[0:00] Well, if you would please turn in your Bibles to Isaiah chapter 40. We're going to sit on this short little passage in Isaiah 40 today.
[0:11] I'll be sharing with you some words that I shared when I was down in Camp Hill around Christmas time. Isaiah 40, verses 3 through 5. Isaiah 40, beginning in verse 3.
[0:30] A voice cries, In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low.
[0:44] The uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
[0:57] That's the end of our reading. Let's open in prayer. Lord, I desire this evening is to see the glory of the Lord. And we know your glory is revealed through your word.
[1:08] And we pray that that would be true as we spend time on this passage. Would you show us your truth? But would you show us yourself? Would you show us your glory? So we pray that you would use my work in preparation and my tongue to show us more of you and your truth.
[1:27] We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. I read once about a man. His name was Jim Quillen. And he was imprisoned in Alcatraz in the 1940s.
[1:39] Now, you know Alcatraz, the notorious prison off of the coast of San Francisco. It's its own island, hard to escape from. And he was imprisoned in Alcatraz. And while he was there, he was further punished for some misdemeanor.
[1:51] And so he was thrown into what they called the hole. Now, the hole was a prison cell which was completely padded off from the outside.
[2:02] No noise could get in. They also allowed no light to get in. So it was complete darkness. And it was cold and it was chilly. And this fellow Jim was thrown in there for 19 continuous days in the hole.
[2:16] And he said this. He said, worse than being cold, though, was the feeling of total isolation from the world. Being unable to see or hear is an awful experience for someone who has no physical impairment.
[2:30] He said this. He said it would be easy to fall into a state, or he said it was easy to fall into a state of depression. Of course. Could you imagine? 19 days, solitary confinement, no noise from the outside, nobody with you.
[2:47] Absolute darkness. You know, there's something about darkness we don't like. We don't like darkness. Not being able to see what's around us.
[2:58] Darkness is scary to us. I can remember once. I teach at a manual Christian school. My classroom was on the third floor. I can remember once I'd forgotten something in my classroom. And it was nighttime when I went to try to pick it up.
[3:08] And I was going up the steps. And I was partway up the steps, almost to the third floor, when I realized I hadn't turned on the lights. Weird thing in this school. You have to turn on the lights on the second floor. And I thought, I'll just keep going. I'm going down this dark hallway.
[3:21] Have you ever been in ICS at night with no lights? Going down this dark hallway. The floor is creaking. I'm a grown man.
[3:31] But I was getting scared. And I darted from my classroom and turned on the lights in my classroom. Kids, have you ever been scared of the dark? Have you ever had this? Do you like having a night light in your room because of the darkness?
[3:44] Molly Marie and I were talking not too long ago about what it would be like to go blind. And just that fear of having just the world is dark to you. Living in darkness.
[3:55] We don't like the dark. Now, there's also that kind of darkness that's not literal darkness. But it's a darkness nevertheless. And we don't like it. Have you ever felt that you're in the dark about something?
[4:05] And by that, we mean you're out of the loop. There's knowledge out there, but you've not been given access to it. And we use that phrase that you're in the dark. So maybe there's a wedding. And you go to the wedding.
[4:17] And you dress like you always dress. You dress to look your very best. And nobody told you the dress code. And everybody else shows up casual. And there you are in your rented tuxedo. And everybody else is wearing, I don't know, cowboy outfits or something like that.
[4:31] Or imagine there's been a decision that was made at work. And it's in your area of expertise. Usually they ask you about it. But this time nobody told you about it. You were never asked for your opinion.
[4:43] And you say, hey, why was I kept out of the loop? Why was I in the dark? We refer to that as being in the dark. Sometimes we're in the dark simply because we can't know everything. We don't know everything. And so we wonder, is my future spouse out there?
[4:57] Or we wonder, what's the best investment for this money? If I invest this money, will it be wise? What's going to happen with this investment? Or how long will the Lord keep me on this earth? When is he going to take me home to glory?
[5:09] And I'm in the dark. I don't know how long that's going to be. And we don't like being in the dark. And there's other darknesses. We could talk about the darkness of loneliness where you're by yourself.
[5:20] You feel like you're stuck in a situation. No one understands you. Maybe you're suffering. Suffering can be terribly lonely. Because you alone know what it's like to suffer what you are suffering.
[5:33] And then there's another darkness. There's the darkness of living in sin. It's appropriate language. This language of darkness. Because sin is dark. You know that darkness of sin.
[5:43] That darkness of guilt. Ephesians 5 refers to the unfruitful works of darkness. Colossians 1, 1 Peter 2 talk about how someone in sin is in this domain of darkness.
[5:57] And 1 John 2 says that if you hate your brother, you're walking in the darkness. And that darkness has blinded your eyes. You see, we don't like the dark. For good reason. Now, when you're in the dark, what is it that you most need?
[6:14] What is it that you most desire when you're in the dark? When you're in solitary confinement? When you're thrown into the hole in Alcatraz? What is it that you want? Well, what you want and what you need is light.
[6:28] You want light. If you're in the dark because you didn't know the dress code for the wedding, what you want is light. You want enlightenment. You want knowledge. You want somebody to have filled you in. Or if you're caught in the darkness of sin, what you need is that glorious light of salvation.
[6:44] If you're in the darkness of loneliness, you want the light of the presence of others, of someone who's with you and someone who understands you. Now, I want you to hold those two ideas that I just mentioned, light and presence.
[6:59] And by presence, I don't mean like Christmas presents or birthday presents. I'm talking about someone with you, being present with you. Light and presence. Because in this Isaiah 40 passage, we're going to focus this evening on a particular word that has to do with both of those ideas, with both light and with presence.
[7:17] And I bet if I gave you a few seconds, you could look over verses 3 through 5, and you could probably find that word that has to do with God's light and his presence. And that word is the word glory.
[7:29] You see it there in verse 5. Glory. Let me tell you up front what I hope we'll see this evening, and that's this. It is the glory of God that can radically change your darkness.
[7:41] It's the glory of God that can radically change your darkness. So, first thing I want for us to do is to define what we mean by the glory of God.
[7:53] In verse 5, it says, The glory of the Lord shall be revealed. So, what is this glory of the Lord? You'd think it'd be easy to answer that question. After all, it's a common word.
[8:04] We run into the word glory a lot. It's all over our hymnals. It's all over our Bibles. But it's funny. How would you define the glory of God? It's actually kind of hard. And part of the reason for that is that it's hard is because it's used in a variety of ways in Scripture.
[8:20] It's also hard because the Hebrew and Greek words are many that all feed into this idea of glory. But one way that glory is used in the Bible is to talk about God's reputation, His renown, His worth, His character, His stature.
[8:38] You see that in Psalm 96. Declare His glory among the nations. Declare His stature, His character. Declare who He is among the nations. Or Psalm 29.
[8:49] Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name. God's reputation. Ascribe to Him the worth and the renown that is due to His name. The verb form of glory, to glorify, fits in here.
[9:04] Where glorifying has to do with this assigning to God the worth that is due His name. And we talk about what is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to glorify God.
[9:14] It's to do that work and to enjoy Him forever. And so to glorify is to highlight God's reputation and His renown, to positively extol who He is and what He's done.
[9:27] But the word glory is also used in another way in Scripture. And this second one is the one that I really want for us to focus on because it's how the word, I believe, is used here in Isaiah 40.
[9:38] So often in Scripture, glory doesn't refer merely to God's reputation, but it refers to the revealed presence of God. It refers to the revealed presence of God.
[9:52] Okay, and by revealed, we actually mean revealed, like physical. God is present, God is there, and you can see it. This glory is a glory that surrounds His revelation of Himself, and it signifies that He's present in some special way.
[10:10] Often it's seen in a brilliant light, which is very appropriate because God is light. And so often it's this brilliant light, it's this brightness, it's a cloud of fire and smoke and light.
[10:22] Sometimes it's called this shekinah, which means dwelling, this dwelling glory of God. Now God, of course, is not visible. Children in the room.
[10:34] Let's see how Sunday school is doing with this. All right? The Children's Catechism asks this question. What is God? Okay? Can we remember the answer?
[10:46] God is a spirit and does not have a body like men.
[10:56] Now listen to that. God is a spirit. He's a spirit. He doesn't have a body. And so you say, well, God's not visible. You can't see Him. And what that means is that this shekinah glory, this light and brilliance, is not a part of who God is, but rather it's how He chooses to reveal Himself at a particular time.
[11:18] So in order to show His special presence, and by the way, I say special presence because God is omnipresent, right? God is everywhere all the time, but sometimes He shows this special presence and He chooses to create this glory that can actually be seen, full of light and dazzling splendor and glory.
[11:40] Turn in your Bibles to Exodus chapter 13. Exodus 13. So in Exodus 13, we're here in the actual exodus of the Israelites through the wilderness.
[12:01] And verse 20, go ahead and Exodus 13, verse 20 says this, And they, the Israelites, moved on from Sukkoth and encamped at Etham on the edge of the wilderness. And the Lord went before them by day.
[12:14] Well, how do you know? How do you know He went before them by day? He was there in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light that they might travel by day and by night.
[12:27] The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people. So there was this glory of God, this special presence of God that could be seen.
[12:39] I remind you of Exodus 3. That's when Moses is out tending the flocks and he sees this bush and the bush appears to be on fire, but it's not actually burning. That was God's Shekinah glory, God's special presence.
[12:51] If you flip forward to Isaiah, I'm sorry, Exodus chapter 16. In chapter 16, the Israelites are doing what they so often do. They're complaining and grumbling about Moses bringing them out into the wilderness and not having food to eat.
[13:05] So they're grumbling and mumbling and complaining. Chapter 16. And then verse 9, God's going to come near and look at what it says. Then Moses said to Aaron, say to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, come near before the Lord for he has heard your grumbling.
[13:22] Okay, verse 10. And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness and behold, the glory, there's that word, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.
[13:36] Something they could see, this glory of God, this revealed presence of God. And we could go on, right, and look all through scripture. God's glory appears on Mount Sinai when Moses goes up to get the law from God.
[13:47] It appears over the tabernacle there in the wilderness. Later when they build Solomon's temple, we're told that the glory of the Lord filled the temple. 2 Chronicles 7 says, the glory of the Lord filled the temple and the priests could not enter the house of the Lord because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord's house.
[14:06] Just this dazzling display of God's glory. So the glory of God is God's revealed presence, most often seen in this dazzling light and splendor and majesty.
[14:18] And I want you to notice two elements that are connected with God's glory. Light and presence. presence. Light and presence. Those two very things that we so often desire and want when we're in the dark.
[14:32] Light and presence. Well, let's go back to Isaiah chapter 40. And I want to look at these few verses here so that we can see the importance of this revealed glory.
[14:45] And so my second point this evening is the importance of God's glory. All right, so we're in Isaiah chapter 40 verses 3 to 5.
[14:57] And verse 3 begins with these three little words, a voice cries or a voice of one crying. Now, interestingly, it doesn't tell us who's the one crying. It doesn't say who the voice actually is.
[15:07] In Isaiah, it's left vague. And I almost wonder if it's purposely left vague because the point here is not to emphasize who's doing the crying but what the message is that's being cried.
[15:19] So the importance here is the message, not the messenger. But we know as we go further on and look at the New Testament that this is going to be applied to John the Baptist. But John the Baptist even understood that what's important is the message.
[15:33] He himself was not important. He said, I must decrease. Christ must increase. And so what he was focused on was this message. And so here, in Isaiah 40, it's the message that's important.
[15:44] And this little introduction is saying, listen, hear this message. It's important. Listen to this voice. So what's the message? Going on in verse 3, in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.
[16:00] Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. These words were spoken by Isaiah to Israel as he anticipated that one day they would be in captivity in Babylon.
[16:12] He looked ahead and he knew that they were going to be carried off into exile and he spoke these words to them as words of comfort. And he said to them, look, you're going to be in captivity but you won't be in captivity forever.
[16:25] If you look back to verse 2, he says, your iniquity is pardoned, your punishment is over, you're going to put in your time and you're not going to be in there forever. Now, it might be tempting to interpret this highway in verse 3.
[16:37] It says, to make straight in the desert a highway. It might be tempting to interpret, therefore, that highway as a highway that the Israelites will take. One day they're going to be in Babylon, but they'll take this highway and they'll return to Jerusalem, kind of like in Exodus where there's this path across the desert as they're going to the promised land.
[16:56] But look here in Isaiah 40. You'll notice that in this case, the highway is being prepared not so that they can go somewhere else, not so that they can get out of this wilderness of exile.
[17:10] It's being prepared so that God can come to them. God can come to them in the wilderness. And so this is not the language of God leading us out of a hard situation, which he sometimes does.
[17:22] This is the language of God coming to us within our hard situation. God coming to us within our wilderness and our exile. Kind of reminds me of Isaiah 43 that says, when you walk through the fire, you'll not be burned.
[17:35] And when you pass through the waters, I will be with you. God comes to us as we have to go through the fire and go through the water. So God's coming. He's coming to us.
[17:45] And if God's coming to be with us, what do we do? What's left for us to do? Well, notice all the imperatives here in Isaiah 40. All these commands. It says, prepare the way.
[17:57] Make the highway straight. You do this. You prepare for the coming of our God. Verse 4 gives even more specific imperatives. Right? It says, take down the low places and fill them in.
[18:10] Take the high places. Cut them down. Make the road smooth and level and easy. Make it a highway. Now, these are commands of preparation. Get things ready.
[18:22] It's like what we have to do when guests are coming over to the house. We want to get things ready. We have to take all those Legos and push them to the side. You know, make a path so they can get through to the guest room. Push the toys under the couch.
[18:33] We wouldn't do that, would we, kids? No. But there's this preparation. Make the path ready. Now, you know, of course, that this is figurative language.
[18:46] God doesn't actually need mountains cleared out of the way. He doesn't need valleys filled in. He's not sitting there going, boy, I really wish I could get to you, but that mountain's in my way. If somebody would just knock that thing down, it's figurative language.
[19:00] So what is the way in which we are to prepare for the coming of God? How do we prepare for the coming of this God? Well, maybe to answer that question, we should look at the New Testament fulfillment of this passage.
[19:15] So this passage is actually quoted in the Gospels. In fact, it's quoted in all four of the Gospels. All four Gospels go to these verses and cite them and reference them.
[19:28] And each of them points out that John the Baptist is the voice crying. What's he doing? He's telling people to prepare. That's part of John the Baptist's ministry is to tell people to prepare.
[19:42] And of course, who's that preparation for? It's preparation for Jesus. It's preparation for the Messiah. And how does John want the people to prepare? How does John want them to prepare for this coming of God?
[19:52] He's saying the kingdom of God is at hand. The king is coming. And how should people prepare? John's answer is repent. Repent.
[20:05] Get ready. Receive forgiveness of sins by repenting. Repent and be baptized. Brothers and sisters, that is how we are to prepare for the coming of the king.
[20:18] We prepare by repenting. That's how we prepare for the coming of God. We identify our sins. We acknowledge their wrongness. We're grieved by their wrongness.
[20:29] We confess them. We turn from them. We say, I want nothing to do with the darkness of sin. And we turn to the light in repentance.
[20:40] We turn to the glory of God. Well, back to Isaiah 40. we know that whatever is coming is important.
[20:52] I mean, because look at all the preparation that's going on. Something's happening that's going to be important if we're doing this much preparation. Recently, my family has got to enjoy the great fun of trying to sell a house.
[21:05] And so we put our house on the market and soon enough we were told that people were going to come and they were going to view our house. Well, we did lots of preparation. Prepare and prepare. Our house looked sparkling.
[21:17] It looked gorgeous. It looked so much nicer than it's ever looked when we've been living in it the past 10 years. But there was this preparation because this was an important thing. We wanted to sell our house and we wanted to sell it well.
[21:27] And so we prepared. And here, there's all of this preparation going on. So something about this is important. And so we get to verse 5 and we find what it is that we've been preparing for.
[21:40] Look at verse 5. It says, And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. And all flesh shall see it together. How do we know?
[21:51] How do we know that's certain? For the mouth of the Lord has spoken. It's certain. Notice there, verse 5, The glory of the Lord.
[22:02] The glory, that light, that divine presence is going to be revealed. Now this, this is worth preparing for. This is worth the painful work of repentance.
[22:15] This is worth what Chad was talking about this morning, the cutting off of the hand, the gouging out of the eyes. This is worth that painful work. It's worth the back-breaking labor of moving mountains and filling in entire valleys because this is the presence of God.
[22:31] The glory of the Lord is coming. Now in our passage, look at what happens when you see the glory of God. When you see the glory of God, you're so excited because you're transformed by it that you want to tell the world.
[22:43] So if you fast forward to verse 9, you see this fellow, he's this herald, he's this messenger and he's going up onto the mountain and he's lifting up his voice and he's proclaiming by the end of verse 9, Behold your God!
[22:56] He wants to tell everyone. In fact, verse 5 tells us that everyone is going to see it. All flesh will see it together. All of mankind, the entire world is going to know that the glory of the Lord is here.
[23:11] Which begs the question, when? When will this be? When is this glory of the Lord, this divine presence of the Lord going to be revealed? And so thirdly, let's look at the coming of this glory.
[23:27] The coming of this glory. The book of Isaiah and a lot of the prophets are fun to read because like so many other prophets, his prophecies can have near fulfillments and they can have far fulfillments and sometimes Isaiah, of course, is saying things under the utterance of the Holy Spirit but he himself may or may not know when these will be fulfilled.
[23:48] I remember Pastor Tripp saying it's like someone on a vista, on a lookout and you see a mountain range and you see another mountain range beyond that, you see another mountain range beyond that and Isaiah is seeing all these distant things but it's not always clear which ones are closer, which ones are farther away.
[24:05] So, in this case, when Isaiah says the glory of the Lord is going to be revealed, when's that going to happen? When is the fulfillment of this revelation of the glory of the Lord? And some might have argued that it's a reference to the return to Jerusalem.
[24:19] Some have argued that it's possibly this rebuilding of the temple. Okay? After the exile is over, remember Nehemiah, Ezra, the returning to Jerusalem, the rebuilding of the temple and the earlier temple had been destroyed, they rebuild the temple.
[24:33] Maybe the glory of the Lord descended on that temple but interestingly, there's no record of God's Shekinah glory falling on that newly built temple. In fact, what we do have is we're told that all the old men who remembered the former temple were weeping.
[24:48] Were weeping because this new temple lacked the glory of the old one. So when? When is this glory going to be revealed? And here's the beautiful answer.
[25:01] God's glory was revealed in Jesus Christ. God's glory was revealed in Jesus Christ. And so what that means is that the moment of Christ's entrance into the world was of course a hugely important event.
[25:15] The glory of the Lord, the glory of God was coming into the world. In fact, the entire timeline of history has been preparation for the coming of this Jesus Christ. All of Old Testament history is pointing towards it and is leaning towards this very moment when the advent of Jesus Christ comes.
[25:35] And so this is the pivotal moment when the glory of God is going to be clearly revealed to all of mankind. It was in the fullness of time that God sent His Son and this Son is the glory of God.
[25:49] Now how? How is the Son the glory of God? Let me show you that in three ways. Three ways in which the Son, Jesus, is the glory of God. First, the Son has always and eternally been the glory of God.
[26:04] He has always and eternally been the glory of God. 2 Corinthians 4 says that we see the glory of God in the face of Christ. Hebrews 1.3 says that He, Jesus, is the radiance of the glory of God.
[26:20] Notice that wording. He is the radiance of the glory of God, this kind of outward, permeating, permeating, these kind of rays of light coming out from glory, from God.
[26:31] That's who Christ is. Turn to John 1, if you can. John 1. We know John 1 pretty well.
[26:45] And here, John agrees that Christ is the glory and light of God and has always been the glory of God. I'll start, John 1, I'll start in verse 4. It says, in Him, in Christ, was life and the life was the light of men.
[27:03] The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John, that's John the Baptist. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him.
[27:18] He was not the light, John was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. And so there you see Jesus as the light.
[27:31] He's the glory of God. In His high priestly prayer in John 17, Jesus speaks of, He speaks of the glory I had, He's praying to the Father, He speaks of the glory I had with you before the world existed.
[27:44] So He has always and eternally displayed the glory of God. But second, Jesus is the glory of God in His incarnation. He's the glory of God in His incarnation.
[27:56] If glory is God's revealed presence, then the incarnation, which is Jesus taking on flesh, the incarnation of Jesus is the moment at which God's glory was revealed in actual, physical, human, bodily presence.
[28:12] So no longer is the glory of God a bright and brilliant light, it's now a man. It's now flesh. His glory is one that because, to some degree, God veils His glory is a glory that's approachable.
[28:28] It's a glory that's accessible. You'll remember, I mentioned 2 Chronicles 7 and the high priests couldn't even, the priests couldn't even go into the temple because of the glory of God.
[28:39] And here comes this glory of God who's accessible. I find it interesting, that story in Luke chapter 2 of the shepherds, they're keeping watch over the flocks at night, remember, and suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared to them and what happened?
[28:50] The glory of the Lord shone around them and they did that, that kind of typical biblical response, the appropriate response to the glory of God. It says, and they were sore afraid, they were terrified at that glory of the Lord.
[29:05] But then as the story goes on, the angels say about the birth of this Savior, Bethlehem, right? And then they sing their song, glory to God in the highest and they depart.
[29:18] The shepherds turn to one another, they say, come, let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing of which the angels have spoken. What they're really saying is, come, let us see the glory of God incarnate.
[29:32] And these shepherds who were just terrified by this revealed glory of God are going to go see the baby in the manger who is the glory of God, this approachable glory of God.
[29:44] And so there's Jesus who is full of Shekinah glory. Remember the transfiguration, right? He is full of this Shekinah glory, chooses to veil his glory and he takes on flesh, but he still is the glory of God.
[29:57] I mean, look at verse 14 of John chapter 1, if you've still got your Bible open there. It says, the word, that's Jesus, became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory.
[30:11] Glory as of the only son from the Father, full of grace and truth. You know, it struck me this morning as we were reading in John chapter 2, it says that at the end of the wedding scene in Cana and the miracle, it says that, let me see if I can find it.
[30:27] Jesus manifested his glory and the disciples believed in him. Jesus is the glory of God. So he's always and eternally been the glory of God.
[30:39] He's the glory of God in his incarnation. And then thirdly, Jesus is the glory of God in his death. Jesus is the glory of God in his death. Now, this one might seem odd to you, it might seem a bit strange, but do you remember what Jesus said?
[30:51] Jesus was referring ahead of time to his crucifixion, to his death, and he said, the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
[31:03] Referring to his crucifixion. The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Now, how does that work? How is Christ on the cross sweating, bleeding, in agony?
[31:18] How is that a moment of glory? Well, I want you to think of what glory is. Glory is God's revealed presence. And was God present on that cross?
[31:29] He certainly was. Was God revealing who he is on the cross? He certainly was. And so, the Son of Man on the cross displays his glory.
[31:42] Of course, that dazzling display of glory will be only increased all the more as he ascends into heaven and he sits at the right hand of the Father. But you see, God's desire to reveal his glory meant that he was willing to go to the cross so that we might see who he truly is, so that we might see the fullness of his glory on display.
[32:04] And so, Isaiah 40 makes sense. Make a highway for this God. Make a highway. Prepare for him. The glory of the Lord is going to be revealed and all flesh is going to see it together, so prepare for the coming of this God.
[32:18] Remember that darkness we talked about? None of us like being in the darkness. It's cold. It's miserable. It's lonely.
[32:30] And when you're there, what do you look for? You look for light. You look for the presence of someone who understands you. Listen, brothers and sisters, God offers you that.
[32:43] He offers that to you. He offers it to you in the person of Jesus. He offers you his glory, his light, his presence. Why would you, in your darkness, some of you have been in darkness all of your lives.
[32:59] Others of you just know those moments of darkness, those days of darkness. Why would you, in your darkness, not want to come to him? He gives you light. He gives you his presence.
[33:13] Another one of those great passages in Isaiah is Isaiah 9. And in Isaiah 9, you've heard it plenty of times, we're told, the people who walk in darkness, there it is, in darkness, have seen a great light.
[33:32] Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them a light has shown. What's this light? Well, you go down to verse 9, for to us a child is born, to us a son is given.
[33:44] That's Christ Jesus. He's the light in our darkness. Or Isaiah chapter 60, verse 1, it says, Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
[34:01] For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples. But the Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you.
[34:12] I encourage you, turn to the true light. Turn to true glory. Stop chasing those false glories, those pretend glories, those imitation glories.
[34:24] You know what they are. Those things that are supposed to help kind of numb the pain and make the darkness easier. The things that offer you flickers of light, but they're flickers, and they're soon gone.
[34:35] The things that promise that they'll release you from the darkness, but they're empty promises. They didn't work last time. They're not going to work this time. Don't chase those false glories. Jesus Christ is the true glory.
[34:48] He knows how to deal with your darkness. Let me close with this quote from Paul Tripp. He says this. He says, The incarnation of Jesus is about a glorious Savior coming to give glorious grace to people who have forsaken His glory for the temporarily satisfying shadow glories of the created world.
[35:15] Shadow glories. We're guilty of chasing those shadow glories. They're not the real thing. They're the shadow glories. We chase after those, but brothers and sisters, there's a greater glory.
[35:26] There's a greater light. It's been revealed to us. So prepare for the way of the Lord. Make ready for His glory to be revealed.
[35:38] Let's pray. Okay.