Part 1

In its October 2001 issue, National Geographic ran an article called "The Power of Light." It said, "There has been light from the beginning. There will be light, feebly, at the end. In all its forms - visible and invisible - it saturates the universe. Light is more than a little bit inscrutable. The more you look at the topic, the more you realize that our lives are built around light, that our daily existence is continuously shaped - and made vivid - by that ambiguous stuff that dates from the beginning of time. From our technology to our spirituality, we are creatures of light."

That statement had a biblical ring to me, so in this study we're going look more at the topic of light and its interplay with shadow and darkness in the Bible.

The Egyptians had at least four light gods, the Canaanites had a goddess of light, and so did a bunch of other cultures. Who knew? I knew there were sun gods and moon gods, but separate light gods? Genesis 1 seems to me (and to some scholars) to be saying that the natural objects - light, sun, moon, stars, plants, and so on - that were worshiped by the neighbors of the children of Israel were not gods at all: they were created things, and the person responsible for creating them was the God of Israel. The very first thing that God created was light.

John 1:1-18, The light shines in the darkness (04/01/25)

Genesis tells us that in the beginning God said, "Let there be light," and then separated the light from the darkness. John goes back to that beginning and points out that the Word that was there from the very beginning, and through which everything was created, continues to shine in the darkness.

There's a pun in vs. 5 that I think is important in understanding the relationship between light and darkness. Katalambano has two meanings. It can mean "seize" or "overpower," which we see, for example, in Mark 9:18 - when the demon seizes the boy - or in 1 Thessalonians 5:4 - where someone might be seized as a thief. It can also mean "understand" or "comprehend," as in Acts 10:34, when Peter suddenly understands that God accepts Gentiles in the same way as Jews. In almost all translations, you'll see that either the darkness can't overpower the light or that the darkness can't comprehend the light. In a few translations, I've seen "apprehend," "grasp," and "master," all of which are better, because they have the same double meaning in English that katalambano has in Greek.

In fact, both meanings are true: the darkness neither understands nor extinguishes the light.

1 John 1:1-2:11, God is light (04/02/25)

I've heard it said that the only definition we have of God is, "God is love." That's not entirely accurate, because we also have another definition: "God is light." John gives us a choice when he says, "My little darlings, I write to you so that you won't sin. ..." We can live in the light, loving God, obeying his commandments and loving others, or we can live in the dark, not obeying God and not loving others. Choose wisely.

1 Timothy 6:13-16; James 1:12-17, God is light (04/03/25)

"Immortal, invisible, God only wise; in light inaccessible, hid from our eyes." This line of the hymn comes from 1 Timothy 6:15-16. God's light is too bright; we can't look at it. In fact, James says, God's light does not vary. Even the bright light of the sun has dark sunspots, but God's light doesn't even have shadowy spots. If this is true, then clearly God has no supply of evil on hand to tempt people with! Don't be deceived, my beloved.

Habakkuk 3:1-19, God's light is so bright that the sun and moon can't bear it (04/04/25)

We aren't sure when the prophet Habakkuk preached, although he mentions the Chaldeans, a.k.a. the Babylonians, in Habakkuk 1:6, so possibly his conversations with God came within a generation or two of the Exile in 587 B.C.E. In the first two chapters, God says, "You sinners! You're in trouble now!" and Habakkuk says, "Yeah, LORD, but aren't you going to rescue us anyway?" Chapter 3 is in the form of a psalm, as you can see from the instructions to the music director in the last verse. In it, Habakkuk praises God for past rescues and for his mighty powers - as alarming as they might be - and expresses confidence that God will ultimately save. One aspect of God's power is glory that shines like the sun, so bright that even the sun and moon obey his commands.

Psalm 27:1-14, The LORD is our light. (04/07/25)

A lot of people, especially kids, are afraid of the dark, or at least what might be in the dark. David says he doesn't have to be afraid, because the LORD is his light and his salvation. Pay special attention to vss. 8-9, because we're going to come back to the idea of the light of God's face tomorrow.

Today's Reminder: John tells us, "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world." Thus he anticipated the Internet by about 2000 years. There is so much nonsense on the Internet that naturally there's a big chunk of nonsense about the Bible. Please don't forward or post stuff (including my stuff) without checking with a reputable source like your pastor, or Wikipedia, or Snopes, or - what a thought! - the actual Bible to make sure that what you are proliferating is true. And when in doubt, don't.

Numbers 6:22-27; Psalm 31:16, 44:1-3, 67:1-3, 80:1-3, 119:135; Daniel 9:17-19, The light of God's face brings blessing and salvation (04/08/25)

One Hebrew word that occurs frequently - around 2120 times - is paw-neem'/face. English doesn't like to use the same word over and over, so in the King James Version, for example, we only see "face" a few hundred times, and elsewhere it becomes "countenance," "sight," and even "before" (in the sense of "in front of"), to name just a few of the renderings. You don't have to know this; I just thought you might be interested.

In a number of places, God's face is said to shine light on us, either as the people of God or as individuals. The light of God's face brings blessing, grace, forgiveness, and salvation.

p.s. How many times have you heard the benediction from Numbers 6:24-26? Hundreds? I just now discovered that it is a blessing on "thee," not "ye," that is, on each of us, not all of us. One of the great things about the King James Version is that it distinguishes between "you" (singular) and "you" (plural), which is pretty tough to do in a modern translation. Get a modern translation anyway.

Exodus 34:27-35; Matthew 17:1-19, Moses' and Jesus' faces were full of light (04/09/25)

When you were in grade school, did you learn the song, "Good morning to you! Good morning to you! We're all in our places with bright shiny faces ..."? The two most important people in the Bible, Moses and Jesus, had bright shiny faces. Moses' face shone after he spoke with God, and Jesus' face shone after he spoke with Moses and Elijah. Maybe the three of them were also in the presence of God, since there was a cloud and a voice from heaven, both often signs of God's nearness.

You may recall that Michaelangelo's Moses has horns. This is the result of an error in the Latin translation of Jerome, in 382. He mistook qaran/send out rays for qeren/horn. Jerome was a brilliant scholar, so we won't cast any stones here, but there were no horns; forget the horns.

Isaiah 9:1-7; Matthew 4:12-17, Light brings joy and justice (04/10/25)

I don't know where you live, but wherever it is, the people who live there probably look down on those who live in another particular place. When I lived in Oregon, we dissed Californians. Now that I'm in New Mexico, we don't have much use for Texans, but that's fair, because Texans don't have much use for anybody but Texans! In Judea, the particular people they didn't have much use for were Galileans. Galileans lived their lives in the dark (presumably because they didn't have light switches). So when Isaiah says that God is going to make a great light shine on the people of Galilee, that's phenomenal news! In fact, it's such good news that Matthew quotes Isaiah when Jesus begins preaching the Good News in Galilee.

Isaiah 2:5; Psalm 89:15, 82:5; Proverbs 2:13; John 11:5-10; Ephesians 5:1-2, 7-16; 1 John 1:6, We must walk in the light, not in the dark (04/11/25)

I was making the arrangements for a meeting between a number of senior staff at the DOE national laboratories and several members of various tribes. At the end of the conversation with one young fellow, who was Nez Perce as I recall, he said, "Walk in beauty," instead of "Bye." I hadn't heard that before and asked him what it meant. He seemed to think it was self-explanatory, and I dare say he was right, if I had been a little quicker on the uptake. I'm not sure the Bible ever explains what it means to "walk in the light" or to "walk in darkness," but I'm pretty sure that most of us would like to have a flashlight if we're in the woods after dark. Why? So we don't trip over branches or run into trees.

Walking in God's light lets us find justice and righteousness; walking in the darkness lets us stumble over ignorance and run into sins.

Matthew 8:5-13; Matthew 25:14-30, Darkness can be a symbol of punishment and separation from God (04/14/25)

Jesus talked about the outer darkness as a place of punishment and separation from God. In the story of the centurion, the folks headed for the outer darkness are those who don't have faith, whether they are Jews or Gentiles. In the Parable of the Talents, the folks headed for outer darkness are those who don't put what they've been given to good use for God's kingdom.

Matthew 22:1-14, Jesus talked about the outer darkness as a punishment and separation from God (04/15/25)

Toward the end of his earthly ministry, Jesus' parables were getting very dark (MWAHahahaha!). Earlier, the kingdom of God was like a sower spreading seed (Mark 4:3-8) or a woman putting yeast into bread (Matthew 13:33). Seeds and yeast are alive and growing. Now, on what Orville E. Daniel reckons in A Harmony of the Four Gospels to be Tuesday of Holy Week, Jesus presents a completely different picture. The kingdom of heaven may include a banquet, but it also encompasses exclusion and the threat of being cast into the outer darkness.

Today's Exasperated Warning: Brothers and sisters, how many times have I told you not to take my word for anything? I have studied and taught biblical content for 40 years, but you still need to read the scripture for yourself and not just take what I say as Gospel truth. But do please believe this: social media is full of people who have not studied and taught the Bible for 40 years and who just make stuff up! Then other people "do their own research" (How I have come to hate the phrase, "I did my own research"!) by watching erroneous videos and repeating the made-up stuff for an even wider audience. I came across a website once by a lady who "did a word study" by copying my website word for word, so I know that this also happens on websites other than YouTube. Read for yourself. Read more than one translation. Don't take my word for anything.

Exodus 10:21-29; Revelation 16:1, 10-11, 8:12-9:6, Darkness is more than the absence of light; it is malign in and of itself (04/16/25)

If someone accuses me of being afraid of the dark, I say, "Oh, no. I'm afraid of what's in the dark." In a couple of places in the Bible, we see darkness that doesn't just hide evil, but is evil in and of itself. One of the plagues in Egypt was darkness. That's it: darkness was the whole plague all by itself. In Revelation, the fourth trumpet brings forth a partial darkness that dims the sun and the moon, and one of the bowls of the wrath of God is full of darkness. In neither case was anything in the dark. On the other hand, it is possible for evil things to hide in the dark, as we see when locusts come out of smoke that darkens the sun and air.

And as long as we're reading from Revelation, let me remind you that it's an apocalypse - a tract for hard times, not prophecy. The coded message is, "I know things are really bad right now, but hang in there, and God will straighten everything out in the end." Apocalypses are messages of encouragement to people who are currently being persecuted and martyred for the faith. They are not predictions about when to sell your house and stand on a hill to be ready for the second coming. There is no antichrist in Revelation. The beast whose number is 666 is most likely the Roman emperor, Nero, and definitely not your least favorite politician, actor, religious leader, or neighbor.

Deuteronomy 4:7-14, 5:22-27; 1 Kings 8:10-13, Although God is sometimes surrounded by darkness, so it isn't always bad (04/17/25)

Darkness isn't always bad, because sometimes God is wrapped in darkness. I don't think the Bible ever tells us why this is, but this particular darkness is often associated with God's glory. Maybe because the light of God's glory is so bright that we would be blinded, like Paul, by looking directly at it? Whatever the reason, I'm right there with the people: "This is scary and dangerous, Moses. You go ahead!"

2 Samuel 22:1-19, 29, Although God is sometimes surrounded by darkness, so it isn't always bad (04/18/25)

Not all psalms are in the book of Psalms, although this Davidic psalm from 2 Samuel is very similar to Psalm 18. As we saw yesterday, sometimes God is surrounded by darkness. In this psalm, darkness is under God's feet and around him like a canopy. Even in this darkness, however, God's light shines like fire, like coals, like lightning; remember that all this is probably metaphorical. God lightens David's darkness, probably not a metaphor, but more emotional and psychological.

Isaiah 2:1-5, 42:67, 49:5-6, 60:1-3; Luke 2:25-33; Acts 13:46-47, 26:22-23, God's light is also for the Gentiles. (04/21/25)

Okay, this is just weird. We're going to read from the Modern King James Version this week, and I instantly noticed that it substitutes "Jehovah" for "LORD." "LORD" goes back at least to the Coverdale Bible of 1535 as a rendering for "YHWH." When you come to YHWH in Hebrew, what you say when you read it out loud is adonai/Lord.* "Jehovah" is a made-up name that first appeared around the 12th century in Europe. It is a combination of the letters YHWH and the vowels from the Hebrew adonai. The KJV has LORD close to 7,000 times and Jehovah four times. The MKJV has Jehovah 6,895 times, and LORD only eight times that I saw (while skimming the results of an electronic search). What? Why? Why change the reasonably accurate "LORD" to the made-up "Jehovah" in a modernization?

But that's not what we're here to talk about today. Even though God told Abraham way back at the beginning (Genesis 12:3) that all the families of the earth would be blessed though Abraham's descendants, it probably came as a surprise to those descendants when Isaiah began to prophecy to the Jews that they were going to be a light to the nations. "People" is more or less synonymous with "us" and "Jews." "Peoples" and "nations" are more or less synonymous with "them" and "Gentiles." If the ancient Jews were anything like us, they probably didn't understand the message, and to the extent that they understood it, they didn't believe that Isaiah could possibly be serious. Hundreds of years later, when Joseph and Mary bring Jesus to the temple, they also wondered what it meant when Simeon predicted that Jesus would be a light to the nations. When Paul and Barnabas began actually preaching to the Gentiles, it caused such uproar that the first Church council was held to deal with it (Acts 15).

So let's get this straight: You and I are supposed to be bringing God's light to the people and to the peoples who are sitting in the dark. Go spread the light of Easter!

* Unless you say HaShem/the name, as many people do.

Acts 22:1-21, Paul was blinded by the light. (04/22/25)

Paul was blinded by the light of God and truth and right. After he is falsely accused of bringing non-Jews into the temple, a mob tries to kill him, so the Romans arrest him (Acts 21). After he's taken into custody, he asks the chiliarch for permission to address the crowd.

Gamaliel is one of the great rabbis of all time, possibly even the greatest. Having studied with Gamaliel is equivalent to having a law degree from Yale. The Way (at this time) is the new Jewish sect that follows Jesus. The nations are still the Gentiles.

Acts 26:19-32, Paul was blinded by the light for the purpose of bringing light to the Gentiles (04/23/25)

The story of the blinding light Paul saw on the road to Damascus is told three times in Acts: once when it happened (Acts 9), again before the mob in Jerusalem (Acts 22), and finally when he is on trial before Porcius Festus, the Roman procurator of Judea; King Herod Agrippa of Judea; and Agrippa's sister and possibly significant other Bernice (Acts 26:12-18). Paul reminds them that it was foretold that the Christ would proclaim the light to the people (the Jews) and to the nations (the Gentiles) through his resurrection. At the mention of resurrection, Festus decides that Paul's crazy, and Paul appeals to Agrippa, who is Jewish.

Psalm 36:1-12, God's light lets us see light (04/24/25)

You know, if I'm not going to read the psalms in the King James Version, my next favorite is the Bible in Basic English, which keeps the poetry while getting rid of the archaic language. The Modern King James Version (not to be confused with the New King James Version) just isn't cutting it for me.

Nevertheless, the meaning of vs. 9b is so simple and clear that just about every translation has almost exactly the same thing: "For with you is the fountain of life: in your light we will see light." Look around you; can you see light? No, I'm guessing that what you see are the things illuminated by the light. Only the light of God lets you see light.

John 8:12-20, 12:35-36; Matthew 5:14-16; Luke 11:33-36, Jesus is the light of the world, and he expects us to reflect that (04/25/25)

Jesus talked about light and darkness and the importance of walking in the light, not stumbling around in the dark. "Walking in," as you know, is an idiom for behaving. Mumble-mumble years ago when I was in the choir, we sang an anthem by Natalie Sleeth, called "Go Ye Into the World." Part of the lyrics go, "I am the vine, you are the branches, ever the fruit to bear. I am the light, you the reflection, everywhere." You recognize this, because the vine is from John 15, and the light is from John and Matthew. In John, Jesus says, "I am the light of the world," and in Matthew he says, "You are the light of the world; let it shine." Without light of our own, we have to reflect the light of Jesus as well as we can through our behavior. Walk in the light.

More of Light and Shadow
Light and Shadow - Part 2

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