Isaiah 9: 1-7

Theme: Christmas

OUR LIGHT HAS COME

This week I was talking with Mrs. Jackie Wild and she said something that so impressed me that I asked her permission to share it with the church. We had prayed together for her and her great grand daughter and her grandson and others in the family. There is just a lot going on at the holiday season. But as I was leaving, she said, "it is all going to be all right, God’s going to take care of it." She reminded me that she had experience with God’s grace. When she was a young woman, her first husband died of cancer and left her with a 4-year-old daughter to raise. Not long afterwards, her brother died. He had asked her to help raise his three daughters, to kind of watch over them. When she was telling me this, I thought to myself, "There was a lot of darkness in her life then."

She did not want to move back home but was not sure where she would live. One day, she read in the Bible where God told Abraham to go to a place where I will show you. And she happened to pass by a house on Hwy. 190. She felt that as clear as anything God was telling her to buy that house. She was close to her sister-in-law and her nieces where she could watch over them. She said that not long afterwards, she met the man who would love her and take care of her and her family. And she said it with such joy! "God’s going to take care of it." She knew from experience that those who are in darkness will see a great light. She has enough history to know the joy that God brings out of our darkness.

Young adults need the witness of the older adults because we don’t have the time span to look back on and know this great truth. I needed to hear Mrs. Jackie the other day. We all have our times of darkness. Much of it is psychological and spiritual. We feel like failures or we lose hope. We feel that life has caved in on us and there is no way out. Or, we feel like no one cares and there is no one to rescue us. Sometimes it is physical loss and sometimes it is just the weakness that comes with age. I know if I feel that way, you do too. We have all walked through gloomy, thick, darkness and wondered if there is any hope. We must listen to those who have more experience that us. We need the hope of those words from Isaiah, Isaiah 60:1 "Arise, shine; for your light has come, And the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. "For behold, darkness will cover the earth, And deep darkness the peoples; But the LORD will rise upon you, And His glory will appear upon you. "And nations will come to your light, And kings to the brightness of your rising.

Israel would soon have such an experience that they could not imagine shining with the glory of God. Israel was about to be invaded by Assyria. Assyria was ruthless. They bragged about the heavy yoke that they imposed on the peoples they conquered. Their records still exist today. They would soon invade Judah, kill their men, starve them in their cities until they would actually eat each other for food. Then having breached the walls, they would carry most of them off to exile into a foreign land. The things that they were about to see were almost beyond imagination.

For us, Judah’s experience is a symbol for all of life’s darkness. We have all been caught in the fallenness of our world and we stand in need of being redeemed. We need a deliverer. And that is just what God has promised.

But God has not chosen to overcome power with power, might with might, army with army, strength with strength, even though He is the Almighty God. Notice what Isaiah said, "The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; Those who live in a dark land, The light will shine on them. Thou shalt multiply the nation, Thou shalt increase their gladness; They will be glad in Thy presence as with the gladness of harvest, As men rejoice when they divide the spoil." You could not have a more different situation than that found in chapter 8. There the people were plunged into darkness because they refused to repent and follow God. Now it is a time of great joy and celebration. Why, what was different? Was God raising up a great army? Was a great cataclysmic event about to take place? No, a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us. A child! And you can hear murmuring everywhere, a child? A child will be our deliverer?

God has chosen to join us in our darkness in the weakest form possible, as a child. God who made all and is all powerful decided to become like us, to live like us and to suffer like us so that he might over come our darkness in a way that we can comprehend and appreciate. The coming king would not deliver us from life, but transform life and He would overcome the darkness.

This child, this tiny, fragile child on which our hope is built, will be called many names so said the prophet. He is Wonderful Counselor. The idea of "wondrous" is associated with the idea of awesomeness. It is a cosmic wonder. This child does not just offer wisdom that is better than ours, His wisdom is divine wisdom, it is the very mind of God.

He will be called Mighty God. If you had been a Hebrew hearing Isaiah’s prophecy, this would have taken your breath away. You know that there is but one God. But, Isaiah says that this child will be Almighty God! How can this be? I would call it a proto doctrine of the Trinity. There is no mistaking this child with anyone else. He is not a special messenger, he is not a mighty man, he is God in the flesh. No explanation is ever given about the mysterious ways of God and certainly one is not given here. But this child is Almighty God!

He will be called Eternal Father. Again this would have caught the Hebrew mind off guard. There have been many kings and presidents and leaders of various kinds who have pictured themselves as a father to their people. But this one who is Eternal Father will give the kind of fatherly care that can bring about eternal joy in an administration that never ends. Whatever lonesome darkness the people found themselves in, this child will love them like a divine Father who knows their every thought and cares for their every need.

He will be called the prince of peace. The word for peace is "Shalom." It is God's peace. It is not just the absence of turmoil and troubles. It means a totality or completeness, fulfillment, maturity, soundness, wholeness, community, harmony, tranquility, security, well-being, welfare, friendship, agreement, success, and prosperity. It does not just mean one of two of these, it means all of these concepts. Shalom is that state of existence that man knew before the fall and it is the ideal all of humanity seeks to discover and accomplish in their lives. In the midst of their confusion and suffering and sorrow, at a time when their world was destroyed, this promised child comes and says, My peace be with you. The coming One is the Prince of that peace, the only source for Shalom.

Of course that coming child was born to Mary and laid in a manger. We call him Christ and Lord. It is because of Him that our darkness can be overcome by His great light. Only He is able to transform our darkness and our hurt and our pain into light and over coming power. Why? Because He is our deliverer, our redeemer, and our hope. We know that he will deliver us. We know that what we experience in this life is not all there is, we have hope everlasting

We live in a world much like Israel. We suffer from a famine of the hearing of Word of God. Our world is noisy and dark. It is impossible for us to find our way. In such a world we live as hopeless and lonely individuals. But, if we listen to our elders, we hear those words, "it is all going to all right, God’s going to take care of it." God has promised that those in darkness will see a great light. In total darkness, even a candle can be a bright beacon. Into our darkness a Child is born. He is like no other child. He is our God become flesh and has come to deliver us from our darkness. He has come to deliver us from our sin, which destroys that relationship with Him that we so desire.

You don’t desire that relationship? Of course you do. It is that longing to escape the darkness, it is that gnawing emptiness that you feel, it is that sense of wrongness that comes over you to spoil your good times. It is God’s call to you, it is like a beacon of light. He is our Light. Our Light has come. He has come to free us from our darkness and sin.