One of the sure signs that the Christmas season is upon us is all the twinkling lights that suddenly adorn nearby homes and businesses. The tradition of putting up lights during the Advent season can be traced back to the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther. On a late-night hike in December, he was struck by the way the starlight beautifully danced on the boughs of a fir tree. Luther said he felt as if the hand of God had touched his soul. It was so moving, he set out to create a similar experience for his family in the home. Luther attached candle holders to the branches of their tree, and his family and friends were dazzled by the spectacle of a well-lit Christmas tree. Thus began a longstanding tradition, today replicated with the far safer set of electric lights you string around your Christmas tree.

From the beginning, light has symbolized the Christmas hope.

The World in Darkness

The first Christmas came at a time when the world felt very dark. Interestingly, the historian Luke begins his Gospel narrative by focusing not on Mary and Joseph, but on another couple that was far older, Zechariah and Elizabeth.

Zechariah is a priest chosen by lot to present the incense offering before the Lord at the altar in the Jerusalem temple. As a Jew, this was an incredible honor for Zechariah. Most priests only dreamed of being the one who got to burn the incense on the altar of God. Since a priest could only win the lottery one time, this was quite literally a once in a lifetime opportunity for Zechariah.

But as he stood in this place of great honor, Zechariah struggled to feel blessed. For one thing, he and Elizabeth had failed to conceive in a culture where children were a sign of God’s blessing. Over the years, many of Elizabeth’s peers may have looked at her with an arched eyebrow as they hurried along with their train of youngsters.

On top of their personal pain, as a nation Israel felt oppressed by the Roman Empire. Rome’s overbearing rule and hefty taxes had become a weighty burden for an already beleaguered nation. Long gone were the glory days of King David and King Solomon and the First Temple. Long gone, even, were the courageous Maccabees to lead a revolution against all the foreign oppressors.

Many wondered, Where is the Deliverer God promised through the prophets? Why has God abandoned us to become pawns in the hands of pagans?  In short, it was a bleak time for Israel.

From Zechariah’s perspective, it didn’t look like God and His people were winning. The forces of darkness seemed to be having their way and showed no sign of weakening.

Hero of God

It’s in this context that old Zechariah is at the altar when an unexpected visitor shows up: the angel Gabriel. Gabriel – whose name means “hero of God” – had visited the prophet Daniel hundreds of years earlier to foretell a yet future arrival of a Messiah who would “put an end to sin” and “bring in everlasting righteousness” (Daniel 9:24). In a sense, Gabriel’s message hadn’t changed. But he now told Zechariah that he would father this Messiah’s forerunner. This son, whose name would be John (the Baptist), would prepare the nation and “turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God” (Luke 1:16).

Zechariah’s initial response is to doubt. Like many skeptics today who treat the Christmas story as an outmoded myth, Zechariah’s problem was spiritual, not intellectual, in nature. After all, a glorious angel of the living God was standing before his eyes. His unbelief was not caused by a lack of evidence. You see, doubt had probably infected his heart long before Gabriel showed up.

Luke tells us Zechariah and Elizabeth had lived upright and moral lives, but Zechariah had probably struggled to trust God for some time. Why? Today, we would say he lived with the anguish of unanswered prayers. Perhaps when he was younger his prayer for a child was fervent, but in his old age, he had almost certainly given up on such a request. Like the psalmist, he had probably pleaded with God to not forget His people, to break through the heavens, come down, and set things right.[1] But time after time, the Romans had reminded him and his fellow Jews that they were the ones in charge. In his head, he knew that the God of Israel ruled over all, but most days it felt like Caesar reigned supreme.

Heaven’s Perspective

Rather than coddling Zechariah, the angel challenges his unbelief: “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time” (Luke 1:19-20, ESV). It’s as if Gabriel is saying, “Zechariah, things may look dark from where you are standing, but I stand in the presence of the Almighty God Himself. And there is no darkness in Him.”

Zechariah had seen all of life’s circumstances from one angle, and to him, it looked like tragedy upon tragedy. It looked like the light of hope had all but burned out. But Gabriel brought heaven’s perspective, a perspective that is easy to lose in this broken world of suffering and death, but greatly needed.

Many think of Christianity as a nice fairytale for those who simply cannot deal with all of life’s agony, as if faith was an anesthetic that numbs us to the pain of reality. But Christianity never tries to downplay the truth of suffering. Christians have long called this world “fallen” because it no longer displays the ideal of what life was supposed to look like. Cancer, war, oppression, hunger, poverty, and death were not part of God’s original design. But Christianity announces that all this misery is ultimately rooted in humanity’s rebellion against its Maker, and our only hope is to be reconciled back to Him.

Indeed, for one to say that something is wrong implies that there is a way things ought to be. When someone gets away with murder, we don’t say, “Personally, I find murder objectionable. But who am I to judge?” No, we say, “This is evil!” That’s because deep down we recognize that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

Atheism’s Problem of Suffering

People may claim that the world’s suffering shows that a good God does not exist, but the Bible says the real reason we deny God’s existence is that we don’t like being held accountable for the ways we have fallen short.[2]

If you resort to atheism, you still have to deal with the problem of suffering, but now you have a problem with no resolution. Many young atheists claim to be “scientifically minded,” as if science stood in opposition to belief in God. But when you turn to science for answers to life’s most perplexing problems (like death and our desire for lasting happiness), it doesn’t offer much help. Consider atheist Bertrand Russell’s perspective:

“Such, in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief… That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins… Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”[3]

And that was poor Russell on a good day. But isn’t Russell giving an honest appraisal that without God, we are left with “the firm foundation of unyielding despair”?

Without heaven’s perspective, the picture grows ever more hopeless and dull. But one reason we can know atheism isn’t true is that it is totally unlivable. No one can live as if there is no objective moral standard. Atheists cry out for justice when they get hit by porch pirates, too! And no one can live as if there is no meaning and purpose to life. It’s the most barren worldview imaginable, and it leaves us only in despair.

The Good News of Christmas

This world is in desperate need of hope, and Gabriel had come to announce good news. That’s why he began by telling Zechariah that his prayer was not ignored or forgotten, but had been answered. He would have a son and great joy would accompany his birth.

Later in the same chapter, Gabriel shows up again, this time with an announcement for a very young woman. The virgin Mary is told that she is highly favored and will bear a Son, Jesus. Gabriel says, “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David” (Luke 1:31-32). The angels would later tell the shepherds, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10).

The very Messiah Gabriel had foretold to Daniel was now arriving. And once John was born, Zechariah understood the significance of his role. Holding up his newborn boy, he said, “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins” (Luke 1:76-77).

Zechariah no longer doubted God’s goodness. Now, he saw afresh that God’s timing is always perfect, that He hadn’t forgotten His people, but rather that He had sent them a Redeemer. This Messiah would not only deliver them from all enemies (v. 71), but would “give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death” (v. 79).

Science and technology have given us many good gifts, but they could never solve our greatest problems of sin and death. God sent His own Son, the divine Messiah, to bring the light of hope where human effort only leaves us in darkness.

Martin Luther told his children the same thing I tell my boys. The lights on the house and the Christmas tree and the lit candles of the Advent wreath all signify the same truth: Jesus, the Light of the world, has come. And because of His coming, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, we now have hope. The good news of Christmas is that a Savior has come to defeat humanity’s greatest enemies and grant forgiveness and new life to all who throw themselves on His mercy, by trusting in the risen Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross.

Have thoughts on this post? Feel free to comment below!

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[1] Psalm 144.

[2] See Psalm 10:13; 94:7; Isaiah 29:15; Job 22:13-15.

[3] Bertrand Russell quoted in Timothy Keller, Hidden Christmas, 9.