1st Advent 11/27/16—Highland—Meute
“Walk in the Light of the Lord”
Isaiah 2: 1-5; Matthew 24: 36-44
Pearl: The illumination of the great artist who is our Lord Jesus Christ.
Function: To invite the light of the Lord to shine on you so that your life is a thing of beauty in readiness for the surprise return of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Light has a way of illuminating what it shines upon.
1. That seems obvious but an artist looks for light and how it interacts and impacts everything else. That is first-hand testimony from the son of an artist. A few years ago I conducted a Memorial Service for an accomplished artist. The church was filled with her works. Her son spoke of a lesson she taught him. He said his mom often told him to notice the light; look at how the light is interacting with the subject and paint that.
2. The light enhances, illuminates, and makes a stunning impact.
3. With all of the biblical references to light and especially to how our Lord is referred to as the “light” Isaiah’s exhortation to God’s people in Judah and Jerusalem to “walk in the light of the Lord” makes sense.
a. It is as if the prophet was saying something close to what this late artist lived by: “walk in the light of the Lord—look for the light.”
b. Interact with the light and see a lot more of life!
The light of the world, and if you will, the chief artist, Jesus Christ, will return some day at an unexpected moment. So it says in Matthew in the verses just read.
1. This expectation of the return of Jesus Christ is fit for the realm of the imagination.
a. After the Memorial Service for the artist I just spoke about I walked out of the church and looked up to the sky beyond a nearby hill and the sky was breath-taking. I took a picture of it and it popped up in my memory feature of Facebook last Wednesday. There were thin clouds spread around as if a heavenly artist was working on that sky and there were bands of bright sun-light as a necklace almost through the middle of the sky. At the bottom there was more light radiating. It was as if this just memorialized artist was receiving a heavenly tribute light show after her service!
i. Someone who saw the picture when I originally posted it said it is what she imagines the sky will look like when Jesus returns someday.
2. When the Lord Jesus, the chief artist, returns he will want to find people doing beautiful things, inspired by his light! Being ready for his return means walking in the light of the Lord, allowing God’s light to make its impact on us.
a. May 7, 2016 was to be Yiru Sun’s wedding day. But two months earlier, Sun, a New York City insurance executive, called it off after refusing to sign a prenuptial agreement. Unfortunately, she’d put down a nonrefundable deposit on a luxury hall. So, working with nonprofits, she threw a pre-Mother’s Day luncheon for 60 underprivileged kids and their families, none of whom she’d ever met. Sun, outfitted in her wedding dress, mingled and watched kids eat ice pops and have their faces painted. “I can’t be the princess of my wedding day,” she told the New York Post, “but I can give the kids a fairy tale” (RD, Nov. ’16).
b. Yiru Sun let the light move her creating beauty!
Isaiah gives us an oracle of what that age of the light of the Lord will look like.
1. The light will be established as if high on a mountain such that all of the nations of the world will flock to it.
a. God will “judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isa. 2:4).
b. So the new age to come will finally be a time of abiding peace…the ultimate beautiful work of the Chief Artist!
2. In Isaiah’s day he begged the people to walk in the light of the Lord even then as they anticipated that glorious age to come.
a. Isaiah begged the people to turn from self-centered and evil ways to the ways of light. He spelled them out this way:
i. Seek justice,
ii. Rescue the oppressed,
iii. Defend the orphan,
iv. Plead for the widow.
1. Live as illumined by the Lord!
3. Those words remind you of the time that Jesus entered into the synagogue early in his ministry and when the scroll of Isaiah was handed to him he read words very similar to these ones and basically took them as his mission statement for the kind of kingdom that he came to establish.
4. Such describes the light that God wants us to walk in.
a. Last year, Matthew Flores, a 12-year-old from Sandy, Utah, approached postal worker Ron Lynch and asked if he had any extra advertisements or random newsletters. The boy explained that he loved to read but couldn’t afford books or even the bus fare to the library, so he would take anything the mailman had. Lynch was floored. “He didn’t want electronics; he didn’t want to sit in front of the TV playing games all day. The kid just wanted to read,” Lynch told desertnews.com. Lynch asked his Facebook friends for reading material. Soon, Flores was getting books from all over the world—the United States, England, and even India. For his part, Flores said that he plans to read all the books, then share them with other book-starved kids (RD, Nov. ’16).
b. Both Ron and Matthew…enlightended…creating beauty!
Having an Advent readiness for the return of Jesus, the Chief Artist, and preparing for the celebration of his first coming is allowing the light of Christ to illumine you and bring out your best. It means letting God’s light bring out your inner beauty and purpose as a human being.
1. Living more fully and brilliantly in the light of the Lord is everyone’s destiny now and in the new age to come.
a. When a high school English teacher learned that one of her students had attempted suicide, Brittni Darras sent a hand-written note to the student at the hospital, praising her for her academic accomplishments and glowing personality. “My student got the letter,” Darras later posted on Facebook. “Her mom said that her daughter cried and asked, ‘How could someone say such nice things about me? I didn’t think anyone would miss me if I was gone.’” Seeing how that one small act had such an impact, Darras crafted personalized hand-written notes for each of her 130 students to remind them how important they are. “It’s not every day that a teacher would take the time to think about every single student they have, let alone tell them how much they love them,” one of Darras’s students wrote of her teacher (RD, Nov. ’16).
b. Brittni Darras…walking in the light…spreading beauty!
Walk in the light of the Lord and let the light of the Chief Artist shine upon your life bouncing off of you and onto many others as well. In doing this you will be more than ready for the return of Jesus Christ, the Chief Artist, working in and through you now and forever.
