Jesu Juva

“The Night Will Soon Be Ending: The Light of Creation”

Text: Genesis 1:1-5; 2 Peter 3:8-13; John 1:1-5

In the Name of Jesus. Amen.

The night will soon be ending, the dawn cannot be far (LSB #337 v.1).

So it was in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth. At the dawn of creation, God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. But what did that light reveal? An earth that was without form and void. The Hebrew calls it tohu wabohu. A creation without order. Some translations use the word chaos.

But just as soon as the night was ending, so was the formlessness, void, chaos, and disorder of creation. God quickly brought order to His creation. The day is separated from the night. The heavens and the waters are put in their places. The earth comes to life with plants and growth of all sorts, and so on. Everything in its place. Everything working together. Everything just right. Good, God calls it. And what God calls a thing, that’s what it is.

But if the night would soon be ending, it would quickly come again. And perhaps from the most unusual place - from the man and woman God created. They were the crown of His creation; His crowning achievement. The topper on the Christmas tree. The last piece of the puzzle. Made in His own image, they were unlike anything else in all creation. Everything was made for them. And they got to be like God, caring for creation, and loving it and the One who made it, and them.

Instead, though, God’s man and woman brought darkness again into the world. The darkness of sin and evil, the darkness of rebellion, the darkness of not good. When there was something not good in the beginning, the man’s aloneness, God quickly made it good. Now, with nothing but good, Adam and Eve together made not good again. And in the darkness of their own making, there was tohu wabohu, disorder, chaos, again.

The disorder and chaos that you’ve all seen. The disorder and chaos that sin brings into our lives, our hearts and minds, our relationship with our heavenly Father. Into our relationships, our marriages and families, our churches. Into our schools and work places, between nations and peoples. The destructive force of nature in hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes. Wars, violence, hate. White-collar crime, blue-collar crime, scams, and most of all, death. So many forms of death. With new methods of ending life being invented all the time. And we see all that we have made, and it is not good.

But God would break the darkness again. For the darkness cannot overcome Him. So into the darkness of sin and death, light again. The light of God’s promise. That the not good and darkness and chaos of Adam and Eve and their sin would be overcome. God would once again bring order out of the disorder. And the light of faith was lit. Faith in God’s promise. Hope in the woman’s Seed.

Through time and history, there have been times when that light shone brightly and at times dimly. But is it a flame, a light, that according to God’s promise, would never go out. No matter how hard satan, sin, and evil raged to try to blow out this flame of faith and plunge the world into permanent darkness. The darkness of life without faith, without hope, without goodness, without the true God.

But it cannot be done.

For even in a fallen, broken creation, the flame of God’s promise can be seen. Our Father still keeping, still caring for, still preserving all that He has made. Babies, like little Ava on Monday, still being born. The seasons still coming and going and the earth still bearing fruit. The planets still in their rotations, and the stars still in the sky. The day is coming when all that will end - but it will not be the work of sin and satan that does it, but the work of God. Yes, the day is coming when the sun will stop shining and the stars will fall from the sky. When, as we heard tonight, The heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved. Creation will die! For what God said was true: on the day our first parents ate of that forbidden fruit, they would die. They, and all of creation, too.

But since God is doing this and not satan, it will not be just death and destruction - then will come another light! From this death would come new life. And so another flame of hope is lit. That according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Righteousness. Just as it was in the beginning. Everything right, good, perfect again. A recreation. A rebirth. The death of the old creation not an end, but a new beginning.

A new beginning that began with a birth. A birth marked by a light - a star - shining in the east. A baby knit together in His mother’s womb, just like us. But unlike us, without sin. A son begotten not in Adam’s image, but bearing once again God’s perfect image, in human flesh. A son who would shine the light of God’s love and faithfulness into a dark world of chaos and sin. As John said, the One who, in the beginning, created all things, would Himself come and recreate all things new again. He would be the light of the world, exposing the chaos of sin and death, but not only exposing it, but setting it right again with His forgiveness. The forgiveness this child, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of Mary, laid in a manger, and named Jesus, would win for us on the cross. And no matter how the darkness raged against Him - as a baby, in the wilderness, or on the cross - the darkness could not overcome Him. Even the darkness and strength of death could not hold Him - Him who came to break the darkness of death with the light of His forgiveness and love.

Since this is so, all of this, Peter asks: what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God? You well know the answer: we are to be people of faith and love. Faith toward God and His promises, fulfilled in Jesus; and love toward our neighbor, living godly lives, lives filled with the gifts of God, received by faith. People whose hearts and lives have been enlightened by the Spirit. People of repentance. People of forgiveness. People clinging not to a world and the things of this world that are passing away, but to the God and His life which does not. If you are not, or not enough, Advent calls us to repent. And when we do, and when we lives lives of faith and love, we, too, are being lights in a very dark - and getting darker - world. Lights of hope. Showing the hope of God, and the newness and new life, and the goodness and good He is recreating. Just as it was in the beginning. Showing that this night will soon be ending. For the Light is coming. Jesus is coming. Again.

In the Name of the Father, and of the (+) Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.