Thou Shalt Call His Name

“And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.”

You can celebrate Jesus today because He is the Dayspring – We’ve all heard the song, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are gray.” It’s a shame that the mustard company got to those words before the Lord’s people did because they could never be truer than when they are spoken of Jesus, our Sunrise from on High.

Savior

The angels told the shepherds in Luke 2:11, “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior…” The Lord, Yahweh, saves. Today being Christmas, maybe you want to be saved from having to go back to work or having to eat leftover turkey. Maybe you need saving from your credit cards now that you’ve bought all the presents and those after Christmas sales are going to start up.

If you’re like the man Brother George told me about you’re going to need saving. The man and his wife were looking at new cars. He wanted a truck, she wanted a sports car. The wife said, “I want something that goes from 0 to 200 in just a few seconds. Nothing else will do. Christmas is coming up so surprise me!” The man did just that. He bought her a brand new bathroom scale, and nobody has seen or heard from him since.

But seriously, there is a terrible drudgery of life and a purposelessness that man needs to be saved from. Some need to be saved from their addictions, from bad relationships, from hopelessness, from their fears and worry and anxieties. Jesus will certainly save you from all these things and more, but His primary concern is to save you from your lost condition and free you to a relationship with God the Father.

We have a multitude of wrong expectations of Jesus and we have the amazing ability to not see how desperately we need a Savior. The Bible teaches us that we were created for the glory of God. Our lives: our speech, our thoughts, our attitudes, and our actions are to glorify God, but we cannot glorify God the way God intended for us to do because “we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Now, I didn’t choose to become a sinner, I was born with a sin nature, and because of my sin nature I sin. Why do I lie or steal or curse? Because I am a sinner. Now, as we grow not only do we mature, but we learn how to be masters at our sins and we even grow to the place where we will actually deny being sinners. Have you ever caught your child in a lie: you know they lied, there is no question about it, but when they are confronted about it will continue to deny any wrongdoing? We do the same thing with God, but listen, the Word of God testifies against us that we are sinners, and no matter how much we deny it we are confronted daily with the fact of our sin.