Reflection - Shine The Light

So we're in our third week in our Christmas sermon series called Reflection.

The first week, scott did a great job of answering the question what would this world be like if Jesus had never come?

And how many of you realize it's a dark place without Jesus, right?

And then last week Derek followed that up by talking about why it matters that Jesus came into this world and did an awesome job with that.

And so today my task is to kind of look at and answer the question how does the light of Jesus continue to shine on earth until his glorious return?

And so I get to kind of finish this thing up with that thought.

So the title of my message is Shine the Light.

And if you're following along in your Bible, look at, Turn to Isaiah 60, verses 1 through 3, and we'll start with that.

Isaiah 60:1–3

If you don't have your Bible, please look up on the screen and you can follow there.

So it says in Isaiah 60, I rise, shine, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.

For behold, darkness shall cover the earth and thick darkness the peoples.

But the Lord will arise upon you and his glory will be seen upon you, and nations shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of your rising.

Let's pray, father.

We thank you for your word.

Your word is powerful and quick and does its work, and we ask that things would be no different this morning, that you would take these words of yours and that you would cause me to be able to speak these things, to explain these things, to put flesh on these bones, lord God, so that those who hear these words will be able to live them out in their everyday lives.

Father, we pray for those who are in darkness this morning.

We ask that the light of Jesus would shine brightly and that they would see for the very first time how great he is and that they would put their faith and confidence and hope in Jesus Christ.

For those of us who have the light of Jesus and yet were reluctant at times to let that shine, we pray that you would change our hearts and that we would recognize that that's why we're here, lord God, that you've put us in this place.

And for those who are serving you fullheartedly and letting the light shine brightly, we pray that you watch over them, protect them, keep them and help them to continue to do what you've called them to do in everyday life.

In Jesus' name, we pray amen, amen.

So I was born on a Sunday in September in 1972, and I was born into a ranching family.

My dad managed an 80,000 acre ranch in Montana, and on that ranch in Montana we had wild mustang horses, we had Texas longhorns, which I don't know how they wandered all the way from Texas to Montana, but somehow we had Texas longhorns and we had buffalo that we raised, and so that was the life that I was born into.

Now, not a lot of that was passed down to me and to my generation, but that's what I was born into.

And my dad's dad and his dad before him and probably his dad before him, were shepherds who watched over sheep.

That was their occupation, that's what they did, and when they homesteaded in Wyoming, that's what they were doing until they found up from the ground came a bubbling crew oil, that is oil.

They found oil on the property and all of a sudden they were no longer shepherds, they were oil men.

So that's kind of the story of my family and I'm, in a way I'm carrying on that tradition.

Right, I don't have any pets, I don't have any livestock, I'm not an actual shepherd out in the fields, and yet God's called me to be one of the pastors here at Trinity Community Church.

And another word for pastor is shepherd.

And as you read the scriptures you discover that God has a lot to say about shepherds, doesn't he?

The Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want.

And another place in the New Testament it says that Jesus is the what the good shepherd right.

And so that tradition of shepherding is found throughout the scriptures.

And as we examine these powerful words of prophecy given by Isaiah 700 years before the birth of Jesus in the town of Bethlehem, I'm going to use the shepherds from the Nativity story as an example to kind of illustrate the points that we're going to build out from Isaiah, chapter 60.

Isaiah 60 · chapter mention

So are you ready for that?

Let's do this together.

But first let me give you a little explanation.

When you're reading the Old Testament, especially when you're reading prophetic books, how many of you have discovered there's a pattern in most of the Old Testament prophetic books.

What is the pattern?

God is God and he has a people.

The people of God don't follow God.

And so, because they don't follow God, what is the prophecy that comes?

There will be judgment, there will be captivity, there will be oppression that will come, and yet God is merciful and faithful and loving, kind and has loving kindness, and he shows that towards his people, and so there will be a time or times of deliverance that will come for his people.

And then we recognize what the next chapter says.

And then again God's people, and on and on and on.

So we see this kind of cyclical example in the Old Testament and we look back at those people and say, well, that was those people all that time ago.

Well, are we that different?

If we're being honest, not necessarily.

Thankfully, we have an answer to the problem and we're going to be talking about that this morning.

But as you look at the Old Testament, there's kind of three dimensions that you need to consider.

And, as we're preparing messages from the Old Testament, this is what we look at.

So the number one thing is and the question you answer is what did the prophecy mean for the original hearers?

So, in the book of Isaiah, isaiah was a prophet to the kingdom of Judah, where Israel had divided into two different nations, basically.

So you had the people of the north, which was called Israel, and the people of the south, which was called Judah.

Why is Judah significant to the whole Christmas story, because out of Judah, out of David's line, out of Judah, there would come the Messiah, the savior of the world.

So Jesus was born in the line of Judah.

So it's really important, right?

And Isaiah speaks a lot about this Messiah that would come.

So what does the prophecy mean for the original hearers?

The second question is how can it be applied to our context today?

How can we apply it?

The principles that we see in Old Testament prophecy, how can we apply them to our context in 2023, almost 2024?

For those of us who have a little age on us, it's hard to believe, because we were just thinking that 2000 was an impossible thing to happen, like for it to change, the millennium to change.

And now we're a quarter way through this century, already 2023, almost 2024, it's kind of hard to imagine.

But how can we apply these timeless truths in our present scenario?

And then the third question is what implications, if any, does this prophecy have about the future, right?

So let me give you a little example of this found from Isaiah 60.

The first thing is the nation of Israel slash Judah.

So when they heard these words, a rise shined, for your light has come.

What did it mean to them originally?

Well, it meant because they understood that Isaiah was prophesying that they were going to be captured by the Assyrians.

They were going to be captured by the Babylonians.

They were going to be taken out of their land, placed into captivity.

Their land was going to be destroyed in a lot of ways.

All the temple and all of the different things that they held close to were going to be just ramsect.

But then there would be a time and there would be a day, and actually Isaiah again.

Hundreds of years before this occurred, he actually used the name Cyrus, speaking of a Persian king in the future that would give the Israeli people a chance to come back to their homeland and to rebuild and to be a nation again.

So to them, when they heard these words, a rise shined.

They were thinking about the victory that God would provide to them in their context, in their time.

Does that make sense?

Okay, so jump forward to the church.

Do these words mean anything for the church, which is us?

We are the church.

I believe that it means that God will bring light into the dark world through Jesus, coming to this earth as a lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world.

Are you thankful for that this morning?

Yes, the lamb of God, who would take away the sin of the world, and he would also establish his church.

And his church would consist of what Jewish people and Gentile people and the Gentiles in the room say praise God, thank God that God made a way for all of us and in fact even promised in Abraham and many other times in the Old Testament that Gentiles would come to the light of Jesus Christ.

And we're so grateful that God made a way for us.

And so he also intends for the church to be an agent of light in the earth.

And we find ourselves in that window of time.

So you have passed what God was speaking to people in the past through this prophecy, what he's speaking to us through this prophecy in the present, and also in this case, there's a future element to it as well.

What is the future?

The return of Jesus Christ.

The return of Jesus Christ, the culmination of all prophecy ever written, will be the second coming of Christ, where he will rid the world of darkness once and for all and he will reign forever and ever as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

And we say come quickly, lord Jesus, amen.

In the book of Revelation, in the last chapter in the book, jesus himself said that we should say these words come Lord Jesus, come Lord Jesus, and we wait for his coming, but we don't wait as people who don't have hope, and we don't wait with no job to do in the meantime, right?

So when we preach at TCC, we primarily focus on the church era, the time that we find ourselves living in right now.

Right, because that's where we again, that's where we're living, that's where we get up every day and breathe and move and do all of the things that God's asking us to do.

By the way, god hasn't changed at all through any of it Past, present, future.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Right, and that's something that we can hold on to, even when times change and seasons change and people, you know, the world changes.

We can hold on to that truth.

So, understanding this backdrop, let's look at this chapter more closely.

First of all, the verses present a problem.

The problem is sin separates us from God.

What is sin?

If you had to define sin, what is it?

It's disobeying God.

It's being disobedient to God.

It's being in rebellion to God's will and His way of doing things.

That's what sin is.

How many of you know that sin is in the world today?

In fact, we all, no matter how good you are in this life, we all struggle daily to resist temptation and sin.

Right, that's how real it is.

And in the chapter Isaiah 60, it said this for behold, darkness shall cover the earth and thick darkness the people.

That is a result of sin.

That is the result of sin, is that darkness will overshadow the land and will overshadow the people.

Right, and we spend a lot of time a couple of weeks ago, focusing in on this.

But I just want to remind you from Isaiah 59, this is some of the things that it says that will characterize the darkness in the earth.

One, it says that there will be works of iniquity, there will be deeds of violence, no justice, no honesty, hands defiled with blood, tongues full of lies, feet swift to shed innocent blood.

Truth has stumbled in the public squares.

All their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity and there is no one to intercede.

Not, we're thankful that that was just speaking about a time far gone.

That's not applying we cannot apply this at all to our current situation.

Absolutely wrong.

We find these truths still to be evident, and it's because darkness, this is the life that darkness produces.

This is the type of living that walking in darkness naturally produces.

Right, this world was and is subject to abject darkness, desolation and desperation.

Without Jesus Christ, we live in a devastated state.

Outside of Jesus, if we were to get what we deserve and I mean what we deserve we would all be separated from God for eternity in hell.

That's what we deserve.

That's what the darkness wants to produce in people's lives.

Imagine with me what it must have been like for the shepherds, the Bethlehem shepherds, who more than likely would have been keeping watch over the very sheep that were used in temple sacrifice.

So here we have these shepherds doing their job loving the sheep, taking care of them, keeping them, you know, making sure that those that are without spot and without blemish are ready to be sacrificed for the sins of the people.

And even though they're doing this extremely important job, their work made them ceremonially unclean.

And because they were unclean and they couldn't get to the temple very often, because they were constantly watching over the sheep, people looked down on them.

People considered them to be less than they considered them to be, people that were not worth paying attention to.

They were unclean.

They considered them to be unclean according to the law.

I have a question Aren't you glad that God chooses the least among us?

Aren't you glad that God doesn't view people the same way that we view people?

Aren't you glad that he chooses to confound the wise by choosing the foolish to do his work?

I can qualify for that category.

Right so, but for 400 years God had remained silent.

These shepherds are out in the field watching over their flock.

400 years of silence.

Rome now occupies the land, so no longer are they under Assyrian or Babylonian rule, but now they have a new occupation and instead of removing the Israelites out of the land, they have come in and overtaken the land and they are oppressing them as they live within their own land.

These shepherds are going about their duty on this most regular of dark nights.

Just envision that, and just envision that and picture it as we move beyond the problem to the answer.

Isaiah 60 says clearly we take from it the fact that Jesus is the light of the world.

You say that with me.

Jesus is the light of the world.

That is the answer to the problem of darkness.

Jesus Christ is the light of the world that came to dispel, destroy and remove the darkness from people's eyes, remove the blinders so that we could see the truth and follow after him.

Last week, derek again focused on this fact that Jesus would come to save the world.

And Isaiah 59, it says he saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no one to intercede.

Then his own arm brought him salvation and his righteousness upheld him.

And a Redeemer will come to Zion.

To those who, in Jacob, who turned from transgression, declares the Lord.

That's a great promise.

The Redeemer will come.

The Redeemer will come, my friends.

The Redeemer has come and Jesus is his name.

The incarnation is the single greatest event in human history.

Why?

Because God removed himself from his place of glory and took upon himself flesh and bone and moved into our neighborhood.

He moved in to live with us and eventually to live in us by his spirit.

It's a great miracle, it's the greatest miracle of all.

He did this so that he could provide a means for sin to be atoned for by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which opened the door for mankind to once again walk in right relationship with God.

We, of all people, should be very thankful for this good thing that God has done.

How do we participate in this light and in this life?

How do we walk in this relationship with God that's been renewed because of Jesus Christ?

Well, we must repent of our sins.

What does that mean to repent Scott did a great job of illustrating this where the wall of sin was built between the person and God and the person was moving away from God, even though God was not moving at all.

And what needed to happen?

A very simple thing Person that was walking away from God needed to stop and turn around and come back toward God.

And guess what?

God was the one who kicked the barrier of sin out of the way.

And that's what Jesus came to do to remove the barrier that kept us separated from God.

So if we will repent and turn away from our sin and put our trust, hope and faith in Jesus Christ, the Bible says that we will be saved.

And then we're called to walk out that salvation in fear and trembling.

It's those who endure to the end that will truly be saved.

Let's not be those who are just flashing the pan.

People who see the light, acknowledge the light and even make some progress and change.

Let's be of those who endure to the very end.

Those are the ones who we know for sure are chosen by God and have been born again.

John 8, verse 12,.

John 8:12

Jesus said of himself I am the light of the world.

Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

Jesus is the light of the world.

Because of this, we who are His should be eternally grateful.

Listen to this passage in Colossians 1, 12 through 14.

Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.

What an awesome thing that God has, that God has done for us.

This should be normative for us.

God created mankind to walk in the light, to be in the light.

Adam and Eve experienced this at all times as the beginning of creation.

They walked and talked with God in the cool of the day.

They had open dialogue and expression.

There was no shame, there was no guilt, there was no condemnation, there was no fear, there were no mosquitoes.

I can't prove that, but I'm just saying things were vastly different in that time, in that place.

And yet, because they disobeyed and rebelled against God, we know that Adam and all of his descendants, including us, were born dead to God, born in our sin and trespasses.

And the only way for that to change is for us to be made alive by God, to be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit because we have repented and believed on the Lord Jesus Christ.

So this word glory is used in this passage.

What is the glory of God?

Many people greater than me, with greater minds than me, have tried to define this.

I found this definition on the Gospel Coalition website.

It says the glory of God is the magnificence, worth loveliness and grandeur of His many perfections which he displays in His creative and redemptive acts in order to make His glory known to those in His presence, the essence of who he is, which can't help but come out in what he does and then to affect those who experience His great work.

The glory of God.

You notice the chief end of man and women, mankind to bring glory to God.

Jesus made a way for us to be able to do that again and we are eternally grateful for that.

So again, back to the shepherds.

They're experiencing this glory powerfully when suddenly an angel from heaven, a messenger from heaven again, the Lord not speaking for hundreds of years and an angel, appears in the dark Bethlehem sky and the radiance of the glory of God surrounded them.

And they were afraid, wouldn't you be?

That's a normal response and reaction to the glory of God.

They were afraid.

And yet what must have gone through their minds in this split second that probably seemed like an eternity.

I can't even imagine Probably pinching themselves or looking at each other like are you seeing this?

Is it just me?

What did we just eat?

Did we eat pizza?

What did we drink?

What is going on right now?

What are we experiencing?

And yet they couldn't even find the words to speak because they were so enthralled with what they were experiencing.

Luke 2, 10 through 14, describes this.

And the angel said to them fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all of the people, for unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a savior who is Christ, the Lord, and this will be a sign for you, you will find a baby wrapped in, swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was, with the angel, a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace among those with whom he is pleased.

Can you imagine how in tune, how perfectly pitched, how beautifully orchestrated and sung, with instrumentation that's beyond compare, the heavenly choir must have sounded like on that dark Bethlehem night?

Can you hear it?

If you listen real deeply, can you hear it?

Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace, goodwill to men.

This is the declaration, the exclamation of the whole purpose of Jesus coming to restore right relationship with God.

Don't mistake it, friends.

Jesus was born to die and what To be raised again to new life, having defeated death, hell and the grave and darkness of every kind, every type, every shadow, every element that tries to hide the truth from mankind.

When I think about the glory of God, I think about the story of Mary Magdalene.

Imagine how fearful she must have been.

Along with the rest of the disciples, she shows up at the tomb of Jesus, where they had just laid him to rest, rolled a stone in front of it, and when she arrives there, the stone is rolled away and she peeks her head in and Jesus is not there.

And then Jesus is not there.

And Jesus is not there, broken hearted, I can just imagine the tears that must have fallen from her eyes and she just put buries, her head in her hands and the air gets mingled in with her tears.

And she sees somebody there and assumes that it's the gardener coming to take care of flowers and the trees and things.

And he speaks to her, but she doesn't recognize him.

And he says Mary, what a glorious moment.

God of the universe, the Messiah, born in Bethlehem as a baby, has now died and taken the sins of the world, including Mary Magdalene's, on his shoulders.

And now he's risen from the grave and his glory is shining upon her.

And she runs back to tell the rest of the disciples and, of course, men of faith, as they were.

What did they say?

No way, you're seeing things, mary.

Yes, I'm seeing things, I saw Jesus.

And so Jesus and his loving kindness, what does he do?

He appears to all of them.

And we could go on and on.

Are you, mary Magdalene?

Have you seen Jesus for who he truly is, the Son of God, the Savior of the world.

So this leads to the command from Isaiah 60.

Christ's followers will shine the light of Jesus Christ, not that we might or that we may.

This is will.

This is a direct result of having Jesus, the light of Jesus, enter our lives and intersect our lives and transform our lives.

There is no other option or alternative.

We are called to be bearers of the light of Jesus Christ and we find that again in the words arise, shine, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.

I wanna say to you the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.

I wanna say to this church and to the church of Jesus Christ as a whole wake up, wake up, throw off your slumber.

We aren't supposed to hide in caves and behind closed doors.

In moments like this, it's time to shine.

Those who believe in Jesus should be so influenced and infiltrated by His light that it is natural.

It is natural for us to shine His light to those who still find themselves in darkness.

It should matter to us that we pass co-workers and neighbors and people at school and people in the grocery store that are dying and going to hell without Jesus Christ.

It should matter to us, and we should be of those who open up as wide as we possibly can to allow, by God's grace, the light of Jesus Christ to shine forth, to give everybody a chance to respond to His light.

It's His light that he gives us to reflect.

We are called to be a reflection of His.

That's the whole purpose of this series.

The whole title of the series, reflection, is because that's what we're called to do.

We're called for the light to affect us and then beam out from us, hit us and beam out from us.

But that cannot happen unless it has first hit us and changed us.

It should be our great pleasure to do this.

Until he returns.

Matthew 5, 14 through 16,.

The same Jesus who said I am the light of the world now turns to his disciples and he says to them you are the light of the world.

A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.

Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket.

You can hear the old song in your head right, won't let Satan get out, I'm gonna let it shine.

Hide it under a bushel, no, I'm gonna let it shine.

That's what this verse is saying.

Put it on, don't hide it under a basket but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house In the same way.

Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your father, who is in heaven.

Shine the light, be the light First.

Peter 2, 9 says it in another way.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness.

Are we so far removed from that that we forget what it was like to live in the pit of despair and anguish and death and destruction and devastation, with no hope, without God in this world?

I don't care if you were born into a Christian family.

Your family only listened to Christian music.

You drank milk from a Christian cow.

All of us, regardless of where we came up, still were in darkness and needed a great light to shine, dispelling the darkness in our hearts.

Behavior modification can be trained into individuals, but only God can change the heart, and so I was thinking about how to give an example of this.

So I thought of many different people that I could call out in this church that are those who shine the light of Jesus in great ways every day.

Then I thought about my wife.

My wife, as a teenager, had been a Christian and I was a Christian, but I was a Christian and I was a Christian and I was a Christian major had had a lot of life experience up to that point.

She grew up in a home that was religious but never really learned about Jesus, never learned about the cross or the Savior, never learned about forgiveness, about all of the things that we hold so dear.

She never heard those things and she was involved in different areas in her life, just like all of us in sin.

But all of a sudden, one summer I think she was about 15 or 16 years old, the light of Jesus broke through to her and she became a new creation.

Old things were passed away and all things had become new.

She came home and she said to her parents, my in-laws, with whom I love very deeply and if they're watching right now, I love you more than you can ever imagine and that's true.

But I can only imagine what it must have been like for their daughter to come home and say to them Jesus has changed my life.

I can't even stay in the school that I was a part of, because I know that there's too much temptation there.

I wanna go to a Christian school.

And so her parents scraped together whatever they could and they sent her to a Christian school.

And while she was at that Christian school, god continued to shape and form her.

And then, after she graduated, she went to YWIM Youth with a Mission and she traveled to Nicaragua.

And then she spent a month in Guyana during the hottest part of the year, for a month shining the light of Jesus Christ in all the time, continuing to minister to her parents as well, just shining the light, not preaching at them or trying to convince them in some kind of earthly way, just being the light of Jesus that she is.

And then she came home and went to college and she had a feeling that God wanted her to travel to the New Life Drama Company, which is a result of a lot of prayers on my part.

I was praying that God would bring the right person into my life and she was praying the same thing.

And so what did God do?

He brought us together in Cleveland, tennessee, and he made us a family.

And she's continued to shine the light in my life as an example.

Our children, most of them, have come to know Jesus as their savior.

Under her tutelage and under her care, she has continued to be an example to her parents.

Her parents came to know Jesus as their Lord and savior and she, during COVID, got to baptize her parents in water in a pool.

I think it was during COVID, right before COVID.

Yeah, she baptized them in water in a swimming pool.

Their lives were changed.

My kids' lives have been changed.

Everywhere that she goes, she's a testimony to people around her.

I have found myself in the grocery store in Walmart looking for my wife, only to find her talking to somebody that's tucked away somewhere, just sharing the life of Jesus with them in such special ways that never makes them feel like she's talking down to them.

She's talking to them about the light of Jesus Christ.

This is an example to me, a conviction to me of how I need to live my life shining the light.

She's not a person that typically likes to get up in front of a bunch of people, or even likes crowds very much, but, man, you put her one-on-one in scenarios and situations where people are in desperate need of help or somebody to listen to them, and she's there, all in.

And now God's using her with the next generation as she meets with young mothers in our church and outside of our church, some of them saved, some of them unsaved still, but the light of Jesus is shining in her life and through her example to those young ladies who are then shining the light to their children and the next generation through her and hundreds of other hers and hymns, shining the light of Jesus into these young lives.

This gospel of Jesus Christ will continue to be preached in all of the world until the Lord returns.

Be the light.

Shine the light.

Shine the light by loving your wives, as Christ loves the church, and honoring your husbands.

Shine the light by training your children in the way that they should go.

The scripture tells us that in the end they will not depart from it.

Hold on to that truth.

It doesn't matter currently what that looks like or how your children are behaving.

God is in control.

Continue to stand and believe.

2024 or even the end of this year could be the time that your prodigal returns home to the Lord.

Do not give up.

Continue to shine the light of Jesus.

Shine the light by attending school board meetings and being involved in your community.

Shine the light at your place of work, whether you're an employer or an employee.

Shine the light at school in the face of persecution.

Shine the light at the grocery store or the restaurant.

Please, I beg of you, use the name of Jesus.

Everybody can say God bless you, but very few will say Jesus loves you.

We have the power that's found in the name of Jesus to break bondages and destroy corruption.

It is not the name of God, it is the name of Jesus, who is the epitome of God.

Use his name.

Shine the light at the grocery store or restaurant.

Shine the light in your conversations and through social media.

Moving on, shine the light, shine the light, shine the light.

You know, one of my favorite Christmas songs is go tell it on the mountain, about these shepherd boys who saw the great light and they couldn't hold back, they couldn't keep themselves from sharing it with others.

And we read that in Luke, chapter two, verses 15 through 20.

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherd said to one another let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.

And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger.

Notice, joseph and Mary didn't put them out, even though they were the outcasts of Israel.

When they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child.

They couldn't help themselves.

They couldn't hold it back.

It was on the tip of their tongues and everybody that they encountered got to hear a piece of the story of something that had just happened.

That was great, and all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.

But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart, and the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

What a great example to the rest of us of what it means to shine the light of Jesus Christ.

What's the result of all of this?

Isaiah tells us that those who are lost will turn to Jesus.

That is the promise that we hold onto.

That is the truth that we proclaim and believe.

It says in Isaiah 60, a nation shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of your rising.

Isn't it beautiful how?

The culmination of the Christmas story, even though it was sometime after the birth of Jesus.

What do we have?

Wise men from a distant land who were lost and looking in the skies for answers.

And all of a sudden they saw a star that was pointed toward Bethlehem.

And so they loaded up and they headed to Bethlehem.

And what did they do?

They brought gifts of worship and adoration to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

They brought gold and frankincense and myrrh.

These men, who were lost and searching the skies for answers, were drawn by the light to be transformed by a small child who is now King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Let me finish this morning with this exhortation to all of us it is not our job to do the saving, it is not our job to save anyone.

It is our job to do the shining.

That's what we get to do.

That's our part in the equation.

God does the great work of saving all by himself.

We can't duplicate it, we can't replicate it, we can't make it happen.

And if we try to force somebody into it, it won't work.

It won't remain, the fruit will not remain.

Only God can save a sinner who is lost.

But we get to shine the light in the darkness.

Only he can breathe on dry bones and make them live again.

He is the one who gives the gift of faith to those who would repent and follow after him.

He saves us, keeps us, transforms us and will one day glorify us.

I said it and you can believe it there will be a day when the trumpet will sound and when Jesus himself will appear in the sky and those who are dead in Christ will rise to meet him in the air, and the rest of us who remain will join them as well, and we will be transformed in the twinkling of an eye and we will be made like him, and he will return to this earth.

He will eradicate all darkness, all sin, all shame, all guilt, all condemnation, sending it to the pit of hell forever and ever, and he will rule and reign forever and ever.

Shout it from the rooftops, let's sing it in this beautiful Tennessee valley.

Let's let the world know that Jesus Christ is born and he is Lord, amen.

If you're ready to shine the light of Jesus in a greater way than you have been, let's stand to our feet together and let's pray together.

Let's ask the Lord for help in doing this.

We cannot accomplish this without him, but through him.

Remember Philippians 4, 13,.

I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.

So let's just start for a minute, just your heart and God's heart, just talk to him and just say, hey, let's be honest, father.

I confess this is me, tyler, speaking.

I confess, lord, that there have been times when I have resisted shining the light because of circumstance or situation.

I was tired or I was focused in on my own darkness, my own areas of need.

I just didn't want to be bothered, I didn't care enough, my compassion level wasn't where it needed to be.

Forgive me, lord, for those times when I have failed to shine the light in the way that you deserve for it to be shown.

And, father, we thank you that with repentance comes a new beginning, and so we ask you for your grace right now to transform us, lord, god, to change our hearts and minds, that our desires would line up with your desires and that we would fully embrace the light of Jesus that has impacted our lives and that through that light, we would reflect and shine that light to the world around us in ever increasing ways.

And, father, we pray result of the church doing this as a whole around the world, as that you will be raised up very high and that those who look to you, will be drawn to you, will be transformed and changed from the inside out.

The work that only you can do, father, I pray specifically for our own families, friends, coworkers and those that we encounter on a daily basis.

Lord, would you move?

Even this Christmas, lord, would you give you've already given the gift of your son, lord, would you give a gift of repentance, change and just now, if you wanna just call out the names of the people in your life that you're believing in or believing God for either first time salvation or for them to return to the Lord just begin to speak those names before the Lord.

I thank you, lord, for my uncle, joe, my dad, father, I pray for my neighbors.

Pray for Joe, especially my neighborhood, lord.

I pray for all of those, lord, that find themselves surrounded by darkness, with no hope.

Pray for persecutors.

We pray for those who are involved in wicked and evil things, lord, god, we pray for those in the prisons, lord.

We pray for those who are, who find themselves in places of drug addiction and many other things.

Lord, we just ask help us to shine the light and do the work that you can only do in their lives, father, and we do pray the prayer that you've asked us to pray, and we ask come quickly, lord Jesus, but not until you accomplish the task of saving all of those who you've chosen to be a part of your family.

Help us to be busy about your business this Christmas, and always.

In Jesus' name, and may the Lord bless you and keep you.

May he cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.

May he lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace in Jesus' mighty name.

Amen, amen.

Merry Christmas everybody.