Isaiah 8:16-21; 9:1-7 2nd Kings 16:1-16

The Bible study this morning began with some grim and discouraging words from Isaiah. Look at 8:16-21. What do you see? God is hiding his face. The people turn their faces upward but find only distress and darkness and gloom and anguish. They look for God and feel like no one is there. They call upon God but hear only their own voices. They wonder—no, they fear—that God is no longer there for them. Do we know these Israelites? Have we ever felt their plight? Their predicament? Their fear?

Right before we begin I always stand in the middle of the room—there are anywhere between 50-70 guys there—and inevitably a couple of them will come to me and say that they need to talk or they will inform me of something that is going on with them or with someone in the group that they feel I ought to know about. Two men before we started today used almost the exact language that Isaiah used to talk about their own lives. I say this to affirm that that the scriptures are current, that the Bible is not some out-dated book, and that it can and does speak right now to our daily lives.

Before we got too far into describing the “darkness” that Isaiah writes about, I told the fellows that we needed to understand that the prophet was writing with particular historical and political events taking place—events that we needed to know about in order to understand the gloom that he feels. These events were recorded in 2 Kings 16: 1-16. This was during the reign of King Ahaz. King Ahaz had followed King Uzziah, who had been struck down with leprosy because he had usurped the role of the high priest. When the King was leprous, the whole community in time became infected. When he died the people had great hope that King Ahaz was going to be a more faithful king. What we read in 2 Kings 16 is that he was not. In this piece of scripture we see that King Ahaz stripped all the gold and silver out of the temple and gave it to the king of Assyria, with the hope that his army would not invade Judah. We also see that King Ahaz saw an altar in Damascus and was so enthralled by it that he had the altar in the temple taken out so that a new altar modeled upon the altar that was in Damascus could be installed. We also read that the king took it upon himself, much like Uzziah, to usurp the role of the high priest and dash blood upon the altar himself. And we read that he dismantled some of the costly bronze equipment of the temple in order to pay tribute to Assyria. Imagine, I asked the gentlemen, that you came into church some Sunday and found all the sacred objects gone; that you found a different altar, one patterned after the pagan gods—how would you feel? This background sets the stage for why Isaiah is writing about gloom and darkness and despair. The people wonder where God is that he would allow this desecration to take place.

In chapter 9, Isaiah turns from despair to hope, from darkness to light: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.” I asked the guys to talk about a time in their life when they have made this move from darkness to light and how that transition happened. One guy—a man who has indeed gone through some great darkness—said that many of the men in the room, and many of the members of this community, were his sources of light, for we had come to him during his darkest times and shared a light with him, a light that gave him the hope he needed to carry on. We then talked about how one lone flashlight had just saved some of the members of the Cynthia Woods, that boat that had just lost its keel on its way to Mexico. One light, just one, had saved their lives. How can we be a light to others when they are in the dark, when they are drowning, when they are lost?

Isaiah’s prophecy goes on: “For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.” Now, that is an interesting image. Isaiah, of course, has in mind that all of the Assyrians implements of war will be burned, destroyed—that is clear. But how could these words speak to us in our own time and place? Are there any implements of “war” that we use and resort to that need to be destroyed?

And then he gives his great prophecy in words that many of us know from Handel’s Messiah: “For a child has been born for us, a son has been given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

God chooses a baby to lead the people out of darkness into light, out of despair into hope. We, as Christians, believe that this prophecy was and is and will ever be fulfilled in Jesus. If we claim him, we must follow him. If we follow him, we must be willing to go to the dark places within ourselves and ask for his light, and we must be willing to go to those in great darkness and share with them the light that we have been given.

Gloom and darkness and despair are all around us. Isaiah’s words could not be more current. What are we, with God’s help, going to do about it? Lives and souls are at stake. Sometimes the smallest light, the smallest word, can make all the difference. JWN