Waiting to be Rescued

Isaiah 9.1-7

Christian Standard Bible (Chapter 9)

Nevertheless, the gloom of the distressed land will not be like that of the former times when he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. But in the future he will bring honor to the way of the sea, to the land east of the Jordan, and to Galilee of the nations.

2 The people walking in darkness

have seen a great light;

a light has dawned

on those living in the land of darkness.

3 You have enlarged the nation

and increased its joy.,

The people have rejoiced before you

as they rejoice at harvest time

and as they rejoice when dividing spoils.

4 For you have shattered their oppressive yoke

and the rod on their shoulders,

the staff of their oppressor,

just as you did on the day of Midian.

5 For every trampling boot of battle

and the bloodied garments of war

will be burned as fuel for the fire.

6 For a child will be born for us,

a son will be given to us,

and the government will be on his shoulders.

He will be named

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

7 The dominion will be vast,

and its prosperity will never end.

He will reign on the throne of David

and over his kingdom,

to establish and sustain it

with justice and righteousness from now on and forever.

The zeal of the LORD of Armies will accomplish this.

Series Introduction

Advent is a term that indicates there is a "coming" an "arrival". This is a natural season of acknowledging what's to come. We "wait" for Christmas to come.

But not everyone "waits" expectantly, with hope. Some wait for the pain to hit, for the inevitable hard conversation, the disappointment that comes from countless 'previous' UNMET expectations.

I've seen and heard this in conversations with you as you wait for “good news” about relationships, careers, ministry opportunities, clarity in your calling.

There was also a bit of this theme coming out of the book of Esther.

We were introduced to the tension Mordecai and Esther waited and wondered if God would indeed rescue them.

Advent is also a season that can often make us feel like we want to tell others in our life “sorry, there’s no room at the in, no room in my life right now for your troubles and cares”.

In the messages we heard on hospitality we, as a church and individuals, were introduced to the need to “make room” in our lives, to examine our priorities, our commitments, and see when God enters our life we experience a radical reorientation to “allow others” into our lives through hospitality.

How do we wait WITH others, how do allow others to wait WITH us tension as we wait for God to rescue us from our situation or rescue those we love from theirs, for Jesus to return and sweep us up with him.

So we enter a book of the Bible in Isaiah that literally translates as “the Lord shall save”.

We read versus 1-7 for context but we’re going to zero in on verses 4-6.

The Big Idea and Application

We need to be rescued and we have one! How do we wait for an unlikely savior to rescue us in the middle of a war for our desires, our choices, our culture?

Overview

Advent traditionally includes messages with a lot of emotion and eloquent messages about peace, a baby in a manger, good will toward men, and angels singing.

And it is indeed includes all of that.

But sometimes in focusing on those familiar things, good things, we lose sight of the ache, the longing that we experience until the light dawns, until someone rescues us, because in those details are the ‘joy of our salvation’.

I read an example of this sentiment where the author explained the ache they feel when they walk out in a crisp, beautiful morning, and they realize they can’t carry the beauty of that moment throughout the day. At some point, the beauty fades into the edges of life.

What does the Isaiah tell us about those details and how does it apply to me, to us, today.

Let me take just a minute to set up this chapter.

Isaiah is a book of prophecy with two major themes: Judgement and Hope for the people of Israel - God’s chosen people.

Judgement was for their rebellion, idolatry, and injustice - mostly mistreatment of the poor. So, not small things to be guilty of.

Isaiah was warning Israel their rebellion would come at a cost - oppression by Assyria and Babylon.

Which takes us to our first important detail about waiting on God. The Bible gives us two major themes and metaphors for the Christian experience: deserts and war or conflict. We see people waiting to be rescued in deserts, think Moses, and from battles, think Judges, Kings and most of the OT.

Isaiah highlights the second mostly, there’s a war.

The War

verse’s 4-5 jump us right into this context:

4 For you have shattered their oppressive yoke

and the rod on their shoulders,

the staff of their oppressor,

just as you did on the day of Midian.

5 For every trampling boot of battle

and the bloodied garments of war

will be burned as fuel for the fire. -- Isaiah 9:4-5 (CSB)

what perfect imagery for Christmas, right!

But pause for moment. It’s easy to read the OT from too objective a stance and miss the human experience. The consequences of their rebellion were not inconvenience, low paying jobs, or no good coffee shops.

Picture yourself in a war-torn country. You never know a day that is free from cruelty, deadly battles, and cultural and political reminders that your life does not belong to you. The boot of the oppressor is on your neck. Your life is not your own.

There’s two sides to this experience.

The first is you also look around and you see individual reminders in your own life of injustice and idolatry - friends and family who get overlooked, authority figures who ignore their responsibilities.

The second is you see those who perpetuate oppression and injustice thriving and instead of wanting to fight against it, you envy them, want to join them.

You don’t speak up, you allow yourself to benefit. You hear this all the time in stories of sexual assault. People knew but chose not to speak up out of fear of losing what they loved more than justice - reputation, money, or power.

That’s why the yoke, rod, and staff are a powerful word pictures of the tools at that time.

They depict the tools of tyrannical control, misery, and oppression that lead to darkness in the land we read in verse 2.

And Isaiah declares God has shattered them!

We can read this as Christians and out of familiarity with a quick acknowledgment and skip to the the “child is born” as Jesus and make this a sweet Jesus in a manger moment.

Yet the context of this is clearly a war.

5 For every trampling boot of battle

and the bloodied garments of war

will be burned as fuel for the fire.

Isaiah warns, and history tells us, Jerusalem would literally be burned to the ground between the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. They would walk in darkness and in the meantime, they would wait.

Madeleine L-Engle -

This is no time for a child to be born, With the earth betrayed by war & hate And a comet slashing the sky to warn That time runs out & the sun burns late.

Isaiah portrays the reality of what Israel would experience a few versus earlier

8. 22 They will look toward the earth and see only distress, darkness, and the gloom of affliction, and they will be driven into thick darkness. -- Isaiah 8:21-22 (CSB)

The Reason: War of the Heart

to know the reason, we can go back to the opening versus of Isaiah in speaking TO the people of Israel, God’s chosen.

16 “Wash yourselves. Cleanse yourselves.

Remove your evil deeds from my sight.

Stop doing evil.

17 Learn to do what is good.

Pursue justice.

Correct the oppressor.

Defend the rights of the fatherless.

Plead the widow’s cause. -- Isaiah 1:16-17 (CSB)

God’s people are being judged NOT for mismanagement or poor government and laws but for mistreatment of the poor and injustice.

Where did that come from? How did God’s chosen people end up like this?

21 They will wander through the land, dejected and hungry. When they are famished, they will become enraged, and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God. -- Isaiah 8:21 (CSB)

We are ruled, not just by a people, but by sin and rebellion. This is a picture of a life that wars against God and as a result creates misery in our culture.

Romans 1.21 For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened. -- Romans 1:21 (CSB)

The most simple explanation I can give is in raising your kids, fundamentally you are training the heart to respond to parents with love and gratitude. This is at the heart of the “kids should respect authority”. It’s in a way glorifying the parents with a thankful heart.

Parents know that if left to their own devices, to do what ‘they’ want they’ll continue want what they want and destroy themselves and eventually others around them.

Kids can’t wait very well - they are ruled by their desires. I like candy, I want more.

As we get older, this appears in a couple ways.

The first is that you don’t have to wait for what you want. Go get it. Do you. You can even christen with theology that God wants you to be happy.

The other is to start to see God and others through your pain of not getting what you want.

I want to feel accepted and belong, I’m waiting for a relationship, a marriage, for someone to take care of me but I feel rejected so whoever you think is responsible for providing that becomes the source of our anger - God, friends, parents.

I shared before how I realized this in my own life. My ability to “wait” correlated with my ability to fight the war in my heart to have what I wanted.

When I was single, career ambitions became the idol, then it shifted to relationships and marriage. In both cases, I found myself shaking my fist at God when what I “wanted” was taking too long, this was too hard.

So, how do we wait then as Christians, how do avoid shaking our fist at God?

The Rescue

This sets the context for the immense miracle God declares in Isaiah 9.4 , "For you [God] have shattered their [Israel's] oppressive yoke and the rod on their shoulders, the staff of their oppressor".

How? We know that wars on earth on not going away not because of bad politics but a bad heart.

A child.

6 For a child will be born for us,

a son will be given to us,

This points to one of the most, if not THE most popular passages in the Bible about Jesus’ birth.

10 But the angel said to them, “Don’t be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people: 11 Today in the city of David a Savior was born for you, who is the Messiah, the Lord....14 Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people he favors! Luke 2:10-12 (CSB)

So, this is “good news” a child is born who will put the government on HIS shoulders.

Stop for a second and think about that not from 30,000 feet and knowing the end of the story but in the moment. First, notice Isaiah emphasizes the government is being put on the shoulders of a child.

If you are waiting for the government to solve the problem or a powerful ruler this is not good news.

If we turn back to Luke 4, we see why this child who is born is good news.

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me

to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to set free the oppressed, -- Luke 4:18 (CSB)

that IS good news

Peace then is not the absence of war and oppression, it is the presence of Savior in the midst of our misery.

Peace did not come to Israel through social negotiation or political restructuring. Peace enters in the form of a weak, vulnerable child.

We need a savior who will rescue us from ourselves and our war with God and govern us with justice and mercy.

Isaiah puts an exclamation point on this future promise by recalling God's miraculous rescue of Israel from Midianite oppression. God used an Israelite, Gideon, the weakest family in the land, to capture two Midianite princes and free Israel.

You starting to see the picture Isaiah is laying out about how life in His Kingdom would work? Freedom from oppression and misery (peace) required two things: God's intervention through the most unlikely of people, a child, and the acknowledgement and existence of a war.

A war first and foremost between us and God, and then because of that with each other.

And look at how v. 6 compares or juxtaposes versus 4 and 5.

The government will be on the shoulders of a

WONDERFUL COUNSELOR

MIGHTY GOD

ETERNAL FATHER

PRINCE OF PEACE

This is the message of hope we get in Isaiah 53

Isaiah 53 (CSB)

He was despised and rejected by men,

a man of suffering who knew what sickness was...

he was despised, and we didn’t value him...

and he carried our pains;

but we in turn regarded him stricken,

struck down by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced because of our rebellion,

crushed because of our iniquities;

punishment for our peace was on him,

and we are healed by his wounds.

We all went astray like sheep;

we all have turned to our own way;

and the Lord has punished him

for the iniquity of us all.

This child was born, to be crushed, to rescue you from YOU and ME from ourselves - wandering sheep from the yoke of sin and misery.

This child, our Savior, knows the pain of living in the gap between what is and what is yet to come, to bear the weight of OUR enmity, our war with God, so that he could be WITH us in the battle to proclaim this as good news for US and for the world.

Application

For those wrestling with the question of whether God can be trusted, you’ve been waiting too long for a situation to change

For those who believe in Jesus but have lost sight of the realities of the war in your own heart.

For those who believe and have become overwhelmed by consequences of sin and misery around you.

Behold, a Savior WAS born, and is Available to you.

Don’t look to the world, your resume, your resources to rescue you.

Know that when you wander and go astray you can turn to a Savior who will:

give wisdom in the midst of confusion WONDERFUL COUNSELOR

give strength in the midst of your weakness MIGHTY GOD

provide and protect in the midst of rejection and hunger ETERNAL FATHER

reconcile you with God and others in the midst of brokenness PRINCE OF PEACE