Out of the Darkness - Isaiah 9:2; 6-7

INTRODUCTION:

This morning we're kicking off a new series for Advent. I love this time of year for so many reasons.

One of the reasons we do an Advent season every year is because we need to be reminded on an ongoing basis of the truths behind Advent.

The word advent just means a "coming." The first advent was the coming of Jesus in a manger, born in Bethlehem and surrounded by the shepherds.

But in celebrating advent, we're not just celebrating his first coming 2,000 years ago. We're anticipating the fulfillment of another promise which is his eminent return.

The way in which God's people waited on the fulfillment of God's promise in the first advent is instructive for us as we await the second.

This morning we're going to draw our attention to a famous Christmas passage. Like most Christmas passages, sentimentality has clouded the original meaning.

When Christmas hits the calendar and the famous carols start hitting the department stores then a warm spirited sentimentality begins to set in and we get in the "Christmas spirit."

I'm not saying that's a bad thing. It's a good thing. The emphasis on family and giving and peace on earth good will towards men - those are all great.

But in our tendency to do that we sometimes miss the original context of the original Christmas promise.

Before Christmas was a national holiday, commercialized as it has become, it was a guarantee and a promise to a group of people suffering in a world full of darkness.

The passage that best describes that darkness can be found in Isaiah 8-9. We're going to read one section in chapter nine but do some background work in chapter 8.

Isaiah 9:2; 6

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... 6 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.

Of the many Christmas truths we tend to forget is that we live in a world of great darkness.

Christmas takes place during one of the darkest times of the year. Like literally. It gets darker earlier and stays darker longer than at any other point on the calendar.

This is especially true in the Mediterranean world and Europe (where the origins of Christmas as a holiday first manifested themselves) But we feel it in the USA just as well.

The reason we focus so much on the light is because we're surrounded by such great darkness. And this isn't just true as it pertains to the rotation and distance of the sun. It's true in a deeper sense as well.

OUT OF THE DARKNESS:

When the Bible talks about the world being in darkness it carries two basic ideas: one it the idea of moral evil and the other is the idea of spiritual ignorance.

You don't have to look far to see the moral evil of the world today. It looks similar to the moral evil of Isaiah's day.

In the culture to which Isaiah wrote they worshipped a God named Molech and would sacrifice children through fire as an offering to him. Today we have things like abortion and sex trafficking and other sorts of evil.

Violence, injustice, abuse of power, homelessness, refugees fleeing oppression, families ripped apart, and bottomless grief as a result. It was happening 800 years before the birth of Jesus, 800 after and even so today.

But it wasn't just moral evil that made for a world of darkness. It was a lack of intellectual and spiritual resources to deal with that evil.

Their culture was plagued by ignorance. A constant quest for knowledge but never arriving at any kind of practical truth.

If you skip back to Isaiah 8 you see this laid out in vivid terms.

In verses 19–20 we see people consulting mediums and magicians instead of God.

Then the chapter ends: “Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land.… They will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom” (verses 21–22).

What is going on here? They are “looking toward the earth” and to human resources to fix their world.

They are looking to their experts, to the mystics, to the scholars, for solutions. Yes, they say, we are in darkness, but we can overcome it ourselves.

People make the same claim today. Some look more to the state, some to politicians, some to the market, some to technology. Yet they share the identical assumption.

Things are dark but we believe we can end that darkness with our intellect and innovation. We can find the solution to our problems ourselves. We don't need God. God has no answers. That was the mindset of this culture and the cause of their darkness.

The mistake they made then is the same mistake we make today. That's why I want us to study this familiar Christmas text so we can see the similarities.

The people to whom Isaiah was writing and we ourselves in this day are facing what we might call a national crisis. 2020 has served as a pivot point for us as a culture.

Then as now, they had been economically devastated. There was a lot of uncertainty about their future as a nation and a people.

Things were coming apart at the seams in various realms. Their politics were a mess. Their society was a mess. Their spiritual vitality had waned and they were growing more and more idolatrous by the day.

They were fearful of their safety and were surrounded by hostile enemies from the north and the south. They were looking for something to hold onto and it was into that darkness that God makes this promise of Christmas.

Maybe you feel a little bit like Isaiah's original audience. Everything you once thought was certain is now uncertain. What do you do in that moment?

You feel like the ground is shifting underneath you. You feel like there's no way to put things back together the way the need to be. You're more aware now than you've ever been of how helpless you really are.

All of our prosperity and state of the art medical system and resilient economy are all being tested right now. Nobody knows what the future holds. Everything is shaky.

Maybe your own job is up in the air. Maybe your own marriage feels like it's crumbling. Your own family falling apart. Maybe this is the first Christmas where you really feel all alone.

What does God have to say to you? How might Isaiah's prophecy speak to our own response to the darkness we are facing this advent?

The answer is we need to wake up. We need to wake up to the fact that we cannot save ourselves. Our only hope is to wait on and receive the salvation that comes from the Lord.

That's the message of Advent. We cannot save ourselves. And the belief that we can save ourselves will only result in more brokenness and more darkness. The first lesson we need to be reminded of this Advent season is we cannot do this on our own.

In a way we need this sobering reminder because the sentimental nature of Christmas tends to point us in the opposite direction. Cheer up. The world is going to be a better place. We can do this. Lets unite and make the world a better place. Christmas responds - nope I wouldn't go that route.

Christmas rejects the sentimental optimists and the dystopian pessimists. It is a sober and clear headed response to reality. Things really are dark. We cannot save ourselves. But a light has dawned that can save us all if we will receive it.

THE RIGHT KIND OF FEAR:

To unpack this idea I want to show you from Isaiah's prophecy two mistakes that God's people made then that kept them from being able to receive the light.

The people of Isaiah's day made two fundamental mistakes: they had a misplaced fear and a misplaced faith.

They had a fear of what was fickle and feeble. They took true and concerning problems but they magnified them beyond their proper scope. They blew things out of proportion you might say.

The second thing they did is they trusted what was futile and false. The took solutions that were good for certain problems and magnified them beyond their proper use. They blew those things out of proportion as well.

So they took some concerning things and made them WAY MORE concerning than what they actually were and in response to that elevated some positive solutions to try and deliver a kind of salvation they could never provide.

Both of these decisions ended up undermining a true and proper fear of the Lord and a true and proper confidence in Him and his word to deliver from evil and save from destruction.

We see the Lord offer up a warning and encouragement to Isaiah to NOT walk in the way of his people in Isaiah 8:11. They were to fear the LORD and not their PROBLEMS.

Isaiah 8:11-14

For this is what the Lord said to me with great power, to keep me from going the way of this people: 12 Do not call everything a conspiracy that these people say is a conspiracy. Do not fear what they fear; do not be terrified. 13 You are to regard only the Lord of Armies as holy. Only he should be feared; only he should be held in awe. 14 He will be a sanctuary; but for the two houses of Israel, he will be a stone to stumble over and a rock to trip over, and a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

What are these conspiracies?

We can't know for certain but most scholars think it's in reference to an invading army from the Assyrians and some secret coalition between them an other enemy countries to try and take them out.

Less important than the particulars of the conspiracy was the tendency for God's people to leave out a fear or confidence in the Lord to deliver them from harm. Basically they were assessing their problems and finding solutions as if God couldn't not be trusted.

God's people were living as if God was not sovereign nor sympathetic to their needs. If you God is big then your problems will be small. If your God is small then your problems will be big.

Israel had entered a season of spiritual apathy and indifference and as a result they had lost their confidence in the Lord. They had an outsized fear of people and people problems because they had an undersized fear and confidence in the Lord.

I think maybe some of us have made the same mistake in our day and age. We've placed an outsized fear in some legitimate problems but we've elevated those problems beyond their proper scope.

We live in fear. We develop conspiracy theories about this thing or the other thing (political, cultural, religious, etc) and we act as though if those conspiracies have their intended effect then not even God himself can save us from the fall out.

When God's people fall into this trap it leads to one of two extremes: triumphalism or defeatism. God's people begin to put their trust in man instead of the Lord.

When things go wrong they lose their faith and develop a crippling paranoia. When things go right they lose their humility and develop such pride and arrogance it blinds them to the truth.

So the Lord is warning us - don't be like these people. Don't allow failure and social problems to consume you. Don't allow success and cultural wins to mislead you. There is a temptation to get so caught up in the culture war that you miss the main point of living.

The same is true for the church today. We are looking at some serious problems but we must never forget who has the whole world in his hands. Just because we feel like some "opposition party" is in control of certain outcomes doesn't mean that the Lord is no longer on the throne.

We won't solve the world's problems by simply putting together a political or cultural majority. Where's the humility in that? Where's the faith in God? Be careful of the movements that say "unless you think like we thing and do what we do then you don't understand what God is about."

Don't live your life in fear of what others fear. Instead, "regard only the LORD of Armies as holy. Only HE should be feared. only HE should be held in awe." (Verse 13)

This is a common theme in Scripture. We must not take the name of the Lord our God in vain. To NOT set him apart as wholly other, as uniquely capable, as the ONLY hope is to make him common. It's to make his name vain.

That's why the people of God in the OT and the church of God in the NT are constantly reminded "Sanctify the Lord in your hearts as holy." Always be ready to give an answer for the reason for the hope that is within you.

My hope is not in man or the solutions of man. My fear is not in man or the problems of man. My hope is the LORD. My Fear is in the LORD.

QUESTION: Is the Lord your sanctuary or is he a stumbling block? He's one or the other. If he's not a sanctuary in whom you're resting then he's a block over which you'll stumble.

The thing about the Lord is it doesn't matter how hard you try and ignore him/marginalize him/shut him out of your life. He never goes away.

You can't get him out of your life. He's God. You don't get to tell him what to do or how to behave. You'll either embrace him as your sanctuary or you'll trip over him and be shattered by the stone of stumbling.

The one option you do not get is to remove him. You can't remove him from your life. You can't pretend as though he has no bearing on your problems or lifestyle decisions. Trust him and he becomes your safe place. Reject him and you invite your own judgment.

Isaiah 8:15-18

Many will stumble over these; they will fall and be broken; they will be snared and captured. 16 Bind up the testimony. Seal up the instruction among my disciples. 17 I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob. I will wait for him. 18Here I am with the children the Lord has given me to be signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of Armies who dwells on Mount Zion."

Which one will you choose? Will you fear what is fickle and feeble. Will you trust what is futile and false? Or will you trust in the Lord? Will you bind up the testimony? Will you hide his word in your heart and let it guide your life?

A MISPLACED FAITH:

Not only did the people of Israel have a misplaced fear. They also had a misplaced faith. The closing verse of Isaiah 8 show the people in whom they were placing their confidence.

Isaiah 8:19-22

"When they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the spiritists who chirp and mutter,” shouldn’t a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? 20Go to God’s instruction and testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, there will be no dawn for them. 21They 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. 22They will look toward the earth and see only distress, darkness, and the gloom of affliction, and they will be driven into thick darkness.

Here you see a description of what happens when God's people put their faith in something and someone other than the Lord.

They exchanged the truth of God word for dark arts and mediums and all sorts of other nonsense.

You see this in culture when they go godless. There's a rise in astrology, terot cads, gurus, tea leaves, demonic stuff, worship of nature, seances, getting word back from the dead, etc.

God's people had shifted from trusting in the Lord and the promises of his word to trusting in these futile and false saviors. False revelation.

They thought if we could get word from this spirit or that spirit then we could know the future and then we can be confident in our victory. And the Lord just laughs and says, "why would you be so foolish to put your hope in those things?"

They were looking for security in all the wrong places. They were looking for confidence in all the wrong places. As a result, they were inviting the judgment of God into their life. They were inviting God's judgment onto their nation.

In all of this the Lord is STRONGLY warning Isaiah from becoming like everybody else in his culture. These were GOD'S PEOPLE who had an outsized fear of the world and undersized faith in God.

And we need to hear those words this morning. We need to WAKE UP! We need to INCREASE our faith in the Lord and DECREASE our fear of man and the problems of this world.

Instead of trusting in the false promises of these pseudo saviors and false guides we need to return back to the word of the Lord and confidence in his promises.

When people are BIG and GOD is small it will invite the Lord's judgment into our life because we'll be wandering around in darkness.

But when God is big and people are small then we will be turning away from the darkness and towards the light. This is exactly where Isaiah takes his prophecy in chapter 9.

A LIGHT HAS DAWNED:

From the contrast of a world full of people - even religious people - who were feeling their way forward in darkness - comes the promise of God to send down the light through the birth of a child.

Isaiah 9:1-2

1Nevertheless, the gloom;p-\ 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. 2The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; a light has dawned on those living in the land of darkness.

There could not be a greater contrast between the darkness derived from spiritual apostasy and the comfort of God's light when he fulfills his promise.

When all human attempts at order and security and justice had failed, God himself intervenes.

This isn't because the people have finally found the magic key to power. It's because God is a good God. he's discloses himself and rescues his people even though they don't deserve it and haven't earned it.

Notice some things about the dawning of this light that would've been curious for the original readers of Isaiah's day.

First, the light dawns where the darkness and confusion is most severe and must unlikely to happen. Zebulun and Naphtali.

Some refer to this as "Galilee of the Gentiles. This was a geographical region that was furthermost from civilized and properly spiritualized society. It was the country. The wild wild west.

This was the place where there was the greatest amount of intermarriage between Jews and Gentiles. The greatest amount of confusion. When foreign armies invaded and conquered they conquered THIS land FIRST.

Confusion of the races. Confusion of religion. A place of compromise and impurity. But this is exactly where Jesus announces himself as the light that penetrates the darkness.

Into this most unlikely place Jesus announces himself as that promised child who would bear the weight of the world's problems and deliver God's people.

(Matthew 4:12-17)

When he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee. 13He left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali. 14This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: 15Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, along the road by the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. 16The people who live in darkness have seen a great light, and for those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned. 17From then on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

The light dawned in the most unlikely place. At the darkest moment in the darkest place at the most unlikely of times. This is how the Lord works. This is a reminder we need during season of Advent waiting like we're in today.

The second thing we see about this light is it produces and irreversible and indestructible level of joy.

Isaiah 9:3-4

3You 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. 4For 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.

Isaiah is digging around for metaphors to try and describe this joy. I

t's like the joy of harvest time after a season of patiently waiting for the crop to come in.

It's like the end of a long war in which you experienced so much loss but you finally get to reap the reward of victory.

Instead of loss there is gain. Instead of being plundered you now take of the plunder.

Isaiah then references Midian's defeat. The yoke of Midian was destroyed by Gideon and his 300 soldiers.

It was impossible odds. No way it could happen outside of a miracle of God (which it was). 300 against tens of thousands. How? What a victory.

This child who becomes king brings a final end to all war, all struggle, all loss, all striving, all oppression.

5For every trampling boot of battle and the bloodied garments of war will be burned as fuel for the fire.

The last thing we see about this light is it begins with the birth of a child, who is given as a Son and will one day reign eternally as the true Davidic King.

6For 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. 7The 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.

This light didn't suddenly descend in a sheet of brilliant light, riding on a charger, one of the heavenly incredibles going to solve all problems through a demonstration of supernatural power.

He comes as a child. A baby. Vulnerable. He's setting us up for the picture of a servant king in Isaiah 53 who suffers for God's people. Who bears the weight of the penalty for their sin and rebellion and spiritual apostasy.

It's the paradox of how God works. He is simultaneously a newborn baby and mighty God at the same time.

IN THE MEANTIME:

So before we conclude our time let me offer up one more similarity between the people of Isaiah's day and the situation we find ourselves in this morning.

We, like them, find ourselves in a season of waiting. They were waiting for the first advent of this promised child turned king. We are waiting for his second advent.

Christ came as predicted, 750 years later, but the consummation of those predicted blessings is only here in measure. We await his second coming to seal the deal.

He has not yet made all wars to cease. It is not yet that we can burn the boots of battle and experience the joy of reaping our bounty. We're in the middle. It's an already not yet kind of Kingdom we're living in.

As we wait, let us do so as people who have sanctified the Lord as HOLY in our hearts. Who have made the Lord OUR SANCTUARY and not a block of stumbling.

Guard yourselves from the temptation of misplaced fear and misguided faith. Remember that WE TOO live in a world of darkness. A world of great moral evil and a world of great spiritual ignorance.

Why would we join in on fruitless enterprises and conspiracies that place an unreasonable fear in our hearts and encourage an unreasonable faith in futile saviors?

We should wait in a way that trusts in the Lord and has confidence in his Word. We do not fear what the culture fears. We do not find false security in the whispered voices of the occult or complex conspiracy theories.

As we wait, let us do so remembering that God's timing is on a far larger scale than ours.

Isaiah's prophecy was written over 700 years before the fulfillment of the promise he wrote about. What happens in the meantime?

The Assyrian conspiracy they were worried about actually takes place and they end up being conquered by their enemies. In 535 BC the southern exile actually takes place. Their worst fears actually came true.

But about 535 BC they start to come back. They rebuild the temple in 520 or so BC. The wall gets rebuilt by 484 BC or so. And even then the people are under oppresive regimes one after another until finally the Maccabean revolt 200 years BCE.

7 centuries go by between this prophecy and the coming of Jesus. So when the Bible tells us to TRUST IN GOD because HE WILL KEEP HIS PROMISE it doesn't mean the fulfillment will come in our lifetime.

To trust God means to trust him even when he doesn't operate on our timeline. It means you can have confidence in him through the nitty gritty of life even as it's not working out the way you think it should in the here and now. Keep the long game in mind.

The part you and I play may be a time of suffering or blessing, it may be a time of revival or spiritual apostasy, it may be a time of prosperity or of poverty. We don't get to choose. We are called to TRUST him in each and every season.

The last thing, as we wait, let us do so with knowledge that the light that was born into the world now lives inside of us through the Holy Spirit.

RIGHT NOW you can know and experience Jesus as the wonderful counselor. HIs wisdom and counsel are available to you even now through the Holy Spirit.

RIGHT NOW you can experience him as the MIGHTY GOD who is able to save you from the sin and brokenness in your life.

RIGHT NOW you can relate to him as a always available always dependable father. He will never cast you out. he will not ever leave you as an orphan. You are dearly loved and cared for. Everybody else maybe let you down but he never will.

RIGHT NOW you can experience him as the prince of peace. The one who will give you a peace that surpasses human understanding. You're problems may not cease to exist but the anxiety and stress around them can be removed by the Lord.

Take his yoke upon you. Repent and believe for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Let him bear the weight of the world for you as we respond to God's Word together.