Advent PEACE 2020

ROUGH DRAFT

Intro - Advent - Hope, Peace, Love, Joy, Christ (Light)

Isaiah 8:22 - 9:1-7

Dialog in the Dark - Several years back Atlanta offered an experience called “Dialogue in the Dark”.

An experience to understand what it was like to live life as a blind person.

Your group would be brought into an environment of total and complete darkness. You would individually be led by blind guides through different environments in a totally darkened exhibition, with sounds, wind, temperatures, smells, and textures that help you understand daily life of a blind person.

At the end you sit in complete darkness and discuss your experience of being blind. Enlightening experience

-If you or I lost our sight today. We would feel like out world was completely out of control.

-In an out of control world you don’t know what to do next. You don’t know what decision to make because your environment is not predictable.

-This unpredictable environment is exactly what the people of God had experienced in Isaiah.

NEW SCREEN SLIDE - The 2 Tribes of Israel Zebulun and Naphtali are very Northern Tribes.

They also has an addiction to following foreign gods.

God disciplined them for their spiritual adultery.

Because they were boarder states of Israel they were the first to be raided, attacked, or have immigrants. Through Israel’s history God sent destruction on these 2 Tribe/States. They had been wrecked by other nations.

Their future was not predictable. They never knew how long it would be before the next attack on them. Their resources had been stripped away time and time again.

There was ...

Darkness of the world, 8:22-9:1

How can we have peace in the darkness?

What is Peace? - A rest in your soul that God is in control and that God is at work.

-An inward trust & rest that out of God’s great love He is ultimately working for His glory and my good.

We can have Peace in the darkness because ...

-Darkness is part of how God prepares our heart for Him to work

Darkness brings us humility.

Darkness helps us come the place where we admit that only God can move the impossible.

Darkness is a tool that God uses to ready us for the light.

-How else can we have peace in darkness?

Darkness is always the backdrop of God’s redemptive story.

When there is darkness God is up to something.

-Hebrews were 400 years in slavery in Egypt before their freedom, the plagues, parting of the red sea and the Law was given.

-Darkness proceeded the light.

-Between the book of Malachi and Matthew - the Israelites had 400 years of silence. Then John the Baptist and Jesus entered the picture to prepare the way for Jesus.

-It was a dark spiritual time for Israel.

-God’s prophetic voice was silent. God was not speaking to the people.

-Darkness proceeded the light.

-Darkness was readying the people for redemption.

Application _______________________

-Has there been a time for you that there was darkness and difficulty, but God showed up and worked?

-Have you been in a financially dark time, and God showed up and provided?

-Have you been in a dark relational season with a parent, spouse or child and seen God bring a break through?

-Where you away from God for a season and God humbled you in your darkness and brought you to Him.

-Maybe you are in a dark spiritual season now and God is calling you to Him.

Darkness is always the backdrop of God’s redemptive story.

Transition - Next we see in our passage that ...

Darkness Pierced by Light - 9:2-3

Read - Isaiah 9:2-3

And John 1:1-5 reminds us who this light is.

John 1:1–5 ESV

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Transition - Have you ever heard the term “they scattered like cockroaches”

“Those darn kids were out cow-tipping, sneaking behind my old barn, when I turn on my flashlight, they scattered like cockroaches.”

When light shines on evil. Evil runs. Why, because evil is found out.

Evil fears the light.

Illustration - When you were a teenager and you got sneaky without your parents knowing it. Then the parents start to sense something is happening. They ask you about it. What is your first instinct? To lie.

Don’t say Tell the Truth. I know what you did!

Lying is how we run from the light.

Evil fears the light.

-When the light of God’s holiness shines into you life, it produces fear.

When even your smallest sin is compared to the pure holiness of God - you see that you are a vile wretch.

-You come to realize that there is no good in you & that your sin leaves you guilty and full of shame before a perfect God.

-Can I tell you. If you never fear God. If you are never distraught over your sin, you have some places to still experience spiritually.

Illustration - Have you ever gone to the top of Stone Mountain? You want to see the greatest view so you go closer to the edge.

-There is something that stops you from going too far. Yes, your mom. She grabs you by the collar and yanks you back.

-The fear that keeps you from the edge of Stone Mountain is a healthy fear.

Spiritually - When you look at your sin side by side the magnitude of God’s perfect purity and are distraught because you recognize your spiritual failure. This is a good fear.

If you have experienced this fear let me encourage you.

Fear of God is a good thing.

Being distraught over your sin is a good thing.

Fear and distress are good as long as they are not the final place a Christ Follower lands. x2

The light coming in your life and revealing your sin is a beautiful thing.

It means that the God of the universe is pursuing you out of His love for you.

-How can we have peace when the light comes?

Remember I Peter 2:9

1 Peter 2:9 ESV

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

It is in the light of God that God strips away the sin that holds you back.

-It is in the light of God that His mercies are new every morning.

-It is in the light of God that causes you to see and understand what salvation is and receive it.

Vs. 3 tells us that through the light God multiplied the nation.

Many more than Just the Jews come to God because God’s light (the Gospel of Jesus) has gone our all over the world.

The Map Slide

Remember these 2 rebellious Tribes - Naphtali and Zebulun (in the green)

-That area hundreds of years later becomes Galilee where Jesus - the light - does most of His ministry and most of His miracles. It is an area that is filled with not just Jews, but Gentiles.

That area that was in rebellion and ruin becomes a light - it becomes vs.2 “Galilee of the Nations”.

We have peace when the light comes because the the final purpose of God’s light is not to condemn. The final purpose of God’s light is to lead the broken to restoration.

Transition - The Darkness of the World, The Darkness pierced by light and the ...

Dominance of Christ Kingdom 9:4-5

Read verses 4-5

This is part of the “already” and “not yet” (use in slides)

Already because through the salvation of Christ who has come the 1st time

The not yet is the Dominance of Christ’s Kingdom that will come at His final return. Then we will see God’s full judgment and authority over the heavens and earth as He sets up His Final Kingdom on this earth.

What is the Dominance that happens now? (the already)

vs. 4 - The weight of the burden of sin that hangs on our shoulders like a yoke hangs across oxen has been broken.

-The staff and rod of the the slavedriver of sin that demands obedience. Has been shattered.

How shattered has it been?

Illustration - Judges 7 God calls the Judge Gideon to take 300 men and war against the Midianites.

When the Midianites set up camp the Bible describes their number as locusts in abundance and their camels could not be numbered like sand on the seashore.

-This was an impossible task. There was way too much strength.

-Gideon took his 300 measly men. Gave them all torches and horns. Sneaking up in the middle of the night they surrounded the valley of the camp. They shouted and blew their horns. The army awoke & by a miracle of God were thrown into confusion. In the dark the Midianites began attacking each other. This powerful army of the Midianites was destroyed by the hand of God.

-Midian represents the power of sin in your life. Overwhelming.

-Have you ever had a sin or a bad habit in your life that you thought you would never beat? It kept conquering you over and over again?

-This sin or bad habit is like a task master driving you. The sin is in control, not Christ.

-This passage says, verse 4.

For the Christ Follower, the strength of Sin has been broken.

To what extent is the victory?

Vs 5 That even the blooding garment and the boot that was used to step on you is burned up in the fire.

As a Christ follower, Jesus has broken the hold that sin has on your life.

You are not a slave to sin. You no longer have to obey it’s rule. When a Christ Follower sins, it is because he has willingly given himself over to it.

-You can have peace because God because God has dominated Satan and sin. Sin no longer has control over your life.

God uses conflict to destroy our enemies (outwardly and inwardly) to change our life.

God wants to change your life today.

-If you are a Christ follower, He wants you to let in more of His transformational light. The light that ultimately brings peace.

-If you do not know Jesus. If you have not trusted in Jesus sacrifice on the cross for your sins, the press on your heart that your experiencing right now is Jesus calling your to trust in His sacrifice on the Cross and be saved.

Review:

-So fare we have see the Darkness of the World, That Darkness has been Pierced by Light, The Dominance of God’s Kingdom, and we see the ...

Distinctiveness of the Savior 9:6-7

vs. 6, child is born, Word becomes flesh, the spiritual the supernatural takes on a body just like your and mine.

Jesus comes from heaven and confines himself in humility to a body where he must learn to speak 7 walk. God is dependent on others for life. He will suffer. He will have friends and relatives that die, he will get sick, have fever and headaches. Most of all He will be mocked & betrayed. Jesus will suffer from how He is treated.

-It is this body that will allow Him to be the sacrifice for sin.

vs. 6. Shows us the relationship. “A Son is given.”

God the Father gives His one and only Son. The most precious of relationships. The Father gave His Son knowing His Son would suffer, be tortured and die. The Father knew this would be the most painful moment the Godhead had ever suffered.

vs. 6. Wonderful (counselor)

This word “Wonderful” literally means Supernatural.

A counselor that has supernatural Wisdom.

This is the kind of wisdom that your Savior has.

Mighty (God) = literally means - might man or warrior, and speaks to the powerful acts he has done and that He will do.

-Mighty God tell us that Jesus is King and will come back as a warrior King.

-It is the might of God that empowers the believer to conquer sin, temptation, addictions & to live an obedient life.

-It is the might of God that has the power to deal with your sin and cast it as far as the east is from the west and remove it completely.

Father - points to His concern for the week & broken hearted, the care for His own, the discipline of his children, the loyal respect he expects from you.

The Child - the Son is also the Father? How?

Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.”

Prince of peace - no more war, well being, freedom from anxiety, relationally there is understanding and harmony,

Jesus uses His light to free you, give you Peace from your chaotic darkness.

Closing

In what area of life is God shining His darkness today?

In what area of life is God working to give you peace today?

Will you surrender this place of darkness to Him?

Will you walk in His light in a fresh way?