Sermon Tone Analysis

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: Isaiah 9:1-7

N:

Welcome

Good morning, and merry Christmas!

Welcome to December and to our Family Worship Service here at Eastern Hills.

That title—Family Worship—is intentional, and it has something of a double meaning.

First, it means that we see the church as a family, and so when we gather to worship, it’s “family” worship.

But also, we understand the importance of individual families worshiping together, for kids to see their parents worshiping God, for parents to teach their children the importance of joining with the church to worship our Lord, and for all of us to be able to do that together.

So we’re great with little ones in the room, even if they can be a little noisy at times, because they are learning what it means to be a part of the church, and we together have a responsibility to help raise them in the knowledge and love of Jesus Christ.

And if you’re joining us online, we’re glad that we have the technology to be able to do this.

Thanks for being here this morning digitally today.

However, for those in the church family locally who haven’t been able to join in person just yet for whatever reason, I do look forward to the day when we can worship together in person again.

Announcements

I wanted to take a second and thank everyone for their prayers and encouragement regarding my trip to Israel.

I wrote about it on the front page of the EHBC Life a couple of weeks ago.

I had planned going to the airport this afternoon to fly to New York and then on to Israel tomorrow, but God had other plans.

Due to the rise of the omicron variant of COVID-19, Israel decided last Sunday to close their borders to international travel for two weeks, so my trip has been at least postponed.

The organization that was traveling with, The Israel Collective, has very little information about next steps, because of course everything depends on what the nation of Israel does.

So while I don’t know what the plans are, I know that God does, and I’ll just follow His lead when the time comes.

Thanks again for your prayers, support, and encouragement.

Pastor Wayne has just a couple more Sundays with us after this morning.

We are excited for him as he steps through the door into retirement!

As I said in the letter that I sent out last month, we will have a send-off reception for Wayne and Joy in two weeks on Sunday, December 19, at 5:30 pm in Miller Hall.

We are also taking up a collection as a gift for them that we will present to them that night.

Please plan to be here that night to celebrate Wayne’s ministry and congratulate him on this next step in life.

LMCO: Goal $30K, given through last Sunday $11,810.

Prayerfully give to this offering.

Also the mailboxes in the foyer.

Opening & Scripture

This morning is our second week of a 5-sermon series for Christmas called “God With Us,” which comes from the prophesied name that Messiah would be called: Immanuel.

We’re looking at five prophecies about the Messiah from the book of Isaiah, with the last message in the series being planned for our Christmas Eve Service.

What we find in the book of Isaiah is what’s known as progressive revelation.

The word “progressive” can have a couple of meanings.

When I say “progressive revelation” for this series, I mean that throughout the book of Isaiah, we are given additional bits of the revelatory picture of Messiah’s coming.

Last week, we saw the actual “Immanuel” prophecy in Isaiah chapter 7, and this morning, we will move on to Isaiah 9 and add another piece to the picture of Messiah’s coming.

Let’s stand in honor of God’s Word as we read verses 1-7 of that chapter for our focal passage this morning:

PRAYER

Of all of the places in the Old Testament where we find messianic prophecy, this is probably my favorite passage.

There’s a hope that it brings that is actually timeless: it speaks to our contemporary setting much in the way that it did in the time that it was given.

Although the contexts are vastly different, the message of the messianic hope is the same.

The Immanuel prophecy in chapter 7 that we looked at last week ended on a really ominous note:

And this wasn’t a good thing.

In between last week’s focal passage and this week’s is the prophecy of the remainder of chapter 7: a prophecy of difficulty and desolation in Judah.

And then chapter 8 prophesied the invasion, predicting that the Northern Kingdom would be overrun and that the invasion would reach up to Judah’s “neck,” which it eventually did when Assyria invaded Judah under Sennacherib.

The prophecy there is dark.

Even in the coming oppression of Assyria, the people of Judah pursued spiritists and mediums for spiritual guidance, refusing to look to God for deliverance.

Despite that apostasy, God gives a message of the arrival of Messiah… a message of light and victory in a dark time of difficulty.

Now, before we dive into looking at what we see in this passage, I need to address one textual issue.

We need to remember that we are reading an English translation of ancient Hebrew here.

If you compare the English translations of the CSB, NLT, ESV, and NASB, you’ll find that they don’t always agree on the tense of the verbs here.

From verse 2 through the first part of verse 6, nearly all of the verbs are Hebrew perfect tense, which needs additional context to determine time frame: Just like our perfect tense verbs, perfect tense verbs in Hebrew can be past, present, future, or even ongoing.

The prophetic context that we see here has its basis in the assurance of the action of God.

However, commentators and translators differ a little about how they think these verbs should be translated.

Some commentators say that they should all be future tense: that all of them “will be,” which is what the NASB does.

Some say that they should be present tense: that there is such assurance in what God is going to do that we can speak of it as being done, especially in light of the full revelation of Scripture, so they say “have seen” (verse 2), “have enlarged” and “have rejoiced” (verse 3), which is what the NKJV does.

As long as we look at it in that light, neither translation is “incorrect.”

The CSB and ESV translators chose to mix it up: to use the present tense through verse 4, and then the future in verses 5-6.

The NLT does the opposite: it uses the future through verse 5, and then switches to confident present tense for the first part of verse 6.

Again, neither is wrong.

They are saying the same thing: that we can have such complete confidence in what God is saying that He will do that we can speak of it as either that it WILL occur, or as if it has ALREADY occurred.

God did say of Himself later in Isaiah:

I’m bringing this up for two reasons.

First: many of us are using various translations this morning.

I didn’t want that to be a distraction for you as you read and listen.

Second: I wanted to make sure that you understand that, just like I said at the beginning of my message, this prophecy is timeless.

It points to a particular event in history: the coming of the Messiah, but the message of His coming has meaning for all people from the time the prophecy was given through today.

We’ll consider both perspectives in each of our points this morning.

1) Messiah’s Arrival as Light

The message that Judah had been given since the Immanuel prophecy in chapter 7 was a difficult one to receive.

Yes, there was a announcement made of God’s coming to be with us, but as I mentioned last week, that prophecy was likely not a positive message for Judah’s king, Ahaz.

But the message in chapter 9 is different: it’s full of hope.

The Hebrew tradition actually puts verse 1 of chapter 9 with the end of chapter 8, but especially because of the connection between the gloom of verse 1 when coupled with the darkness in verse 2, along with the hope of honor in the future coupled with the “great light” in verse 2, I think that it goes well as an introduction to the poetry we find in verses 2-7.

Zebulun and Naphtali were the northernmost tribes of Israel, and they would have been the first to suffer when an invading army came from the north, such as what happened with Assyria.

During the Syro-Ephraimite conflict, which we talked about last week, when Judah called on help from Assyria, Assyria provided that help in the form of invading northern Israel, particularly Naphtali:

But this is not how the message will end.

Instead, God says that he would bring honor to what would be the least likely of places in Israel: by the way of the sea (of Galilee, most likely), from the land east of the Jordan, out of the land of the Gentiles (“of the nations”).

So what would come from that far northern part of Israel that would honor it so?

A light.

A great light.

A light that would dawn on the land of darkness.

Darkness is a pretty big image in Scripture.

It normally denotes things like despair, fear, judgment, and hopelessness.

Basically, as the opposite of light, darkness in Scripture is usually a place that is away from the presence of God.

Certainly, the time that Judah found herself in, with the impending invasion of the Assyrians because of the apostasy that her king had led her into, would count as a time of darkness.

Fast forward about 250 years.

After the message of the prophet Malachi in the early 400’s BC, the voice of God through the prophets falls silent.

He stopped speaking directly to His people through prophecy, and the promise from Isaiah 9 hadn’t come true yet.

Where is the light?

Where is the Savior?

The nation of Israel is plunged into spiritual darkness while they wait for the promise to be fulfilled.

This passage in Isaiah is clearly a message about the Messiah, as it is used as a reference to Jesus by Matthew in chapter 4 of his Gospel:

With the coming of Jesus, The silence is over, and the light has dawned.

A modern Christmas song, “When I Think Upon Christmas” by Hillsong Worship, captures the message of the wonderful light of Christ that dispels the darkness:

For the joy of the world, He was born

Bringing peace to us all through the gift of the Son

Now the darkest of ages are done

For the Saviour of heaven has come.

— “When I Think Upon Christmas” by Hillsong Worship, Aodhan King, Renee Sieff, Benjamin Tan

The darkest of ages—the over 400 year silence of the voice of God—is broken when God the Son takes on flesh and comes as a baby: Immanuel, God with us.