Gloom and Darkness Before the Rising of the Son (The state of humanity before Christmas time)

Before we embark on our programme of learning about Advent and Christmas time it is good to pause and think about light and darkness.  It is great to get up in the morning and the sun is shining. however here in Finland as we come closer to the Christmas it gets darker and darker.  When it gets dark where I live it is very dark. It is so dark that it is easy to fall into the ditch. Here in Finland in certain places we have wolves and bears.  When it is dark there are dangers. Darkness can be scary on certain people like to watch horror films. I personally don't like horror films and I certainly don't want to be scared. 

It is good to think about the gloom before we turn to the light

When I was a child I lived in Cyprus. Cyprus is a beautiful island, and the sun shines a lot. However, if you stay in the in the sun too long you will get burnt. Part of the culture is for the ladies especially, to stay where it is cool inside the house.  the men tend to go to the cafes and drink coffee. The sun is very hot, and you can get burned. If you put sunshine through a prism one can see lots of beautiful colours.  Show my friends light and darkness are very different. Emotionally when we're in the light we can feel positive about life. When we are in the darkness it can make us feel negative. I don't know if it's true anymore, but I do know but at one time suicide was a serious problem in Finland because of the dark.

John uses light and darkness in his gospel. It is very interesting that John started to write his gospel with in the beginning. The beautiful thing about is his start to this gospel is that jaune takes his readers back to genesis chapter one, the creation story! What is look at genesis 1:

“The Creation

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.  Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. Genesis 1:1-5”

This is an amazing story! So, there was darkness everywhere and there was no order for the world. After the material universe was created it wasn't a place where we could live as human beings. If anything the the the universe was a hostile place for human beings. Something had to happen and God created but heavens on the earth on the first day.  It wasn't just darkness anymore but there was light. So the first day hard both light and darkness.  capital God’s word is very powerful my friend. The impressive thing is that God spoke and everything was created. I once read something by Rabbi Sacks.  He said that the Jewish religion is a spoken religion other nations put more emphasis on the visual stuff such as idols and so on. There are some very powerful stories in the Bible and stories are made-up of words. So then in Hebrew aren't in Greek culture words play an important part for philosophy and religion. Without words you can't have an argument.  Just imagine a world without words people would have to mime Found it will take a lot longer to get ones message across. In both Hebrew and Greek culture word has an important meaning it is linked to wisdom. For Greeks the logos was wisdom and this is how the philosophers used to talk about it. The power of word and wisdom has played a very important part in western cultures.

For Johns Jesus is the Word, “in the beginning was the word and the word was with God on the word was God”.  We also need to realise that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity. In theology Jesus is fully God and fully Man at the same time. Jesus is usually referred to as the eternal Son and he has always existed with the father and the Holy Spirit.  God sent his son into the world not that the world would be destroyed but by through the work of Christ the world would be saved.

In all the great religions of the world light and darkness are important motifs in explaining great spiritual truths. Before we move on we need to realise what some  great Christians have said about this world. This is a fallen world and people have turned their backs on God. The natural man wants to enjoy himself and this seems to be the most important thing sometimes. In today's world the idea of duty has been thrown out with the bathtub. There was a time row when there wasn't sin in the world when God created the garden of Eden. I'm not really interested if you take it literally or whether you take it as an allegory both have the same message. The world God created was perfect and God walked in the garden and he talked with Adam and Eve and they had blissful communication.  This was such a beautiful picture but it was ruined because of disobedience and lies. Do not think that Satan hadn't a part to play in this fall. Satan took on the form of a serpent and he started to give ideas to eve and he just twisted the truth a little bit to make it look beautiful. He said that if you eat of the tree you will not die but you will be like God.  That's what he's good at he deceives. This is why he was cast out of heaven. There is light and darkness my friends and we have been called to live in the light by faith in Christ.

We cannot save ourselves, yet God didn't give up on us even though creation was marred.  On that special relationship we had with God, that was broken all that time ago, and it was not the end my friends. It would take great courage from God to save us. God became a man he lived among us; he was crucified, he was buried, but death could not hold him down as he was resurrected. Our Lord Jesus was resurrected and in him we can also have eternal life.  God had a plan for us from before the foundation of the world.

I don't know how election works and there are different takes on it from different theological points of view. On the one hand you have the calvinists who Who talk about the five points of Calvinism:

·       total depravity

·       unconditional election

·       limited atonement

·       irresistible calling

·       perseverance of the Saints

the main drive is to protect the idea of the sovereignty of God that God elects his chosen people.  Others say that it is up to you to make that decision and to become a Christian. For some Christians this takes away the idea of the sovereignty of God.

Karl Barth has got a completely different idea, that Jesus is the as the elect of God and he is both judge on the one who is judged so that we can have eternal life. 1000 words is quite a lot actually

let the theologians argue over these things because it isn't my point to win an argument. I'm only interested in looking at light and darkness as these are important motifs for the Christmas story.

Why did Jesus have to come into this world in the first place?

It's because of sin, it is because of darkness, it is because we turned our backs on God. Even though we turned our backs on God, God did not give up on us. We are God special creation and he loves us, This is why the Christmas story is so special. We're going to drill down a little bit into light and darkness now and we're going to look at the beginning of John's gospel in a little more detail where these motifs of light and darkness are found.

The Deity of Jesus Christ

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. John 1:1-5

Verse one

This verse tells us that Jesus is God and it is a very important statement. Some have said that Jesus is a God with a small g.  this is not the case the eternal son was one with the father.

Verse 2

The second verse says that Jesus was with God at the beginning and this excludes angels. Believe it or not angels are created beings just like we are. As a general rule of thumb the good angels reside in the heavens but still they are only created beings. Satan is only a created being.

verse 3

If you remember we read genesis chapter one earlier and John John is reminding us dodgy Jesus played a part in the creation of the world. The creation was perfect my friends because God said on each day that it was good. If God said that it was good then what does it exclude?

It means it wasn't bad, it was good, it was perfect and this is our God my friends.  In the letters of John it tells us that God is love. The nature of God is perfect love. God through the Son proved that he was perfect love. As a loving father you may be willing to give your life for your child. As a human being would you give your life up for a tramp? Human nature tells me no. This is what God did for us while we were grovelling in our sins and in our lawless state on our way to hell, God became a man. The perfect Creator the perfect Judge, the holy and perfect God became a human being. If you lived in heaven, would you be willing to give it all up?  In our human and selfish state, I don’t think we would leave heaven, that is my opinion.  God however left heaven the place of light and came t oa place full of darkness and lawlessness to sdave us.

Verses 4 -5

Our communion with God was broken and even though as Bavinck puts it somewhere we were spiritually dead to the things of God we were as it were a ‘dead twig’.  Jesus title in the Gospel of John is ‘Light of the World’.

Reflection

This world is a mess and too many people live in poverty, sickness or in war situations.  If as humans, we cannot even take care of this world then how can we save ourselves from destruction.  I think you already know the answer to that question.  We are in dire straits and the only way this world can be saved is through direct intervention from the Divine (The Trinity).  When we think about this time of year leading into the advent period and into Christmas let us ponder where we as individuals stand.  Perhaps the person reading this blog is from another religion, no religion or agnostic.   All that I can say to you is that whoever you are, God loves you and he wants you to come into fellowship with him.  It is an invitation of love, pure love.  Pure love from God’s side is selfless love wanting only your good.  Even though I am exclusivist in my Christian faith it is because of my exclusivity that allows me to talk to people of other faith or no faiths in humility.  I am not any better than anyone else; God loves the wealthy and the tramps.  God loves the Muslim, Hindu, Jew, Buddhist, atheist et al and the invitation is open to all.  Obviously, you might be from another faith and you might have an exclusive belief system that your religion is correct.  The truth is possibly the golden rule of loving ones neighbour is found in all of the great religions.  This Week we have started looking at this dark world.  We will continue looking at the Gospel and the Christmas story and picking various strands.  Thankyou for reading this blog.