INTRODUCTION
The passage just read is probably one of my favorite Christmas passages from one of my favorite books of the Bible. In fact, it is one of the reasons Isaiah has sometimes been called the “fifth gospel”, because between this, 7:14, 11:1-9, and chapter 53, we have an almost complete account of Jesus’ birth, life, death, and the promise of his eternal kingdom. But what many people don’t know is that this was written at one of the darkest points in Israel’s history.
A new and ruthless power, called Assyria, was on the rise in the North. It had already annexed Zebulun, Naphtali, and Galilee and the prophet Isaiah had been told by God that this was only a foretaste of what was to come.(1) After centuries of shifting between obedience and disobedience, justice and oppression, faithful service and faithless idolatry, judgment would soon be visited on the Northern ten tribes of Israel and they would be completely destroyed, with only a remnant remaining that would be carted off to far-flung places in the empire, never to be heard from again.
But despite Isaiah’s warnings, the people would not listen. They stumbled around in the dark like blind people, with no hope of finding God without his help. In fact, they would become so desperate that they would seek out mediums and people who claimed they could raise and speak to the dead, for answers; but they wouldn’t turn to their own God for help. We can see some parallels to our culture today.
We are living in an increasingly secularized culture where many people have either been burned by their experiences with people who claimed to know God, or who rejected the idea of God because they were never given a good reason to believe in Him, or because they felt God demanded more than they could give, or more and more, people who weren’t even raised with an idea of God to reject. But I’ve noticed, that even among my friends and family who have walked away from God, they are still searching for *something*… a deeper truth they can’t find, a reason for why things the way they are, for why they are even here, and a hope for the future. Even people who have never seen the light instinctively long for it, even if they can’t exactly define what they are looking for.
Often, in confusion and darkness, they reach out for whatever they can grasp. There’s a reason spiritualist philosophies, New Age books, and even goofy ghost-hunting shows are so popular, even as organized religion wanes in relevance and importance in the cultural sphere. Our society may think it is becoming more rational and has less need for spiritual truths and concepts, but it’s deluding itself. The truth and light of the gospel is just as relevant as it’s ever been.
A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS
But the beautiful thing about the God we serve is that he isn’t content to contain darkness, to just keep it at bay a little while. No, he pierces the heart of it. It reminds me of the times I’ve gone camping. I love the outdoors and one of my favorite ways to recharge is to head into the mountains or woods and just enjoy the beauty of God’s creation. But, oddly enough, one of my favorite moments is that moment just before dawn, when the air is cold and still, and the sky is so black that you can’t see barely a foot in front of your face. But soon enough, the dawn breaks and the world is transformed. The shadows retreat and all the monsters your imagination could conjure up lurking in the shadows retreat with them.
In Isaiah 9, we find a promise that God would pierce the darkness which had covered the land and the people; and this is later fulfilled by Jesus in Mat. 4:15-16, when he begins his ministry in the same “Galilee of the Gentiles” which the Assyrians had first invaded over 700 years before. What better place to declare freedom for the captives than the very spot where they were first enslaved?
This freedom came from an anointed king, but not the type of king anyone expected. After all, when you think of a good king or a strong leader, who do you think of? It’s natural to think of someone who is strong and who can project their strength through force if necessary. That’s how the ancients thought. When the Israelites begged Samuel for a king like those of their neighbors, despite Samuel’s warnings that kings bring oppression and suffering on their people,(2) the type of ideal king they were hoping for were exactly the types of kings the Assyrians and the Egyptians tried to be. In fact, if you go to Egypt or the Ancient Near East today, you can still see reliefs of Egyptian Pharaoh's etched into their tombs, depicting glorious victories, even for battles that we know they lost! And the Assyrians, they became masters in the art of terror, known for razing whole cities and impaling anyone who opposed them on spikes as they conquered one territory after another.
A DIFFERENT KIND OF KING
But our God is a good God. He knows the last thing Israel needed was a king like those who ruled over the Assyrians or the Egyptians, even if the Israelites thought otherwise. Instead of a king who could rule with an iron scepter, this king would break the rod of the oppressor. Instead of a king who waged war on his neighbors and won great victories, this king would be a prince of peace. He would abolish war and burn to the last the boots and cloaks of those who marched over the land to conquer it. Like Gideon’s victory over the Midianites in Judges 6-8, when an unlikely leader was given a sign and 300 men triumphed over a multitude, Israel’s hope for victory over her oppressors would come from the most unexpected source, a child. A little baby.
Now, I’ve never been a king, but I’m relatively sure babies don’t make great generals. But this baby would be what no king before him could have been. The wise counsel he would bring his people would literally fill them with awe. He would be a Father to them forever. His name would be Mighty God and the peace he would bring wouldn’t just be a cessation of hostilities between people, but it would bring “shalom,” which in Hebrew is usually translated “peace” but really means a rich and lasting fullness.(3)
He wouldn’t be a far-off, aloof king obsessed with holding onto power for himself and his heirs. His reign would be imminent, intimate, and characterized by “justice and righteousness,” the characteristics of a truly good king. A just king plays no favorites, but loves all his subjects equally, while a righteous one repairs the relationship between king and people, and people and God. That is why the Israelite kings were anointed from the beginning. They didn’t have a clear separation between Church and State like we do today. They believed the institution of kingship was a fundamentally religious one, and the king’s relationship with God had a direct impact on how the people themselves related to God.(4)
Some scholars have argued that Isaiah wrote this as an enthronement psalm for an actual king of Judah,(5) whether Ahaz or Hezekiah, who eventually was forced to face off against the Assyrians before God miraculously saved Jerusalem from destruction, an event recorded in the king of Assyria’s own annals.(6) But it’s clear from the titles given to this king above, that he would fill a role that no earthly king could ever fulfill.(7)
What the people of Israel hadn’t understood all those years ago, when they begged Samuel for a king, was that they were actually begging for a Messiah. They were begging for God’s anointing to dwell among them, but in the darkness and confusion of their own sin, they didn’t understand that. Their desire was clouded by the envy of their neighbors, and so each king they received ultimately fell short of that ideal.
A DIM HOPE THROUGH THE AGES
The reason Isaiah speaks in the past tense, as if this child had already been born, is that he is using what is called the “prophetic perfect” tense to communicate the understanding that when God spoke through his authentic prophets, His Word was reliable and could be trusted as if it had already happened.(8) Because God is faithful to fulfill his promises, Israel could hold on to this hope as a fact. We take it for granted now, 2,000 years after Jesus’ birth, an event we celebrate every year as something that happened in the distant past. But when Isaiah spoke these words, it was to a handful of disciples who stuck around when the rest of the people refused to listen. They saw the writing on the wall, so to speak, and they knew that Israel had dark and terrible days ahead. They were probably derided as crazy. They were probably discouraged. But they hung on to the dim hope that God would be true to his Word.
Even long after they were buried by their sons, and their sons were buried by their grandsons, and so on for many generations, those who remained faithful to God held on to those far off words of hope. Through invasions by Assyria and Egypt, through captivity in Babylon, and the oppressive rule of the Persians, the Greeks, and then the Romans, the people still held hope. Their scribes faithfully recorded and taught Isaiah’s words to new generations.
A promised king would once again sit on the throne of David and no king, Pharaoh, or Caesar would oppose him. It was this dim hope which was taught to Mary and Joseph by their own parents and village elders, and it was this hope which drew shepherds to a stable outside an inn in Bethlehem to worship the very baby Isaiah had spoken of over seven centuries previously. It was that hope which Jesus communicated to his disciples, and it is the hope which they carried with them after Pentecost, even to their own deaths at the hands of authorities who were deeply afraid of what this promised king could do. It’s the hope we carry today, on this fourth Sunday of Advent, as we prepare to celebrate Christmas in a few days. And it’s the hope which we carry throughout the year, as we look forward to the day when Christ’s eternal reign will be fully realized on Earth as it is in Heaven.
FOOTNOTES
(1) Grogan, Geoffrey W. “Isaiah,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Revised Ed. Vol. 6. Ed. by Tremper Longman III & David E. Garland. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2008), 527.
(2) cf. 1 Sam. 8.
(3) Scott, R.B.Y. “Exegesis, Chs. 1-39 of Isaiah,” in The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 5. Ed. By George A. Buttrick, et.
al. (Nashville, TN: Addington-Cokesbury Press, 1952), 234.
(4) Scott, 231.
(5) Ibid.
(6) 1Ki. 18-19. The siege of Jerusalem is also mentioned in Sennacherib’s Prism, but (tellingly) its capture is omitted, though the capture of many other cities are explicitly described.
(7) Kilpatrick, G.G.D. “Exposition, Chs. 1-39 of Isaiah,” in The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 5. Ed. By George A. Buttrick, et. al. (Nashville, TN: Addington-Cokesbury Press, 1952), 233.
(8) cf. Scott, 232; who argues against the idea that this passage is written in the prophetic perfect tense. I disagree with his conclusions.
Delivered Dec. 23, 2018 - Cortez (CO) Church of the Nazarene.
