>Advent Meditation
For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
And the government will rest on His shoulders;
And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace
Isaiah 9: 7—9
One of the great dangers with “signature texts” is that over time they become divorced from the specific context of Scripture in which they are found and they become separated from redemptive history, of which they are a part.
Our text is one of the great signature Advent texts, but there are few today who have ever read it in its context. For many it has become a kind of slogan. Consequently, they risk abstracting and neutering its meaning. For many, Isaiah’s prophecy concerning the coming of the son-who-will-be-given has been idealised and platonised into something that affects only the inner realms of the human heart.
But Isaiah delivered this Word from God in human history—in particular, in the eighth century BC—to Israel and Judah. The divided kingdom had increasingly turned away from the Lord and had entered into the worst kind of abominations and evil. They had aped the degeneracy of the surrounding nations—and even sought to exceed it. As a result of their rebellion against God, Isaiah announces that judgment was coming—firstly, in the form of an Assyrian devastation of the northern kingdom of Israel in 722BC, followed by successive despoilations of Judea, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem a century or so later at the hand of the Babylonian armies in 586BC.
Sin and oath breaking was to end in a judgment which resulted in the tearing down of Israelite civilisation and subjecting it to the heel of Gentile overlords. Neither Israel nor Judah were ever again to enjoy freedom from the hand of the oppressor, except for brief flickering moments during the time of the Maccabees, who themselves proved proved in a short time to be worse than corrupt themselves.
Despite all this, Isaiah 9 commences with a pronouncement that a time of redemption and deliverance would come. The place of the ancient relics of the northern kingdom would, in time, be visited with a great light, which would shine in the darkness.
But there will be no more gloom for her who was in anguish; in earlier times he treated the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphthtali with contempt, but later on He shall make it glorious, by the way of the sea, on the other side of Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles.
The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; those who live in a dark land—the light will shine on them.
Isaiah 9: 1—2
Into that land of darkness, under the heel of the Gentile overlords, racked with unbelief, superstition, ignorance, false religion—and the enslavement of heart and mind that always accompanies sin—into that dark land came the One—the one that would be born to us, the child that would be given to us. But what would this child do?
Isaiah tells us very clearly what the One would do:
For thou shalt break the yoke of their burden and the staff on their shoulders,
The rod of the oppressor, as at the battle of Midian.
For very boot of the booted warrior in the battle tumult,
And cloak rolled in blood will be for burning, fuel for the fire;
For a child will be born to us . . .
Isaiah 9: 4—6
The text leaves us in no doubt. The One would remove the oppressor and the oppression: the slaves would be liberated; light would chase out darkness; the joy and gladness as of rich harvest would replace the dirge of subjugation and oppression.
And so it came to pass. In the fullness of time the Son did come forth. To leave us certain and without doubt the Apostle declares that when Jesus spent eighteen months or so in Galilee teaching in the regions of Naphtali and Zebulun it was in fulfillment of this prophecy of Isaiah. (Matthew 4: 14, 15) A great light dawned—and that light shines to this day, and nothing can nor ever will extinguish it.
But what actually happened? It is here that the story takes an unexpected turn, which most did not expect. It was hidden, even from the angels, for centuries. (I Peter 2: 12) For, we would have expected that the One would come forth to reinstate what once was. We would have expected that He would roll back history. That is precisely what the vast majority of Israel was hoping and looking for. The oppressor Romans to be driven out; Israel to be released from foreign pagan domination, lo these six hundred years; pure worship to be restored; freedom accomplished and made inviolate.
Yet within a brief forty years after the One coming forth, the Roman oppression over Galilee of the Gentiles had become more cruel and hard than ever; Jewish blood instead of life giving water had soaked into the empty, untended, vacant fields of once fertile Galilee; the ranks of Roman slaves had been swelled by hundreds of thousands of Jews dragged in chains to Rome; Jerusalem had been “deconstructed” under one of the cruelest devastations ever recorded in human history to any city—a devastation which left the Babylonian onslaught of a half-millennium ago a mere melee in comparison.
This final destruction of Israel closed the circle and ended the matter. The time of the Old Covenant had passed; a New Covenant had been made. But what of the One. Had He failed? Had Isaiah’s prophecy fallen into vanity? Had man succeeded in thwarting the will and purpose of the Living God?
No. It is here that the unexpected turn was revealed. The coming of the Son was like no other. There were none before Him; there will be none after Him. His Kingdom is too dreadful, awe-ful, and powerful to be compared to any that had before or since been known. The light He brought shone upon the fundamental cause, the root of all human suffering and degradation—it dealt with the sin of human beings, our rebellion against God. It dealt the death blow to that ancient curse from Eden. It broke the death-hold of Satan over the human race.
It was and is sin which is the true and only cause of all oppression and slavery in human history. Assyria, and Babylon, and Rome were its progeny; they would not be broken and removed from the earth, until sin was broken and atonement made. The light that dawned in far off Galilee of the Gentiles was a light greater than the human race had ever seen, far greater than it had ever dared in which to believe or hope. It brought a healing more deep, more profound, more complete, more thorough, and more perfect than the sons of Adam had or would ever see. Now indeed oppression was, can, and will be, broken.
But for ancient Israel, and the majority of its leaders and people, it was not to be. For they clung to their diabolical independence and arrogant pride in the face of God. They mocked the Son and sought to extinguish the light. It was expedient, they thought, that the One should die to preserve their evil lifestyles. They clung to Rome, even as Rome was preparing to devour one of its own true children.
But God’s purposes were deeper and higher—inconceivably so. The light that dawned upon Galilee of the Gentiles was indeed for the Gentiles. It was too light a thing that He should raise up the lost of Israel; He had determined that His salvation would encompass the uttermost parts of the earth. So, two thousand years later, we, in one of the most far flung places of the earth from Galilee, we, who were Gentiles, are found bowing the knee and lifting up glad song to Him, the light bearer upon ancient Galilee. Our shackles of sin have been broken in heart and mind, family and household, church and covenant community.
Around us Fortress Unbelief appears strong and impregnable. But this is just Satanic “spin”. Look again. At its foundations, the cracks are deep, wide and ever growing. “There will be no end to the increase of His government,” declared the prophet.
Even so, come Lord Jesus. May the light which You shone upon our brethren so long ago in Naphtali and Zebulun shine ever more brightly in our lands in the coming year.
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