[0:00] Well, good evening and Merry Christmas. Jesus has entered our night. What a wonderful way to express what we're here to celebrate tonight. Church family, I'm so grateful to get to spend this evening with you.
[0:12] I love when Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday and we join millions of churches around the world that are gathering this night before Christmas and celebrate what Jesus Christ has done on our behalf.
[0:24] If you're a guest here with us tonight, we're so thankful that you're here. Love the opportunity to meet you. My name is Trent. I serve as a pastor here. I'd love to get to know you better. And if you're visiting a place, no matter if it's a church or wherever you go, you like to know what's going to happen.
[0:40] And I want to just let you know I'm going to share with you something from God's Word about the light of Jesus Christ. But before that, we're going to speak about the reality of darkness. And we're going to look at those two things.
[0:51] After I speak about the reality of darkness, I'm going to stand up here with Pastor Bo and we're going to invite dads to join us to the front in our tradition of lighting their candle. And the piano will play and they will go back and they will light the candles and the light will shine throughout this building.
[1:06] And I'll come up here and say a few words about that light. And then we'll end the night singing Silent Night. You know, Christmas is known for its Christmas lights. My wife is always asking the kids, do you want to go out and look for Christmas lights?
[1:19] And how many of you have been to Ashbrook subdivision here in this county? You ought to go on your way home. I don't know how people live there this time of year. The traffic is just bumper to bumper.
[1:30] The community does just an incredible job. But people love Christmas lights, but nobody ever goes out and says, hey, why don't we go find some darkness at Christmas time? Why don't we go out and find the darkest area of town and just look at it, you know?
[1:41] That would be weird, all right? If your family's doing that, let's talk about it afterwards. It's weird. If you enjoyed that, I read that there's a city in Norway. It's 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
[1:55] And it is dark there for four months out of the year. And we recently had, what, our longest day, and then now it starts to get brighter every day. But four months, could you imagine how that would just weigh upon you?
[2:08] In the book of Isaiah, from the very beginning, from the very beginning after the garden, and man falls into sin, the Bible tells us of a Savior who is going to come.
[2:19] And then we have the gospel records that tell it. And then afterwards, you find people rejoicing in what has happened. Well, so in the book of Isaiah, which is a prophet in the Old Testament, it speaks about the coming of the light, but it also speaks about the reality of the darkness.
[2:35] And we must acknowledge that. So it says it like this in Isaiah chapter 9 and verse 2. Now it would be hard for you to see there in your seats. So the guys in the back will put it on the screen for you. And it says this in Isaiah 9 to, The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light, that they dwell in the land of the shadow of death.
[2:54] Upon them hath the light shined. It spoke about the people that walked in darkness. Here in the context of Isaiah, it's speaking specifically about a group of people of Judah and a time in history.
[3:06] But that walking in darkness is something that describes people all through human history. In the times of the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament, and times now, it describes how you and I lived.
[3:19] And we must acknowledge it, that we once lived in darkness and that we were the darkness. You ever had a darkness around you that you could feel? Some of you that are young, I noticed in here that some of my kids don't like to say that they want to be grown, but when there's free candy canes at the age of 12, a lot of you came up here and I'm not so sure how young you are, right?
[3:40] My kids were 12 all the way until they were 15 when we went to the restaurant and kids under 12 ain't free, right? And so they come up here as kids. But remember being a kid and you had to go out to the mailbox at late at night and you could just feel the darkness every step that was there upon you.
[3:56] Maybe you've experienced a natural disaster and you went a couple nights or many nights without electricity and you felt that in here. We have some visit with us tonight, not visiting at all, members of our church and they live in parts of the world where Christmas looks quite different, not just the weather, but the celebration of it.
[4:18] When I was in my early 20s, me and Mark, one of our missionaries in Asia, we did some work at the University of Cincinnati in a campus ministry.
[4:30] And at the student center, we were always trying to create discussion. So we found this quote by Albert Einstein that said this, Once again, you are wrong, sir. Darkness does not exist.
[4:42] Darkness is in the reality of the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. You know, you don't study darkness. You can only measure how much light is there.
[4:53] You can study the implications of it. And that's what Einstein was saying, that darkness doesn't exist, but it's the absence of light. If you want to talk about physics after service, don't come to me.
[5:03] I won't be any fun, okay? But I do understand here that you get rid of darkness by bringing in light. You can study the implications of it. And so tonight, for all of you, and especially our little ones in here, when we speak about darkness, we're not speaking about the type of darkness that we can see in here.
[5:19] This exemplifies it, but we're talking about a darkness that comes from having a lack of knowledge. Maybe you're trying to coordinate with somebody and we're going to meet here on Christmas.
[5:30] We're going to this place and they never call you back. And what would you say? You say, you kind of left me in the dark. I didn't know when we were going to get together. You never called me back. You never answered my call, but you left me in the dark.
[5:42] You left me without the information that I need. And that's what we speak about is about living in a darkness that is here, that is real, and it's spiritual.
[5:52] So Isaiah is speaking about a darkness and its implications. And so Isaiah is speaking about how people have rejected the truth of God's Word. They've rejected that light. And in doing so, they've been driven deeper and deeper in the darkness.
[6:07] Isaiah 8.22 And they shall look unto the earth and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish, and they shall be driven to darkness.
[6:19] Just a little bit ago, we had some ladies sing for us. And they said this, Jesus, you entered our night. You bore our sorrows. Laid down your life. Conquered the darkness and rose up in light.
[6:32] All of our hope is in you. In that same passage of Scripture in Isaiah, it says in 8.20, it says, To the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.
[6:47] There was a time that your family and my family lived in darkness. It might not have been in this generation. Maybe you're a second, third, or fourth generation Christian. Maybe you had the opportunity to learn of Jesus Christ from your parents who learned it from their parents.
[7:02] But there was a time that your family and my family, we sat in darkness. And we were driven deeper and deeper in darkness. And without the Word of God, we would have never found the light.
[7:14] We would have been like that city in Norway that lived day after day and in darkness. Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 8, this idea of darkness and light and being transcended out of darkness into light runs all throughout the Bible.
[7:28] This is something that is uniquely Christian, that truly belongs to us, is that Jesus Christ, the light of the world, the truth, brings us out of darkness and the light. It says in Ephesians 5.8, a reminder that we were sometimes darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
[7:43] and walk as children of light. Young people in here, if you've been blessed to have godly parents, a godly heritage, we thank the Lord for that. The light was not found in your family.
[7:55] The light did not reside in any one of us, but it came to us as a gift. And so we rejoice. You'll meet together and you'll celebrate. You'll sing these songs together. And that is a gift from God that you no longer walk in darkness, but you're now children of the light.
[8:11] And it brings us no greater joy. Some of you in here are watching your children do that. Some of you are watching your grandchildren do that. And what an incredible blessing in here to have that.
[8:22] Here in a moment, Pastor Bo and I will stand here and invite all the dads up here as our tradition. And the dads and the deacons will help. And we will take our candle. I'll ask you to stand as the piano will play and we'll light our candles and it will spread.
[8:37] And I'll have the opportunity to go to each one of my children and light their candle remembering how they put their faith and trust in Jesus. How they know the same Jesus and they are not in darkness anymore, but they're in light.
[8:50] That's something to rejoice in. And so I want to encourage you. Typically, I don't know if you've been to a candlelight service many times. To be honest with you, I haven't led one many times, so I'm going to make this up as I go here, all right?
[9:02] No, but one of the things that I know from watching Home Alone and other movies that teach me these kind of things is that often it's a very solemn event and there's nothing wrong about being solemn, but this is so joyful.
[9:14] And so I want to ask here is as the piano will play and somebody comes to the piano now if you wouldn't mind and as it plays and Pastor Bo and I stand up here and you dads come up here and deacons help us to make sure that the light gets back to everybody, take a moment.
[9:29] Just laugh with your family. Smile with your family. Talk about how wonderful it is that we aren't people that live in darkness anymore, but because of the truth of God's word, you and I get to live and not light and rejoice in it.
[9:44] There was, we were in darkness, but then the light came and that's what we're to celebrate. You all have such a nice glow about you. It's just quite beautiful. Those electric candles do not do the job that these real ones do.
[9:55] So Jesus says, enter it into our night. We were people that walked the darkness, but we have seen a great light. And the New Testament speaks about the prophets. They inquired and they searched diligently.
[10:06] Isaiah chapter 9, verse 6, it said that a child will be born unto us and a son is given. And here's the fulfillment of this promise. Matthew 4, 13. Jesus comes to Capernaum upon a city there and he fulfills the prophecy that we read in Isaiah.
[10:22] And it says in verse 16 in Matthew 4, the people which sat in darkness saw great light and to them that which sat in the region in the shadow of death, light has sprung up.
[10:33] How many of you have seen the sunrise in here, all right? It's a lot like the sunset, just different, right? On the other side of the world here. And so I imagine some of you have, some of you teenagers on Christmas break, you're probably not going to see a sunrise.
[10:47] Some of you tomorrow will be awake before the sun and waiting as kids will be excited. And can I encourage you tomorrow, if you get to see the sunrise or if you wake up and it's halfway in the sky, you'll just be reminded of the fact that Jesus Christ, the light of this world, has come into our life.
[11:03] It has sprung up and we are very blessed people. We no longer live in darkness. As you sit around the table together, you sit around the fireplace or the kitchen table, but more importantly, we will sit underneath the light that is there and we are blessed by this.
[11:20] And this is the most important truth on this Christmas night for us to remember that those of us that were once in darkness have now been delivered into light. If you're here with us tonight and this darkness, the light doesn't resonate with you, you don't understand it, I would love to show you what God's word has to say about it.
[11:40] But you come here tonight as a testimony of what God has done in your life. I want to encourage you to take time and to celebrate the light that has come to us and found us in our darkness.
[11:52] We're going to stand together and I'll pray and then after we pray, we will sing together a silent night. Heavenly Father, I thank you for this time that we have spent with our family around your word and enjoying, Lord, the truth that we have found on this Christmas Eve night.
[12:12] We once sat in darkness. Father, I thank you about families in here and the great joy that they will experience this week. The Christian love that they were shown one for another and Lord, that is not something that was created inside of that family or by this church, but that is a work that God has done in their lives.
[12:31] Father, I thank you for that. I thank you that the light came to us in darkness. Lord, I want to thank you for the people that brought the gospel message to us. Lord, I want to pray for all those tonight that sit in darkness, those that do not have the knowledge of this truth.
[12:49] Lord, I pray specifically for those among us in here. I will soon go back to Africa and the Chile, the Columbia, and Lord, they will be sharing this gospel message.
[13:02] I pray for them, Lord, as they will carry their light in the darkness. Lord, I pray for the families in here, that many of them, they know you and this light shines in their heart, but they have loved ones that do not know this truth.
[13:16] I pray that at this Christmas season that you would use them to carry this light into the darkness. Lord, we thank you that all is calm and all is bright because what Jesus Christ has done on our behalf, in Jesus' name I pray, amen.