THE DAWNING OF GOD’S LIGHT, AND ITS AWAKENING CALL
Isaiah 60:1-6. Arise, shine, for thy light is come, &c.
We ourselves are a part fulfilment of this prophecy. It is Israel’s God we worship, &c. The Church of today is what it is through the fulfilment of this prophecy in part; the Church of the future will be what it shall become through its fulfilment in completeness. Dropping the special reference to Israel, and viewing the text in its universal bearings, we have—
I. THE CHURCH ENLIGHTENED BY CHRIST’S COMING. Christ rose upon His Church like a great sun, imparting life, reviving courage, diffusing gladness, making bright with glory (Malachi 4:2). Christ gives light—
1. By imparting saving knowledge (see p. 569). He taught men of the Father. He showed the way of life. He put into the precepts of the law a depth of spiritual meaning never seen in them before. He could say of Himself (John 8:12). He came with full knowledge of the Divine purpose. He spake with absolute authority.
2. By restoring the Church to power and influence. The godly in Israel were but a handful. They were down-trodden and despised. But Christ would reinstate it in power and influence among the nations; He would give it prosperity. This was bringing it light. Accordingly, a new spring-time came with the advent of the Saviour. He made His Church a power. Its power speedily became felt, and continues to this day. It is a permanent and influential factor in history—a thing of might.
3. By conferring on the Church the beauty of holiness. This may answer to the “glory” which the prophet declares “shall be seen upon it.” Christ confers a glory on the Church by the spiritual gifts which He bestows, and by the graces which become visible in the character of His people through the operation of His Word and Spirit.
II. THE LIGHT OF THE CHURCH IN CONTRAST WITH THE SURROUNDING DARKNESS. The Church—believers, Christian nations, enlightened by Christ, stand in marked contrast with the darkness of the world around. The effect of the light is to make the darkness more visible. Contrast—
1. The enlightenment of faith with the boasted enlightenment of reason (1 Corinthians 1:21). The world’s cleverness did not lead it to the truth. It leads it often to reject the truth now that it has come. The boasted enlightenment of antiquity left it profoundly immoral. The theories, schemes, reasonings of our philosophers to-day leave the mind in just as great uncertainty on the chief questions of existence, and are powerless to effect moral regeneration.
2. The enlightenment of nations which have received the truth with the darkness of surrounding heathenism.
3. The enlightenment of individuals who have obeyed the truth with the darkness of those who are still in sin. The believer recognises in his own experience that, whereas he was once darkness, he is now light in the Lord. The change in his character manifests this to be true. The unbeliever, on the contrary, knows his state to be one of darkness, of moral evil, of unhappiness; through lack of true knowledge of God, of hopelessness as regards the future.
III. THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF AND TO DIFFUSE HER LIGHT (Isaiah 60:1; Isaiah 60:3). Missionary effort is of the essence of the Church’s calling (Mark 16:16).—The Homiletical Library, vol. ii. pp. 25–27.
Isaiah 60:1. This stirring appeal springs from a soul full of exultant joy. To understand the depth of that exultation, observe that the prophet spoke in a time of the deepest gloom. Chapter 59:depicts the state of cold formalism into which the nation had sunk. In the very heart of that gloom, Isaiah saw a distant light gathering round the vision of the future Saviour (chap. Isaiah 59:20). He gazed on the dawning glory, and thence arose the cry, rousing as a trumpet call, “Arise, shine,” &c. Taking these words into the full illumination of Christianity, they express, very beautifully, the awakening of a man to his true work in the world. Paul has himself given them that interpretation (Ephesians 5:14). Giving to the prophet’s words that Christian meaning, they present to us a truth of immense value respecting the Christian’s mission in the world. It is because the “glory of the Lord has risen on” him, that he is to reflect the light which has entered his soul.
I. THE DAWNING OF THE LIGHT. Man is not in a world of darkness, but blind in a world of light In the awakening hour we call conversion, God does seem to come nearer to the soul. The veil is lifted from the spirit’s eye, and His nearness, for the first time, is discovered. The glory of God in Christ is in close contact with every human heart. Our little life is enveloped by the spiritual world. Just as in the opening of the eyes of the man who was blind from his birth, there appeared to him to be created a world of trees and flowers, whose beauty no idea had ever pictured—so in the solemn awakening hour of spiritual life, all the world of God’s glory breaks in like a new creation. There are three requisites for the dawning of the light.
1. Spiritual penitence. Spiritual, because there is a repentance which is by no means a rising of God’s light in the soul, but merely a transient motion. Mere regret and mere terror may be the beginning of the true, but it is not in itself true repentance. True repentance is the turning of the whole heart to God on the discovery of its own darkness and estrangement. Its chief cause is not so much the remembrance of guilty acts, as the feeling of a guilty heart.
2. Spiritual love. Spiritual, in contrast with that semi-pious emotion which is always convulsively striving to learn whether the soul loves God or not. Spiritual love is not so much the feeling of our love to God, as of His love to us. It is the love which has swept into the soul, subduing its whole being, and becoming its ruling emotion. This is requisite, because love is the insight of the soul. The man who has not this love is blind to the light of God.
3. Spiritual prayer. Spiritual, because living fellowship with the Father is meant. This is the full dawning of the light of God. He who lives in prayer, lives before the unveiled eternity. By penitence, therefore, the soul turns God-wards; by love its eye is opened; and by prayer it moves in the sunrise of the eternal light. This brings us to consider—
II. THE AWAKENING CALL,—“Arise, shine.” When God is felt to be near a man thus—in penitence, love, and prayer, that man is imperatively bound to reflect the glory which has risen in his heart; to bear witness of the light which has pierced and transformed his soul. This is based on a great principle, viz., The deepest emotion in a man’s nature must reveal itself in his life. There is no such thing as a life-long hypocrisy; sooner or later the master passion within will glow to a red heat, and the man will stand transparent before the eye of the world. In what way does the glory of the Lord thus manifest itself in life?
1. In the majesty of holiness. Holiness means, literally, separateness—separateness from sin, by dedication to God. Remember, you are to shine with that light;—you are to go bearing the glory of the Lord, and of the spiritual world, in your life.
2. In the beauty of unselfishness. The life of God is the life of the Cross in the heart. This is a manifestation of God’s light in the soul. Let that light dawn, and men will see the Cross-life there. This is the light which the world so much needs to-day.
3. In the earnestness of your efforts for men. If the light has risen, you know its power. If the glory has dawned, you feel the realities of life. In that illumination, who can be slothfully calm? There is a spirit of so-called refinement abroad now, which makes men afraid to speak of those things which lie deepest in the heart. Was it so with the great ones of old? Was Paul afraid to speak in the name of Christ before Agrippa? Did he shrink before the fiery scorn of Festus? Go, then, bear witness of the light. Live out your prayers in daily actions.—E. L. Hull, B. A.: Sermons, First Series, pp. 61–70.
I. THERE IS A DECLARATION OF FACT: “Thy light is come.” This prophecy was fulfilled when Christ was born. But we must pass beyond that fact, and recognise that there is a revelation to ourselves to-day as much as there was of yore. Thy light is come. What does it mean?
1. The revelation of God in Jesus Christ was a light to mankind, because it brought home distinctly as far as the mind could contemplate it the thought of God [1749]
2. The prophecy is fulfilled in revealing to mankind the dignity and the destiny of man. Before the keen logicians, the wonderful thinkers, of Greece and Rome, there is always hanging a great gulf of blank despair. With us, the poorest character that we meet in rags, we in some measure respect. Man is now seen in the light of the faith of Jesus, &c.
[1749] Even in the Old Testament that thought was most inaccurate. Even in the ancient nations that loved righteousness there was no entire conception of the nature and character of God. One cannot read the “Republic” of Plato, e.g., without being struck with the accuracy of the thoughts and the beauty of the pictures he brings out, with the power of the argument and the keenness of the criticism; and yet through it and above it all with the darkness, and sadness, and despair. God not known; no real grasp of the eternal goodness; no real thought of the eternal life. Christ came and taught men not only by His stately words, but by His loving life, that God is love. Surely when we feel that no rest can be found in a passing life unless we rest upon God, then we acknowledge the truth of the prophet’s saying, “Thy light is come.”
II. AN EXHORTATION TO DUTY: Arise and shine. Be in active operation with Divine force, and permit the light of God to shine through the soul and life. That applies to the Church. 1. The Church is a witness of Divine truth. The Church shines when she witnesses the truth. A modern idea is that the Church is not to be so bigoted as positively to assert the truth. Christ said, “Go ye and teach all nations.” When once the Church forgets her function of teaching the truth there will be heard “the beating of the unseen feet,” Christ coming in the clouds to judge and to condemn. May He give us grace to recollect and to contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.
2. The Church shines when she bears witness to the worship of Almighty God. The Church is the house of prayer, the home of Christian union, the school of souls in their constant intercourse with the Eternal God.
CONCLUSION.—The same truth applies to souls. Shine with the light that has come, is a command for souls more than for the Church. How shall we do it?
1. By keeping steadily before us the severe lines of duty that God lays down for us, and trying to do our duty; seeking grace to do it, &c. We shine when we try to hold the true estimate of character. Unless we are true to ourselves, and true to God, we may make grave mistakes. We must know ourselves by self-examination, by severe and careful watchfulness. It is in penitence, and in the progress that comes from penitence, that the soul shines in the light of Christ. Let us each begin with ourselves and not be content with broad views of Christianity.—Canon Knox-Little: Clerical World, vol. i., pp. 310–312.
I. The deep darkness which envelops the world without the Gospel (Isaiah 60:2). “Gross darkness,” a striking emblem of ignorance, error, sin, guilt, misery, danger.
1. The heathen world is in this darkness (Romans 1:18-32).
2. In the midst of Christendom there is this darkness. Home heathenism. The condition, of the unregenerate.
II. The uprising of a glorious light for the transformation of the darkness. There is no redeeming principle in man’s apostate nature. But for the prospect opened by the Gospel, there must be the darkness of final and absolute despair. Modern Materialism, &c., are as powerless as the ancient systems to reach the conscience and renew the heart (Isaiah 38:17; Isaiah 45:8, and others). But glorious is the view here presented, &c.
1. The Gospel is “light,” and this marks its divinity.
2. The Gospel is universally adapted—
(1.) To every stage of human society.
(2.) To the common wants of man—instruction, comfort, &c.
(3.) To every order of mind.
(4.) To every possible condition. The Gospel offers pardon for the guilty, &c.
3. The Gospel is diffusive, penetrating. Its progress in Apostolic times, &c. (Isaiah 60:3). Not a dead letter, but “the power of God,” &c. In how many dark places has “light sprung up” (Matthew 4:16). It will be diffused till the whole world is flooded with its glorious light.
Conclusion.—Has the light risen upon your soul? Are you reflecting its radiance in your life, &c.? Are you doing what you can to communicate it to others! Every Christian is called upon not only to “arise,” but to “shine” (Ephesians 5:4). In the radiance of this Divine light the Church is to stand up and show herself, and then the greatest and most blessed results will follow. If your soul is in darkness you need not despair, for LIGHT I. ALL AROUND YOU. A. Tucker.
Words full of inspiration and high hope. Day has dawned upon the world; light and life have come, the day of salvation for all people. Let us consider this new day of salvation in three aspects.
I. How has light arisen upon the world in Jesus Christ?
II. How does light arise upon the individual soul that comes to Christ?
III. How may the blessed light which has arisen within us, and which has made us children of the light, so be manifested by us in our life that it may run its widening way upon the earth?
The claims of foreign missions.—The Homiletical Library, vol. ii. pp. 27–35.
I. The auspicious fact. II. The reasonable command.—J. Rawlinton.
Isaiah 60:3. The Light. I. Revealed to the Jews. II. Extended to the Gentiles. III. Supreme above all authority and power.
Isaiah 60:4-5. I. The gathering of the Gentiles to Zion. From every quarter—from far—from beyond the sea. With all their forces. II. Zion’s emotions. She sees and overflows with joy.
Isaiah 60:6-7. The gathering of Zion’s children. I. They come from all quarters. II. Come full-handed. III. Come with thanksgiving and praise. IV. Come to offer themselves in the service of the Lord. V. Come to find acceptance. VI. Come to share in the manifestation of the Divine glory.—J. Lyth, D.D.