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Hope in the Lord!

December 2, 2018 Speaker: Brian Wilbur Series: Advent 2018

Topic: Advent Passage: Isaiah 8:4–20

HOPE IN THE LORD!

An Exposition of Isaiah 8:4-20a

By Pastor Brian Wilbur

Date:   December 2, 2018 (First Sunday of Advent)

Series: Advent 2018

Note:   Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard   Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

 

INTRODUCTION

We have gathered together on this First Sunday of Advent. The word ‘advent’ means arrival or coming. In this season of Advent, we remember the arrival and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We look back to His first advent when He became flesh and dwelt among 1st century human beings like us in order to bring salvation to this perishing world. At the same time, we look forward to His second advent when He will come again, judge those who are outside of His kingdom, and bring His own people to final and everlasting glory. We live between these two advents of our Lord: He has come, and He will come.

We celebrate the Lord’s coming in our Christmas hymns. For example:

“O come, O come, Emmanuel,

And ransom captive Israel,

That mourns in lonely exile here,

Until the Son of God appear.

"O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer

Our spirits by Thine advent here;

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,

And death’s dark shadows put to flight.”[1]

In these two verses from “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” our Lord’s coming is set in the context of captivity, exile, gloomy clouds and dark shadows. “Israel,” and indeed the whole world, “mourns” in a “lonely [spiritual] exile”; “[our] spirits” are downcast; we live in the shadow of death; and our great need is to be ransomed, redeemed, rescued, reclaimed for God. When “the Son of God [appears],” other things disappear: “the gloomy clouds of night” are dispersed, “death’s dark shadows [are] put to flight.” For those who know the Lord as the mighty Redeemer and Savior, as the great death-destroyer and gloomy-cloud-disperser, His coming – both His already accomplished first coming and His promised second coming – are a source of profound joy.

Isaac Watts, with an eye probably focused upon the second advent, wrote in his well-known hymn:

“Joy to the world! The Lord is come; Let earth receive her King;

Let ev’ry heart, prepare Him room, And heav’n and nature sing.

“Joy to the earth! the Savior reigns; Let men their songs employ;

While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains, Repeat the sounding joy.

“No more let sins and sorrows grow, Nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make His blessings flow / Far as the curse is found.

“He rules the world with truth and grace, And makes the nations prove

The glories of His righteousness, And wonders of His love.”[2]

“Joy” and “Joy” again and “the sounding joy,” because He comes and reigns. “[Sins] and sorrows” are overcome, and in their place “blessings” and “songs,” “glories” and “wonders,” “righteousness” and “love,” “truth and grace.” His coming is the coming that makes all the difference. Have you been caught up into the wonder and joy of the Lord’s coming?

There can be no doubt that humanity, left to itself, is in a terrible plight from which it cannot escape. The words and concepts referenced in the above hymns – captivity and exile, darkness and gloom, mourning and dampened spirits, “sins and sorrows,” “the ground” infested with “thorns,” and “the curse” – are all very familiar to us, whether in our own experience or in our awareness of history and current events. “O Holy Night!” speaks of “the weary world” that lay long “in sin and error pining.[3]” “O Little Town of Bethlehem” refers to “[the] hopes and fears of all the years.”[4]

And “hopes and fears” is just what I want us to think about in this sermon, because one of the perennial marks of human sin is to put our hopes and fears in all the wrong places. The aim of this sermon is to encourage you, whatever your circumstances may be, to put your hope in the Lord! Stand firm in the redeeming work that He accomplished in His first coming, draw strength from the help and strength that He gives now through His Spirit, and wait patiently for the final victory that He will bring about when He comes again. Put your hope in the Lord who comes and comes through, who draws near and delivers.

TURNING TO ISAIAH FOR INSTRUCTION

For this morning’s Scriptural instruction, we turn to the Old Testament book of Isaiah. The Lord revealed a great panorama of truth to the prophet Isaiah, who wrote it down as Holy Scripture, the very Word of God. The prophet Isaiah lived in the 8th century BC and ministered in the second half of the 8th century. His divinely-inspired words are some of the most well-known in the entire Bible. Isaiah tells us about the terrible plight of Judah and of the whole world, and of our desperate need for God to intervene and make things right.

In chapter 1, Isaiah laments the sick-hearted spiritual condition of Judah:

“Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity;

offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly!

They have forsaken the LORD, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged.” (Isaiah 1:4)

And therein lies the root of all of our problems: to forsake the Lord is to forsake “the fountain of living waters” (Jeremiah 2:13); to despise the Holy One is to despise the source of all that is good and true and beautiful. When you are far from God, you are far from home, far from life, far from health, and far from hope. When you are far from God, you are in a place of desolation and devastation. Sin multiplies, and the social fabric crumbles:

“How the faithful city has become a whore, she who was full of justice!

Righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers.

Your silver has become dross, your best wine mixed with water.

Your princes are rebels and companions of thieves.

Everyone loves a bribe and runs after gifts.

They do not bring justice to the fatherless,

and the widow’s cause does not come to them.” (Isaiah 1:21-23)

Injustice and unrighteousness, murder and theft, greed and bribery, cruelty instead of compassion. This is the rotten fruit that results from forsaking the Lord.

At the same time, Isaiah looks forward to a day when the Lord will intervene and bring salvation to our sin-sick world.

“It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it, and many peoples shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:2-4)

Here is a vision of peace! From the vantage point of the 8th century BC, Isaiah saw a vision of a future when the Lord would do a great thing in the midst of our broken planet: He would exalt His mountain, His house, His temple, His law, His word, and the peoples of the world would “flow to it.” They would come to Him, that they might learn from Him.

How do you unlearn sin? By being like Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. What did Mary do? She “sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching” (Luke 10:39). What did the early church do? “[They] devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42). What does Paul tell pastors to do? “[Devote] yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.” (1 Timothy 4:14) The way to unlearn injustice and in its place learn justice, righteousness, and compassion; the way to unlearn greed and bribery and self-seeking and in their place learn generosity and self-giving; the way to unlearn war – the violence of military warfare, the uncivility of malicious political speech, and all the unkindness that takes place even in our very own homes – the way to unlearn war and in its place learn peace and peacemaking; the way to unlearn sin and to learn holiness is to come to the Lord in order to learn from Him and walk in His light.

The perennial temptation, however, is to seek other medications and other therapies for our sin-sick condition. The perennial temptation is to seek band-aids, cover-ups, and quick-fixes for the maladies of our soul. The perennial temptation is to attempt to manage the undesirable symptoms of our disease, instead of going to the Lord for true healing. And, when it comes to the threats of the present or the uncertainties of the future, the perennial temptation is to put our “hopes and fears” in all the wrong places.

For example, when people tell us that a particular political election year is the most important election in our lifetime, and then they say the same thing two years later, and then they say the same thing two years later, we may be sure that they are drawing our “hopes and fears” in the wrong direction. The temptation is to put our “hopes” in a favorable outcome to the election and to put our “fears” in an unfavorable outcome, favorable and unfavorable being defined, of course, by whatever our political loyalties happen to be. But as Malcolm Muggeridge put it, “such hopes and fears are equally beside the point”[5] for the people who trust in the Lord.

THE CONTEXT OF ISAIAH 8

Now let’s turn to Isaiah 8. In Isaiah 8, the pagan “king of Assyria” (Isaiah 8:4) is rising up under God’s almighty hand to overthrow Syria and Israel. This overthrow is real politics, real warfare, real devastation. According to Isaiah 8:4, the Assyrian king would carry away “the wealth of Damascus [the capital of Syria] and the spoil of Samaria [the capital of Israel]” (Isaiah 8:4). We must remember, though, that the prophecy of Isaiah was addressed first of all to Judah (Isaiah 1:1).

Judah and Israel were originally one nation called Israel, but early in its history the ten northern tribes rebelled against the God-appointed king, and so the nation was torn asunder. Thereafter the ten northern tribes were called Israel, whereas the two southern tribes – consisting of Judah and Benjamin – were called Judah. Thus Israel divided into two houses (note “both houses” in Isaiah 8:14). Both Israel and Judah went astray spiritually and became apostate and fell under God’s judgment, but Israel did so first, and Judah followed later. Under God’s judgment, Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 BC, whereas Judah would fall to the Babylonians in 586 BC.

In Isaiah 8, Isaiah anticipates the soon and coming judgment upon Israel by “the king of Assyria,” who would also defeat Syria. But, as I said, this prophecy was directed first of all to Judah. In Isaiah 8:5-8, we learn that Assyria’s conquering of Syria and Israel is going to overflow into Judah: in other words, Assyria’s military aggression is going to affect Judah also – and it did so a couple decades or so after Israel’s demise in 722 BC. Judah wasn’t going to be defeated by Assyria, but they were going to suffer some loss at Assyria’s hand. And why? As a judgment from the Lord, because Judah refused to trust the Lord, Judah refused to rest in His gracious care.

Judah’s refusal to trust the Lord was typified in its leader, King Ahaz. According to Isaiah 7 Ahaz was afraid because Israel and Syria were working together and threatening war against Judah.

“In the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah, Rezin the king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah the king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but could not yet mount an attack against it. When the house of David was told, “Syria is in league with Ephraim,’ the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.” (Isaiah 7:1-2)

Isaiah pleaded with Ahaz to trust the Lord (Isaiah 7:3-9), but Ahaz refused to do so.

John Oswalt, in his commentary on Isaiah, directs our attention to 2 Kings 16, which describes this same situation with additional detail.[6] Second Kings 16 tells us that Ahaz, instead of trusting the Lord, actually put his trust in Assyria to grant him salvation from Israel and Syria. ‘Assyria will save us,’ thought Ahaz. Second Kings 16:7 tells us:

“So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, saying, “I am your servant and your son. Come up and rescue me from the hand of the king of Syria and from the hand of the king of Israel, who are attacking me” (2 Kings 16:7).

Shouldn’t those who claim to know the Lord say to the Lord: “To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens! Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maidservant [look] to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the LORD our God, till he has mercy upon us” (Psalm 123:1-2)? But Ahaz entrusted himself and paid tribute to the Assyrian king in order to gain his favor. Ahaz’s unbelief was typical of most of the people in Judah – and their wayward hearts would result in serious consequences.

“The LORD spoke to me again: “Because this people has refused the waters of Shiloah that flow gently, and rejoice over Rezin and the son of Remaliah, therefore, behold, the Lord is bringing up against them [Judah] the waters of the River, mighty and many, the king of Assyria and all his glory. And it will rise over all its channels and go over all its banks, and it will sweep on into Judah, it will overflow and pass on, reaching even to the neck, and its outspread wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel.” (Isaiah 8:5-8)

“O Immanuel”! “Immanuel” means “God is with us.”[7] Judah was God’s land, God’s country, God’s dwelling place – and yet, God ordained that Assyria bring trouble and turmoil upon His land because of the disobedience of His people. Even so, Assyria would not be able to destroy Judah, because the Lord was with His people to protect them and give them additional time to repent. In Isaiah 8:9-10, the prophet Isaiah takes up a word of judgment against any warring “peoples” who stand against God’s people:

“Be broken, you peoples, and be shattered;

give ear, all you far countries;

strap on your armor and be shattered;

strap on your armor and be shattered;

Take counsel together, but it will come to nothing;

speak a word, but it will not stand,

for God is with us.” (Isaiah 8:9-10)

The “peoples” can only do what God decrees them to do – that, and no more. The godless counsel of all countries “will come to nothing” and the godless words of all nations “will not stand.” If you go back to Isaiah 7, Israel and Syria stood together in an unholy alliance against Judah, but they would not succeed. The Lord appointed Assyria to sack Israel and Syria. Then in Isaiah 8 it is prophesied that Assyria would afflict difficulty upon Judah, but Assyria wouldn’t succeed in their venture. And why? Because God is with His people – and as long as He is with us and for us, we are safe. But once Judah’s sin would reach its full measure, then God would depart from them and deliver them into the hand of the Babylonians. But from Isaiah’s vantage point, that day was still 150 years into the future.

As we learn the lesson of Isaiah 8, we need to understand that though Judah by and large was sin-sick from head to toe, there was a faithful remnant within the land who remained faithful to the Lord. It was often the case in both Israel and Judah, that you had a small remnant of godly people within an overwhelming supermajority of ungodly people. Sad to say, it is all too often the same way in the church: you have so many churchgoers in the land, but who among them truly knows the Lord and walks in His light? In any case, the prophet Isaiah and his small band of disciples were among the godly remnant who lived in Judah. The challenge for them, and indeed the challenge for us, is to continue in faithfulness – though so many people around us are continuing in unfaithfulness, and their influence upon us is not good. The unfaithful in the land would have us join them in their foolish hopes and fears, but we must resist. We must put our hope in the Lord!

THE LORD ISSUES A WARNING TO ISAIAH: ISAIAH 8:11-15

So right after declaring with great faith that the counsels and worlds of the nations “will not stand” because “God is with us,” Isaiah immediately sheds further light on the reason for his great faith. Isaiah writes:

“For the LORD spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying: “Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the LORD of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many shall stumble on it. They shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken.” (Isaiah 8:11-15)

Do not “walk in the way of this people.” Do not do what the majority of people are doing. Do not go along with the clueless crowd. Do not be conformed to the fears of this world. The majority of the people in Judah were afraid and in dread of all the wrong things. They were concerned about the threat posed by Israel and Syria in Isaiah 7 and would eventually be concerned about the threat posed by Assyria; they were concerned about their borders, their security, and their wealth. But what they should have been concerned about was honoring the Lord their God! The Lord would have freely bestowed peace and prosperity upon them, if they had trusted in Him. But instead they trusted in themselves, in the works of their own hands, in the cleverness of their own counsels, and in the alliances they forged with pagan nations.

When you have what Malcolm Muggeridge calls “idiot despair” (or what we might call idiot fears) then you also have what Muggeridge calls “idiot hopes”.[8] In other words, if your fears are misdirected, then your hopes are misdirected, because “hopes and fears” are closely related to one another. If you fear an invasion, then you hope in a strong military defense – or a strong military ally. If you fear an economic recession or a stock market collapse, then you hope in a strong economy. If you fear a leftist government run by progressives, then you hope in a saner government run by conservatives. Instead of being truly anchored in the Lord and thus abiding in His peace, you get all worked up about the ebb and flow of circumstances. Indeed, the vast majority of human beings make a regular habit of getting all worked up about all the wrong things. They’re preoccupied with managing the rotten fruit of a thorn-infested orchard, when they should be concerned with putting down healthy roots in good soil and figuring out how to grow healthy trees. Which means, of course, that they should be pinning their hopes and fears on God.

Verse 13 instructs us to honor the Lord “as holy.” The Lord Almighty is the sovereign King who stands over this “weary world.” He holds this world in His all-powerful hand and He directs this world according to His perfect wisdom. If He is with you and for you, it does not matter who or what is against you. But if He is against you, it does not matter who or what is for you. Don’t be impressed by the latest news, the latest reports, the latest alleged conspiracies, the latest fads, or the latest whatever. Be impressed by “the LORD of hosts”: He is over it all, and He is not impressed by these things, and He can blow them to smithereens in an instant, and one day He is going to lay low the pride and plots and plans of mankind. Honor Him! Fear Him! Stand in awe of Him! “[Let] him be your dread.” If He looks with favor upon you, and you rest your hopes upon Him, then He will be to you “a sanctuary,” a refuge, a safe and holy dwelling place. But if you stubbornly insist on doing your own thing in your own way, then look out! He will be to you “a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling,” “a trap and a snare,” and you will “stumble,” you will “fall and be broken,” you will “be snared and taken.”

Forget your silly hopes and silly fears, and put your hope the living God, who saves and satisfies forever everyone who trusts in Him.

ISAIAH’S DECLARATION OF FAITH: ISAIAH 8:16-20a

After Isaiah hears the warning that the Lord gives him, he responds with a declaration of faith in verses 16-20a. His declaration of faith includes faithful counsel for all who trust the Lord.

First, Isaiah tells us to bank on God’s promises. He says, “Bind up the testimony; seal the teaching among my disciples” (Isaiah 8:16). From the vantage point of when Isaiah received this vision and wrote this prophecy, the specific words of God here in Isaiah 8 would be fulfilled in the future. Assyria had not yet overthrown Syria and Israel; Assyria had not yet been on the doorsteps of Judah; Judah had not yet been saved from Assyria’s military machine; the Lord had not yet become “a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel [i.e., Israel and Judah].” In the present moment, life goes on and foolish people go on believing foolish things and speculating about things they don’t understand and giving their own two cents on current events (which is worth less than two cents) and living fragmented and frantic and fearful lives. The Lord’s people, however, are not to drift along with this nonsense: they are to believe and bank on God’s promises. “Bind up the testimony; seal the teaching…,” knowing that all will be fulfilled at the appointed time.

Second, Isaiah makes it clear that he is banking on God’s promises. He says, “I will wait for the LORD, who is hiding his face form the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.” (Isaiah 8:17) For people who can’t see farther than some pundit’s spin on the most recent event, the Lord’s hiding – the Lord’s apparent withholding of blessing – seems to confirm their unbelief. The governorship has switched hands; the House of Representatives has flipped; Washington, DC is a madhouse; activist judges are overreaching; the southern border is a mess; the country is morally bankrupt – ‘oh no!’ cries the unbelieving heart. You must learn to have very low expectations of people who remain dead in their sins – which frankly is where most people are at. At the same time, you must learn to have very high expectations of God’s purpose, even when you can’t discern the details – which frankly is most of the time. The king of Assyria was no saint, and yet he was a tool in the hand of our God! (see Isaiah 10:5-19)

For true disciples who have the Lord’s Word in our possession and recollection, we are not tossed back and forth on the tumultuous waves of circumstance, uncertainty, and affliction. We know the Lord God, we know that He will come through for those who believe in Him, we know that setbacks and sufferings don’t have the last word, we know that His purpose shall stand and every promise shall be fulfilled. Therefore, we “wait for the LORD,” we wait for Him to act (Isaiah 64:4), we wait for Him to settle the matter in His own time and in His own way, and all our hope is in Him, because we know that He is good. Are you among the ‘we’ who put our hope in the Lord?

Third, Isaiah indicates that he and his children are the Lord’s signpost among unfaithful people. Isaiah says, “Behold, I and the children whom the LORD has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the LORD of hosts, who dwells in Mount Zion.” (Isaiah 8:18) I originally took “children” as spiritual children but after reading a commentary was persuaded that “children” refers to Isaiah’s biological children, whose names were full of prophetic significance.[9] The prophet Isaiah had one son named “Shear-jashub” (Isaiah 7:3) and another son named “Maher-shalal-hash-baz” (Isaiah 8:1, 3). “Shear-jashub” means ‘A remnant shall return’[10] and signified that God would preserve a remnant within Judah who would remain faithful to the Lord and return to the land on the far side of judgment.  “Maher-shalal-hash-baz” means ‘The spoil speeds, the prey hastens’[11] and signified Judah’s protection because the predator Assyria would speedily defeat their prey, Israel and Syria, and capture their spoil.

Isaiah and his sons, by means of their God-appointed presence among the people, testified to God’s promise to preserve and protect His people. This is welcome sign for those who believe in God’s promise, but an ominous sign for those who disbelieve and are thus excluded from the promise. It is those who make the sovereign Lord their refuge (Psalm 73:28) who are preserved and protected, whereas the unfaithful “fall and [are] broken.” To put it simply: Isaiah and his sons symbolize hope in God. Those who hope in God delight in the God-appointed symbols of that hope. There is a very real sense in which you – if you are a disciple of the Lord – stand forth as a symbol of that same hope. Your character, your manner of life, your priorities, and your reactions show the world that your hope isn’t in the world, but rather that your hope is in God and His promise. Don’t be surprised, however, when those who broker in false hopes show themselves to be irritated by any word or any sign of Godward hope.

Fourth, Isaiah encourages the faithful ones to remain faithful in looking to the Lord, although the unfaithful seek to lead you astray. He writes, “And when they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?” (Isaiah 8:19) The right course of action, in any and every situation, is to inquire of God, to hear from God, to find out what God thinks, to know what God has said. And yet, unbelieving people will encourage you to go elsewhere for guidance and counsel. There are mediums and necromancers who claim to bring a word from the realm of the dead. In our day, people can get so excited about a word from someone who claims to have died, or had a near-death experience, and returned to life – and they have a story about what they experienced in the realm of death, and they write a book about it and it gets turned into a movie and people eat it up! But who is eating up and drinking in the words of God?

The fundamental issue here is where you look for insight and direction. Do you love the Bible? Or do you prefer self-help books? Do you love God’s Word? Or do you prefer your favorite guru? Do you love faithful preaching and teaching? Or do you prefer media outlets, political pundits, and cultural commentators? Do you love speaking to faithful Christians whose minds are saturated with Holy Scripture? Or do you prefer your unbelieving buddies and friends and co-workers who like to tickle your ears with their emotional interpretations? Do you submit to God’s leading in every aspect of your life? Or do you hold back ‘budget and finance’ and ‘health and fitness’ and ‘career and retirement’ and ‘politics and culture’ and ‘marriage and family’ for yourself and seek after worldly wisdom for 7/8ths of your life? Is your mind soaked with the wisdom of God or with the wisdom of men? Shouldn’t God’s people be glad to let God direct the whole course of their lives? Resist false and faulty sources of counsel and guidance, and always look to the Lord. Do we mean it when we sing “O come, Thou Wisdom from on high, / And order all things, far and nigh; To us the path of knowledge show, / And cause us in her ways to go”? Do we mean it? Let us be a people who hope in the Lord!

Isaiah brings his declaration of faith full circle when he concludes at the beginning of verse 20: “To the teaching and to the testimony!” (Isaiah 8:20) Brothers and sisters, this ought to be our continual and cheerful mindset. We do not live by the counsels and words of men, whether alive or dead. We do not live by the counsels and words of our own heart. We live by the counsels and words of our God! As an individual Christian, as a member of a Christian family, and as a participant in this congregation of believers, be in the happy habit of saying “To the teaching and to the testimony!” Show me what the Bible says! Remind me of God’s promise! Let’s “go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” (Isaiah 2:3)

LOOK TO JESUS

When we move into the rest of Isaiah 8:20 through Isaiah 9:7 next week, we will learn about God’s oppression-destroying, peace-making, and joy-giving light. This light is the most precious reality in the universe – and it’s all about Jesus. This whole passage – and indeed the whole book of Isaiah – is about God’s Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. We will see this so clearly when we get to Isaiah 9:6 where our Lord is called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). But Isaiah 8:4–20 is all about Jesus, too.

Jesus is the One whom Isaiah 8:8 calls Immanuel, the God who is with us. (Matthew 1:23)

Isaiah 8:13 says to not fear what everyone else fears but to fear the Lord and honor Him as holy. The apostle Peter says, “Have no fear of [those who persecute you], nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy” (1 Peter 3:14-15). Sound familiar?

Jesus is the One whom Isaiah 8:14 calls “a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling,” the very phrase that Peter uses to describe Jesus in 1 Peter 2:8.

Regarding the precious reality of God’s Word – of “the testimony” and “the teaching” – Jesus is the living Word of God, the embodiment of God’s truth, the fulfillment of God’s promise, the Word-made-flesh.

Isaiah banked on God’s promise, bound up the testimony, and resolved to “wait for the LORD” and “hope in him.” Eight-hundred years later, God made good on His promise: the Lord came! 

It is our privilege to look back and remember that He came, that He walked the earth bringing the bread of life and hope of salvation to the distressed and hungry, and that He made atonement for our sins on the cross. At the same time, we must – like Isaiah – continue to “wait for the LORD” because He is coming again. Thus we look forward to His second advent, when He will bring to completion His great work of salvation and usher in the eternal age of unending joy and peace for His faithful people. Therefore we say, we will “not fear what they fear, nor be in dread,” but we will honor the Lord as holy and wait expectantly for His promised return.

Let us pray.

 

ENDNOTES

[1] From the hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”

[2] Isaac Watts, “Joy to the World!”

[3] John S. Dwight, “O Holy Night!”

[4] Phillips Brooks, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

[5] Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980: around p. 52.

[6] John N. Oswalt, Isaiah (The NIV Application Commentary). Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003: Kindle Version, Page 136 of 704.

[7] See footnote on Isaiah 7:14 (ESV): “Immanuel means God is with us.” Also see footnote on Isaiah 8:10 (ESV): “The Hebrew for God is with us is Immanuel.” Note also Matthew 1:23 (ESV), where Matthew says that “Immanuel” means “God with us.”

[8] Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980: p. 52.

[9] Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments: Volume Two. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997 (orig. 1866): p. 591.

[10] See footnote on Isaiah 7:3 (ESV): “Shear-jashub means A remnant shall return.”

[11] See footnote on Isaiah 8:1 (ESV): “Maher-shalal-hashbaz means The spoil speeds, the prey hastens.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

My knowledge of the Old Testament historical context is rather thin. Therefore I appreciate the historical information (e.g., significant dates, timeframes, and events), along with helpful commentary, provided by commentaries such as the two mentioned below.

Jamieson, Robert, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown. A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments: Volume Two. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997 (orig. 1866).

Oswalt, John N. Isaiah (The NIV Application Commentary). Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003. Kindle Version.

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