FROM GLORIOUS LIGHT TO GLORIOUS LIGHT

The Light is On,
and So We Come Home!!
Isaiah 60:1-6

† In Jesus’s Name †

May the grace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ convince you it is time to come home, and to bring your friends home with you!

• Introduction – Street lights…

Those were the days, when parents told their kids to “go outside and play” and outside had a 3 to 5 mile limit. Or at least it did in New Hampshire. Or maybe in Massachusetts it was an area several city blocks in dimension – maybe a quare mile or so.

Needless to say, whether there you were in the city, or in a town, there was one rule…

When the streetlights came on, you should be home!

Of course, we interpreted that to mean – when they came on, we had to start home! Where we would hear the rule again! When that streetlight comes on, you need to be at home!

There was the problem that on Brookdale Road that I lived on – there were only 5 street lights in 4.3 miles of road, and one of them was right across the street from our house!

But front lights and street lights growing up meant someone was home, and you would be welcome. You fell on your bike, riding in near darkness – was the Stober’s light on? The Zahn’s? the Jacksons? Or the Breen’s. If the light was on, they were home and guests—including injured kids—were welome.

• In Isaiah todey, the basic message is,

God is shinging the light of Christ on His people, letting others know it’s time, and it is okay, to come home.

The Absence of Light….

There are a bunch of cute stories going around, where a professor, or a junior teacher makes a comment about the existense of God and one of their students has to teah them a thing or two.

The basic premise of the teacher is that God can’t exist, because of negative things. If there was a God, we would only have good, and evil couldn’t exist. We would only have good health, and illness, heart problems and cancer wouldn’t exist. There would only be light, and darkness wouldn’t exist. His point was the the existence of evil, of illness, of darkness, and injustice wouldn’t exist.

The student, having thought through the words, asked to respond. Politely, she explained that those things he didn’t want to exist, only are known because they are the conseequences of removing what is good.

Evil doesn’t it exist on its own, it is simply is how we describe the lack of good. Illness is simply a term to describe the absence of health. Injustice is what happens where there is no justice. And of course, darkess is how we describe the absence of light.

For the people of God at the time of Israel, there was lacking a lot. The people of God were going into, or were already taken into captivity, their freedoms given away as they pursued sins, sins common to our society today.

You could start with the way they dealt with the widows and orphans and foreigners in their midst. You could move onto their lack of ethics and sexual morals, and in gossip and slaner.  And most of all, the people of Judah and Israel were caught up in idolatry, the sin God warned about over and over in the first five books, as man created gods in their own likesness, who they asked to meet their desires.

In other words, the darkness that surrounded them was often the darkness they chose—the consequences of the sins they chose….

And in our day and age, the sins are much the same. We still struggle with dealing with those who have less, we still have trouble with ethics in business and life, and in following God’s plan for sexual morality. Gossip and slander abound, especialy as we try to find scapegoats for things that hurt us and those we love. And we create our own idols—things we count on when life is updside down.

Hear the description of their days, “”Darkness as black as night covers ALL the nations of the earth….

but….”

• They come to worhsip the Lord – because Christ shined..

but the glory of the Lord rises and appears over you. All nations will come to your light; mighty kings will come to see your radiance. “Look and see, for everyone is coming home! Your sons are coming from distant lands; your little daughters will be carried home. Your eyes will shine, and your heart will thrill with joy,

What a big but.. hmmm – what an enormously different direction the scriptures twist, as thy aniticipate the one who would be recognzied when “Vast caravans of camels will converge on you, the camels of Midian and Ephah. And…”The people of Sheba will bring gold and frankincense and will come worshiping the Lord.”

This prophecy is part of why we call the visitation of the Magi, the Wise Men, Epiphany. Days after the birth of Jesus, Isaiah’s prophecy aabout people who weren’t the people of God coming to worship Him—something that has been happening every since, and even more since the resurrection and ascension.

The light has come, and all are welcome to come home!

Look at the joy Isaiah speaks of! The kind of joy where your eyes twinkle and sparkle with joy. Picture the joy of grandparents, seeing their grandchildren for the first time as babies.

What a glorious moment! What a trememdously incredible moment, to see people come to God, to come home, because they saw the light of Christ.

We reflect that glory, that light of Christ which shatters our darkness, sometimes even on a daily basis…

And that reflection, as we realize the glory of the Lord, as we realize that love of God, results in even more coming Home…to the Father, through Jesus.

To confidently celebrate in the glorious prsence of our Lord…the presence where we find His peace – that passes all understanding, as our hearts nad minds-for we dwell in Christ. AMEN!