Light in the Darkness-Message of Hope

PastorTimothy Phillips

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, as we read these ancient words of prophesy, instill in us a reverence for your authority. Bless us as we hear these words. Make it as if we heard them for the first time. Let your Holy Spirit open our hearts and minds and instill in us an excitement and anticipation that the people of Isaiah's time felt. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Light in the darkness. A message of hope. This is one of the promises God made in the

Old Testament but He made many, many promises. We call them prophesies that looked forward to the time when the Messiah would come. In our text tonight, we find many powerful words, the idea of darkness. In the bible, darkness represents everything bad, sin, death, the devil, wickedness, hopelessness, despair. And, in the midst of the darkness, God shines a brilliant light. In the gospel, it said that Jesus was that light and that He brought life to men.

Our Christian faith has taught us, yes, Jesus brought life. He brought eternal life and all who believe in Him have that as a gift. But let's go back to the time of Isaiah before Jesus came when the people were suffering for the sins they had committed. They had worshiped false gods and so God had allowed foreign powers to come into their land and destroy all their defenses, carry off all their wealth, even destroy the wonderful temple they had built in honor of God and the people were now slaves in foreign countries, desperate without hope. God sent His prophets, and He gave them messages of comfort and encouragement.

That's what the words of our text are tonight. “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned.” As I was meditating on these scriptures, translating them from the Hebrew, I remembered something I'd watched recently on T.V. and maybe you had also. It was a documentary about two people who were climbing a mountain and then they were coming back. They were walking across a glacier and they fell together into a crevasse, a deep ravine in the ice. They were roped together. One fell down deep. The other one wasn't quite into the crevasse, but he was about to go and he had to make a choice. Either he cut the rope and save his life or the two of them together would die. He made a difficult choice, and he cut the rope. My thoughts now turn to the one down in the crevasse. In the fall, he had broken his leg and was in great pain but he was on sort of a ledge and the rope above was pounded into the ice. He had done that to save himself, tied a knot on that end. And he looked down into the crevasse, and he looked up to the top. He knew there was absolutely no way he could get out, and he called for his friend but his friend had left. His friend had given up on him figuring he would most certainly die, so he left.

And the man down in the ravine was faced with a difficult choice also. He could remain there where he was with almost no hope that anyone would ever come to rescue him, or he could look for a way out by lowering himself down into the darkness. Well, he sat there awhile and he thought. And he had a stubborn streak in him, he said, a stubborn streak that wouldn't allow him to just sit there and do nothing. So he began to lower himself down, broken leg and all, down into the cold, down into the darkness, down how far? He didn't know. He didn't know if the rope he had was long enough to reach the bottom and safety. He didn't know what was down there, if there was a way out or another trap. But what choice did he have? So he kept lowering himself down into the darkness. And finally, he looked down and he could see in the darkness his rope on the bottom. He knew he could make it to the bottom them. So he finished lowering himself down, and he kind of collapsed on the floor there on the ice. And he thought, “Oh, the bottom. Now what?” And he looked up, and there was a beam of light shining through the darkness right to him. And he looked, and there was a slanted slope up towards that light. And he thought, “That has to be the way out.” So he started to drag himself with his broken leg across this ice floor, and he thought, “It feels solid. I hope it's solid.” Then he began to hear noises beneath him of things breaking away. He wasn't really at the bottom, but the floor held. And he drug himself over to that slanted wall up to that light and, painstakingly, he pulled his way up, up, up toward the light and finally made it to the top. He burst out through the snow, and he said the sky was a beautiful blue. It was like a new day had dawned. Now he had hope to survive.

The words of Isaiah, the prophet, brought that kind of hope to the people of Israel . They were desperate. They were downtrodden. Can you imagine how they felt, having their nation destroyed, being carried off as slaves into captivity, wondering about family members, what might become of them? Their spirits had to be low, yet some of them turned to God in that time and heard the words of Isaiah, the prophet, the words we're looking at tonight. “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned.” God's message of hope proclaimed boldly and faithfully by Isaiah, the prophet. And then it talks about what this light is all about. “For to us a child is born, and the government will be on His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” The effect of these words on the people of Isaiah's time was transforming. No longer did they simply focus on their misery and their suffering. Now they clung with faith to the hope that God would send the Messiah and deliver them.

It's very powerful when we look at these words. We understand them to be a description of who the Messiah is and what He will be when He comes. In the beginning, it says that a son will be born to us, a child will be given to us. God's Messiah would be fully human, fully man. The Messiah to come would be a man. Then he gives all these wonderful, descriptive names and I'm just going to go through them with you. The first one is wonder. These words mean something special. Often we hear this word or this name translated as wonderful, but that's not really a literal translation. The literal translation is wonder, and it calls to mind all the wonderful things that God had done for the people of Israel . When He led them out of the slavery in Egypt and He defeated the army of the Pharaoh and He led them with a pillar of fire and darkness. And when He split open the sea and the people walked through on dry ground, when He split open the rocks and provided water, when the manna came from heaven and He guided them safely through the wilderness and led them to the Promise Land , the wonders that God had performed. This word, wonder, describes God not only as the worker of wonders, the doer of wonders, but as a wonder Himself, an awesome God who would do anything to save His people. God is the wonder of wonders, the Messiah to come. It is the wonder of wonders.

The next word we hear is counselor. Now in today's world, that means a professional person trained to help you with your emotions or to provide counseling in a different situation but think in this term. Think of a king on a throne with all his wise counselors around him to give him advice so he can lead his country in the best way, so he can make decisions that are the wisest. Except in this sense, the king, the Messiah is the counselor. He is God. He has no need to gain wisdom from people around Him, from mere humans. He is God Almighty, infinitely wise. So when we think of these two words put together, He is the counselor who does wonders and Himself is a wonder.

The next word we have is translated God. Now you might be familiar with this Hebrew word, Elohim. Have you heard that one before? Elohim. That's a very common word in the

Old Testament referring to God. It's actually a plural word. The “im” at the end is Hebrew plural. Elohim. And it's usually used to refer to God, but sometimes it's referring to false gods. That's not actually the word translated here. The one we have is the construct or an abbreviated form, El. No Elohim but El. This word never refers to a false god but only refers to the true God and is reserved for Him alone. God. The Messiah will be God.

The next word we usually read in English is mighty. Remember? Mighty God. Wonderful counselor, mighty God. In Hebrew, it means hero. Isn't that interesting? It's a lot different than what we were thinking of. We were thinking of strength and might, but this is an idea of a hero. Somebody who saves the day. Somebody who rescues the people who need help. A true hero. So putting these two words together, the Messiah will be a heroic God. Not one of these impotent gods of the nations around them but a heroic God that can do all things and will rescue His people and deliver them from their enemies.

The next title has to do with being a father. The Messiah will eternally be a father to us. The quality of the Messiah with respect to His people is indicated here. He acts towards them like a father toward His children. Now and forever He guards His people and supplies all their needs. Psalm 103:13 says, “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.” Tenderness and love forever. Some of us have gone through the loss of a father or, in my case, a grandfather, the one who made this cross I wear; and, when we lose someone like that, it takes a lot out of us. We miss them and all they meant to us. We miss their protection, their wisdom, their guidance, their steadying influence in our life; but the Messiah is not a temporary human father. He is a father to us eternally.

Finally, we come to the last title given to the Messiah by Isaiah here. Prince of Peace. Now I'm not going to change the translation on that one. That's exactly what it is. The Prince of Peace. Now you think about our world today, wars, conflicts, things like that. While most leaders and kings of the time of Isaiah seek greatness for their country and themselves through war, the Messiah does this through peace. He establishes peace. He reigns in peace. He seeks peace and pursues peace. This peace is not merely the end of a war but the removal of the cause for the war, namely, our sin. For sin to be removed, peace needs to be made with God. This is the primary purpose of the Messiah, to make peace between us and God. This is His job. That's what He will do.

So, in summary, the Messiah, described by Isaiah, is the counselor who does and is Himself a wonder. He is the heroic God. He is eternally a father to His people. He is the Prince of Peace. For the people of Isaiah's time, this was a message of great encouragement and hope. Yet this message is not stuck in history. It's true for us today. The Messiah gives us hope today. Jesus, the Messiah, because we know the whole story and, although we're in a season of anticipation which looks at the Old Testament passages talking about when Jesus would come and save the world, we look forward to His second coming as well, don't we? Not just the first coming, celebrating it, but remembering the second coming is coming, too. And one day, He'll return. The Lord will return and gather all who believe in Him and take them to be with Him forever in heaven.

We have a message of hope for us today, too. It's not just for the people of Isaiah's time. It's for you and me as well. Let's pray about that. Heavenly Father, as with the people of Isaiah's time, it is our sin that brings us into times of despair and suffering or the sin of the people around us or the sin in our culture that brings pain and suffering. Yet, in our suffering, we are not without hope because we know our sin is forgiven in Jesus' name. And as we confess it, God is faithful and just and forgives us, cleanses us from all unrighteousness. We pray, as we meditate on that and think about that this Advent season, we will rejoice all the more at the birth of our Savior and, beyond that, we will look forward with joy and excitement to His second coming. Bless us with your Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Copyright 2004 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church