January can be a month of darkness. All the cold weather and short days aside, there is a let down in January. Have the post-Christmas blues? The highs that came with Christmas came to a screeching halt this week as everyone went back to school and back to work. Do you have Christmas presents and the Christmas bills that go along with it? Our emotions may be down, but January doesn’t have to be dark.
We celebrate Epiphany apart from anything else in our society. When was the last time you saw an Epiphany sale at your favorite retailer? Christmas has been drowned out or confused by so many – parties, materialism, entertainment revolving around Santa or Frosty. For others maybe Christmas isn’t a high, but a low. Divorced families make up the majority in our country. For many of these the holidays are a season to dread and survive. Where is there any worship of the Christ child in that mess?!
Enter Epiphany. The Wise Men saw the star… along with everyone else, but they were the only ones who came to worship. To be fair, we don’t know how many wise men there were, but we say three because there were three gifts. Epiphany is Christmas for the rest of the world. The angels only announced Jesus birth to a few Jewish shepherds. God didn’t hide the birth – there was that Christmas Star – but realize that this was the first time the rest of the world was included in the gospel – the good news – that Jesus came to die for everyone’s sins. That truth is the focus – nothing else. With no distractions we are free for focus on the incarnation – God became man, clothed in flesh. We can see the sacrifice that Jesus was sent to be – he lived a perfect life in our place – not to show us how to do it – but to be the perfect substitute. He died. We won’t. There is no punishment left for our sins. Jesus took them all.
Where does that leave us? Not in darkness. Watch the sermon to see where the light takes us!
Topic(s): ChristmasBook(s): Isaiah
Tag(s): Epiphany, Wise Men
Speaker(s): Fred Guldberg