He Got here to a World in Darkness: O Day-Spring

O come, thou Day-Spring, come and cheer,
Our Spirits by thine Introduction right here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night time,
And demise’s darkish shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

I like this stunning stanza from one of the beloved Christmas hymns as a result of I like to talk of Jesus and to Jesus as “the sunshine [that] shines within the darkness” (John 1:5). I suppose it is because the extra of the world’s darkness I expertise and observe, the extra I like and lengthy for “the sunshine of the world” to completely and at last swallow up the darkness — the world’s and mine (John 8:12). And I discover that singing the phrases of this stunning prayer stirs up my love and eager for the Nice Gentle.

It’s an historic longing, our deep want for religious mild. It’s a longing that has been a part of the human expertise from the second our ancestors first turned conscious that there was such a factor as darkness, such a joy-destroying expertise as a darkish night time of the soul, such a hope-destroying concern because the shadow of demise. And on this stanza, we hear an echo of an historic prophecy of a coming mild, the hope of an approaching daybreak:

The people who walked in darkness
     have seen an awesome mild:
they that dwell within the land of the shadow of demise,
     upon them hath the sunshine shined. (Isaiah 9:2 KJV)

These luminous phrases of hope had been first spoken 2,700 years in the past to a fractured Hebrew individuals who had been watching with anguish as a fearful night time fell upon them. It appeared as if Israel’s lamp can be ceaselessly extinguished. However the prophet foresaw that, past this fearful night time, an awesome daybreak was coming. And its mild would disperse their gloomy darkness and destroy demise’s energy in order that its fearful shadow can be solid over them no extra. And he informed them that the sunshine of this daybreak would break brightest upon the area the place their nationwide night time first fell: “the land past the Jordan, Galilee of the nations” (Isaiah 9:1).

Simply because the prophet promised, seven centuries later, this nice daybreak broke with the approaching of Jesus, who mentioned, “I’ve come into the world as mild, in order that whoever believes in me might not stay in darkness” (John 12:46).

Thou Day-Spring

That’s why, on this Christmas hymn, we tackle Jesus because the “Day-Spring,” an older English time period for dawn. The creator drew from the prophetic blessing Zechariah spoke over his toddler son, John (the longer term Baptist). Hear additionally for the echo of Isaiah’s messianic prophecy in Zechariah’s phrases:

And thou, baby, shalt be referred to as the prophet of the Highest:
     for thou shalt go earlier than the face of the Lord to arrange his methods;
To present information of salvation unto his individuals
     by the remission of their sins,
By means of the tender mercy of our God;
     whereby the dayspring from on excessive hath visited us,
To present mild to them that sit in darkness and within the shadow of demise,
     to information our ft into the way in which of peace. (Luke 1:76–79 KJV)

The long-awaited, long-longed-for “solar of righteousness” was lastly dawning upon Israel, bringing therapeutic in his wings (Malachi 4:2) and multiplied pleasure to his individuals (Isaiah 9:3).

However this daybreak additionally introduced with it a better hope: the Solar was rising not merely to dispel the darkness from ethnic Israel but in addition to attract the nations of the earth to his mild (Isaiah 60:3). For one of many heralds of this daybreak was a star, a lightweight of the heavens whose silent voice went out throughout the earth to declare the arrival of Israel’s King — the radiance of the glory of God — to pagan astrologers (Matthew 2:1–10). How gloriously becoming that the start of the One who would grow to be “a lightweight of revelation to the Gentiles” (Luke 2:32) needs to be proclaimed to the primary Gentiles by a revelatory mild.

“Jesus got here into the world as mild and have become the sunshine of the world.”

And so, Jesus got here into the world as mild and have become the sunshine of the world. And his mild shone in our darkness. However he did greater than shine. He set in movement the everlasting destruction of our darkness by taking it upon himself. It even appeared as if the darkness of our sin had extinguished the radiance of the glory of God. But it surely didn’t — as a result of it couldn’t — overcome him. At first mild on the third day, the Solar of righteousness, the nice dayspring of Immanuel, burst once more upon the horizon of humanity, and his everlasting, therapeutic rays have been spreading all through the world ever since.

Immanuel to Come

There may be but another dayspring for which the Israel of God, all who consider in him from each tribe and tongue, anticipate with hopeful longing: the second creation of Jesus, “the brilliant morning star” (Revelation 22:16). And when ultimately he comes, “night time will likely be no extra. [Then we] will want no mild of lamp or solar, for the Lord God will likely be [our] mild,” and our “lamp [will be] the Lamb” (Revelation 22:5; 21:23). And in his mild, we will solely and ceaselessly see mild (Psalm 36:9).

So, as we anticipate the arrival of this everlasting morning, we be a part of the nice, rising choir of saints previous and current in singing,

Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.