It was a very dark night. There was no moon and the stars were covered by a thick layer of clouds. Here in the deep forest of the north, there were no lights, no fires, no streetlamps, no distant blue light of television glowing in someone’s window. All was darkness and danger. The gentle whisper of the snow falling covered up all noises and most of the smells of the forest. This far north, the sun had set for the winter a week before and would not be back for six more weeks. What if the clouds never broke, what if the darkness just continued, what if he never saw anything again?
Here, in the dark, things lurked in the imagination. Was there a wolf out there, what about a grizzly or a polar bear? Mountain lions were reported here. But even without those beasts of flesh and blood, there were the dark creatures of the soul, the memories of dark times past, those ideas from film and books and stories told of creatures of Hell that wandered in the darkness. And wherever the man walked, there were his memories, his personal demons, his own guilts and hates, his desires for revenge and his regrets for what he had done. Here, in the dark, all alone, that tremendous past came back to haunt him. He remembered the evil he had done and he despaired.
He looked down toward his feet. He strained, trying to see his boots, trying to see through the utter blackness of the night. Could he just barely see his kneecap? He thought, “Lord, could you send me some hope!” – What was that?
Something flickered. He’d almost missed it looking at himself.
And then, in the distance, there was again a brief flicker of light. He wasn’t sure he had even seen it, but he had no other choice. He couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face, it was so dark. So he began to slowly and carefully head toward where the light might have been.
He walked for 15, 20 minutes. There it was again, closer. A face perhaps? Then it was gone.
He corrected his path, turning slightly to the right and kept walking.
All of a sudden, not ten feet from him, a light came on.
It was a cell phone, a man’s face glowing in the reflection of that light. A kindly man’s face, a man’s face who had seen years of trouble but had survived all of it, a man who was surely his rescuer.
The light went out again, and the first man, the man who had been in darkness for a long time spoke. “Are you a friend? Could I see your face again? Do you have a house where I can see light and get warm again?”
…
Have you ever walked in darkness? Have you ever lived for a time when everything you did failed, when everyone you knew turned their back on you, when nothing you touched worked the way you hoped? Have you ever wondered if the darkness would ever end?
I have. I have spent days numb because everything was going wrong. I have laid off workers, giving them a last check and bidding them “good luck!”, knowing I’d never see them again. I have closed businesses, struggling to pay off those business debts over the next few years.
And I have been successful, only to find that my success was hollow, giving me joy for a few days, but then the boredom set in as I looked for a new challenge, a new mountain to climb, a new skill to master.
The devil seems to work on each of us in different ways. Some people suffer from an addiction, a chemical, an activity that they can’t stop by themselves. Other people suffer from a compulsion to evil behavior, whether it be gossip, saying the wrong things, hurting people in sly ways, putting down people who would be our friends. And some people are ensnared by certain types of people, certain types of activities, certain aspects of our modern life that suck us in and drain us of our life-blood like vampires clamped to our necks. These snares are our nemeses.
We all have our particular nemeses, those people or things that seem to actively oppose everything we do. I have two nemeses: Computers and two-cycle engines.
I have a long history with computers. My first computer was a Timex-Sinclair computer. It was the size and shape of a doorstop - and about as useful! You had to program it yourself by typing in the program. It had a membrane keyboard and an add-on module. With the add-on module, which was about the size and shape of a power adaptor, you could expand the 2 kb internal memory to 16 kb. I have a USB drive today that has 16 gigabytes of memory, which means that little thumb drive has about a million times more memory than my first computer had with the expansion module.
So you had to type in the hundred-line program. If you pushed to hard, the expansion module flexed, lost contact, and the whole computer lost everything you’d typed in. That’s how my life with computers began.
Later, at WVU Morgantown, I learned to use a keypunch and create programs using a card deck. You’d type up about 140 cards and then drop the cards – they’d be all out of order, and a single card out of order meant the program failed.
One semester, I spent every evening for two weeks at the computer center until two o’clock in the morning trying to find a bug in a program. I’d make a change and then wait two hours until the slow main system finished printing out my bugs and results. Then I’d make another change and wait another two hours. I finally found out that my keypunch had punched the holes for a semi-colon where I needed a colon – yet had printed a colon properly in ink on the card. I didn’t find the error until I lined up the little holes in the cards.
Later, I’d spend days and days working on my website because of some little error in the computer. And when I worked at Parkersburg Catholic High School, part of my job was maintaining the 75 or so computers they had. Does anyone else think that the devil resides in computers?
I not going to waste your time telling you about my fights with two-cycle engines. Let’s just say that I now own an electric weed eater – and do not plan to ever buy anything with a two-cycle engine if I can help it.
Computers and two-cycle engines. They have stolen several years of my life, and created much darkness in my life. They are my declared nemeses.
But I have to say that I have created more darkness in my life than computers and two-cycle engines and other people ever did. Just like each one of you, I could list twenty things I’ve done that darkened my life, things I wished I’d never done and things I didn't do that I wish I had done. They all kept me in darkness. Thankfully, about 20 years ago I saw a light in the darkness and went to seek the face in the darkness and it turned out to be Jesus Christ.
Our first scripture today speaks of an entire nation of people living in a land of deep darkness. Does this sound familiar? The land of Israel at both the time of Isaiah and the time of Jesus was in bad shape. Enemies from outside the country came and went as they pleased, taking and destroying, raping and pillaging as they wished. Israel’s army was no match for the invaders. In Isaiah's time the Assyrians had spread from their capital in Ninevah, across the river from modern Mosel, the same Mosel that is a stronghold of Isis, to destroy first the armies of Damascus and then the army of the Northern Kingdom Israel. Then, they began to work on the army of Judah, based in Jerusalem. In Jesus' time, the apparent enemy was the Roman Empire.
Each of the twelve tribes of Israel – descendants of the man also known as Jacob - had been given a territory when the Israelites entered the Promised Land by a lottery supervised by Joshua. Naphtali, the sixth son of Israel had drawn land to the west and northwest of the Sea of Galilee, productive land, beautiful both for vineyards and tree fruits, but also with good access to the excellent fishery of the freshwater lake that was the Sea of Galilee. Zebulun had a territory southwest of Naphtali, in the wonderful head of the Jezreel Valley, a well-watered expanse north of Mr Carmel, which shadowed much of the land in the evening as the sun dipped behind this high mountain range, leaving the land in darkness. These tribes were very blessed with their land.
But long ago, at the end of the reign of King Ahab and the evil Queen Jezebel, God led Israel into a battle in the Jezreel Valley, in the very heart of Zebulun’s territory. There, they were defeated and killed, with Jezebel coming to a particularly bad end. You can find the story in 2nd Kings in the Old Testament. From that day, it was felt that there was something wrong with that part of the world, the same way that Americans feel about the retreat from Vietnam or the US Army feels about the Little Bighorn where General Custer lost his entire command. It was a humbling place, a dishonored place, a place tied up with a degree of shame.
Yet Isaiah had heard from God a great prophecy. Isaiah had heard from God that:
In the past He humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future He will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—
The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
a light has dawned.
You have enlarged the nation
and increased their joy;
they rejoice before you
as people rejoice at the harvest,
as warriors rejoice
when dividing the plunder.
For as in the day of Midian’s defeat,
you have shattered
the yoke that burdens them,
the bar across their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor.
For seven hundred years, Jews debated the meaning of this prophecy. For seven hundred years, Jews argued over various interpretations of this prediction. For seven hundred years Jews discussed and wondered and worried and hoped why there would be such great joy and they wondered who this great leader would be, and they prayed to live in the time when the light would come.
And in their song, in the Psalm, they heard David sing:
The Lord is my light and my salvation—
They heard David sing : “Seek his face!”
Your face, Lord, I will seek.
And so, some of the wise men and women sought God’s face. Some remembered that the Lord is the light and salvation, and they waited. And they waited. And they waited...
Like people waiting for the second coming, some of the Jews waited on the Lord.
But, like people waiting for the second coming, most of the Jews spent their days worrying about their crops, their loves, their farms, their money, the precise interpretation of their Law, the decorations of their Temple, their horses, their politics, their cattle, their sheep, their clothing, their health. In other words, they were just like us, except that we’ve added sports to the list of things to worry about.
Few of the Jews were ready for the light when the light arrived in their darkness. They were too busy looking at themselves to be looking out into the darkness looking for a light to guide them out of that darkness.
John the Baptizer announced the Lamb of God had arrived. “Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world!” John announced, pointing to Jesus of Nazareth and a couple of young men followed Jesus home that afternoon. Later, Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days to wrestle with the devil, to deal with temptation, to seek out God, to settle in His mind who He was. Then, when John was arrested by King Herod, Jesus went to Capernaum, a town in the heart of the ancient land of Naphtali, on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and it was there he began his ministry. In that town, far from the reach of Herod, He began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
And it was there, that Jesus called upon Peter and Andrew to follow him. Peter and Andrew were brothers, fishermen with a boat on the lake, and they had met Jesus when John the Baptized had pointed Him out by the Jordan River. Jesus told them to follow Him, not as servants, not as paparazzi, but to become His students, to be taught the Way of God, the Way of Holiness, to find out the secrets this man who might be the great Messiah savior had brought.
And then a little later, Jesus met up with a young man named John – another fisherman He had met that afternoon with Andrew who had been following John the Baptist – and this young man John’s brother, James. And He asked them to follow Him and they did, and now there were five of them – a teacher and four students seeking the face of God.
Little did those students realize at that time that God was walking with them!
Did you notice that these men simply stopped work and followed Jesus when He showed up. They didn’t hem and haw, they didn’t check their schedules, they didn’t put Him off a week or a month to get their affairs in order. They simply followed Jesus.
It has often puzzled people why Jesus chose these four young men to be his first disciples. They aren’t very remarkable men, four professional fishermen who went out on the Sea of Galilee six nights out of seven, throwing nets into the lake and then pulling those heavy nets out of the water to catch some fish, which they would eat or sell. These men were not very well educated, they were not sophisticated, they were not leaders of tribes or clans, they were good ole’ boys.
But they had shown something a bit unusual for the time.
Of the four, at least Andrew, John, and Peter had traveled to hear John the Baptist and become followers of John. They had demonstrated that they wanted to learn about God’s will, they had walked many miles to do this, and they had believed John when John said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!”
These four, or at least these three, had shown that they wanted to seek the face of God.
And they found God’s face. At the critical times of the ministry, it was these three who were invited up to the top of Mr Hermon with Jesus for the Transfiguration. John was leaning against Jesus during the Last Supper. It was Peter who pulled a knife to defend Jesus, and it was Peter and John who walked with Jesus on the shore after the Resurrection. Andrew brought Greeks to meet Jesus on the day Jesus announced that the Gospel would also go to the Gentiles. These three or four men were the inner circle for one reason: They wanted to seek the face of God.
And after Jesus had gone back to Heaven, these men (along with the latecomer Paul) became the most influential members of the early church. John wrote a Gospel, three letters, and Revelation. He also became the Bishop in Ephesus, soon to be the major Christian city in Western Turkey. Peter wrote two letters, is said to have founded churches in Babylon and in Rome, and is a major figure in the Book of Acts. Andrew is said to have preached along the Black Sea coast into Romania and Ukraine, founding churches as he went. James was a major leader of the early church, likely wrote the Book of James, and was martyred by Herod.
Throughout history, certain men and women have become known as special people, as saints, as people who were particularly blessed by God. I’ve read their stories – and the thing that made them different was not that they were particularly well educated, nor that they were blessed by strong families. They didn’t have special sponsors or pastors. They weren’t particularly smart or good looking - some of them were downright ugly in appearance. Some began young while others began their ministries at an advanced age.
But they had one thing in common – their priorities in life.
Where many people make seeking God an important thing in their lives and fewer make seeking God’s face the most important thing in their lives, these remarkable people simply said, “Seeking God’s face and doing God’s will is the only priority in my life!” for this is the only way to make an eternal difference.
What about you?
Do you want to seek the face of God?
How important in your life is Christ? How important in the scheme of things is coming closer to God? We all have many things to do, but I’d like to ask you this question:
What do you think would happen if even half of those people who declare themselves to be Christians began to truly spend Sunday in search of God’s face and doing His will?
Oh, I know that you come to church, most of you rarely miss. By the standards of the world, you are committed Christians.
But what do you do when you leave church? Do you go home and take a nap, watch a football game, catch up on some work?
Or do you read a few chapters of your Bible, talk about God with friends, spend time trying to help a neighbor come to Christ? Do you engage the waitress at the restaurant, get to know her as a person and not as a serving robot, learn what she needs and help her out the next Sunday?
Do you teach your children Bible stories, do you paint Bible scenes, do you read a book or listen to a CD about some great Christian saint? Do you even stay for Sunday school?
Can you imagine what would happen if half of the Church, just half, began to really, truly take God as far as the early disciples did?
The light is shining in the darkness of this world, is there anyone who will go to the light? Who is ready to commit their lives to truly becoming strong in the Lord, to being filled with the Holy Spirit, to walking boldly toward the light and saying “Lord, show me your face, for this world needs you!” Are you willing to follow God wherever He leads you?
But, pastor, you can’t expect that of us! We’re ordinary people – they were great men and women! After all, Peter and John and Andrew and James were special, they were highly trained….fishermen, ordinary men who chose to seek the face of God. And so they found Him.
Over the next thirty years, with God’s help, those men changed the world. You can too. There is darkness in our land today. Everyone thinks of changing the world, but few realize that with God’s help they can do it themselves. Fewer still realize that it is only through God's help that the world can be changed, that light can shine in the darkness.
Will you be one of those who seek the face of God and change the world?
If so, I’ll be here at 6:30 Sunday evenings to lead a group which will run until Easter. This group will not deal with basics, but will be a group focused upon becoming Spirit-led, world-changing Christian leaders. This is like no other group you’ve ever been involved in, because we aren’t going to worry about theology and names and places, but we are going to do what we need to become Holy and change the world with God’s help. See you at 6:30 pm at Quiet Dell United Methodist Church, I-79 at Exit 115 southeast of Clarksburg, WV. It doesn't matter which church you belong to. The only requirement is that you truly want to seek God's face and will.
But, pastor, you can’t expect that of us! We’re ordinary people – they were great men and women! After all, Peter and John and Andrew and James were special, they were highly trained….fishermen, ordinary men who chose to seek the face of God. And so they found Him.
Over the next thirty years, with God’s help, those men changed the world. You can too. There is darkness in our land today. Everyone thinks of changing the world, but few realize that with God’s help they can do it themselves. Fewer still realize that it is only through God's help that the world can be changed, that light can shine in the darkness.
Will you be one of those who seek the face of God and change the world?
If so, I’ll be here at 6:30 Sunday evenings to lead a group which will run until Easter. This group will not deal with basics, but will be a group focused upon becoming Spirit-led, world-changing Christian leaders. This is like no other group you’ve ever been involved in, because we aren’t going to worry about theology and names and places, but we are going to do what we need to become Holy and change the world with God’s help. See you at 6:30 pm at Quiet Dell United Methodist Church, I-79 at Exit 115 southeast of Clarksburg, WV. It doesn't matter which church you belong to. The only requirement is that you truly want to seek God's face and will.
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