O come, thou Day-Spring, come and cheer,
Our Spirits by thine Creation right here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night time,
And loss of life’s darkish shadows put to flight.Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.
I like this lovely 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’s 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 eventually swallow up the darkness — the world’s and mine (John 8:12). And I discover that singing the phrases of this lovely prayer stirs up my love and eager for the Nice Gentle.
It’s an historical longing, our deep want for religious gentle. 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 loss of life. And on this stanza, we hear an echo of an historical prophecy of a coming gentle, the hope of an approaching daybreak:
The people who walked in darkness
have seen an incredible gentle:
they that dwell within the land of the shadow of loss of life,
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 seemed as if Israel’s lamp can be eternally extinguished. However the prophet foresaw that, past this fearful night time, an incredible daybreak was coming. And its gentle would disperse their gloomy darkness and destroy loss of life’s energy in order that its fearful shadow can be forged over them no extra. And he instructed 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 gentle, in order that whoever believes in me could 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 long run Baptist). Pay attention additionally for the echo of Isaiah’s messianic prophecy in Zechariah’s phrases:
And thou, baby, shalt be known as the prophet of the Highest:
for thou shalt go earlier than the face of the Lord to arrange his methods;
To offer information of salvation unto his folks
by the remission of their sins,
By way of the tender mercy of our God;
whereby the dayspring from on excessive hath visited us,
To offer gentle to them that sit in darkness and within the shadow of loss of life,
to information our toes 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 folks (Isaiah 9:3).
However this daybreak additionally introduced with it a higher hope: the Solar was rising not merely to dispel the darkness from ethnic Israel but additionally to attract the nations of the earth to his gentle (Isaiah 60:3). For one of many heralds of this daybreak was a star, a light-weight 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 beginning of the One who would turn out to be “a light-weight of revelation to the Gentiles” (Luke 2:32) ought to be proclaimed to the primary Gentiles by a revelatory gentle.
“Jesus got here into the world as gentle and have become the sunshine of the world.”
And so, Jesus got here into the world as gentle and have become the sunshine of the world. And his gentle 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. Nevertheless it didn’t — as a result of it couldn’t — overcome him. At first gentle 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 imagine in him from each tribe and tongue, look forward to with hopeful longing: the second creation of Jesus, “the intense morning star” (Revelation 22:16). And when finally he comes, “night time might be no extra. [Then we] will want no gentle of lamp or solar, for the Lord God might be [our] gentle,” and our “lamp [will be] the Lamb” (Revelation 22:5; 21:23). And in his gentle, we will solely and eternally see gentle (Psalm 36:9).
So, as we look forward to 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.
