Luke 2:32

A light to lighten the Gentiles

The light of the Gentiles

I. EXPLAIN THE IMPORT OF THE TEXT.

1. The character of Jesus is exhibited under the image of light--the most glorious of all the creatures of God.

(1) Among the properties of light are penetration and universality. Light would have been an inappropriate image, in reference to Christ, had He not intended to illuminate the world. Not to a district, not to an empire, not to one quarter of the globe, does that glorious boon--light--confine its influences. It visits all in their turn. It burns within the torrid zone, it reaches the dark and distant poles; it proceeds with a gradual, yet inconceivable speed, in its restless career, till it has enlightened the whole.

(2) Light is a source of comfort (Ecclesiastes 11:7).

(3) Another quality of light is purity. It is this which renders it a fit emblem of Deity (1 John 1:5).

2. The subjects of His influences--“The Gentiles”--i.e., all nations that have not yet heard the tidings of the gospel in Him.

3. The result of the manifestation of Christ to the world will be universal illumination. He rises upon the nations to “lighten” them.

II. APPLY ITS TESTIMONY TO MISSIONARY EXERTIONS.

1. Examine the principles on which they are founded.

(1) They are founded in nature. The same cause should produce the same effects. Whoever sincerely loves the Saviour will feel a proportionate attachment to His laws, His people, His interests. He cannot sit down indifferent to the last, any more than he can consent to break the first.

(2) They are founded on the purest principles of reason. Missionary effort must be used as a means, to bring about the end in view--the spread of the gospel. God employs in the meantime human instruments for the carrying out of His Divine purposes.

(3) They are founded on the purest principles of humanity. The gospel is the only effectual remedy of all this world s evil and misery.

(4) They are founded on the purest principles of patriotism. Religious lethargy precedes national ruin; patriotism, therefore, calls for the support of religious zeal.

(5) They are founded on the purest principles of religion.

2. The considerations by which we are encouraged.

(1) Revelation.

(2) Experience.

(3) Existing circumstances. Is there not crying need throughout the world of those consolations which the gospel alone can bring, and of the Saviour whom the gospel alone proclaims? (W. B. Collyer, D. D.)

Christ the light of all nations

He gives the light of truth, of spiritual sight, of knowledge, of holiness, of joy, of heaven. The natives of arctic regions put on their holiday attire, and enthusiastically welcome the returning sun, when after months of absence, he again revisits them with his rays. How much more should we rejoice in the light of “the Sun of Righteousness?” There was a light once on or near the Goodwin Sands, called “The light of all nations,” because it was supposed that some of all nations would see it. The “light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” will one day “cover the earth.” When Christ gives us light, we must reflect it (see Matthew 5:14). The lighthouse, when its lights burn truly, will warn the mariner against danger, and enable him to pursue the right and safe way. So we may each guide some from the darkness and danger of sin, to the light and safety of God’s mercy in Christ. (Henry R. Burton.)

Light an emblem of Christ

There is no figure more common nor more beautiful in the Scriptures, than that by which Christ is compared to “light.” Incomprehensible in its nature, itself first visible, and that by which all else is so; “light” represents to us Christ, whose generation none can declare, but who must shine on us ere we can know aught aright whether of things Divine or human. Pure, uncontaminated, though visiting the lowest parts of the earth, and penetrating the most noisome recesses; what is “light” an image of, if not of that Divine Mediator, who contracted no stain, though born of a woman, in the likeness of sinful flesh? Instrumental in all the processes of vegetation, so that, without its vivifying power, the earth could not yield its kindly fruits, nor expose its verdant hues, what is “light” but the emblem of that source of illumination, of whom the Evangelist declares that “He was the Light and Life of men”? And without searching too narrowly into the particular sources by which this resemblance might be proved, we may say that Christ is to the material world what the sun is to the natural; and wherever the gospel has been published and received as a communication from God, the darkness has fled, as night flies before the day; and we know, that wherever the revelation made through Christ has been dispersed, wherever it has vouchsafed its cheering rays, the clouds of ignorance, and superstition, and irreligion have vanished, and holiness purity, and morality have illumined the horizon. It has done more. It has hung the very grave with bright lamps, and re-kindled the blazings of an almost quenched immortality. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

And the glory of Thy people Israel--

Christ the glory of His people

We shall now employ the natural Israel as a type of the Lord’s elect ones, and surely there is no straining of the text, when we say that Jesus Christ is the glory of the spiritual seed, the redeemed people. And why, with evident propriety, may the saints of God be compared to Israel?

1. Surely because God has made a covenant with them as He did with Jacob.

2. We may be compared with Israel, again, because if we be the children of God we have learned to wrestle with the angel and prevail.

3. It may be that you have another likeness to Israel in the fact that you are much tried. Faith must be tried. God had one Son without sin, but He never had a Son without the rod.

4. The true Israel, which are spiritually the Church of Christ, are said, according to the text, to be the Lord’s people.

(1) By His eternal choice.

(2) By redemption.

(3) By voluntary dedication of yourselves to Him.

I. When we say that Christ is our glory, we mean that WE GET ALL THE GLORY WE HAVE THROUGH HIM. Some men go to the schools for glory, others to the camps of war. In all kinds of places men have sought after honour, but the believer saith that Christ is the mine in which he digs for this gold, Christ is the sea in which he fishes for this pearl; he gives up all other searchings and looks for glory in Jesus, and nowhere else.

1. The glory of election.

2. The glory of redemption.

3. The glory of adoption.

4. The glory of justification.

5. The glory of sanctification.

Thus I might continue showing you that there is not a single treasure which a Christian possesses which does not come to him through Christ. He has nothing in which he can glory but what he is sweetly compelled to say of it, “I gained this in the market of Calvary; I found this in the mines of a Saviour’s suffering; all this came to me through my bleeding, buried, risen, coming Lord, and He shall have the glory of it as long as I live.”

II. WE SEE A GLORY IN CHRIST which swallows up all other glories, as the sun’s light conceals the light of the stars.

1. In Christ’s person.

2. In Christ’s sufferings.

3. In Christ’s resurrection.

4. In Christ’s ascension.

5. In Christ’s intercession.

6. In Christ’s second advent.

III. The text is true in the sense that WE GIVE GLORY TO HIM. There is life in a look at the Crucified One. There is life in simple confidence in Him, but there is life nowhere else. God send to His Church an undying passion to promote the Saviour’s glory, an invincible, unconquerable pang of desire, and longing that by any means King Jesus may have His own, and may reign throughout these realms! In this sense, then, Jesus is and must be the glory of His people.

IV. But there is another sense--namely, FROM JESUS IS REFLECTED ALL THE GLORY WHICH IS PUT UPON HIS PEOPLE. Whatever glory they have, and they have much in the eyes of angels, and much honour in the eyes of discerning men, it is always the reflection of the Saviour’s glory. I know some holy men and women for whom I cannot but feel the deepest and intensest respect, but the reason is because they have so much of my Master about them. I think I would travel many miles to talk with some of them, because their speech is always so full of Him, and they live so near to Him.

V. The text may be read in this sense: Christ is the glory of His people, that is to say, THEY EXPECT GLORY WHEN HE COMES. Our glory is laid up. When you follow Jesus in resurrection, what glory! But we must not begin to speak of that, for we should never leave off at all if we began to talk about that glory--the glory of perfection, the glory of being delivered from sin, the glory of conquest, having trodden Satan under our feet; the glory of eternal rest, the glory of infinite security, the glory of being like Christ, the glory of being in the light and brightness of God, standing, like Milton’s angel, in the very sun itself. If you want to know what heaven is, you can spell it in five letters, and when you put the five letters together they sound like this: Jesus. That is heaven. It is all the heaven the angels round the throne desire to know. They want nothing better than this, to see His face, to behold His glory, and to dwell in it world with out end.

VI. THE PRACTICAL DRIFT OF THE SUBJECT.

1. We would give a word of warning to those of you who seek your glory anywhere else, because as surely aa you do so, even if you meet with honour for a time, you will have to lose it. It is always ill to put your treasure where it will be stolen from yon. Now, suppose you seek your glory in your learning. Well, well, well! Let the sexton take up your skull after you have been dead a little while, and what learning will there be in it, what show of wisdom will be found in it when it is resolved into a little impalpable brown powder? What will your science, and your mathematics, and your classics do for you in death and judgment? Suppose you seek your glory in fame, and become the favourite of the nation as a great soldier. When the grave-digger rattles your old bones about, what will that signify? You will have great fame, you say, and men will talk about you.

But he who hath his glory in Christ, when he openeth his eyes in the next world will see Christ, and so behold his glory safe, and firmly entailed upon him.

2. Another word, and that is a word of rebuke. There are some preachers we know of, and I suppose there will always be some of the genus, who preach, preach, preach, but they never preach what is Israel’s glory. They talk of anything but Christ.

3. There are some of you to whom I have a last word to say, and that is, some of you love Jesus Christ, but you are ashamed to say so. Now, since He is the glory of His people Israel, I shall be afraid of you and for you if you do not make Him your glory. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Christ the glory of Israel

Christ was the glory of Israel.

1. Because He was a Jew by birth.

2. Because His history has vindicated all that was peculiar in the Jewish polity.

3. Because He confined His personal ministry to the Jews.

4. Because He has stamped the impress of Jewish thought on the mind of man.

5. Because He has invested the condition and prospects of the Jews with universal interest. (G. Brooks.)

The glory of Israel

There was salvation in this sight: there was light in it; and there was glory in it also. He will be--said Simeon--“the glory of Thy people Israel.” The prophet Isaiah was speaking of this same Saviour, when he said “They shall hang on Him all the glory of His Father’s house” Isaiah 22:24). The chief glory that a nation has is made up of the wise, and good, and great, and useful men who have belonged to it. We speak of Washington as the glory of America. We feel it an honour to belong to the nation which could claim Washington as one of its people. In Holland they call William, Prince of Orange, the glory of their nation. England, our grand old mother country, has had so many wise, and good, and great men, that it is hard to tell which to speak of as the best and greatest. They all help to make up the glory of the people of England. And any one who was born in England may feel it an honour to belong to a country which has produced so many good and great men. And in the same way it is the glory of the Jewish nation, or of Israel, as a people, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, belonged to their nation. Jesus was a Jew. And the Jewish people may well feel it an honour to belong to the nation among whom He was born. It is true in this sense that He is “the glory of His people Israel.” (Dr. Newton.)