Light out of darkness. Such is always the work of God and always the way of his working.

He is the God of light. In him is pure light. Absolute goodness. Absolute perfection. Absolute holiness. In him is no darkness at all.

He caused the light to stand out of the darkness in the beginning as his first work in creation. He discovers deep things out of darkness and brings out into light the shadow of death. He causes the light to stand out of the darkness in us too: God has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. He has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. 

Heaven will have no night and, indeed, no need of light; for the Son of God will be the light of it.

And the Light has come.

Out of darkness. It was a dark time in the church. The precious promises of the mercy and grace of the God of salvation were suppressed by the terrible theology of works. Those who sat in Moses’ seat oppressed the people with their theology of doing—though they themselves did not do. There was no light in that: no hope, joy, or happiness. There was only darkness, for man never could and never can do enough to bring joy, happiness, and salvation. That teaching of doing bound the people in the chains of their sinfulness and guilt or exalted them in their abominable pride that they—of all men—had done or could do what God required. They never experienced the blessed light, peace, joy, and happiness of God’s forgiveness of sins.

That false theology was the cause of terrible oppression that reigned in the church. As the leaders taught how God treated his people—the doer, the strong, and the mighty were blessed and saved—so the leaders acted toward one another and the people. “Do what I want, and I will like you, and you can be my friend; but if you do not do, I will hate you.” 

The leaders of the church were oppressors. So Jesus told the people not to do what those leaders did. He called them what they were: a generation of vipers and whitewashed sepulchers full of dead men’s bones. The fatherless and the widow they oppressed, the poor and needy they ignored, and the true children of God they despised. The good they called evil, and the evil they called good. They tithed of anise and mint and cumin and of everything they possessed. They had their scripture verses, their laws, and their procedures; but they neglected the weighty matters of the law, such as justice, mercy, and judgment. There was no justice and mercy in the church among the people because they rejected the truth of God’s justice and mercy in salvation. When men instead of God are lords in the church, everyone suffers and suffers terribly under the oppressive headship of such wicked men.

The people sat in darkness.

It is always darkest before dawn!

Now the Dayspring!

On the horizon of time and history, a first faint finger of light shot into the darkness. And John the Baptist would be his herald, the herald of the Day. John’s whole purpose and task would be to point to that first, faint finger of light as the hope, joy, and happiness of the people of God. The Day was coming to drive away their night.

Dayspring is the moment early in the morning in which the first light of the rising sun kisses the eastern horizon, and the first red and purple beams of light from that rising sun pierce the darkness and begin to drive away the night. The dayspring is the moment that separates night from day. The watchmen look for the break of day.

Only a man who is sick because the sun is a killing power to him or one whose wickedness is done in the night is exposed by the sun regrets the coming of the day.

Dayspring is also the beginning of the unstoppable advance of day. From dayspring to rosy-fingered dawn, the sun runs on higher and higher into the sky as a strong man to run a race and as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. Everything is bathed in the glorious light of day and refreshed with the sun’s life-giving rays. With the dayspring life begins anew. Birds begin to sing and roosters to crow. Animals come out of their dens for another day. Man arises and begins his day of work.

The coming of the day is a sign of God’s faithfulness to his creation. He upholds that creation and governs it by his almighty power every day and has for thousands of years. The coming of the day is a sign of God’s faithfulness to his covenant promise, so that as little as the sun can fail to rise for a new day, so little can the covenant promise of God fail. God’s mercies are new every morning because his faithfulness is great.

When Zacharias prophesied of the Dayspring from on high, he prophesied of Jesus Christ. He is light out of darkness. He is the day, and his coming is the coming of the new day. When he appears, morning has broken upon the world. As God is faithful to bring the new day every day, and as God is faithful to give new mercies to his people every day, so God is faithful at last to bring the one whose name is Day and who is light to those who sit in darkness.

Before his coming, all sat in darkness.

Darkness is symbolic of moral corruption, hatred, and enmity against God. Darkness is the corruption of our natures, the crookedness of our thoughts and desires, and our insane hatred of God and man. Darkness is unrighteousness. Man himself, the world of sin, and all who oppose God are called darkness. The kingdom of Satan is a kingdom of darkness in which all are held in terrible bondage to sin. Darkness is the world of unrighteous people and all their unrighteous deeds. The false church—having departed from the truth—as a synagogue of Satan is all darkness, and in it there is no light at all. In the whole world there is no light! Men stumble around in their corruption and enmity against God and the neighbor and march inextricably toward the darkness of hell.

It was not always dark in the world. Once, the sun shone brightly in Eden. Man awoke to each new day to serve his God and to press all creation into the service of God. At the close of each day, man walked with his God in the garden in the cool of the day.

But man loved darkness. He departed from God. With the sin of that one man, terrible darkness came into Eden and cast its pall upon the world. God had said that in the day man ate of the tree he would surely die, and that just judgment God brought upon all men.

That darkness is deep, damning darkness. It is total darkness. It is not merely the darkness of a moonless night. The darkness of which Zacharias spoke is the darkness of the shadow of death. It is the darkness that comes over a man when death looms over him on his deathbed. It is the darkness of the light going out of the eyes. It is the darkness of the coffin lid closing at last. It is the darkness of the grave, with the door of dirt or stone sealing a man in. It is the outer darkness of hell, where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.

The terror of that darkness is the wrath of God revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Death is men’s wages. In his perfect justice the holy God pays sinners what they deserve.

In that darkness men sit. They are in bondage, prisoners of the kingdom of Satan, chained in his dungeon, under his power, doing his will, fulfilling all their lusts, and advancing on the broad way to hell. There is no good in that darkness but only evil. There is no life in that darkness but only death. There all men sit as men trapped in a cave deep in the bowels of the earth.

In that darkness the Dayspring appears. The sun has kissed the eastern horizon and throws up its beam of purple and red to herald a new day and to drive away the night.

God calls him the Dayspring, for it is God who brings him. Does man bring the rising of the sun? Does man command the sun to get up and run its course again for another day? Does man have the power to control the sun and by means of the sun to energize all the creation for another day? To bring the Dayspring is a divine work.

A divine work in his mercy. God’s tender mercies are over all his works! Why does he preserve the world fallen in sin and lying under the curse of death? Why does he cause the sun to rise every day to give life to the world? Because of his mercy. Because he willed that this world, fallen in sin and lying under the curse, see a new day—a new day in which redemption comes, a new day in which that world is lifted to the height of heavenly glory and blessedness.

So the Dayspring is a work of God’s mercy, and the Dayspring’s coming is a work of God’s mercy to bring that new day.

At the heart of the creation that God loves are his people—chosen in Christ and precious and dear to him—who also sit in darkness. He willed to call them out of that darkness into his marvelous light. And the very darkness serves the revelation of God’s grace in the Dayspring. For in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God so that in the wisdom of God his people might know him in Christ. At the heart of that world stands God’s elect church, upon whom he had mercy and whom he eternally appointed to salvation. And at the head of that world and bringing the new day of joy, peace, righteousness, and salvation is the Dayspring from on high, who comes and in whose coming the new day of joy, peace, and righteousness breaks upon the world.

The Dayspring comes through the tender mercy of God. His coming is a wholly divine work of mercy in order to fulfill the gracious will of God for the salvation of his people and the glorification of the entire creation.

Thus he is also the Dayspring from on high. He comes from God. He comes through the work of God. He comes to perform the work of God.

The Dayspring comes as God. As light himself, as the one who has light and who gives light, he comes and, thus, he comes as God. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. God’s Word is light. And as God has light in himself, so he gave to the Dayspring to have light in himself and to give light to whomsoever God willed.

With the Dayspring’s coming the first new day has begun, and that day rises ever clearer and brighter until the coming of the everlasting day, when there shall be no night any longer.

And John would be his forerunner, the herald of the dawn. No father has ever laid so weighty a task on his infant son as Zacharias laid on the shoulders of John. Being a prophet, Zacharias spoke of God’s will for the child.

Already before his father spoke and, indeed, with his father unable to speak because of his unbelief at the wonderful word of the angel Gabriel, John had begun his work of heralding the coming of the Dayspring by a tremendous leap in the womb of his mother Elisabeth at the presence of the Lord in the womb of his mother Mary. That joyful leap in the womb of John’s mother would become a weighty ministry of the word just before the revelation of Jesus Christ.

As the herald of the dawn, John was the greatest of the Old Testament prophets. He was the greatest because while all the other prophets heralded the coming of the new day, they did so from afar. Abel and Enoch and Noah spoke of Christ. Abraham saw Christ’s day and was glad. David, being a prophet, declared God’s word concerning the savior. The ministries of Isaiah and Jeremiah and all the rest of the prophets were concerned with nothing else than declaring the coming of the Christ. But John received the privilege of pointing out the Christ, seeing him with his own eyes, touching him, indeed, of baptizing him in the Jordan River!

John himself was a child of wonder. John means grace, and John was a wonder of grace in the womb of Elisabeth, his aged mother. The womb of Elisabeth was proverbially and reproachfully barren. A sign of the incapability of God’s people themselves to produce anything spiritual or good, and her enemies proudly mocked and reproached her for her barrenness. In that dead and barren womb, the power of John’s conception was the grace of Jehovah God.

A child of wonder, yet not the child of wonder but his herald. In the wonder of grace that begat John, there was the heralding already of a far more glorious wonder of grace, when God would send the Dayspring from on high. And that child John would be the Dayspring’s forerunner to go before his face, to make ready a people prepared for the day of the Lord that would break on Israel.

A glorious day!

The remission of sins. That is the most piercing beam of this Sun. He comes from heaven to give the remission of sins. God sent him to give the remission of sins.

All our sin is an unpayable, ever-increasing, abiding, and a terrible debt with God. Men—all men by nature—are trapped in darkness because they stand guilty before God for sin: the sin of Adam plus all their actual sins. Because of their debt, by right they are the subjects of the kingdom of darkness. The sinner does not have the right to sit in the light of the knowledge of God, to know God, or to love God. Because of the sinner’s guilt, he only has the right to sit in darkness. In God’s perfect justice he subjected the world and the whole human race to darkness because of guilt. In the darkness sinners do not ultimately have to do with man, Satan, sin, or death but with God, who punishes sin.

Through his tender mercy God forgives that debt of his people. His mercy is God’s deep and tender pity toward his people and his will to save them from their sins and to bring them to heavenly glory.

He remits our sins by his mercy, so that the remission of sins and eternal life are not because of any works of ours but only because he had pity on us and willed to deliver us from our sins and make us blessed forever in covenant fellowship with him.

God does that in his mercy because in his mercy he sent the Dayspring from on high to enter our night and to take on himself all the debt of our sins and to pay that debt by satisfying the justice of God for our sins. When the Dayspring came, he came first to descend into our night, to take our sins upon himself, to suffer the terrible darkness of the cross, and to be plunged into hell on the tree of the cross that we might have light and life through the forgiveness of our sins.

In that way he gives the knowledge of salvation. Zacharias spoke of that and connected those two things. To have the remission of sins by faith in Jesus Christ is to have the knowledge of your salvation.

Our salvation consists in the remission of our sins. The knowledge of our salvation—the assurance of it—consists in the forgiveness of sins.

The knowledge of it is faith: faith alone—not works and faith. Oh, beloved, if you want to have the knowledge of your salvation, do not look to your works. To give to you the knowledge of your salvation, God does not condescend to use your works to assure you. He condescends as the Dayspring, and as the Dayspring he works all the perfect work of the Dayspring on account of which your sins are remitted. By the works of the Dayspring, you have forgiveness and with forgiveness the assurance of your salvation. To know your salvation is to know the Dayspring and his perfect work and complete righteousness. To know your salvation is to have the assurance of salvation.

You have that by faith. Believing in him as the Dayspring sent from God and as God come to give light to you, you have this forgiveness, this precious remittance of your debt, and then you have escaped the punishment of your sins and are blessed by God.

If you know that your sins are forgiven, you know your salvation. Then you know the attitude of God’s heart toward you. You know that he is not angry with you but full of tender pity toward you. Then you know that he does not will to curse you but to bless you in all things.

Then you know that the day that has broken in your heart will shine ever brighter and brighter to the coming of the fullness of that day in the coming of Jesus Christ, when the Sun shall stand in the heavens and declare himself judge of the world and when he will make all things new, so that there will be no night there.

Then the coming of the Lord is a blessed gospel.

Unless a man knows his salvation, the coming of the Lord is a terrible event for him. For the one who comes is the God of light, in whom there is no darkness at all. The God of spotless purity and perfection. The God who is holy and just and a just judge.

If I tell you only that the Lord is coming, you and I must be terrified because of our sins. Then the Lord is coming to perfect the darkness and to cast men into outer darkness.

But if I tell you that the Lord is coming and that you are saved because the Lord who is coming remits all your sins through his tender pity, does not hold you accountable for them, and will not judge you because of them, the coming of the Lord is truly a bright and glorious event. Then, like the rising of the sun on a new day, the rising of the Sun of Righteousness will cheer your heart and make you unspeakably glad, for the day of salvation comes in his coming.

Then the gospel of the Dayspring from on high gives blessed peace. That is the effect of his coming. In those who have him—believers only—he works an amazing change. In their hearts he gives peace. That is what the angels sang at Christ’s birth: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to men of his pleasure.”

He comes not only to establish a peace hidden in God, but he also comes to establish such a peace that we walk in that way, so that every day and all the days of our lives we have peace with God.

Man’s problem is that he is at war with the living God. Man’s heart is full of hatred and enmity against God. That explains all the trouble in the world. Man is at war with God; in all man does and in all he plans, he attempts to execute this terrible counsel: “Let us cast his yoke from us!” Such war with the living God is the most terrible thing ever. If you fight with men, you can defend yourself, but who can defend himself when God comes against him?

But peace with God? That is the most blessed thing in the universe. It means you are one with the living God. Your heart is like his heart, your love is his love, your hatred his hatred. It means that God is for you; and if God is for you, nothing in heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in hell itself can be against you. To have peace with God means that God is on your side and loves you.

He guides his people in the way of peace. That is the change he works in those to whom he comes and in whose hearts he shines with his light of the remission of sins. Where he gives peace, they who sat in darkness now walk in the light of his peace. To walk in the way of peace means that in their whole lives and in their hearts this truth reigns: they are at peace with the living God.

That is the way of knowing that God is merciful toward you and loves you because he sent Christ to die for you. That is the way of knowing that though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. That is the way of knowing, no matter your outward circumstances, that he works your good and everlasting blessedness in heaven. That peace is knowing that you are saved because God forgave your sins. That peace is understanding that nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. That peace is believing that he works all things for your advantage and salvation. That peace passes all understanding and keeps your heart and mind.

That peace no unbeliever knows. He sits in the darkness of sin, terrified of death.

That peace is the gift of God in his mercy to his people through the Dayspring from on high by the forgiveness of sins.

In that way he guides us. He takes us by the hand and lifts us up from our darkness and takes us along by the hand to confess our sins and to believe in him for the remission of our sins.

Thanks be to God, who remembered his promise and sent the Dayspring from on high to guide us in the way of peace.

Hallelujah!

Glory to God in the highest!