. We are not able to see, we still feel like everything is dark around us, when we hear the Lord speak to us and say, His Glory has come on us, we obey and we arise that’s one when we actually see, the Glory of the Lord on us. That’s when people around us will see, God’s glory in our lives. So it’s a matter of us believing what the Lord speaks to us and acting on what God is telling us to.
Two Bible characters went through a dark period and when Jesus came and told them to arise, what did they do? How did God’s glory shine in their life? In our lives, the application is what is the purpose? What is the purpose of God’s glory coming into our lives? When we are going through a dark situation, we are looking to the morning to come. Everybody will say, “Ok, If you are going through a dark period, the morning will come, daybreak will come.” When we continue to go through, for some people it like year after year, month after month, seems like the darkness is never gone, for them, the Lord is saying, (if you believe what is the Lord is speaking to us tonight), “God’s glory rises upon us.” This month going to be a bright month.
The two-fold blessing is:
Number one, we are actually coming out of darkness, our dark period is finished.
Number two is, the people around us they will see the brightness, for that’s what verse three is and And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.
So it’s not just us, we are not just happy with the brightness, God took me out of my dark environment I will see the darkness around me, but it's a two-fold blessing. One is I am happy because God took me out of it I am so thankful, number two is people are seeing the Light, The Lord in our lives. We become like the moon, the moon is reflecting the sunlight, Without the sun, the moon is dark. So without the light of the Lord, we are dark. But when His light comes on our lives. We begin to radiate and that light attracts gentiles, to the brightness of the light of the Lord. So we going to see, how the Lord came, How the Lord Jesus was the light of the world, came to two people, there are many people that the Lord came, who were in darkness the Lord came and because of His grace even though they did not know the Lord Jesus Christ that’s what we are going to see those two people did not know the light came to them, but they believed, and they obeyed and as the result of that they saw the light and the people around them saw the light. So we are going to see what the Lord did to those two people. We turn to the book of John chapter 5 verses 1 through 15.
After this, there was a feast for the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2 Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches.
3 In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.
4 For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.
5 And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.
6 When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole?
7 The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.
8 Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed and walk.
9 And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the sabbath.
10 The Jews, therefore, said unto him that was cured, It is the sabbath day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.
11 He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk.
12 Then asked them him, What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk?
13 And he that was healed wist not who it was: for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place.
14 Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.
15 The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus, which had made him whole.
We see in this passage the man was sitting by this pool for a long time and he was there for 38 years. Every year he is waiting, for somebody to put him in the pool. The Angel of the Lord comes and stirs up the pool, He stirs up the pool and whoever jumps in, gets healed. He never got the opportunity of being able to get into the pool before other people. So he is sitting there year after year after year, 38 years of his sickness, when we see, in the bible, in this chapter it was a result of sin, because of sin He became sick. So sometimes people can get sick, because of disobedience, because of sin, and when we repent God heals. We see Jesus now coming into this man’s life, he didn’t even know, He didn’t know who Jesus was. If we look at verse 13 it says “And he that was healed wist not who it was” so he didn’t even know that it was Jesus who healed him. He didn’t know who Jesus was.
We don’t see here that a Huge Angel is appearing in front of this man, saying, “I am here sent from God, I am Gabriel.” You know. “Arise take up your bed and walk.” If that would have been it case, it would have been easier for this man to take up his bed and walk. But Jesus came in the form of a man, an ordinary man, He came and he told him, Arise take up your bed and walk. So over here what we see is, this man even though he did not see light around him; it was 38 years and it was another dark day for him. Nothing different, he could not feel anything different. He could not see anything different, but he believed when Jesus came and told him. When Jesus came to him and said, arise take up your bed and walk. He got up, so what the Lord is speaking to us tonight is, no matter what our situation is, how many years we have been going through this. Lord says it does not matter. When I come to you and I tell you Arise, that is our job is to get up, imagine this man never got up, he would have been there, for 40 years, 50 years, He would die in the same situation but he obeyed the Lord, so what the Lord wants us to do here is, obedience. When the Lord comes and speaks to us about our situation, regardless of how it looks, it can look the same way as it looked yesterday. But we should not keep our eyes on circumstances, instead of that, we have to look at what the Lord is speaking to us. If the Lord is telling this month, God is going to take away that which was hurting you all these years. That which was keeping you in darkness all these years. In emotional darkness, In physical darkness, whatever it is, financial darkness. Whatever circumstances you feel like there is no light around me, there is no hope. When we feel like even today everything looks the same, there is nothing different. Spirit of the Lord is telling us tonight, for this month that, your light comes. Your light which you have been expecting all these years you got tired of, is right there, is on you. That was what the Lord is saying, It is not just around you, it is on you. The presence of the Lord, the virtue of the Lord is already on this man, all he had to do was arise. So obedience, plays a big part, faith, in showing faith in action, is active faith, without obedience, there is no faith.
So as an act of faith, he obeyed, he got up, and he was healed. And we see after that, not only his darkness left, not only he felt that healing in his body, we see the Jews, the people around him, now they coming and asking, what happened to you? How come you are carrying your bed and you walking? Now that light has gone to people who did not know Jesus Christ. These people are Jewish people who really did not know Jesus Christ. So we see here what the Lord is going to do to our lives this month, people around us will see. Gentiles will come to the light…(11:25 king to brightness… we will be like the moon that’s what the Lord is telling me this morning. We will be like the moon, without the sun, the moon cannot shine. When the sun is there, when the moon shines and people who are in darkness get that light, that’s what the Lord wants us to be, He wants us to be that reflective (11:46) of him. We have to reflect on Jesus Christ. That Light. SO when that light comes on us, we can never be in dark That brightness. Everybody will go to see, What happened you are glowing? It’s not physical, like a glow all of sudden. It’s not like Lord said arise and shine….. all of us sudden we see the glitter on us….it’s not like that but, people will notice that light. That is on us. We may not notice in the beginning, but when we believe what the Lord says this is the promise for this month. What happened is, that the light that is on us, will get into us. People around will see that light and they will be drawn to Jesus Christ… so we have to take that as a promise for our lives, for this month because Lord was especially speaking to me this morning about the during of this man, 38 years, imagine 38 years he was in that situation, waiting, Lord when is my morning going to come? He would have even given up, he would have even thought ok this is how its gonna be, is there anybody going to be able to help me, anybody is going to carry me and put me in the pool, but all of a sudden without even him knowing that light came to him. Everything can look the same in our lives, this month, our circumstances look exactly the same, and we won’t even know that the Light of the Lord is on us. This is God’s time, God’s presence is on us, and the power to change is on us when we hear the Word of God when we act on it. It actually becomes reality in our lives and God changes us, He changes our circumstances, what we have been expecting years after year, day after day, The Lord is able to completely make it happen, and not only us, the people around us will see Jesus!
Let us pray... Heavenly Father may Your Word shine in the hearts of the listeners. May they rise up and claim the victory that is theirs in Christ once they place their trust in you. In Jesus' Name. Amen.
