Sermon manuscript:
Tonight I would like to speak briefly using just one of the many
themes found in this Easter Vigil service. We have heard many times tonight
that Jesus is the light who lightens the darkness. I’d like read some Scripture.
You will no doubt be familiar with a portion of it. Our reading begins with
John 3:16:
Jesus said:
For God so loved the world, that he
gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have
eternal life.
Then, a couple verses later:
And this is the judgment: the light
has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light
because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the
light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But
whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen
that his works have been carried out in God.
Maybe you remember when you were a kid that sometimes you
wanted to do things that you knew you weren’t supposed to do. You learned
fairly quickly that you couldn’t do those things out in the open. If you did
them out in the open, then you’d be told to stop. Then you wouldn’t be able to
do what you wanted to do. So you learned fairly quickly that if you wanted to
do the things you wanted to do you needed to go where you thought that no one
could see you.
I wish it were true that we all outgrew this, leaving it
forever behind, but probably not. Hiding from prying eyes so that you get to do
what you want to do probably didn’t go away.
But this kind of thing is much more damaging than people
imagine. Lots of addictions start and are fed by going into the darkness. Eating
in the darkness, drinking in the darkness, using pornography in the darkness,
and many other things along these lines are done in the darkness. No light. We
do not want what we have done to be exposed.
Before I speak about Jesus as the light who has come, I feel
it is necessary to trace where a love of the darkness will ultimately lead us.
Hell is a place where there is nothing but darkness. It is filled with evil
people who always and only do what they want, and what they want is perpetually
evil. They are incapable of love. They think only of themselves.
Darkness might seem advantageous because then you get to do
what you want, but it is unhealthy, damaging, deadening. The pleasures of the
darkness are never as good as their counterparts which are done in the light,
and yet there’s this zip and excitement—is there not?—with what is done in the
darkness. I guess that must be the bait that the devil uses to sink his hooks
into his would-be victims.
Jesus, though, is the Savior. He is the light who lightens
the darkness. The light is not afraid of the darkness. It is the darkness which
must retreat and shrink back in the presence of light. Light exposes and
reveals. Light removes lies. Light brings truth. There’s no sneaking around when
there is a bright light. Everything is revealed as it truly is. This is what
Jesus as the light does.
If we are extremely willful, if we only want to do what we
want to do, then this light is going to seem hostile and unfriendly. Doesn’t
the kid who has gone into the darkness just want to be left alone? The kid
doesn’t care whether what he is doing is destructive. But it’s not just kids
who are that way. Don’t grown-ups want to be left alone with their pet-sins, don’t
they want to be able to go on with their manipulating and unloving ways?
So Jesus as the light necessarily must strike all of us, to
one extent or another, as something opposed to our will, as something alien, as
something hostile. There’s at least a part of us that loves the darkness. Jesus
doesn’t love the darkness. The darkness is where the devil is with all his
horrible hooks and barbs. How could Jesus love such destructive and
death-dealing things? Jesus doesn’t love the darkness, but Jesus does love you.
Jesus loves you even though you have been in the darkness.
He loves you even though you have shunned him, shunned the light, and thought
that the devil was the one who really had the pleasurable goods. It is not food
comas or drunkenness or illicit orgasms that truly satisfy. Love is the best
and highest thing. The Scriptures say, “God is love.”
God, who is light and love, is who satisfies.
And God is not stingy either. He wants us to have the good
things of life. The devil liked to paint God as some insufferable prude. No, he
wants us to eat, to drink, and to have sex. But these things should not be
worshipped as gods in themselves in the darkness. Let them be done honorably in
the light according to the will and ordering that God has put in place. And let
us give thanks to the true God from whom they come—the giver of every good
thing.
During this Easter time learn yet again that God has loved
the world in this way, that he sent his only begotten Son, that whoever
believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send
his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved
through him. Jesus died for you, Jesus rose for you, to rescue you from eternal
darkness and bring you into the everlasting light. It’s a little scary when the
light comes. The darkness is what we’re accustomed to. But the light is good.
Stand to receive a blessing:
May Jesus the light shine on you more and more. Amen.
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