LIGHT FOR OUR PATH
Text: Isaiah 9:1 – 4
Have you ever wondered where Hank Williams, Sr. got the idea for his song entitled “I Saw The Light”? It is an interesting story as his wife Audrey Williams pointed out. …
“According to Audrey Williams, Hank wrote the song, "I Saw The Light" while on his way home from a tour.
Audrey commented, "Hank and his band had been on tour for several days and the car they were traveling in kept breaking down all the time they were gone. They were on their way back to Montgomery, Alabama and the car was about to quit again. They were beginning to wonder if the car was going to make it back home. All at once, Hank spotted the beacon light at the Montgomery airport and he hollered, "We're okay now boys -- we're gonna make it – I saw the light."
After he got home he kept repeating those words over and over and finally sat down and began writing the song. He finished it the next day."
"I Saw The Light" never became a Hank Williams hit record, but it did become one of the country's best loved gospel songs. Roy Acuff and he Nitty Gritty Dirt Band scored a #56 hit on the tune in 1971.”
(http://www.countrymusicclassics.com/CMCStorySong.htm). It would be great if Hank’s story had ended as positively as his song did. Although Hank might have seen the light, he had a fatal attraction to the dark.
In the Bible, light is often associated with salvation, and hope life. Darkness is often associated with evil, sin and even death. God sent us His light----Jesus Christ who is the light of the world. God sent us Jesus to help us so we would not be stranded in the dark.
STRANDED IN THE DARK
God wants to help those who are in distress (Isaiah 9:4).
1) Distress: Distress is usually associated with anguish, anxiety, grief, and misery.
2) Dark: The people were oppressed. The people were living in a place that the scripture calls a “shadow of death” (Isaiah 9:2). There is no doubt that any place that is referred to as a “shadow of death” is intimidating. They had been oppressed, defeated and walking in the dark because of their distress.
3) Discovery: God did not want them to focus on their distress. God wanted them to see His intervention.
They had circumstances that seemed to contradict hope.
1) Beating the odds?: They were oppressed, defeated, intimidated and lacking in faith and hope. Isaiah 9:4 recalls how God shattered the rod of one of their oppressors in reference to the Midianites. In the past, God used Gideon to defeat the Midianites. They were outnumbered, but God was on their side as Gideon and an army of 300 men gained a victory against impossible odds (See Judges 6 and 7).
2) Discouraged: Imagine what it would be like to have been one of the miners who were trapped in one of them most recent mining incidents. Times and Democrat Columnist recalls what happened in the December 25 newspaper: “Thirty-three miners spent 69 days waiting for the end of darkness, for that first shaft of light to break through. Their rescue, their redemption from the depths of earth, drew nearer as the Chilean president declared, "We will do everything humanly possible" to save them. We witnessed the miraculous results of those efforts. … In our own lives, we may hear a "noise that sounds like tapping and breaking" through the rocks in our lives. God's redemption is always near. We just have to look up, raise our heads and hearts and say, "Here I am, come on through and help me!" We cannot even imagine what it would have been like to be one of those 33 miners! They were stranded by both darkness and distance. Think about the distance that Jesus went for you and me as He come from heaven to earth.
LIBERATED BY THE LIGHT
Have you ever experienced a power outage?
1) A common experience: The chances of us not ever experiencing a power outage is very slim. We have storms, ice storms, knocked down power lines. We have also had the brief moments of darkness when our power company has routinely shifted switches.
2) A common cause: What is the most common frustration of a power outage? It is a lack of light.
3) Looking for a flashlight: How many of you have ever tripped in the dark because you were looking for a flashlight in the dark during a power outage?
Have you ever doubted God and been afraid?
1) Fear: Christian author Phillip Yancey explained how one of his former jobs was a mirror image of our fear and doubt of God’s intention to help us. "I learned about incarnation when I kept a saltwater aquarium. Management of a marine aquarium, I discovered, is no easy task. I had to run a portable chemical laboratory to monitor the nitrate levels and the ammonia content. I pumped in vitamins and antibiotics and sulfa drugs and enough enzymes to make a rock grow. I filtered the water through glass fibers and charcoal and exposed it to ultraviolet light. You would think, in view of all the energy expended on their behalf, that my fish would at least be grateful. Not so. Every time my shadow loomed above the tank, they dove for cover into the nearest shell. They showed me one emotion only: fear.
Although I opened the lid and dropped in food on a regular schedule, three times a day, they responded to each visit as a sure sign of my designs to torture them. I could not convince them of my true concern. To my fish I was deity. I was too large for them, my actions too incomprehensible. My acts of mercy they saw as cruelty; my attempts at healing they viewed as destruction.
To change their perceptions, I began to see, would require a form of incarnation. I would have to become a fish and speak to them in a language they could understand." (Craig Brian Larson and Phyllis Ten Elshof. eds. 1001 Illustrations That Connect. [source: Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew (Zondervan, 1995)]. Grand Rapids: Zondervan,2008, p. 119).
2) Faith: God wants us to trust Him. Through the ministry of Jesus, God has taken care of our past, given us an abundant life in the present and prepared for us an place for us in heaven!
LIBERTAED BY THE LIGHT
From the beginning God created light to have a place in creation!
1) Let there be light: To ignore God’s guidance is to walk around in spiritual darkness. Without God and His involvement in our lives, we are spiritually walking around, stumbling and falling in the dark. As we know light was a part of creation from the beginning---“let there be light” (Genesis 1:4). God saw that light was good and separated the light form the darkness (Genesis 1:4 b).
2) The Pied Piper principle: Satan a.k.a. Lucifer, was God’s angel whom God had designed to carry light. Lucifer’s name was associated with his task of carrying light. Satan is synonymous with the dark side. Like the Pied Piper, from the children’s story, Satan has an agenda to oppose God and seeks to sabotage God’s creation.
3) The eternal light: God wills for us to have light that is why He sent Jesus as the light of the world to punch holes in the world’s darkness. With Jesus as the light of our lives, we do not have to be scared of the dark.
We have a ministry to work while it is light.
1) A priority in our marching orders: Consider John 9:4 -5 As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me; night is coming when no one can work. 5 While I am in the world, I am the light for the world."
2) Urgency: How well do we help people to see Jesus when the lights go out? When Jesus talked working while it was day, He was talking about how the clock is ticking. There is time to work in forwarding God’s kingdom and the time is now. A preacher recalls a significant incident from his own life: “When I was a student at Harvard Divinity School, I learned preaching from Dr. Gardner Taylor, a pastor in New York City. I’ll never forget those lectures. I remember him telling a story from when he was preaching in Louisiana during the Depression. Electricity was just coming into that part of the country, and he was out in a rural, black church that had just one little lightbulb hanging down from the ceiling to light up the whole sanctuary. He was preaching away, and in the middle of his sermon, the electricity went out. The building went pitch-black, and Dr. Taylor didn’t know what to say, being a young preacher. He stumbled around until one of the elderly deacons sitting in the back of the church cried out, “Preach on, preacher! We can still see Jesus in the dark.”
Sometimes that’s the only time we can see him — in the dark. And the good news of the gospel is that whether or not we can see him in the dark, he can see us in the dark." (Craig Brian Larson and Phyllis Ten Elshof. eds. 1001 Illustrations That Connect. [source: — Timothy George, “Unseen Footprints,” Preaching Today Audio, no. 290]. Grand Rapids: Zondervan,2008, p. 190).
3) Punch holes in the darkness and shine for Jesus: God wants us to help others to see the great light through our faith. We are here to allow God to will and act according to His good purpose (Philippians 2:13). God has created good works in advance for us to accomplish (Ephesians 2:10). “For [we] were once darkness, but now [we] are light in the Lord. [We must] live as children of light for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth” (Ephesians 5:8 – 9 NIV). “… let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in Heaven” (Matthew 5:16 NIV). God’s light is for our path!
