When Sandra and I moved to Broadbridge Heath 9 years ago and made our home on the Great Oaks estate (as the builders called it), we were happy that the rear of the house faced south and thus would enjoy lots of sunshine; but also as the day progressed the front of the house would get the later sun. We were happy, and have been ever since. Some of the houses round the corner, however, seem to face more north-eastwards with high bushes opposite, so that their frontages would appear to be most of the time in deep shade.
When Isaiah, in his day, was writing prophetically in chapter 9 of the coming of Christ , he speaks in verse 2 of ‘the people walking in darkness’ and ‘living in the land of deep darkness’, or as some translations put it ‘the land of the shadow of death’. He adds that they ‘have seen a great light’, and that on them ‘a light has dawned’.
I’m sure that we realise that the Word of God tends to refer to those who have not believed or received Jesus into their hearts as being in darkness, and that He, being the Light of the world, when he comes into our hearts, brings His glorious light—eternal light.
But it struck me as I read those words in Isaiah about the description of people ‘living in the land of the shadow of death’. Might we not say that, naturally we all live in this ’land’? Everyone lives in the shadow of death – everyone knows deep down that their day will come when, as old mythologies would say – the grim reaper will strike.
But people are all the time trying to put off thinking about death, as if they could live for ever. But nevertheless they are living in the shadow of death.
And such a shadow can be a fearful thing. But God, our Creator knows our fearful state. That’s why, in His great mercy and amazing grace, He sent light and eternal life for all who would receive His Son. When in Zechariah’s song on the birth of his son, John (Luke 1), he refers to his baby boy as the one who would go before and prepare the way for the Lord, he takes up that Old Testament prophet’s word about ‘those living in darkness and in the shadow of death’, saying that ‘the rising sun will come to us from heaven’ Luke 1:78,79. And that ‘sun’ is nothing other than the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, elsewhere called ‘the bright Morning Star’. And it’s wonderful, for it means that, through what He would do in dying for our sins and rising again, all who receive Him need no longer remain in the shadow, the fear, of death, but have a sure hope for eternity. But we know all this, don’t we?
Yet the awful thing was, and still is, that, as the apostle John says, ’This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.’ So people are still living fearfully in the shadow of death. Where are you today? Which land are you living in – the land of Light, or the land of the shadow of death?
A couple of verses from a hymn by Thomas Binney to think about:
Eternal light, eternal light! how pure the soul must be when, placed within your searching sight, it does not fear, but with delight can face such majesty.
Such grace prepares us for the sight of holiness above; the child of ignorance and night may dwell in the eternal light through the eternal love.
Steve
Elder
December 2022