A Dark Season of the Soul

Jesus Brings Peace Into Our Darkest Seasons. Isaiah 9:1-6

Introduction For many people, the holidays are a time to look forward to. Even with the stresses of meal planning, travel, and gift-giving, many of us still find it to be a happy time of year. For many people, myself included, this is the most wonderful time of the year. But that isn’t always the case for everyone. For some people, the holidays can be a difficult and emotionally exhausting time.

A survey by the American Psychological Association found that 38% of people felt their stress levels dramatically increase during the holiday season. This stress can lead to an increased risk of illness, substance misuse, and higher rates of anxiety and depression. Feeling depressed during the holidays is a very real and difficult season for many people.

But we also know that feeling down and depressed isn't restricted to just this time of year. Many of us struggle with dark days. It's often referred to as the "Dark Night of the Soul."

The words  "Dark Night of the Soul" were first described by the 16th-century Spanish mystic and poet St. John of the Cross. The phrase “dark night of the soul” is often used informally to describe an extremely difficult and painful period in one's life, for example, after the death of a loved one, the break-up of a marriage, or the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness. Through painful and difficult times, we have all gone through dark nights of the soul. Whether you are struggling with your faith, recently lost a loved one, have friendship issues, or are going through a family issue, these can all be dilemmas that lead to a dark night of the soul.

Even the most faithful and strongest Christians in their faith have gone through a dark season. Throughout the Psalms, we see King David struggling with dark nights that cause him to lose sleep, not eat, and grow weak. We often fail to see him as the struggling writer of the majority of Psalms. He poured his heart out to God and petitioned for God to help him.

Without a doubt, David went through multiple dark nights of the soul throughout his life. Most of us can relate to the Psalms and the cry for help that David experiences. Going through dark nights of the soul is never pleasant. It's rather painful.

Going through these dark seasons can extend from a day to years. It can last for however long your period of pain lasts. Some can be in these dark nights for the majority of their lives. We can really feel like it's a dark season of the soul.

Let me say we're not talking about clinical depression. That is a mental health issue that needs seasoned and wise professionals. And again, there is no shame in getting that help. But all of us go through times of darkness. Times when our hearts and souls are heavy and down. That darkness is birthed because we know deep down that something has gone wrong in the world. You would have to be a blind fool to argue otherwise. Something is broken. What we see in the Bible is that what’s broken in us is a severed relationship with our creator God. That has led to a brokenness in all of us, and that has overflowed into a brokenness in the systems we have built so that we live in a completely broken and dark world.

Yet God, in the midst of our rebellion against him, in the middle of our accusation that we are smarter, more capable, and owe him nothing, responds not with destruction but actually intervenes on our behalf by bringing light into our darkness.

Isaiah 9:1–6 ESV

But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil. For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Scriptural Analysis Verses 1-2 Isaiah 8 ended in the darkness and gloom of corrupt and wicked people who were seeking occult wisdom from mediums and rejecting the wisdom of God. People were roaming around in angry despair and cursing God. The land of Zebulun and Naphtali, Galilee of the nations, is called a humbled land, a “people walking in darkness,” a people living without hope and without God in the world. Even back when all 12 tribes were there in Israel, Zebulun, and Naphtali were the northern part, sort of the outskirts of Israel.

The tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali were among those hardest hit by the Assyrian's campaign in 2 Kings. The Assyrians came to punish the northern kingdom of Israel for its participation in anti-Assyrian activities. The captured Israelites are plunged into despair and humiliation. These Jews had been deported and taken away, and now Galilee was a place that still had many Jews in it, but it also had people from a lot of other countries. It was a very multi-ethnic region. That’s the reason for this phrase, “Galilee of the nations.” In this prophecy, God offers them hope for the future. He speaks of a coming light who will illuminate those who are in distress and darkness: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned.”

Verses 3-5 Because of this light shining into darkness, the people respond with overpowering joy. The nation is enlarged, and the people rejoice as on a day when a great war has ended in total victory, with abundant plunder for everybody. The joy is likened to the day of Midian’s defeat, a famous story from the era of the judges, when Gideon defeated the overwhelmingly oppressive Midianites without a sword in his hand in Judges 6 and 7. At that time, Israel was powerless to save itself and was enslaved by the Midianites. God caused the terror of the Lord to come on them when the light from Gideon’s scant “army” of three hundred men ripped through the darkness. The evil forces of Midian turned on themselves and imploded, destroying one another. As a result, the “oppressive yoke and the rod on their shoulders, the staff of their oppressor” was shattered. All trampling boots and bloodied garments were destined for the fire. The burning of the boots and the clothes of enemy soldiers signified a victory when spoils were dedicated to God and enemy military equipment was set on fire.

Verse 6 Isaiah 9:6, one of the most famous passages in the entire book, answers these hopes and dreams of the world, for it predicts a perfect ruler who will reign forever and ever over a prosperous and peaceful realm. This is Jesus Christ, the perfect Ruler of the world. This one verse contains perfect proof of the deity of the Messiah, the doctrine of the incarnation.

The humanity of the Savior is established in the first words: “For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us.” The fact that he has come “for us” to benefit us is also established in these words. These words are echoed by the glorious angel who said to those shepherds outside Bethlehem, “Today, in the city of David, a Savior was born for you.”

On the shoulders of this child is laid the weight of the government of his people. He, at last, is the answer to the quest for a perfect and lasting government. His shoulders will bear that weight, and they will not buckle. As Jesus would say, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth” (Matt 28:18). Then we combine this human child with his divine nature with the series of four couplets, four pairs of two words linked, a mingling of supernatural and natural, of God and man.

Wonderful Counselor: the word translated as “wonderful” refers to the ability to work supernatural signs; the word counselor refers to the giving of wise advice, as advisors to the king would do.

Mighty God: These words show the infinite power of Jesus Christ, our Savior, who is an omnipotent warrior and who will someday return to earth to slay all his enemies with the sword coming out of his mouth.

Eternal Father: Again, a mingling of the natural with the supernatural. The title father is obviously an everyday word, but to couple it with the word eternal makes it supernatural—a father whose going forth is from eternity past and who will continue a father forever.

Prince of Peace: Jesus reigns as a prince, a common word for a government official, but he will be a ruler who brings peace and is characterized by peace. This is the very thing that most warlike conqueror kings can never bring about, but Jesus speaks peace to his disciples after his resurrection victory and previously had said, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Don’t let your heart be troubled or fearful.” Christians will see what God did in Jesus as guaranteeing this vision’s fulfillment, as Jesus gives eternal peace to God by his death on the cross. TODAY'S KEY TRUTH Jesus Brings Peace Into Our Darkest Seasons. Application There was a huge turn in Isaiah, chapter 9. For the first time in the prophetic literature, the promise of the Savior to come, we find out this is not just a mere man who’s going to show up and assume David’s throne and become an earthly king; this is God himself coming to fix what’s wrong, crush the Enemy, and bless all families on earth. We learn that God is going to solve this himself, God in the flesh, Immanuel.

To really know Galilee makes this scripture amazing. This would have been a big surprise to any of the readers because Isaiah’s readers would have thought, “If God is going to do something big, he would have started at divine headquarters, which is Jerusalem.” Galilee is in the north part of Israel, and when Israel is invaded, particularly in the Old Testament times, it’s almost always from the north because they’re hemmed in by mountains and sea. As invading armies would make their way to Jerusalem, they marched right through Galilee. This makes for a violent history in Galilee. Galilee had been the starting point at which invading forces would rape, pillage, and burn to the ground towns on their way to lay siege to Jerusalem. They would lay siege sometimes for years, and then, on their way back defeated, would once again burn Galilee to the ground and rape and pillage and steal and take whatever they wanted because the only thing more angry than an invading soldier is an unescorted retreating soldier who has been defeated.

This is Galilee’s history. What we find happening in this text is this dark spot has become ground zero for the Light of the World. This dark, cursed spot in Israel’s history becomes ground zero for the reversal of oppression, violence, slavery, and injustice. All of a sudden, God is saying, “A people walking in darkness have seen a great light.” These aren’t people who are just having a rough season. This just isn't one bad night. This is a place marked by centuries of death, centuries of violence, centuries of a lack of safety, and centuries of a lack of stability. Nobody is vacationing in Galilee by the sea. The people who live here are too poor to move anywhere else and have no other land. It is the darkest of places. Yet this becomes ground zero for the divine invasion.

It’s spectacular. From the dark spot on the map comes the wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, and prince of peace. The light that breaks the darkness of Galilee also breaks the darkness of the entire world.

Jesus was not born into a comfortable home or in a good place. He was born into a feed trough, a manger. He was not born into a middle-class, wealthy family. He was born into a poor family from a dark area of the world. He was not born surrounded by heads of state. He was surrounded by shepherds, who were at the bottom of the social totem pole. He was born to a pregnant, unwed teenage peasant girl who, because she got pregnant before she was married, would have been stigmatized the rest of her life by the pregnancy and her hometown.

In other words, Jesus had none of the markers the world looks for that tells the world he's important. He had none of the marks of greatness. He was a person of no consequence as far as the world was concerned. But in that obscurity, you had the most influential person in the history of the world. In that servility in that manger, you had the greatest kingliness possible. In that weakness, you had the greatest strength possible. In that darkness from Galilee, you have the brightest light being shone.

Jesus Brings Peace Into Our Darkest Seasons. Conclusion Dorothy Sayers was one of the first women who ever graduated from Oxford. She wrote detective novels, and she wasn’t a particularly beautiful woman. She wrote a series of detective novels featuring Lord Peter Wimsey as the aristocratic detective. They’re very well-known, and you may have heard of them. About halfway through the series, suddenly a woman character appears named Harriet Vane. The character Harriet Vane is one of the first women who ever graduated from Oxford. The character Harriet Vane writes detective novels, and she’s not a particularly beautiful woman. She and Peter, through several novels, get to know each other, fall in love, are happily married, and live happily ever after.

A lot of people say, “That’s interesting. That woman looks and seems an awful lot like Dorothy Sayers herself.” Some people think Sayers looked into the world she had created and saw one of her characters. He was lonely, and she pitied his loneliness. She fell in love with him, and she wrote herself into the world she had created and made him happy, and they lived happily ever after. You go, “Ah. What a sweet, romantic thing to do.”

The Bible goes one better. It says in cosmic reality, God looked into the world he had created and saw us sinking. He saw us flailing and miserable because we didn’t believe the truth about ourselves or him. We’re looking for love in all the wrong places and looking for freedom in all the wrong ways, and so he wrote himself into our stories. He saw that by our own choices, we had fallen into darkness. A darkness darker than even Galilee's. A darkness that would lead to this life and the next life being nothing but dark.

That’s what Christmas means.  He came to earth, became one of us, and gave himself away so that you, seeing him do that in love, can have the wound of your heart healed. You can give yourself to him and come to know the joy that only comes through glad surrender to the One who came to save us. We don’t have a God who’s strictly vengeful against those who are disobedient but a God who is working on behalf of those in rebellion to save and rescue us.

Jesus Brings Peace Into Our Darkest Seasons.

If you are suffering from a dark night of the soul at the present, know that your pain is completely valid. This is a dark and, at times, sad, lonely world. Also, know that there is nothing to be ashamed of. All Christians have gone through this challenge at least once in their life. The struggle of the dark night of the soul is difficult, yet God is always by our side. Rest in knowing He promises to always be with us, and He will never leave. God came to rescue you. He definitely will not abandon you now. God saw your darkness just as he saw the darkness of Galilee. Jesus came into this darkness for you. He brings the light of hope, forgiveness, grace, mercy, and love. From the darkest spot on the map comes the brightest light for your soul.

Jesus Brings Peace Into Our Darkest Seasons.

In Jesus, we see the evidence that the Mighty God really will bring into effect a wonderful plan of salvation. In Jesus, we see the Everlasting Father being a provider for the sake of his people’s spiritual and physical well-being. In Jesus, we see the wonderful counselor who did signs and wonders and gave divine wisdom through his teachings. In Jesus, we see the prince of peace who would declare, "My peace I give to you. The peace I give to you is greater than what the world falsely promises you. Let not your hearts be troubled. I love you." His peace transcends the darkness of this world and the darkness in your soul.

Jesus Brings Peace Into Our Darkest Seasons.