CHFC - Christmas Eve (Isaiah 9:2-7)

This is ERC Sundays, the messages at Emmaus Rd.

Church in DeWitt, Iowa. ERC is a Church of people

striving to grow in Jesus and make him known to others through

our faith, words and actions. Find out more about our church

at emmausrdonline.org. Here's this week's message. 1122

presents real men of Christmas. Real men.

Of Christmas. Today we salute you, Mr. Too

Many lights on your house, guy. Too Many lights.

On your house. Guy, For 11 months out of the

year, you're cool, calm and collected.

But after Thanksgiving, you flip the switch.

It's your. Time to.

Shine. Most men have one tub of lights.

Not you. You took being the light of the

world literally. It was just.

You don't just hang lights, you go to war with darkness.

Why worry about fiscal responsibility when Santa is

counting on you? Is it over the top?

Yes. Do your neighbors kind of hate

you? Probably.

But we know under the lights, power cords and authentic 110

scale blow up reindeer set is a heart for making Christmas

magical for your family. Thank.

You. Thank you.

Thank you. The wise men might have brought

gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but you lit up the whole

neighborhood. There's the too many lights on

your house, guys. Yeah.

Amen. Amen.

OK, here's the thing. I first of all, I want to thank

our friends at the Church of 11/22, which is down in Florida.

I want to thank them for that video because I saw that and I

was like, it's perfect. It's perfect for a number of

reasons, not the least of which is you probably know somebody

like that or in a room with this many people, you there probably

is somebody who is that person. So Lord bless you.

Good for you. Way to light up your whole

neighborhood and make sure your neighbors can't sleep because

it's too bright. Well, here's the thing, I, I

love that video also because it's, it points us directly.

Well, kind of what we're going to be talking about tonight.

We're going to be talking about light.

We're going to be talking about the light of the world in Jesus

Christ and, and how only through him do we have any opportunity

to overcome the darkness that so often hits US in our in, in our

own lives. And so, friends, I'm excited to

bring you God's word tonight. Now, I am also going to give you

another gift, one in the same. It is the gift of brevity.

I am not going to try and be particularly clever tonight or

speak very long because you know what?

It's dinner time, isn't it? Unless you guys have already had

all of the Christmas food. Is that a thing?

I have. I didn't.

I didn't even have any of the cookies yet.

Were they good? Yeah.

Good for you. That's awesome.

All right, you can give me one after this service, huh?

All right. Well, so, yeah, I, I, I want to

be brief tonight. We're just going to, yeah, pick

up on this very real theme that Jesus Christ is the light of the

world and, and what that means for us.

And so we're going to read Isaiah 9, verses 2 through 7,

Isaiah 9:2–7

just six little short verses. And this is the word of the Lord

to us. The people who walked in

darkness have seen a great light, those who dwelt in a land

of deep darkness, On them has light shined.

You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy.

They rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are

glad when they divide the spoil for the yoke of his burden and

the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his persecutor.

You have broken as on the day of Midian.

Every boot of the trampling warrior in battle tumult, and

every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the

fire. For on to us the child is born,

to us son is given, and the government shall be upon his

shoulders, and his name shall be called.

Wonderful Counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of

Peace. Of the increase of his

government and his peace. There will be no end on the

throne of David and over his Kingdom to establish it and to

uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time

forth and forevermore. And the zeal of the Lord of

hosts will do this. Here ends the reading of God's

word in verse 2. We here we read that the people

who walked in darkness and it also says those who dwelt in a

land of deep darkness three days ago was literally by light

standard the darkest day of the year for us living in eastern

Iowa. Hear what you probably

experienced if you paid any attention was there was a

complete Max of about 8 hours of light and that includes sunrise,

sunset, but that means that 2/3 of the day it was just dark.

Now that literal darkness is a little bit different than what

Isaiah is talking about here and what the Bible typically talks

about. Because typically in the Bible

darkness is a is a metaphor for sin and evil and suffering and

death. And in the case of Isaiah's

writing, when he uses the phrase deep darkness, that actually

literally means impenetrable gloom or a death shadow.

If you reverse those words, which it's the same compound

Hebrew word, what you'll find is in Psalm 23, that's what we

hear. For though I walk through the

valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are

with me now. The original hearers of this

text, when Isaiah is writing this, they're in deep, deep

darkness. Why?

They were exiles. They were by force, pulled out

of their homes, pulled out of their country, brought to a

different place, their friends and family killed.

The only people left are the ones who are forced into a new

country, forced into a place where they don't know what's

going on. This is not home.

They have no idea. And you know what they're told?

They're told, get used to it. You're never going home.

This is your life now. These people are in deep, deep

darkness, that which we can probably barely understand here

in the West. Now, all of those things that

happened to them, those were just outside forces that they

had no control over. And that happens to us sometimes

too. Sometimes we, we call it seasons

of darkness and things happen in our lives and they happen to us

and our loved ones, and we have literally no control over those

things. Give you an example.

This is not super dark, but it's relevant in my world right now.

Let's say you park your car in front of your house and you wake

up the next morning. That's not funny.

That's not funny. You wake up the next morning and

you go out to your car and the just the front end is smashed.

No, no, nothing. There, There we are.

You now have a new financial problem.

Yay. Totally outside of you.

Totally outside of your control. There's nothing you can do about

it. There's there's nowhere to go

except for your wallet. Good luck.

And that happens sometimes there's there's these things

that happen outside of our control and sometimes that looks

like a relationship issue. You had no idea it was as bad as

it was. You, you, in your heart of

hearts, you don't know what happened.

It's outside of your control. The person has just walked away

from you. That can happen.

And, and there's of course, the bigger geopolitical issues and,

and all those things that as we look at them and we ponder them

as we live through them, it can, it has the potential to pull us

into seasons of darkness. And in those seasons, what

typically happens is we lose peace, we lose joy, we lose

assurance, we lose all these things that normally are part of

our daily lives that keep us moving forward.

But having said all that, I know, I know that there is a

darkness that needs to be dealt with far more than the darkness

that comes from the outside in. And that darkness is the one

that resides in US. It resides in us.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, I didn't come to

church on Christmas Eve to be told I'm a terrible person.

Well, hello, welcome. But it's true.

It's true. There is a darkness that resides

in US called sin that is more powerful than we give it credit

for. I got to tell you, I fully

believe that most people I ever meet, including myself, from

time to time, we are capable of far worse than we would ever

imagine. Now, for the best of us, you

know what happens that stays in our heads.

We have terrible thoughts about people, awful things that we

would never say out loud because then nobody would ever talk to

us again. That kind of darkness and it's

real and it's and it's right there in all of us.

If you think about it, if you could do a thought experiment

with me for a moment. If you could think of every

problem that you had in the year 2025, every single one of them.

I am willing to vet my bank account that 99% of them were

not outside forces working in that those things were created.

Those problems were created by either the sin that is in with

it within each of us, or the sin that is in somebody else like

you who perpetrated that on you. That's where that stuff comes

from. It comes from greed and pride

and lust and vanity. All of those things and, and so

much more. They all come to us from a deep

dark place in ourselves and other people.

So let me give you a couple examples.

Maybe, maybe, maybe you're having a hard time sleeping at

night. I've had that.

Why do you think I came up with that example?

And in that, maybe it's because somebody said something to you

or about you. And deep in your heart, you know

it's true, but it hurts. It hurts because your pride,

that sinful thing that says I'm not that bad, your pride says I

can't believe they would say that about me.

Well, is it true? Maybe, but that hurts us and

then we lose sleep over or maybe we lose sleep because man, I, I

should be somewhere else in my life.

I was supposed to have a better career than this.

I'm more talented than that person.

I can't believe they got the job in front of me and all that

pride wells up in US and it creates hate and anger.

Or I mean, gosh, maybe you're dealing with self loathing.

The self loathing that happens when we look at ourselves in the

mirror and instead of seeing what God sees, instead of

leaning into the fact that he knit us together in our mother's

womb and he made us just the way he wanted to.

You can't accept it. You look at yourself, you look

at your actions and you say I I'm not worthy of anything.

But how dare you? How dare you do that?

Because quite frankly, God has designed you and created you

just the way He wanted you to be for a purpose for a time.

We don't get to tell him he's wrong, not without breaking his

law. Now, I'll have to tell you that

we can go on all night, although I don't want to.

We can go on all night kind of pointing fingers and saying,

well, this is terrible and this is my fault, and that's their

fault. And yeah, we're all just kind of

broken, messed up people. But I would rather spend the

rest of our short time together figuring out how then do we get

a fix? How do we fix this thing that is

so broken and so dark with inside of us?

What would that even look like? Well, Second Corinthians 46 says

it this way. For God who said let light shine

out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of

knowledge of glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Friends, I have to tell you that if we want to live our lives

with joy and peace and, and, and in a sense of everything can be

OK despite my circumstances. If we want to do that and we

want to throw away that rod of oppression that bends down on us

and it feels like it's going to break us that Isaiah talked

about in verses 3 and 4 here. If we want to do that, what we

need to do is we have to allow God's light to shine in the

darkest corners of ourselves. Do you know what I mean by that?

What I mean by that is we have to be real.

We have to be honest. We have to be authentic.

And I'm, and I'm not saying that you go on the street corners and

you start shouting out every stupid thing you've ever thought

done or said. But what I am saying is that we

get real honest with God and we let Him shine his light into our

hearts and our minds and our souls, exposing those things

that we are so scared to tell anybody that we are, that we are

ashamed of, that we are afraid of.

Because if they knew that they would never talk to me again.

Well, friends, you're not alone if you think that you are not

alone. Every single person you meet is

a Sinner saved by grace who needs the light of Jesus Christ.

Every single one. And so we have to be willing to

start getting honest, owning our faults, repenting, exposing

those things to the light and mercy of Jesus Christ.

And then, and only then will we be free.

Will we be free to live in joy and peace and exit that toxic

pride within us that does so much damage to ourselves and to

other people. And here's the thing about

Christianity. It's beautiful.

My pride is destroyed by the fact that God tells me someone

had to die for me. That's how bad I am.

It destroys, it does. It decimates my pride.

But you know what else it does? It doesn't leave me there.

It doesn't leave me squashed into the ground because that

same God who said I needed my son to die for you, that's where

you are. That same God who knows all my

faults, who knows the darkness of my heart, he also looks at

his son and you know what? And he says, you're going to die

for him because I love him. So while Christianity, while the

lost, puts us down into the ground, it also pulls us right

back up out of death and says, my son died for you.

Don't waste it. Don't waste it, don't live in

darkness when He has shown His glorious and merciful light all

over your life and all over your total existence.

And you know what? When you start doing the hard

work of that self examination of exposing those deep corners of

darkness, exposing that to God's light and His mercy and His

forgiveness, you know what happens?

You become His child. You become a child of light.

First Thessalonians 55 says it this way, for you are all

children of light and children of the day.

We do not belong to the night or to darkness.

Friends, if we want joy, if we want peace, if we want freedom,

we need to seek Him first. But seeking Him does mean

exposing those things that we are so ashamed of because when

they're exposed to the light in the mercy of Jesus Christ, we

can then move forward in freedom.

That's how that works. Now, second and last point, last

point, how did God choose to bring light into an otherwise

Dark World? Well, I would prefer that you

think about it this way. Let me put an illustration in

your brain. Parents, listen closely.

This should resonate a little bit.

So you are in one side, 1 room upstairs, downstairs in the

house. You're lovely, beautiful,

fantastic, perfect. Little children are somewhere

else in the house. And you know what they're doing?

They're fighting, they're poking each other, they're annoying

each other, they're taking each other's stuff.

And what do you do? Your first response, you're

like, dude, I'm in bed. I Nope.

And So what do you do? You yell across the house, you

yell down the stairs. You say knock it off.

I have had it. Stop poking each other, stop

stealing each other's stuff. Stop doing all this junk.

Please. Just get along.

And you yell, you use your voice and you know what happens?

Nothing. They keep fighting.

They they keep poking. And actually sometimes they do

it more quietly, like they just keep at it.

So you try to use your voice from a distance and it doesn't

work. It doesn't work at all.

And so eventually, once you just hit your limit, what do you do?

You get off your chair, you get out of bed, you go downstairs,

you walk across the hall and you're like, I swear, if you

don't stop, I'm going to beat you both.

I don't know, maybe that's just me.

Maybe that's just me. Maybe that's just me.

I'm sorry. You know, you'll have to ask my

kids. You'll have to ask my kids.

But here's the thing, in some ways God is not much different.

Here's what I mean by that. God, before he sent his Son

Jesus, he gave us the Old Testament.

He gave us his word. He gave us the law.

This is how you live in order to flourish.

He gave us his prophets who came and said thus says the Lord.

He gave us all of that. And you know what we did?

We kept poking and fighting. That's what we kept doing.

So God in response, like every good parent, he got involved.

He got off his throne in heaven and he came down and he got

involved because that's the only solution that says this verse 6

for on to us a child is born, a son is given.

You see, God our Father, not content to let us stumble in the

darkness and and stay in our sin and our shame, he gave us a

great light. He gave us His Son and Jesus,

fully knowing His role in what He was called to do in this

world. This is what he says in John

1246. I have come into the world as a

light so that no one who believes in me should stay in

darkness. Every single one of us have this

opportunity right in front of us to no longer kind of grope and

feel our way through the darkness, lacking assurance,

lacking certainty of what's going to happen to us.

But that's what we do often times.

But God says, no, you don't have to live that way.

You don't have to live in the darkness because my Son has come

to bring you light. And then Jesus Christ, born in

obscurity, born in a Manger, he came to light our path all the

way home, all the way home. In verse 7 it says this of the

increase of his government and peace.

There will be no end. So what Isaiah is telling us and

what the rest of the Bible is telling us that Jesus Christ is

establishing a community. He is establishing a home for us

that is full of peace and justice and righteousness and

light that never goes out. I want you to think about this,

another thought experiment. Think about it this way, at your

home or a home at Christmas time.

If there is, if there are presents being handed out,

Here's the thing, Before all those are being opened, you can

see the floor. You can walk without tripping

and falling over the place and banging your head on the end

table. I haven't done that yet, but

it's coming probably. So you can walk.

You can see the whole floor. But then as people are giving

and receiving gifts and they're tearing them open and they're

there's paper and there's bows and there's ribbons everywhere.

And you know what? I'll tell you what, if you ever

get me a gift and it's wrapped, there will not be more than two

or three inches of that wrapping paper in one piece because I I'm

just that guy, man. I'm going to RIP that thing.

There's paper everywhere. And looks like the Tasmanian

devil's going crazy. Yeah, that's me.

Well, guess what? By the time maniacs like me are

done opening presents, you can't see the floor anymore.

It is completely covered. Well, the light that God brought

into the world. It did.

It started small, started vulnerable, started weak,

started as a baby, started as baby in Bethlehem.

Who's shining this small light, just this tiny little light in

the night in Bethlehem, a town that nobody was terribly

concerned with. But then this king in his light,

in his Kingdom grew exponentially.

And as he grew and became a man, he lived.

And then he died for our sins. He lived a life that we cannot

live. He, he took on all of our

darkness upon his own shoulders. How did he do that?

How do we know that? Well, as he is being crucified

in the middle of the day at noon, the whole world goes dark.

The whole world goes dark. Why?

Because that is God. Not just using a metaphor, but

God straight up showing us that this darkness that is with

inside us that needs to be lit up by his grace, it is all being

compacted and pound down on Jesus Christ, his Son.

That's what he did. He took it all, but then, but

then he was put in a tomb that was meant for a dead person, and

that tomb was awfully disappointed on the third day

because it was empty. He rose to life because of the

light that was within him. The darkness could not suppress

it. It could not overcome the light

of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. It could not do it, and it can't

do it in you if if you believe in Jesus Christ, it cannot.

Neither height nor depth, nor hell, nor heaven, nor anything

in between can separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus

Christ as we believe in Him. Amen.

And here's the thing, He came once and he's coming again.

He's coming again. He will be back and the promise

of his rule and his reign and his ever expanding House of

light and his government, it's, it's coming to all believers.

It will return. And just like that wrapping

paper on, on Christmas morning, on the covering the whole floor,

his light and his government will cover the entire world and

those who believe in him will be brought into their home.

And that's just it. That's just it.

Jesus is the only way and the only light that can guide you

home. He's a gift.

Do you believe that? Because if you believe that, all

you have to do is receive it like a gift.

That's it. I pray that you'd receive that

gift tonight. If that hasn't been your life so

far, I pray that you would take Him as your own.

And if it has been man walk out of here and joy and peace and

light because he's done everything necessary for you to

go home. Let's pray.

Our Father in heaven, we thank you for the light that you

brought into this world through your Son.

Lord, I pray that as we consider Jesus Christ, that we wouldn't

just look at him as a teacher or a really nice guy, but we would

look at him as Lord and King, that we would light his, that we

would let his light shine into the depths of our souls and set

us free. So Father, work in light in

every single person's heart who's sitting here tonight that

you might light them up with the gospel and give them your

freedom and your peace so that they can come home.

Lord, we pray all these things in Jesus name, Amen.

Thanks for listening to ERC Sundays.

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