One of our biggest problems, is that we do not understand the big story in which we find ourselves.  And if we don’t understand how things went so terribly wrong at the beginning, in the Garden, then we will find ourselves battered by life and confused by what is happening to us. Why do we feel disappointed, or insecure or lonely or restless?  Why do we feel empty at times?  Why do we want something more than what we have?  Why do we want to feel better than we feel?  Why do we long for a more perfect and happier life?  

Perhaps the most important thing the Christmas story can do for us is to awaken us to the big story of life.  If Christ came, we must answer, why did he come?  What was wrong with us that required him to come?  If the birth of Jesus means great joy, why does it mean great joy?  What does his coming solve for us?  How does his coming affect me, my thoughts, my purpose, my emotions, here now in 2020?  How does his coming fix me, heal me, and save me.  What does he save me from?  Why do I need Someone to save me?  

The prophet Isaiah gave a powerful summation of our desperate condition AND the relief that Jesus would bring to our hearts. Isaiah 9:2 “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.” This passage is just before the more familiar verses:  “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end.”   

Those verses tell us about WHO Jesus is and WHAT he will do. But Isaiah 9:2 tell us WHO we are and WHAT our condition is.  We are people walking in darkness. We are (or were) all part of the human condition, living in the darkness of sin and shut out of God’s good and loving presence.

But the EFFECT that Jesus brings to people in darkness is “they see a great light!”  Jesus himself said: “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” [John 8:12] This is the very essence of the Christmas message: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.”

This prophecy by Isaiah had a very specific fulfillment!  Isaiah 9:1 said “there will be a time in the future when Galilee of the Gentiles, which lies along the road that runs between the Jordan and the sea, will be filled with glory”. Matthew 4:16 says when Jesus came to Galilee he fulfilled this promise and the people in that spiritually dark place, saw a great light who was Jesus!  But it was not only people in Galilee that live in deep darkness.  The whole world lives in darkness and Jesus is the light of the whole world. 

Jesus Christ did not come to a Disneyland kind of planet, where we pretend that all is happy and bright. He came to a real world, where people are sinful, to a world where lives are broken, where families are NOT picture perfect. He came to people alienated from God, lonely for God and disconnected from God.  He came to people who experience sorrow, gloom and grief.  He came to people living in deep darkness. 

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This darkness, began in the Garden of Eden.   God created us for union with himself. When Adam rebelled against God, the intimate friendship with God he had enjoyed was broken! The deep darkness people live in is the absence of this close communion with God!  Dick Staub said: “our one story, and one story ONLY is the narrative of our loss of God and longing to get back to God.” 

The story of the human race from creation to the birth of Jesus, is the story of how sin has ruined and bent our lives and put us out of communion with our Creator.  Something went terribly wrong with our hearts, and with our world when Adam and Eve sinned. They were expelled from the Garden. And we don’t live in a Garden of Eden world anymore.

We see it in the conflicts and wars of history.  We have felt it in ourselves, in our struggle with anger and pride and tendencies to complain, in envy, and strife with others, in our insecurities, and fears.  All that is hard and painful about life, all sense of loneliness and separation from God, stem from that original sin.  Death and loss are a part of this life, because we are no longer in a perfect world. Tozier said, “(Adam) destroyed the proper Creator-creature relationship, in which his TRUE HAPPINESS lay”. 

Sin not only damaged our happiness and our wholeness, but brought us under the judgment of God. “The wages of sin is death.”  With no Christ we would be destined to live broken lives here and now and then go to an eternity without God, under the wrath of God. 

*If we do not acknowledge that this is our story, we will constantly try to fix ourselves and fix life by things that do not get at our real need!  If you still think your human brokenness, sin and sadness, flows merely from bad luck, bad upbringing, bad genes, bad chemistry, and bad circumstances, then you will be looking for something that can fix those things and Jesus will not be much of an answer for you.  But if you truly understand that your personal brokenness and inner dissatisfaction are caused by a broken union with God, then Jesus is the best news you could ever hear!  

The first work of God in our hearts is to make us aware that we need something more than we have.  God reveals himself to those who see that something is wrong, something is missing, not just out there in the world, but in us!  God reveals himself to those who thirst for more, to those who realize the darkness of life without Him.

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But..One of the strange ways that sin has warped people, is that most people are insensitive to their sad and ruined state. 

Dick Staub said, “Among the side effects of our dehumanizing disease is a “euphoric sense of wellness even as we waste away in our illness.”  Jesus said, "If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, 'We see,' your sin remains. It is not healthy people who need a doctor but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”   Jesus said if you think you are “OK” I can’t heal you!  He can’t do anything for any of us until we are awakened to our desperate need of him.  

The name of Jesus is music to the sinners ear.   It is mournful, broken hearts that rejoice in Jesus.  It is people who realize they were in darkness to whom Jesus is a great light.

This attitude of desperate need is NOT just for those who come to Christ for the first time.  We must recognize our need to continually feed ourselves on Christ, to continually drink from him, to draw upon his Spirit every moment that we may have victory over sin, and love people, and have joy.  

Many people feel that they needed Jesus to get to heaven but don’t need him for much else.  But it was to church people that Jesus said, For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.”  We are to throw open the doors of our heart to Jesus every day.  He wants us to experience him living in our hearts, and for us to fellowship with him, and find great joy in him!

Jesus said “I am the vine; you are the branches”.  He told us to abide or “live” IN HIM.   As we do that we receive from him what we need for joy and peace and love and to live a fruitful life for God!!  It is abiding IN Jesus that darkness is expelled, sin is overcome, our brokenness is healed. 

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Jesus dispels our darkness by bringing us back into communion with God.  The experiential nearness to God that was lost in the Garden was restored to us in Jesus.  He reinstates the happiness in God we lost in the Garden.  He came to bring God near to us and us near to God so we could know and enjoy God. 

**Some specific ways Jesus is a great light to us:

*Jesus is a great light because he dealt with the darkness of our guilt and our shame before a holy God.  He saved us from the darkness of God’s judgment hanging over us, for our sin.   He took our sins away from us and bore them himself.  John said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” The angel told Joseph, “You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”  

*Jesus is a great light to us because he puts his own life in us, with new desires for God, and passion to love God and serve God and please God.  We were dead and he made us alive!  We were empty and he poured his Spirit into our hearts!  

Jesus said, “he who follows Me will have the Light of life.”  IE Those who follow me with have me – the Light of life, inside them!  To be a Christian is to have Jesus Christ living IN you.  He himself dispels our darkness!  

Jesus is a great light to us because he destroys sin, IN US!  1 John 3:8,9 says, “The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.”  Sin is darkness! Paul said, 

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.”  His light and life in us is so mightily at work that we cannot continue living in darkness!

*Jesus is a great light because he is the cure to all that is wrong with our lives due to the fall, and the resulting curse.   Isaiah 61 says, he will bind up our broken hearts, he will give us a crown of beauty instead of ashes, joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.  Jesus is the answer to the cry of your heart.  He is the answer to all the longings within us for wholeness, and joy.

*Jesus is a great light because he fills our hearts with hope. 

For us, who know him, the darkness is past. The light of Jesus is here.  The hope we lost in the beginning is restored to us in Jesus. We have been saved from sins. We are on our way to a good and glorious future with great joy, with him, forever! 

Through Jesus we have no dread of the future, no dread of condemnation, no dread of anything that can happen.  We have confident, bold and certain expectation of good in the days ahead and for all eternity.  Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the presence of the Lord forever and ever!

Hope is not a gift you can hold in your hand.  But it is one of the most valuable gifts you can have!  The difference between a person who has hope and one who does not is huge! 

Jesus is the most precious and beautiful gift ever given.  It is this glorious hope that caused the prophet Zechariah to say “Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion. Shout! You king comes to you!”.  This joyful hope caused the angel to say, “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.” Thi joyous hope caused the wise men to travel a long ways to bring gifts to the newborn King!

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Luther said people know how to rejoice when they are given a Christmas gift. “But how many are there who shout and jump for joy when they hear the message of the angel: ‘To you is born this day the Savior?’ Indeed, the majority look upon it as a sermon that must be preached, and when they have heard it, consider it a trifling thing, and go away just as they were before. 

“When I can say: This I accept as my own, because the angel meant it for me, then, if I believe it in my heart, I shall not fail to love the mother Mary, and even more the child, and especially the Father,” Luther continued. “For, if it is true that the child was born of the virgin and is mine, then I have no angry God and I must know and feel that there is nothing but laughter and joy in the heart of the Father and no sadness in my heart. For, if what the angel says is true, that he is our Lord and Savior, what can sin do against us?”  (Al Mohler)

I agree with Luther!  You must take this as for you, in such a way that it matters to you!  It if matters to you, that produces joy, and that changes everything!  Every day we should wake up and say Jesus has come. That changes everything about my outlook on life, about today, about myself, about my thoughts. 

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We were in darkness.  We sinned, we fell, we got broken.  Jesus comes to us as a great light. He restores and heals and.

But the question for all is this?  Do you want to get well?  Are you content to keep living in partial darkness, sin sickness and brokenness?  Do you want the radical restoration to wholeness that Jesus came to accomplish in your life?  Do you want to be forgiven and assured of heaven?  I think most of us do.  But beyond that do you want to be released from the sins he body and sins of the spirit and heart?  Do you want to live life loving God with all your heart and mind and strength, and loving others as yourself?  

Are you content with a non-existent or superficial relationship with God, Or do you want to know God, and be filled with all the fullness of God and live all of life with God?  Jesus suffered his wounds for is to experience that level of healing!

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There was a massive amount of joy around the birth of Jesus. 

There was joy because Jesus is the answer to the massive suffering and brokenness of human beings that came into the world when our first parents rebelled against God in the Garden of Eden.  

On May 8th 1945 celebrations broke out around the world. People danced in the streets. They sang and hugged and rejoiced.  There were ticker tape parades. Church bells rang in small towns and big cities.  In Holland Dutch civilians “joyously swarmed Canadian troop convoys, throwing flowers and sometimes knocking men from their tanks in the enthusiasm to thank them.  People too sick to walk were often carried outside to join in the celebration”.  In Belgium, the old buildings of Brussels were illuminated by fireworks, spotlights and bonfires as thousands thronged the streets.   Thousands gathered in New York’s Times Square.  

Why did people celebrate?  It was VE Day.  Victory in Europe.  The Nazi’s agreed to unconditional surrender.  They had been through the suffering of war for 6 years and were desperate for relief and victory.  And they celebrated in the streets when it was over.  If they danced in the streets on VE Day...What should we do about Jesus!  

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Lord, help us to see what a big problem we are in without you and what a total answer you are for us, both now and forever.