Light of the World?

A sermon given at Wesley International Church

1 December 2019

By Bob Mendelsohn

Shalom and thank you to Pastor Andy and all here at WIC who are welcoming me today. I spoke here many years ago and it’s always a joy to receive another welcome to the pulpit.

Today as you have heard my topic is “Jesus, Light of the World.”

Up in the northern hemisphere, today begins a dark time. It’s December. For us, it’s summer and beaches and Christmas. For them up north, it’s very different.  With festivals of light that happen this time of year. From Devali in India to Hanukkah and Christmas among Jewish and Christian people. Both speak much about lights. I grew up an Orthodox Jew in the USA, and each night we lit candles like I have in the candelabrum here, and we sang songs (and ate specialty foods of course) to remind us of the holiday. At our home in NYC back in the 80s and 90s we used Advent wreaths in the lead up to Christmas. And we had the Hanukkah menorah and Christmas tree… everything was lit up. Nowadays, the folks of Sydney are reminded of Christmas with Black Friday sales at Harvey Norman and Westfield. Ah, how times have changed.

Here’s a reality that advertisers don’t often consider. 

Lights in dark places make sense, lights in lit places don’t make much sense at all.  You wouldn’t take a torch out to the middle of Pitt Street Mall at midday and point it to the sky or to use to find your path, because the sun is bright enough. Yes, lights make sense in darkness and up north, in the US, Europe or China just now, it’s plenty dark, by 5 pm, it’s dark. So lighting candles and celebrating holidays in that way makes sense. 

Light helps

I was staying at a hotel not long ago and having arrived late in the evening, I went to bed straightaway. But in the middle of the night, I awoke and didn’t turn on the light, but made my way to the toilet. Except I had left a drawer unclosed, and found it with my shin. Ouch. Light would have been a good comfort that night, to be sure.

The Bible says that Satan, “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Messiah, who is the image of God.” (2Cor. 4:4)

We need God’s light to burst into the darkness. 

What darkness is in your world?

I will comment today about three darknesses, and see if you see yourself in any of those. And if there is a solution to those darknesses, perhaps even in our reading of this morning.

1.     The darkness of ignorance

2.     The darkness of sin

3.     The darkness of hopelessness

 1.            The darkness of ignorance

We Jewish people are smart, sometimes too smart for our

own good. In fact, we know enough to win scientific Nobel prizes year after year, but do we know how to get along with our Arab neighbours?  Smarts and knowledge are not the same thing.  Sometimes we even fight with ourselves in the courts and in the neighbourhood.  We know so much but we know so little. 

Yet, God has made Himself known to us in the person of Yeshua. "For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Messiah." (2 Cor. 4.6)

Hosea called us to “Know, let us press on to know the Lord” (6.3)

And in our text this morning, “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light;  Those who live in a dark land,  The light will shine on them. You shall multiply the nation, You shall increase their gladness” (Isaiah 9)

Our ignorance is replaced with knowledge of God and thus darkness is dispelled.

2.            The darkness of sin

Listen, I’m a preacher, and you would expect me to mention sin, and the evils of sin. I won’t disappoint you. I have lived wrongly and I have confessed my sins against the Lord and against His people. I was a hippie in the 1960s and 70s… I know how to live a riotous life with its commensurate darkness. Sin brings sadness, in the long run. Yes, the Bible uses the phrase “the passing pleasures of sin”. To be sure, the promise of fun and folly in sin is abundant, in schoolies up north just now, and in Bali holidays with muling drugs. Big banks with loose scruples and resultant lawsuits and ASX losses evidence sin in its darkness.  But sin has other consequences. Sin brings death. Sin brings separation first from God, then from others. Sin brings guilt and shame. Sin is a liar. 

Whatever else it is, sin brings darkness. 

The Bible uses other terms:

“I will bear the indignation of the LORD Because I have sinned against Him, Until He pleads my case and executes justice for me. He will bring me out to the light,  And I will see His righteousness.” (Micah 7.9)

And again in the book of Acts:

“to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.’ (Acts 26.18)

3.            The darkness of hopelessness

Nothing defines our age more than the increase in pain and separation. Gender dysphoria and dismissal of historic boundaries are rampant. Walls replace bridges in human relationships. United Nations is a nice building complex in New York City, but united is a joke; nations are more interested in using and abusing one another more than trusting and cooperating with each other. 

Hopelessness defines our age.

When I was a hippie, we did all kinds of wrong things, and many of us knew they were wrong, but our purpose was to make the world a better place. We did wrong to get good results. We had hope. 

But in modern times people do wrong things because there is no hope. Nothing is ever going to change; the world is only going to get worse. Might as well eat, sleep and be merry because we have no hope. 

They say that suicide rates increase in December. Maybe it’s just colder in the Northern Hemisphere, or maybe it’s due to darkness setting in, or other meteorological reasons. But I aver that it’s the highlight of the season of joy and giving that doesn’t exactly match the real lives of many. Maybe it’s related to academic failures or pressures with end-of-year sales figures. Whatever causes it, the suicide rate increase shouts loudly to me of hopelessness.  And that’s a darkness that screams in a person’s psyche. 

Is there hope? Realistically?

Simeon was an old man who lived in Jerusalem. The story is told in Luke 2, beginning at verse 25.   “And there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; and this man was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation (other versions translate “HOPE”) of Israel; and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. And he came in the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to carry out for Him the custom of the Law, then he took Him into his arms, and blessed God, and said,

“Now Lord, You are releasing Your bond-servant to depart in peace, According to Your word; For my eyes have seen Your salvation, Which You have prepared in the presence of all peoples, A LIGHT OF REVELATION TO THE GENTILES, And the glory of Your people Israel.”

The darkness of hopelessness is met with the Light of Hope. For an old man like Simeon. For a young man like me in Kansas City in 1971. And maybe for you today.

God visiting our planet, bringing hope and fulfillment to all of humanity, IMMANUEL, meaning “God with us”, overcomes the darkness of ignorance by the light of the knowledge of Himself! Overcomes the darkness of sin by bringing the light of forgiveness to each one of us, all the sins we committed in our youth, in our adult bad choices, and all the sins we have yet to commit; God has forgiven us, and we are in the light of God’s presence.  And that brings hope in our hopelessness. Nothing can stop God’s hope. Nothing can stop God’s IMMANUEL from being with us, from getting to us, from sharing His life with us. 

Our reading this morning showed the light bursting in the people of Israel. “For unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. His name will be called Wonderful. Counsellor. Mighty God. Everlasting Father.
Prince of Peace.”

Are you listening?

Are you in darkness?

Would you like the Light of the World to make His way to you and to live in you? Today, if you hear His voice, don’t harden your heart. Welcome him. 

The Christmas story you might have heard highlights the family Joseph, Mary and some animals trying to find a place to stay. There was no room for them at the local inn. And Jesus was born outside. 

We often hear that we are to make room. 

Make room in our hearts for the Messiah to be born in us today. 

Do you remember the Christmas carol? “Oh little town of Bethlehem” Some of its words are here:

“Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light; the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”

“O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray; cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today. 
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell; o come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!”

Lights to light others

Now most of you are believers in and followers of Jesus. That’s awesome. This holiday menorah, the candelabrum used by Jewish people on Hanukkah tells a story. I don’t have time to unpack the whole story, so I only want to highlight one thing about this today. 

We light the upper candle and then it is used to light the others one by one. Over the course of the 8-day holiday, we actually light 44 candles. Each night we light the menorah and set it in a ground floor window so that people walking by in the neighbourhood can see and learn that God does miracles. 

I like to think of the upper candle, the shamash (servant) as Yeshua, who lights the others, and that’s me!

As I said, my wife and I used to live in NYC back in the 1980s and she kept a clean house. When we returned home in the evening, she would always make me go first into the apartment. Why? Was it for safety? Nope, I would open and then turn on the lights. Then you would hear the scamper of little cockroaches! No matter what we did, those pesky insects returned. So I had to enter the flat first.

Let me help you see something this morning. When light comes to you, you can respond in one of two ways. You can be a candle like these 8 that are burning or you can act like a cockroach. How you respond communicates who you are. 

If you say ‘Light me” you are a candle.

If you run away you are a cockroach. 

One day I spoke on a similar topic and afterward, I asked a man at my resource table in the foyer, how he was doing. He said, “I’m saved and saving.” I’d never heard that before. I think I understood him. Maybe in light of my message today I would hope he would say “Lit and lighting”

Robert Louis Stevenson was a young boy in Scotland who was fascinated by the street lamps near his 1850s home. Each night he would watch the lamplighters light the wicks and make the neighbourhood come to life. One day his father came to his room and asked, “Bobby, what are you doing” The lad said, “I’m watching that man punch holes in the darkness.”

That’s what Jews for Jesus does, in NYC and in Israel. In Sydney where I’ve lived for 21 years and throughout the world. Join us by placing your name and details on the white card you received. Join me at the resource table in the foyer. Share with us in finances and in prayers, as we bring the light of the world to Pitt Street, to Bondi Junction, to Caulfield and Times Square. God is opening the eyes of Jewish people, even through our efforts. 

Last Sunday the Sun Herald featured this advert we ran and this week dozens and dozens of people have responded and ordered some of our resources to learn more. 

Darkness is leaving; we are bringing the Light of the World to Sydney, as are you. Thanks for partnering with us today and throughout your days, until Jesus returns. What a day of rejoicing that will be, amen?