Nov 30th 2025
By Rev. Dr. Ed HIrd
Why do we light five candles at Advent? It is about Jesus the Light of the world who breaks into our darkness. God’s first action in Genesis 1:3 was to say: “Let there be light. 1 John 1:5 says: “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all”. In John 8:12 and 9:5, Jesus said: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” That’s what Advent is all about.
Despite what Carl Jung suggested, God does have not a dark side, ala Luke Skywalker in Star War. John 1:5 reminds us that “Jesus the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Isaiah 66, being the last chapter, is very similar to the last book of Revelation. Many people are not aware how eschatological and apocalyptic that Advent really is. Advent is not just about remembering Jesus first coming in a manger, but also preparing for his second coming. Both Advents are about light breaking into our darkness. As Isaiah 9:2 puts it, “the people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned.” Isaiah 60:1-2 says: “Arise, shine for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you, even in the midst of gross darkness. Have you noticed that the darkness these days is getting much grosser?
2 Corinthians 11:14 says that Satan comes as an angel of light offering counterfeit enlightenment. Jesus brings the true enlightenment in a very dark and lost world. As Isaiah 42:6 and 49:6 tell us, Jesus the Jewish messiah is also the Light to all the Gentile Nations. You don’t need to do yoga to get Jesus’ enlightenment. What you need to do, as Bishop Peter often reminds us, is to surrender our wills.
My late mother Lorna, who used to sit in this second pew, suffered during the winter from SADS, Seasonal Affective Disorder. Is anyone else affected by the lack of sunlight in the winter? Mom was drawn to the Light in the midst of darkness. That is why we flew as a family to Hawaii in December 1971, right before my Jesus movement conversion. Hawaii was indeed a Paradise of Amazing light. The only problem is that I brought my personal darkness with me. When I was born again in a day, I was filled with heavenly light that has never left me in the past 53 years. One Day at a Time. Jesus in Matthew 5:14 calls us the Light of the World. In John 12:36, Jesus said: “Believe in the light while you have the light, so that you may become children of light.” Paul in Ephesians 5:8-9 and 1 Thessalonians 5:5 similarly calls us Children of Light.
One thing that brightened up my mother during the winter was looking at vibrant, colourful paintings. My mother was an amateur painter who took lessons from Bob Hickling, whose arms were paralyzed from polio so he painted with his mouth. My mom loved not only Van Gogh but also Monet, the French father of Impressionism which focused on light, form, and nature. Monet did not use chiaroscuro like Rembrandt, who painted sharp almost three-dimensional contrasts between light and dark. Instead, Monet used extra colour to create effects of light, shadow and depth, giving momentary impressions (hence impressionism). Monet painted the impression of brilliant light by putting contrasting vibrant colors, such as blue and orange, right next to each other. Instead of creating shadows with dark paint, he would create blue and green shadows through which light broke through.
My mother’s love for paintings is now rubbing off on me at age 71. How many of you have or had parents who loved paintings? How many of you have picked up your parent’s love of paintings? How many of you love to actually paint? Both Monet & Van Gogh loved painting sunflowers. (Show painting) His revolutionary method of painting in the outdoors was called plein air. Monet famously said, “To see, we must forget the name of the things we are looking at.”
Some see Monet as the world’s most famous painter. Has any one been to seen Monet’s famous Japanese-inspired garden and pond in Giverny, France? It’s visited by over one half million people annually. Born in 1840, Claude Monet was passionate about light in his flower paintings. In the early 1890s, he painted Rouen Cathedral first in morning light, then midday light, and then gray weather, showing his deep fascination with the effects of light. What however would light be without colour? Monet said: • Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.
Monet struggled with depression, poverty, illness, and discouragement. He became so despondent over his lack of sales that in 1868, he attempted suicide by trying to drown himself in the Seine River. Troubled by cataracts, Monet sometimes was so frustrated with his paintings that he destroyed as many as 500 of his own 2500 paintings. He would burn, cut or kick them into oblivion, ripping them to shreds. He once wrote that “age has worn me out. My life has been nothing but a failure, and all that’s left for me to do is to destroy my paintings before I disappear.”
Yet, one of his paintings has since sold for 110 million dollars.
Hitler as a failed painter stole many of Monet’s paintings from Jewish art collectors. In October 2024, after 86 years, the FBI returned Monet’s Bord de Mer painting to the granddaughters of a Jewish couple who fled Vienna in 1938. His fellow impressionists Degas, Renoir, and Cézanne were all antisemitic. Claude Monet however rejected French antisemitism by supporting Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer unjustly accused of treason and imprisoned.
That is why the nation of Israel loves Monet. The Israel Museum in Jerusalem houses several of his paintings. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art holds Monet’s Water Lily Pond. There are around 130,000 painters in Israel. The most famous Israeli painter was Marc Chagall.
Monet had a God-given ability to see light and colour, helping others to see God’s creation in a whole new way. Similarly, through Advent, Jesus removed our spiritual cataracts so that we can see with Kingdom eyes spiritual light and colour, helping others to see God’s new creation in a whole new way. As Hank Williams sang, ‘I saw the Light. I saw the Light. No more in darkness. No more in night.’ That is what Advent is all about.
In Isaiah 66 1, the Lord says:
“Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool.
Where is the house you will build for me?
Where will my resting place be?
God is the Father of lights. As James 1:17 puts it, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” The house that God dwells in is full of unimaginable heavenly light. Do I hear an Amen?
2 Has not my hand made all these things,
and so they came into being?”
declares the Lord.
“These are the ones I look on with favor:
those who are humble and contrite in spirit,
and who tremble at my word.
Vs 2 tells us that in order to dwell in God’s heavenly house, we need to humble ourselves with contrition and tremble at His Word? How many of you tremble at God’s Word? It is so easy to become blasé and distracted. God wants us to repent of all lukewarmness to His Word and recover our first love for Jesus and the Bible.
3 But whoever sacrifices a bull
is like one who kills a person,
and whoever offers a lamb
is like one who breaks a dog’s neck;
whoever makes a grain offering
is like one who presents pig’s blood,
and whoever burns memorial incense
is like one who worships an idol.
They have chosen their own ways,
and they delight in their abominations;
Vs 2 & 3 tells us that choosing our own ways, delighting in abominations, it never ends well. As E Stanley Jones said in his book The Way, there are essentially two choices in life: God’s way or not the way. Not the way, doing it our own way, always ends in darkness. Idolatry is all about choosing the darkness. Revival is about choosing to turn from darkness back to the true Advent Light, Jesus.
4 so I also will choose harsh treatment for them
and will bring on them what they dread.
For when I called, no one answered,
when I spoke, no one listened.
They did evil in my sight
and chose what displeases me.”
Revival is about realizing that our way doesn’t work. Vs. 4 tells us that idols don’t answer or listen when we call. Doing what displeases Jesus is always a lose-lose. IF we want Advent revival, we must choose what pleases Jesus, the Light of the World.
5 Hear the word of the Lord,
you who tremble at his word:
“Your own people who hate you,
and exclude you because of my name, have said,
‘Let the Lord be glorified,
that we may see your joy!’
Yet they will be put to shame.
Vs 5 reminds us that when you choose the Advent Light, not everyone will be happy about this. They may hate you and exclude you because of your love for Jesus the Light of Advent.
6 Hear that uproar from the city,
hear that noise from the temple!
It is the sound of the Lord
repaying his enemies all they deserve.
Vs. 6 tells us that there is no escaping the sound of Light that God releases into our life. We reap as we sow. As the Creeds remind us, Jesus the Lord of Advent Light will indeed return to judge the living and the dead.
7 “Before she goes into labor,
she gives birth;
before the pains come upon her,
she delivers a son.
Vs. 7 teaches that breakthrough always require labour pains. Advent is a season of labour pains, as we are preparing for the Light of the Christ Child. How many of you as mothers had a completely pain-free delivery? How many mothers have ever suffered or worried about your children post-birth? How old does one’s children need to before you stop being tempted to worry about them? Let me ask you: What is God trying to birth in your life, your family, your work? What is God birthing right now in Israel and secondarily in our nation of Canada?
October 7th, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, has changed Israel forever. The electric fence failed them. Many Israelis are turning to the Lord in a way that they never did before. Has anyone noticed that technology, no matter how impressive, is not our saviour. It will let us down.
Vs 8 says: Who has ever heard of such things?
Who has ever seen things like this?
Can a country be born in a day
or a nation be brought forth in a moment?
Yet no sooner is Zion in labor
than she gives birth to her children.
Advent represents desert and waiting times for the Light of Christ. Israel, since 1948, has turned a barren desert into one of the greatest fruit-exporting country on earth, just like the Old Testament prophesied. They export over 800 million dollars of fruit per year, especially dates, figs, pineapples, avocados, oranges, and mangoes. They have also planted 250 million trees throughout Israel.
God has kept his covenant promises to the ancient Jewish people. Isaiah 11: 12 says, “He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; He will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth.”
In Ezekiel 11:17, “the Sovereign Lord says: I will gather you from the nations and bring you back from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you back the land of Israel again.’”
Prophetically speaking, the rebirth of the Nation of Israel on May 14th 1948 is “The Time Clock of the Nations.” Many are realizing that this single miracle of Israel, “born in one day,” is the biggest and most prominent sign of the coming return of the Messiah to Jerusalem!
British Bible teacher Lance Lambert says: “No other nation in the history of mankind has twice been uprooted from its land, scattered to the ends of the earth and then brought back again to that same territory. Israel has twice lost its statehood and its national sovereignty, twice had its capital destroyed, its towns and cities razed to the ground, its people deported and dispersed, and then twice had it all restored again. No other nation or ethnic group has been scattered to the four corners of the earth, and yet survived as an easily identifiable and recognizable group.” This is a miracle.
The first exile took place under Babylonian rule in 587 BC. As for the second great exile, Roman forces serving under the Roman commander Titus destroyed and dismantled Jerusalem in August AD 70, exactly as Jesus had prophesied 37 years earlier. The Romans killed 600,000 Jewish residents and deported 300,000 more to locations scattered around the Empire. Sixty-five years later in 135 AD, the forces of Roman Emperor Hadrian crushed the last Jewish uprising, led by Bar Kokhba at Masada.
Hadrian’s hatred for the Jews burned so brightly that he changed Jerusalem’s name to his own name and declared it “a Roman city forever which no Jew could enter under pain of death.” He built a temple to Jupiter on the site of the former Jewish Temple. Then he renamed the land “Palestine.”
In Vs 9, God says: Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery? Do I close up the womb when I bring to delivery?” says your God.
Many Canadians are wondering these days: Is there hope for Canada? Things seem pretty dark. Will Canada survive against all odds? Can a nation like Canada be born again in day? Will a revival of divine light sweep through our dark land? The existence of Israel, just like the existence of Canada, is miraculous. Humanly speaking, neither Israel nor Canada should have come into existence, or continued to exist. Yet God keeps breaking his advent light into both Canada and Israel. I don’t believe that God has given up on either Canada or Israel.
I see both Canada and Israel as like turkeys. Wild turkeys are amazingly good fliers, considering their substantial bodies. They reach treetops in seconds to escape predators. Once airborne, they can fly at 55 miles per hour! Domesticated turkeys, however, have lost this ability. The question for us Canadians is ‘will we be a wild turkey or a tame turkey?’ Can Canada learn, by waiting on the Lord, to fly like an eagle or at least like a wild turkey? How many of us here today want to be a wild turkey for Jesus? John A Macdonald our first prime minister was a wild turkey for Jesus.
John A Macdonald was a Moses figure who saw the promised land from sea to sea, that Canada might be born in a day.
Every time we spent a ten-dollar bill from 1971 to 2018, we came face-to-face with Sir John A Macdonald. In 2018, starting with Victoria, eight of Macdonald’s ten statues across Canada have been vandalized and removed by ‘cancel culture, though the one in Ontario’s Queen’s Park was recently returned. In the name of ‘tolerance’, inclusiveness, and diversity, John A.’ statues have been ‘beheaded’, excluded, and defamed. Three public schools have recently removed his name. Many youth have never even heard his name.
Could you imagine Americans removing their 100+ Washington statues and renaming the State and District/DC of Washington? Do we really want, in the words of a former Prime Minister, to be a post-national state with no core identity? Canada’s actual history is now at stake.
Though a complicated man with many flaws, Macdonald was the most famous of all Canadian leaders. Some of his tragic mistakes were the hanging of Louis Riel, the creation of native residential schools, and the 1885 Electoral Franchise Act which removed the right of Chinese people to vote. We must honestly admit John A.’s unfortunate weaknesses while not losing sight of his great accomplishments.
Born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1815, he moved at age 15 to the land of his dreams with his family. Like Don Quixote, John A. dreamed the impossible dream that miraculously came true, a nation from sea to sea (Psalm 72:8). Against all the odds, Canada was birthed on July 1st 1867 and still exists, despite cries from some Quebecers and Albertans to separate. God keep pouring out his light on Canada, far more than we deserve or imagine.
Without Sir John A. Macdonald, BC would have been lost forever from joining Canada. BC would have become the 51st state, physically connecting to Alaska. Many American leaders publicly stated that it was BC and indeed Canada’s manifest destiny to join the United States. The vast majority of early BC settlers were Americans drawn from San Francisco by the 1858 Gold Rush. They certainly were not Eastern Canadians from Ontario. John A’s promise of the Canadian Pacific Railway won over the hearts and mind of ambivalent BCers. The American miners also liked the law and order of Governor James Douglas and Judge Matthew Begbie, protecting them from being robbed like in the American wild west.
After the tragic death of his invalid first wife Isabella, John A. married Agnes Bernard. They met on Dec 8th 1866 while both were sauntering down Bond Street in London. By Christmas, they were engaged. They wed six weeks later, at St. George’s Anglican Church in Hanover Square. This was definitely light breaking into John A’ painfully dark family situation.
Agnes spoke French better than her husband, a real asset in bilingual Canada. He now had a loving wife who worked tirelessly on his behalf –inviting Conservative MPS to his place for dinner rather than get drunk with them in the bars.
As a devout Anglican Christian, Agnes had a significant impact on her husband’s life, causing him to stop drinking and start attending church. John A was deeply impressed by the Beatitudes, and made a practice of reading his bible every night before bedtime. Another MP called Agnes ‘Macdonald’s good angel.’ Biographer E.B. Biggar suggests that Agnes may have extended his life by two decades, saving both his liver and his life. This again was Advent Light breaking into alcoholic darkness.
In 1888, during six weeks of Hunter-Crossley revival meetings in Ottawa, Prime Minister Macdonald had a deep encounter with Jesus Christ. John Hunter and Hugh Crossley were the Canadian Billy Grahams, leading two hundred and fifty thousand Canadians and Americans to Christ. As one journalist put it, “When the well-known form of the Honorable Prime Minister arose in the centre of the church, many strong men bowed their heads and wept for joy.” After dining at the prime minister’s home several days later, Rev John Hunter confirmed that “Sir John is a changed man.” Wherever Hunter and Crossley went in Canada, the bars became empty and the churches became full. How many Canadians know this amazing story of Divine light breaking into a politician’s soul? It is not easy for politicians to be saved with all the pressures they are under.
May the example of John A. and Agnes give us the will to love, live and forgive as a nation. May Albertans and Quebecers realize that we all truly need each other in this grand impossible dream of Canada. May God keep our land glorious and free, in Jesus’ name.
And finally, can we as God’s people, and you personally be born, be born again, in a day? Can Advent light break into our lives this very day? Can people who come from difficult family backgrounds really change? Can people who struggle with alcohol or drug addiction really be born in a day? Is change really possible? Can Jesus really change your heart, your family, one day at a time?
How many of you today are willing to change, to embrace God’s marvellous light, to be born again, to surrender your will to Jesus one day at a time? How many are willing to say no to darkness and yes to Jesus our Advent Light? How many want to walk in the Advent light as Jesus is in the light? Let us pray.
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