The sermon for Christmas Day was based on John 1:1-18.

This is a recording of most of St. Matthew's Christmas Eve service. The sermon, "Come, Desire of Nations", begins around 25 minutes into the recording. It focuses on the hymn "O Come, O Come Emmanuel", especially the verse shown above.

The sermon for Weds, Dec. 18, provided here in written form, was based on the 6th verse of the hymn, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" (shown in the picture above).

“O Come, Thou Dayspring from on high.” That’s not something you ask for every day. We know about “day schools” and “day spas” and that sort of thing, but what about a “Dayspring?” Dayspring is another word for the dawn.  Daybreak.  Those first streaks of light in the eastern sky.

We need the real light of day – especially on these shortest days of the year! You can have every light on in your house, or glowing Christmas lights all around, but it’s still not the same as having the warm sun shining on your face.

But as we know, people can enjoy blessings like a glorious sunrise and the warmth of a sunny day, and yet still be walking in spiritual darkness. You can have all your earthly needs met, and still fear the valley of the shadow of death. 

We can’t live long without the light of the sun. That’s why so many cultures have even worshipped the sun … But through His Word and Spirit, God enlightens us to His Truth: we can’t live eternally without the Light of God’s Son, Jesus, the One who made the sun and the heavens and the earth, and the One who is our “Dayspring who comes from on high.”

Picture that – doesn’t dawn come from the ground up? It begins on the horizon and gradually the light rises higher in the morning sky.  But our Dayspring comes to us from “on high” – from heaven above!

Think about some of the times we hear this Good News from God’s Word, like when the Virgin Mary is greeted by the angel Gabriel. She is told that the power of the Most High God will overshadow her, and that she will give birth to a son – the Son of God!

A few months later, Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, bursts out these words about his own son and Mary’s Son. We heard tonight in our reading from Luke chapter 1 what Zechariah said of his own son, John, “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High.” And then Zechariah says this about Mary’s Son-on-the-way:  “The sunrise [or the Dayspring] shall visit us from on high.”

Zechariah’s words recalled Old Testament words like these, from Malachi 4:2, “For you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.” (We’ll also sing those words this Christmas in the hymn, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”)

On the night that the Dayspring was born at Bethlehem, Luke tells us how the shepherds were visited in the fields by “a multitude of the heavenly host [which means armies of angels!], who were praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest!’”  And as the angels sang their praises to God, the light of the Lord was literally shining down on those sleepy shepherds … 

And then we have Isaiah’s words from his great Christmas prophecy in Isaiah 9:  “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.” Those words shine like a beacon for all of us in this world of sin and fear!

“It’s always darkest before the dawn,” goes the old saying. And it was into some of the deepest darkness of the Old Testament that God spoke this promise, a promise so certain that God expresses it in the past tense: “They have seen a great light … on them has light shined.”

But thank the Lord that this Light is not just for those despairing in ancient Israel. All people are born in the darkness of sin. And the light of Christ dawns for us all …

For the Israelites, their best days were behind them. The glory days of King David and Solomon were long gone. Their kingdom, their economy, and their unity would all collapse. But, really, that doesn’t sound so different from things we’ve seen in our time!  So, praise the Lord that to us the Dayspring comes from on high! 

To paraphrase the words of Psalm 121, “we lift up our eyes” – beyond our present stress or worries or the darkness of this world – because our help comes from the Lord on high!

Admittedly, the coming of the Dayspring doesn’t guarantee things like national resurgence, or world peace, or the eradication of illness.  Instead, God simply promises us His Light, shining from Jesus, showing us that He is the Way to God’s eternal kingdom. Jesus is the Light that doesn’t go out – no matter what happens in this world. 

By faith in Jesus, our fears of death and darkness can begin to fade away because the Dayspring has come from on high. He cheers us by His drawing nigh! He disperses the gloomy clouds of night, and He puts death’s dark shadows to flight!  Just like the news the angels brought on Christmas night, this is Good News of great joy!

God’s Old Testament people, though, had to wait centuries for these promises to come to pass. Isaiah said that God’s people would see this Light in a Child – a Child who upholds all things on His shoulders, a Child who is the “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”  This promised Child would be everything that a world in darkness needs! 

And 700 years later, the Dayspring dawned! God’s promise was fulfilled in Jesus’ birth.  But who received Him?  At first, it’s just a few shepherds, people rejected by society, thought of as dishonest, & suspected as thieves. And Immanuel came to them, to sinners like us, to people needing the Dayspring – so they welcomed Jesus!

Later, there were the Magi from the East. They had probably heard about the promise of the Messiah from the Jews living in Persia. Perhaps they even heard the prophecy from Numbers 24:17, that “a Star shall come out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel.”  The visit of the Magi shows that the Gentiles, the nations, the peoples living in darkness were welcomed into the Light from on high!

But those living in the darkness couldn’t endure this Light!  King Herod, and later, most of the priests, and Pharisees, and leaders of Israel rejected Jesus. Despite the big crowds that came out to see Jesus, there weren’t that many people that followed the Light faithfully. On Pentecost Sunday, after three years of Jesus’ ministry, there were only 120 believers gathered in Jerusalem …

John begins his Gospel by telling us that Jesus, “the true Light which gives light to everyone … came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him.”  More than once, Jesus grieved that His own people – despite how much they needed Him – didn’t receive Him. Here was the Sunrise and fresh hope from on high, and yet so many stayed lost in the darkness of sin and fear …

I heard a story of a woman who was gravely ill. She wasn’t going to get better, and she knew it. But she made her decline worse because, for a while, she refused to go to sleep at night. Her thinking was, “If I can just stay awake and look at the light of the lamp, I won’t die.”  She ended up exhausting herself trying to stay awake.

But spiritually speaking, it’s true:  if only you see the Light, you won’t die! Those who see the Light of Christ by faith, will live, even when they take their last breath. That’s the message that shines for us in the Gospel, that Jesus is the Light, the Dayspring shining away the darkness of death. 

Jesus is the Dayspring for us because of His death and resurrection in our place, and because He continues to “enlighten” us through His Word and through the forgiveness He pours out for us in our Baptism and here at His Altar.

Here, front and center, amid the colors of Christmas, the cross is still the focal point.  Maybe it seems a little out of place compared to “Christmas cheer”, but it’s here to remind us that our salvation was won by the suffering and death of Jesus, not just through “the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay”!  Our sin, death, the devil, and every sort of darkness is defeated at the cross.

One Man’s death – the God-man from on high – paid for a world of sin. And one Man’s resurrection is the dawn of our new life!

Jesus is especially our Dayspring through the Light of His Resurrection! Jesus came to His disciples in their darkness and despair on the first day of the week. First Mary Magdalene. Then Peter. Then the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Then a roomful of His disciples. Then Thomas. And one by one, the Dayspring shone on them from on high, and He dispersed their fear and gloom. 

Jesus is our Dayspring,  He is the dawn of new life,  not just because of the manger, but through His cross and resurrection!

The Light of Christ has dawned, but His Light does not set or go out.  The Bible ends by telling us about the eternal Light that surrounds the throne of God, with all of God’s saints basking in it: “Night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their Light.”  And then, in one of His final words in Scripture, Jesus calls Himself “the Bright Morning Star.”

What will that be like, to live in the Light of the Lord?  We can only imagine, but we know it will be far better than sparkly Christmas lights, better than the Milky Way lit up at night, better than the warm sun streaming through your window.  One day, your faith will turn to sight, and you’ll come face-to-face with the Bright Morning Star, Jesus Himself …

When this verse of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” was first sung, perhaps more than 1000 years ago, it would have been chanted after sundown on December 21, the shortest, darkest day of the year.

Picture those Christians from long ago, perhaps stumbling around a bit in the dark, until candles were lit and they sang together (the original verse), “O Dayspring, splendor of light everlasting, Come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.”

And with those words, darkness gave way to the Light, and fear to faith … And that’s what our Lord wants to do in you this Christmas, to draw you to Christ Himself, the Light of the World.  And we don’t have to stumble around in the dark to find Him, because on us His Light has shined – and He still shines!

Let’s pray:  Lord Jesus, our Dayspring from on high, shine away our fears of death and the darkness of this world, and fill us with the assurance of faith in your death and resurrection, even as we celebrate Your birth this Christmas. In Your name we pray, Amen.