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“His Name Will Be Called, pt.1” •
12.15.13 • Calvary Christian Fellowship, Sunday Morning Service
Intro.
- When one comes to faith in Jesus Christ, a
light is turned on in their soul.
- In the proverbial rear view mirror of our
life is a fleeting darkness which we are moving ever away from, but which once
had been our present reality.
- As time increases that distance, the memory
of what that life was like diminishes, except for fleeting social gatherings
and media creations which expose us to the remaining reality.
- For those who engage those souls still
trapped in darkness, there is either a hope in God's ability to do anything or
a despair which wonders if any will respond to Him.
- God has been calling sinful man to faith in
the One who breaks the bonds of the curse of darkness since the opening
chapters of Genesis. He continues to call today.
- But as great as His offer is and as
magnificent as the benefit of knowing God through Christ is, the real issue at
hand remains, which is best summarized by the Apostle John in John 3:19.
•
John 3:19 : "And this is the condemnation, that the light
has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because
their deeds were evil."
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We live in a world of evil because men love evil rather than the light of God's
love.
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The story of Christmas, the first advent or coming of Christ to the Earth, is a
divine response to this very issue. Today, we begin a study in one of the most
familiar prophecies regarding Christ.
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What we are set to do today is to set the stage for the next two studies. Our
study today is more foundational and principial. We'll call it, "The Context Of Christmas."
Text
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Isaiah 9 gives us a tremendous
prophetic portrait of the Messiah, but first provides us with a sobering view
of what life was like in his days.
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Long after Joshua's passing, and long after the time of the Judges, Israel chose
to change from a theocracy to a monarchy. Consider that thought: We'll take
human rule over God's rule!
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After King Solomon's death, the Kingdom splintered into two factions. The two
southern tribes are known as Judah, while the 10 northern tribes retained the
national name Israel.
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Israel's practice of religion had been doomed from the very beginning when King
Jeroboam instituted the worship of the Golden Calf in the city of Dan.
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Their way of life steadily digressed into greater and greater evils until God
finally used the Assyrian Army to disperse them in 722 BC, about 20 years after
they had begun an occupation.
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This brings us to Isaiah's time, whose career had witnessed the heights of
prosperity in Uzziah's reign but had watched Judah fall into a horrific
spiritual slide during the reign of Ahaz.
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Turn in your Bibles to II Kings 16
to get a small snapshot synopsis of Ahaz' reign.
•
II Kings 16:1-4 : "In the seventeenth year of Pekah
the son of Remaliah, Ahaz the son of Jotham, king of Judah, began to reign. Ahaz was twenty years old when he
became king, and he reigned sixteen years in Jerusalem; and he did not do what
was right in the sight of the Lord his God, as his father David had done. But he walked in the way of the
kings of Israel; indeed he made his son pass through the fire, according to the
abominations of the nations whom the Lord had cast out from before the children of Israel. And he sacrificed and burned
incense on the high places, on the hills, and under every green tree." : Here's a 20 year old who at that young age lacks any semblance
of the fear of God in his life. And he's the King!
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Each King, when introduced, had this summary statement attached to them: They
did or did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord. In the case of Ahaz,
it is said that he did not do right!
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"Maybe he was a victim of his environment?" "Maybe he had a poor
example?" No, in fact, his Father David was the greatest King in Israel's
history!
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To make matters worse, Ahaz not only rejected David's godly example, but walked
in the idolatrous, foul ways of the Kings of Israel, an indictment of the
lowest order.
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This is akin to saying, "His Dad was Billy Graham, but he was a producer
of pornography!" That's about as different as you can get and as close to
what is being reported about Ahaz.
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How committed had he been? Ahaz worshipped Molech, the Canaanite god adopted by
the polygamous North, which demanded the offering of infant children as a sign
of worship.
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This was the type of dangerous, human sacrificing, cult like behavior that
prompted God to remove Canaanites from the land of Israel in the first place!
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In our vernacular, we might say, "He's setting Israel back 200 years
spiritually!"
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He sacrificed and burnt offerings out under every green tree. They knew what
this meant, though we do not. It sounds pretty innocuous, but involved things
that were forbidden by God.
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The King over God's people leading by example, worshipping false gods in every
vile way that the people of Canaan, the previous tenants of the land, had once
done!
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Among his final insults against the God of Israel, Ahaz had an altar
constructed that replaced the Altar that God had ordained to be the offering
place in Israel.
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You might be thinking, "Big deal! So he was a bad King." He was more
than a bad King. He was a very bad King at a very bad time!
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Judah, the southern Kingdom has just witnessed what the Assyrians had done
against the North.
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Israel's godlessness had opened the door to judgment. God did not defend
Israel, but delievered them over to the Assyrians!
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Now, Judah's sole defense against it's enemies, the Syrians, is Yahweh and
Judah's King decides that this is a good time to live like the world around
him, snubbing his nose at the Almighty!
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Isaiah sees the writing on the wall for Judah as well. If this was the way the
King had gone, what about the people of God? I won't ask you to turn there, but
Micah 7 contains a description.
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Judah was becoming a murderous society, filled with injustice and cruelty. Even
family bonds were unsafe as a place of refuge.
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If the King will not seek God and they will not seek God, where is their hope?
This is precisely Isaiah's sentiment at the end of chapter Isaiah 8.
• Isaiah
8:19, 20 : "And when they say to you,
'Seek those who are mediums and wizards, who whisper and mutter,' should not a
people seek their God? Should they seek the dead on behalf of the living? To
the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it
is because there is no light in them." : God's
people wanted counsel, but where did they look? Mediums, wizards, those who
were characterized by their whispering and muttering.
- A medium is a necromancer, one who proposes
to commune with the dead. When this word is translated in the LXX, it gives us
the word "ventriloquist."
- Essentially, a person who believed themselves
to be communing with the dead were themselves puppets for the activity of the
demonic realm!
- The wizard was similar, in that his awareness
of incantations brought wisdom, but from hell.
- Those who whisper or "peep" or
"chirp" seems to describe a sound made by a type of occult advocate.
The same is true of the one muttering, who growled for their answers.
- Isaiah is saying that these noises were made
to convey some spiritual state, but it was just noise inspired by Satan, given
in order to deceive God's people and distract them from God.
- Isaiah asks, "Should they not seek their
God!?" Shouldn't they repent and call upon the name of the Lord? Instead
they sought the dead for the living!
- God had given them a clear witness in the law
and the testimony, or as we would say, God's Word. Therein is the light
contained! There is your wisdom Israel!
- But they would not look. Why? Because there
was no light in them! Profound. They are in a beautiful land of God's choosing,
miraculously conveyed and amply supplied.
- They have history and a heritage, but their
love of darkness has crippled them and left them destitute spiritually! What is
the outcome for such people? Take a look at verse 21.
• Isaiah 8:21,
22 : "They will pass through it hard-pressed and hungry; and it shall
happen, when they are hungry, that they will be enraged and curse their king and
their God, and look upward. Then they will look to the earth, and see trouble and darkness,
gloom of anguish; and they will be driven into darkness." : They will pass through it. What is the "it?" Life.
Those who reject the light of God and refuse the counsel of His Word will pass
through life as will the rest of us.
- For the people listening at this time, they
had already seen this take place. The North was now living scattered from their
land in overwhelming difficulty, that's the word "hard pressed."
- The word "hungry" comes next. It's
strength zapping hunger. It's the kind of hunger that one experiences after
exerting themselves all day long.
- What an apt description. Apart from the life
of righteousness, given by the Lord Jesus to His people, each person is in a
state of difficulty and extreme hunger spiritually.
- In Israel's case, instead of repenting.
Instead of recognizing this as their spiritual condition and turning toward God
for help, they become enraged and cursed both their King and their God.
- "Enraged" speaks of a settled
postion of anger that has been worked up. As the person considered God, he kept
being angry at the thought of Him. Now, it's settled.
- When I don't want to face my sin, I will
blame Him and everyone else! Isaiah paints the picture of one who is angry at
God and then looks upward, as if to say, this anger is for you!
- Then they will look to the earth. What will
their perspective be towards those around them? They'll simply see trouble,
darkness and gloom of anguish!
- The phrase might sound a bit more like this:
They look to the earth and look! This is what they see: A woman has risen to
challenge my rights to my husband! That's the word here.
- The trouble, the distress, is similar to that
which a woman would feel from a rival. Instead of feeling confident rest, she
is working to keep her husband! Oh the trouble!
- They see trouble, darkness and gloom or
dimness of anguish. The word is related to pressure, which constrains them and
causes them hopelessness to their very being.
- To Israel and an unrepentant Judah, the
promise would be a banishment into darkness, a physical deportation. For those
who reject God's law and light, the same is true, but far worse.
- Instead of physical deportation, there awaits
a final spiritual loss of all privilege to eternal life, a foreiture of all of
God's good promise.
- Being driven speaks of a place that nobody
would go willingly, but must go, as the people of Israel did at the behest of
the Assyrian army. They were indeed driven from their land.
- All of this context reveals a dark, hopeless
world that the people of Israel faced. They knew a great past, but were
experiencing a difficult present and an uncertain future.
- Amazingly, it's in this context that God
gives His most wonderful news!
• Isaiah
9:1 : "Nevertheless the gloom will not be upon her who is distressed, as when at first He lightly esteemed
the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward more heavily oppressed her, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, In Galilee of the Gentiles." : Verse 1 in the NKJV
should make each of us wonder if there is any hope at all! A simple reading
gives us this: The gloom will not be upon her!
- There is a promise change of condition
coming. Going from distressed and
lightly esteemed and heavily oppressed to anything would be better! The NLT
reads this a bit more clearly for us.
• Isaiah
9:1 (NLT) : "Nevertheless,
that time of darkness and despair will not go on forever. The land of Zebulun
and Naphtali will be humbled, but there will be a time in the future when
Galilee of the Gentiles, which lies along the road that runs between the Jordan
and the sea, will be filled with glory." :
Geographically, this area in the North of Israel where Zebulun and Naphtali
settled was a dark place.
- It was one of the first places that the
Assyrians over took, given the water supply of the Galilee. Consequently, it
became a base of operations for the Assyrian army.
- One of the tactics of the Assyrians was to
settle people from other nations together in a new land. That's how the Galilee
became known as "Galilee of the Gentiles."
- The impression then was that this area was
lightly esteemed by God, a cast off, a lasting symbol of a part of the land
that was utterly forsaken by God Himself.
- It's there in that specific part of the land
that God was going to do something amazing.
• Isaiah 9:2 : "The
people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; Those
who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon
them a light has shined." : It's at this moment that
Isaiah looks into the future and speaks of this as though it was happening in
his time.
- He's honest about the darkness. He sees it,
but he also sees it as a fantastic backdrop to the announcement of a great
light!
- How wonderful is a little light to a dark
place? How illuminating is even a small light? What Isaiah see is a great,
intense floodlight that disperses the darkness!
- Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of
death. What a picture! The oppresive hand of captivity and the spiritual gloom
that follows a life without God is like living in the shadow of death!
- It feels claustrophobic and imposing, bearing
down on those who must share it's space.
- Imagine a creeping shadow which comes ever
nearer as the light fades. What happens when the light comes shining on? The
shadow of death disappears!
- Shadows and darkness cannot coexist with the
light, especially this light. Who was this light? None other than Jesus Christ
Himself, the Light of the World!
- Turn over to Matthew 4. Jesus has just been tempted in the wilderness and the
world has just taken another turn towards darkness. Note verse 12.
•
Matthew 4:12-17 : "Now when Jesus heard that John had
been put in prison, He departed to Galilee. And leaving Nazareth, He came and
dwelt in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the regions of Zebulun and
Naphtali, that it
might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying: 'The land of Zebulun and the land
of Naphtali, By the
way of the sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles: The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, And upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death Light has dawned.' From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'" : It was in one of these most dark places in Israel that Jesus came to minister and present Himself as the King of the Kingdom of Light from Isaiah.
Galilee of the Gentiles: The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, And upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death Light has dawned.' From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.'" : It was in one of these most dark places in Israel that Jesus came to minister and present Himself as the King of the Kingdom of Light from Isaiah.
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What is the message of the Kingdom? Repent! Repent from from your wickedness.
Repent from your self-righteousness, for the Kingdom of heaven is represented
by the King Himself!
Conclusion
- This is the essence of the Christmas story. God sees the darkness of
human depravity and the hopelessness that comes upon a life that is separated
from Him.
- In time, He sent His Prince, His Savior, His King
to occupy not in Jerusalem, but in the darkest place of the land, where the
enemy's power was greatest.
- Every year, there is a reminder that a person
need not live in darkness or be doomed to darkness forever, for the Light,
Jesus Christ, has come into this world and His light has shone!
- His light will shine, but will you walk
toward it? Don't let the opportunity pass you.
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