As you read this command given to Israel, shouldn’t it also thrill our hearts? Surely, we can see the parallel between God’s message to the nation of Israel and Jesus’ message to His church today.

Just look around.  Don't you see hypocrisy, worse today than in Isaiah's? Hypocrisy is so prevalent, that most people accept it as normal. Especially when it comes to politicians and the ruling elite that govern us. They can tell us what to do and then ignore the very same mandate when it comes to them, their friends, and their families.  Hypocrisy is a fog of lies that makes the darkness deeper. And let me tell you from directly from God’s word, God hates hypocrites.

In the darkness around us it is easy to see the individual streams of hypocrisy trying to obscure the outright sin that is going on behind its veil. Never in our lifetimes nor in the history of this nation has sin been so openly accepted, encouraged and applauded. Babies are sacrificed to the god of lust, children are groomed for the god of perversion, families are being shattered by the god of modernism and many churches are being infiltrated by the Satan, the god of this world. People of God, its dark out there. Its time to Arise and Shine!

in the midst of such great sin, we are told to go and be a light for Jesus. Just as God one day will say to Israel, “Arise, Shine!” We have already received that command from our Lord. Jesus has already sent us forth to be light in this dark world.

Unlike Israel, we are not waiting for a returning Savior, He is already with us. His light has already been given to us. God’s glory, that same glory that led Israel in the wilderness, and filled the Temple, has already come upon the church on the day of Pentecost.

Acts 2:1-4 And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.

We have seen the light of Jesus Christ, we have been baptized in the glory of God through the Holy Spirit and now in the midst of this present darkness we rise and stand as beacons of light, like lighthouses along a dark and stormy shore we light the way to safety and hope in Jesus Christ.

Illustration: Cutting Holes in the Darkness

At age twelve, Robert Louis Stevenson was looking out into the dark from his upstairs window watching a man light the streetlamps. Stevenson's governess came into the room and asked what he was doing. He replied, "I am watching a man cut holes in the darkness." - James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc, 1988) pp. 178-179

This is our task, this is our calling, to be spiritual lamplighters, cutting holes in the darkness with the glorious light of God's Word.