Living in the Light

 November 21 2021

Isaiah 9:1-7

         Our daughter, Sarah, has always been something of an overachiever. As a kid she was involved in so many activities and that hasn’t changed now that she’s an adult. This past while, Sarah, through her work, was responsible for one of her agency’s biggest events, the Reading Festival, where on one Saturday she and many volunteers gave away around a thousand books to children. Yet, at the same time she was also was involved in Little Theatre practicing for a musical revue where she sang like five different solos, some of which required dancing as well which meant a lot of hours of practicing. But that wasn’t all that was on her plate. She was also selected to be part of a leadership development group which had meetings she had to attend and on top of all of this she is also on the Tuscarawas Philharmonic board which is in the midst of choosing a new conductor which requires her to be part of the interviewing process. Oh, one more thing, because she was part of the Philharmonic board she felt that she should sing in the choir that is going to be part of their Christmas show sometime in December. Now, the song that they are going to sing is none other than Handel’s Messiah which after Sarah finished up her first practice told us is a really big performance. I guess she hadn’t really realized what she had gotten herself into which didn’t surprise her mother or me.

         In thinking about Handel’s Messiah that we undoubtedly will be hearing before long, I must confess that I don’t remember much about it. The one part of it that I think, like most people, that I am familiar with is the part where Handel has interwoven this prophecy of Isaiah that we read today into his music. I would imagine that it is Handel’s Messiah where most people have heard the words, “ Unto us a child is given, unto us a son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulders. His name shall be, Wonderful…Counselor…Almighty God… the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. It is a beautiful work which is much revered and enjoyed and has been so for decades.

         Now, even though there are many who have heard these words and sung along to them I have to wonder if people really understood just what the prophet Isaiah foretold so long ago. Like so many scriptures, the key to get a real appreciation of what is being said is to understand the context in which the text is situated and this is extremely true in the case of this well known scripture that we read this morning.When we begin to follow what Isaiah is telling us what is interesting is that the context alters how these words of Isaiah are translated so that what we find is that here is where we discover the very beginning of the hope of the Messiah. But before we rush into that new understanding of what Isaiah is communicating to us we first need to look at the situation out of which he is speaking because as we will find it is quite relevant to the times we live in today. 

         If we go back to the beginning of the seventh chapter of Isaiah, we find that the king, Ahaz , the king of Judaea, the southern kingdom, has received word that Syria, the country north of the northern country of Israel has joined forces with Israel and is on the way to invade Judaea. At the news of this invasion we are told that the heart of Ahaz and the heart of the people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind. What this points out is that the fear of the king quite naturally becomes the fear of the people that he rules over. This fear is what Isaiah comes to speak to the king about. Isaiah tells the king to, “be careful, be quiet, do not fear and do not let your heart be faint.” Isaiah’s reason for such optimism in the face of the oncoming invasion is that God is with them. Now, even to us this seems to be a little sentimental, doesn’t it? Yes, God is with us but what good is God’s presence when we face an invading army, or when we face an invading virus, or an invading culture war, what good is God in these situations like these? Sure, we understand that our God is a personal God, always with us, but can we actually believe that he is a God who is working out there in the real world where there are wars and evil and uncertainty? These are the very questions that Isaiah addresses because these are the very questions that were going through the minds of the king of Judaea and the people who were looking to him to protect them.

         You see, the people then were not much different then people are now because they, just like people now, when faced with a crisis refuse to turn to God and quite naturally turn to everything else to find a way out of their problem. This is why in the eighth chapter then that God tells Isaiah to not walk in the ways of of the people of Judaea. Listen to the words of God that are written in this eighth chapter of Isaiah and see if they don’t ring a bell, “Do not call conspiracy what these people call conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread.” Isn’t interesting that conspiracy theories have been around forever? You see, in uncertain times where people try and explain unpleasant and trying events the fear they feel will often lead people to become paranoid and conjure up all kinds of ideas as to just why things are the way that they are. This is what God tells Isaiah that he is to absolutely reject. You see, when people refuse to see the hand of God in the events of their times this only leads them to become more fearful and more unstable. This in turn leads people to believe that their lives are in the hands of unknown powers that cannot be known yet nonetheless are in some way controlling what is happening in their world.

         The answer to this belief that there are unknown powers at work in the world is to come back to what is known. God tells Isaiah, the the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, let him be your dread. In other words God is saying if you want to be fearful of something I will give you something to be fearful of. God tells us that we need to be in awe of his holiness, to be so overwhelmed by the wholly otherness of his presence and power that all other fears fade into the distant background. God calls us as his people to sanctify him, to magnify him, to make him great before the watching world, to show the world that our God is a God who is high and lifted up in strength and his unfailing character. When we fear everything but God then we witness that our God is helpless, indifferent and unimportant. Can you understand why God forbid Isaiah to walk in the way of the people whose lives had succumbed to fear and paranoia?

         Isaiah continues to tell us that God can either be for people a sanctuary or a stumbling block and if you think about it this is very true. When people are in awe of the holiness of God, when God is the focus of all that they are, then for them God will be their sanctuary, a place of refuge and peace. But for those who refuse to witness to the holiness of God, when through their words and actions they make God out to be insignificant and unimportant then for them God will be a stumbling block. You see, for those who make a place for God they will find that God makes a place for them. But for those who do not make a place for God in their world, for those who are unable to concede that God is at work within our world, they will end up tripping over him because he is there whether people believe this is true or whether they flat out refuse to do so. 

         Isaiah goes on to testify that he is one who was willing to sanctify God and find his sanctuary under the wings of God. Isaiah tells us that he was waiting on God to act and it was in God that he would find his hope. The people of Judaea though, would not follow in Isaiahs footsteps. For those who had no certainty in God, they turned to consulting the dead on behalf of the living. Can you begin to understand the level of absurdity that happens when in our fear we look to everything else but God? You see when people lose their faith in God they will turn to just about anything else to find answers to the dilemma that they find themselves in. Isaiah cries out, “To the teaching and the testimony”. This means that he is calling his people to remember the words of God and the mighty acts of God that recall the power of God, this is what they were to hold fast to. The word of God is to remind us that the hope of our world does not reside within the realm of our world but the answers for the way out come to us from the word from above. Isaiah tells his people if they do not speak according to this word, the word of God, then they will have no dawn. In other words, for them they will go from darkness into deeper darkness. They will pass through their land and be hungry because as Isaiah knew, we do not live by bread alone but we need the very word of God to live. Their lives then just go from bad to worse because in their hunger and their groping in the dark they turn to cursing their king and their God.

         This then is where we begin with our scripture for today. Do you see how the preceding scriptures explain the gloom and the darkness that only God can overcome? Isaiah speaks about the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the land of the northern kingdom that as we learned last week in our study of Amos, refused to be people of justice and righteousness so God had no choice but to allow them to go into exile at the hands of the Assyrians. These were as Isaiah tells us, the former days when God brought the nation of Israel into contempt. They, like the people of Judaea, refused to hear the word of God so for them there was no dawn. The light they turned away from was the presence of God and when they refused to listen to him and instead listened to everything else then they were in essence walking always further from the light. Yet even though they turned their back on God, God never gave up on his people. The coming of the Assyrian army into their land was a wake up call that was to be seen as the hand of God disciplining his wayward children so that they might once again turn back to the light of his presence. This is why Isaiah tells us that those who had walked in darkness had at last seen a great light.  When they at last realized that every human attempt to bring forth light had failed then God at last would shine the light of his presence. It is in this act of grace, the favor of God that welcomed home those who had traveled to a far country, this is where at last the people would find their joy. Their joy, Isaiah tells us, is like the great joy of the harvest, like the joy of the  receiving of unexpected abundant riches. This joy replaced the elemental fear that had once gripped their hearts and made their minds conjure up wild causes for their plight. At last, we are told that they no longer found themselves oppressed at the hands of their enemies but instead they found that God had secured their freedom. It is here that Isaiah gives us a clue to where his thinking is in all this. He writes that the rod of their oppressor will be broken as it was on the day of Midian. This phrase, “the day of Midian”, recalls the time of Gideon, one of the so called judges that God had raised up when the Midians had come to enslave God’s people. Isaiah is reminding us that God delivered his people then and if that is so then he can very well do so again. This recalling of the day of judges is also put there as a contrast to the days of the kings under which Isaiah lived, the judges who trusted God to deliver them from any foe instead of cowering in fear at the first sight of trouble.

         We need to hold on to the victory God has proven he can provide over those who seek to oppress his people as we go further into the thought of Isaiah because he tells us that one day that every boot of the warrior and every garment from the battlefield will be burned as fuel for the fire. You see, for Isaiah, it is not a leap to go from knowing that God is able to defeat any army to understanding then at last all armies will be done away with when God has at last come to rule over all. Yet, where Isaiah goes next is very unexpected because he states the words that we have so often heard as we prepare ourselves for the birth of Jesus, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given.” This is the one upon whose shoulders will be the government. He is the one, in other words, who will rule over the world where all wars have been done away with. Now, even though it is clear that this one who comes to rule is very much human he is as his name tells us, much more than human; he is in fact, divine as well. So, as we contemplate the true nature of the one who is coming to rule we cannot forget that he comes as human child, which tells us that he will be one who is vulnerable, one who is humble, and one who is dependent. So, he will come to us at the place where all our fears originate yet he will be one who does not let his fears be the source of violence against God and others but instead he will be the one who defeats violence forever.

         All of this must be understood as we at last come to this rather unusual name that Isaiah prophesies will be given to this child. If we go back to the original Hebrew we will find that there will be some differences from what we normally hear from this scripture. The first part of the name that we usually know as being Wonderful Counselor is actually better translated as being the Wonder of the Counselor. The Counselor is one who speaks wisdom and this child will be a source of astonishment and wonder for them. The next part of this child’s name is often heard to say Almighty God. Now, there the word translated as being “God in this instance can also be translated as being the word “Judge”. In this instance there is a lot of support for the use of the word Judge because when it is connected with the next phrase, the Everlasting Father, we get this sense that this child will one day be the Almighty Judge who stands in the presence of the Everlasting Father. This then is followed by the title, Prince of Peace. This too if we look at the Hebrew meanings can be understood as the one who makes peace prevail at last. Now, when we understand this child being the wonder of the one who speaks wisdom, we can follow this thought through the further prophesies of Isaiah who states in the forty-second chapter that God speaks, “Behold, my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights. This word, “delights” is similar in meaning to this idea of wonder, or being amazed or astonished at the one who is before God. 

         Then when we can understand that this child shall be the Almighty Judge before the Everlasting Father we can begin to see the roots of the vision of Daniel, who in the seventh chapter of his book, writes about the one like the Son of Man, who stands before the one Daniel calls the Ancient of Days which is very similar to the title of Everlasting Father. The Son of Man we are told will bring judgment against the nations and take away their dominion but he will also judge in favor of those who are the holy ones of the one Daniel calls the, Most High.  When we understand that this Son of Man is going to judge in favor of the holy ones of God, we begin to see how this rings with what Isaiah already knew that those who make holy the name of God will find God to be for them a holy sanctuary and they being in his holy presence must by extension, be holy as well. It is the judgment then, by the one who is human like us yet can stand in the presence of the Everlasting Father, his judgment is the source of the world’s salvation which is exactly what Isaiah is speaking to.  God is saving the world and he does so by judging those who oppose him to be evil. Those who are evil, who refuse the incoming kingdom of peace where violence has no place, these will find themselves forever in the darkness, the absence of the presence of God’s light. But those who make holy the Lord, who live knowing that his peace will prevail these will share his life in the kingdom of light. This is what I believe God revealed to Isaiah and this is what is revealed to us in Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the one by his rejection of violence and his willing to give of himself as our once for all sacrifice has perfected those who are made holy. Now, we can know God as our sanctuary, the place where we can draw forever near to him in full assurance of faith. The question we must ask ourselves then is this: As God’s holy people does the world see our faith in God? Does our faith in God  make God holy in the eyes of the world? May we glorify him always for giving us Jesus, the child Isaiah prophesied about and our king forever! Amen!