The Dawn of Redeeming Grace Brings Hope: Isaiah 8:16-9:7 - The Dawn of Redeeming Grace

We do typically study through books of the Bible here at the Village Chapel.

For the next four weeks, though, we're going to give our attention to several different texts that point us forward to the coming of Christ the first time and his coming again.

But if you'd like a paper copy of the Bible, just lift up your hand.

Someone will bring one along to you.

And if you don't have one at home, this is our gift to you.

Take that Bible.

We're also privileged to have folks from all over the world worship with us from week to week.

Last week we worshiped with folks from London, England, Dabradun, India, Jakarta, Indonesia, and Grand Rapids, Michigan.

May the Spirit of the Lord move among you wherever you might be today.

So at the start of this Advent season, we are beginning this new series, and we've titled it The Dawn of Redeeming Grace.

Of course, we borrowed that title from the Austrian carol Silent Night.

And you'll remember how that line goes.

That's a simple line, but if we go just below the surface a bit, think about it for a minute.

The Lord of the heavens and the earth, the King of the cosmos, entered into our world in astonishing humility.

Think for a minute of the scene, the sound of rustling animals, the indignity of having a baby in a cattle stall, the smell of dung, the sight of Mary and Joseph doing all they could to care for this little one, this new little one, in the most inhospitable of places.

But the word dawn there, I think, is instructive for us in that carol, because it tells us something about the condition of the world into which redeeming grace arrives.

As Rutledge says, Advent begins in the dark.

On them a light has shone, dawned.

It's broken in on them.

The word Advent actually comes from the Latin adventus, which means a coming or a visitation.

And throughout Christian history, the Advent season and today has held particular significance as the four weeks of preparation and anticipation as we await the day to celebrate Christ's first coming into our dark world and two Advents, his second coming, in which he'll finally and fully dispel the darkness all around us.

We just sang about that.

See, you and I, we can miss, and I often do this, miss the gravity of the Advent season on its own when we jump headfirst into the celebration of Christmas.

And the world, of course, doesn't give us much help, as Christmas merchandise starts going on the shelves in August.

I'll look that up.

At least at Costco.

I think Hobby Lobby, it's always Christmas.

I love all the trappings and the beauty of Christmas.

Isn't this beautiful when our room is decorated like this?

But in the frenzy of Christmas lights, of gift cards, Black Friday deals, it's good and right for us to push back and to pause to reflect on the significance of what the season of Advent actually has to teach us.

And that would be good for us to listen to this podcast, the Creative Thinking Podcast, which we're going to be doing just that along with Kim.

The Christian faith and the lesson of the Advent season is both honest and full of hope.

We're going to hold both of those together today, honest and full of hope.

Honest about the darkness of the fallen world that we're in and my own disordered heart, and it's overflowing with the inexhaustible hope of Christ.

Not wishful thinking, not manifesting, not positive thoughts, but hope anchored in something that actually happened 2,000 years ago in a cattle stall, and later on a wooden cross, and later in an empty tomb, and later still soon around an eternal throne.

The Advent season highlights the hunger pains of every human heart that longs for the hope of Emmanuel.

That's why we sing it.

Oh come, O come.

Rejoice, set all things right, please.

I think our world, though, is hungry for hope.

And I don't know what you carried with you today, but maybe you're hungry for hope as well.

You came famished, needing a word of hope from a source other than yourself, other than the voices, the cacophony of voices that are shouting at us every day.

Some see the Christian faith as simply a crutch, or at least one of a thousand ways to cope with life's troubles.

Not sure if it actually has anything to say about the terrible state of the world and what can be done about it.

But the Advent season tells us something else.

On the contrary, Advent begins in the dark.

Honesty.

It says this is how things really are, but it ends with hope.

Both held together, honesty and genuine hope.

Fleming Rudledge, a writer and theologian that we love, she says this: Advent is the most tough-minded of all the church seasons.

It so clearly shows us that our faith is not for sissies.

I think she's right about that.

The season of Advent doesn't rush to the celebration of Christmas.

It slows us down so that we might see again our true condition.

So that later, when we do read those words, spoken to the lowly shepherds, for unto you this day in the city of David is born to you a savior, we can't help but fall to our knees in worship and wonder.

Turn with me, if you would, to Isaiah chapter 8, verse 16.

Isaiah 8:16

Isaiah chapter 8, verse 16.

Isaiah 8:16

Isaiah, sometimes called the Christmas prophet, he's writing in the 8th century, about 700 years before the birth of Jesus.

It was a time of deep darkness, not unlike our own.

Moral ambiguity, anxiety, fear.

God's people are in exile.

They've turned away from God, living as if he didn't matter.

They were in a spiritual crisis, yet, watch for the dawn of redeeming grace in our text here today.

Let me pray for us.

And we'll learn from Isaiah.

Heavenly Father, we bow before your presence this morning.

With our Bibles open, we ask that you would open your word to us and open us to your word.

May your spirit both convict and comfort and lead us to your Son Jesus, in whose name we pray.

We all said.

Amen.

Chapter 8, verse 16.

Bind up the testimony, seal the teaching among my disciples.

Isaiah is talking here, he's teaching here.

I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.

Highlight that, circle that, underline that.

We're gonna come back to it in a little bit.

As I said, they're in a time of spiritual crisis.

Isaiah had just said, the coming judgment of the Lord is about, there's an enemy advancing on them.

So there's genuine fear and anxiety.

And Isaiah is saying, wait on the Lord.

Hope in him.

Even you who have turned away, there's still time, turn around.

Verse 18 Behold, I and the children whom the Lord have given me are signs and portents in Israel from the Lord of hosts who dwells on Mount Zion.

And when they, that's the people of God who've turned away, when they say to you, Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God?

You should hear grief in that statement.

Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?

Verse 20, to the teaching and to the testimony.

Come back to the Word of God.

If they will not speak according to this word, the Word of God, it's because they have no dawn.

They will pass to the land greatly distressed and hungry.

And when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will speak contemptuously against their king and their God and turn their faces upward.

In other words, they're gonna put their noses up to God, see him as in contempt.

Verse 22.

And underline this too is as a warning, and they will look to the earth.

They've turned away from God, they're gonna look to the earth, the resources of this world, the resources of whatever's inside of us.

But behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish, and they will be thrust into thick darkness.

You could actually say they'll be thrust into pitch black.

Chapter 9, though, verse 1.

Nevertheless, or some translations say, but there will be no gloom for her, for the people who have turned away, who was in anguish.

In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he is made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.

So what's Isaiah doing here?

Well, like many of the prophets, he has three different tracks that he'll run on, sometimes simultaneously.

He'll be looking back at the history of God's people and what God has done.

He'll be looking at the present situation, which is what we've been seeing here, and he'll also look forward to future hope, which is what he's doing now in chapter 9, verse 1.

See, when it says Zebulun and Naphtali, we don't have to worry about who is he talking about here.

He is talking about Jesus.

And you should go back and read this in the New Testament later on for some homework, Matthew 4.

It tells us that that is exactly the land of Naphtali, and Zebulun is where Jesus began his ministry.

In that land.

And Isaiah 700 years before that is pointing forward to that day.

So here's the hope, verse 2.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.

Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them a light has shone, dawned, broken in.

And that word there, deep darkness, is actually the same word used in Psalm 23, the land of the shadow of death.

Those who have gone that far, have turned that far in on themselves, have looked to the earth alone for their resources.

That's who this light has shown on.

Verse 3.

Now he's going to go back to the past and talk about the character of God.

You, Lord, have multiplied the nation.

You have increased its joy.

They rejoiced, they rejoiced before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil.

Verse 4, for the yoke of his burden and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken, as on the day of Midian.

What's he talking about there?

He's talking about the story of Gideon and the Midianites.

Do you remember that story?

Gideon was going up against an army of 135,000.

And he had 32,000, but God said, no, that's too many.

Let's whittle that down.

And he whittles it down to 22,000.

No, no, no, no, that's too many.

He whittles it down to 10,000.

No, no, no, still too many.

To 300.

And Gideon, with his 300 against 135,000, has victory.

But the point of that story is that God is the one who has the power.

The point of that story, and that we can see here, is God is the initiating God who comes in with his grace.

And that's what Isaiah is doing here.

He's looking back in history to show the character of God.

Verse 5.

For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult, every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire.

In other words, God's victory will be complete.

And so then it begs the question: how is this going to take place?

And if we weren't familiar with this text already, and I know many of us are, if we weren't familiar with this text, we might think that the next thing that Isaiah says is that a big army is going to come and rescue them and accomplish this with all the regalia and the pomp and circumstance of another king, a big king, an adult king with a big big army.

Instead, he confounds us in verse 6.

It says, For to us a child is born.

To us, a son is given.

Grace.

And the government shall be upon his shoulder.

And his name shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Prince of Shalom is the word there.

Wholeness, right relationship with God, with one another in creation.

Verse 7 of the increase of his government and of shalom, there will be no end.

On the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.

If you want that, say amen.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

There's a promise.

Underline that, circle that.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts.

You could translate it another way.

The red-faced passion of the Lord will accomplish this.

He's going to get it done.

He made a promise and he's going to keep it.

The empire of grace will have no end.

Well, this is a reading of God's word.

We all said, thanks be to God.

So the argument of Isaiah is actually quite sharp.

It cuts against the grain of the way his culture, his people were going, and it cuts against ours today.

Isaiah gives us an honest assessment of the human condition.

Spiritually hungry, yet stubbornly refusing to go to the source of all truth, goodness, and beauty in God Himself.

Advent begins in the dark.

But chapter 9, verse 1, nevertheless.

And that word carries a lot of weight.

Isaiah gives us a jarringly hopeful gospel of grace that intrudes on those who are walking around in darkness of their own making.

Most of us are familiar with the Christmas text of Isaiah 9.

We know it from Handel's Messiah.

But the claims of chapter 9 only hang together when we understand the reality, the darkness of chapter 8.

Advent begins in the dark and it ends with an anchored hope that comes from outside of ourselves.

Grace for the undeserving.

Grace for the ones stumbling around in the dark.

Grace for the spiritually hungry.

All of grace for anyone who would turn to God.

Isaiah's prophetic voice bursts with the good news of grace from several different angles.

And I want us to look at just four of them today.

Both in the category of honesty and hope, we see the illuminating grace of God in Christ.

The intrusive grace of God in Christ, the saving grace of God in Christ, and then finally the future grace.

Well, number one, the illuminating grace of God.

Let's look together at chapter 8, verse 20.

If you'd set your eyes there with me again.

To the teaching and to the testimony.

Back to the Word of God is what he's saying.

If they will not speak according to this word, it's because they have no dawn.

Isaiah is giving us, I think, in miniature, a theology of the nature of sin.

Our sinful condition, apart from the word of God, blinds us to the reality of how things really are.

The honesty of the Christian faith.

It's like when I woke up the other day and I just, I just carelessly bounded through our room in the pitch black, thinking I knew exactly how to get to the bathroom, forgetting that I put a piece of luggage on the floor.

Starting your day with a stubbed toe is not good.

Without light, we're blind.

And that blindness only gets darker the longer we turn away.

And we can see that if you look at verse 22.

They turn away from the Lord.

They finally look to the earth instead of looking to Yahweh.

And they're thrust into thick darkness, utter darkness of their own making, stumbling around in the dark because they had untethered themselves from the source of light and life.

And that is the story of humanity in a nutshell, from the Garden of Eden to our story here today, apart from Christ.

By its very nature, sin actually turns us away.

It breaks our communion with the Heavenly Father.

It stops our ears, so we no longer want to hear the truth of his word.

And the light of his word that shines on them is both instruction to us.

We know that.

We know that from our study of Psalm 119.

But it also reveals our desperate need for him.

And that kind of grace, what I'm going to call that kind of illuminating grace, can be painful at first, like an antiseptic.

The light reveals as it rescues.

And every one of us, if we were honest, we recoil when we're when we're told that we need something from the outside to help us.

All of us do.

But it's precisely there when we recognize our need that the power of God begins to work in us.

Save us.

Transform us.

Jesus taught us that.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who recognize their spiritual poverty, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The light reveals our need.

But don't hear shame.

I want you to hear grace this morning.

Grace for you and me as it uncovers our eyes, not merely to see our own sin.

We need to see that, but to see our great Savior, Jesus, who draws near to sinners like me, to sinners who are stumbling around in the dark.

Perhaps like you.

So many in our world are hungry for hope.

And the source of hope is on offer for us today.

That kind of freedom, that kind of newness of life.

Maybe you sense that hunger in you today.

This grace is for you today.

The Gospel of John says of Jesus, in him was life, and the life was the light of men.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Cornelius Plantinga says, God wants shalom and will pay any price to get it back.

Human sin is stubborn, but not as stubborn as the grace of God.

Number two, the intrusive grace of God in Christ.

I think we see that all over this text.

Advent begins in the dark, but Isaiah shows us that the grace of God is like the dawn that breaks in on the night.

His grace is often breaking in.

It's intrusive.

Look with me at 9, uh chapter 9, verse 2.

The people who walked in a darkness have seen a great light.

Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, the land of the shadow of death, on them a light has shone.

Isaiah is trying to show you the depravity that they'd come to at that point.

That deep darkness.

And Isaiah underpins actually what Jesus would proclaim about 700 years later: that he came to seek and to save the lost, those who are stumbling around in the dark.

The father who runs after the prodigal son.

To bring him back into the family.

The son, who doesn't even realize how dark he is because of his pride.

The father seeks after him, too.

Honesty and hope held together.

We cannot come home on our own.

The dawn breaks in on them, not from within them.

The light comes not as a discovery, but as an interruption, an intrusion.

C.S.

Lewis says the human soul is not the seeker, but the sought.

It is God who seeks, who descends from the other world to find and to heal man.

Ephesians, it's not on the screen here, would say, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together in Christ.

It is by grace you have been saved.

For all the believers in here, say amen.

That is the good news of the gospel.

The people of Isaiah's day were searching everywhere, but to the Lord God, to Yahweh, to satiate their hunger, to find freedom from their oppressors.

They had turned their noses up to God in contempt.

And it's to these people that the grace of God intrudes.

The hound of heaven runs after people like me and like you.

You probably notice that most of chapter 9 is talking about the initiative of God's work.

I'm going to put it on the screen.

Verse 2 of chapter 9 says, On them a light has shone.

Verse 3, you, Lord, have multiplied the nation.

Verse 4, the rod of his oppressor, Lord, you have broken.

Verse 6, for to us a son is given.

The government shall be on his shoulder, of the increase of his government, and the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

One of the great and humbling lessons of the Advent season teaches us that we cannot save ourselves, and we can't hear that enough.

That can be a hard pill to swallow.

Our Western experience teaches us that if we try hard enough, if we put our mind to, if we build more sophisticated technology, if we construct better political systems, our problems can be solved one day, or the Beatles told us we can work it out.

How's that working out for us?

Gospel of Jesus tells us our condition is far worse than we realize.

Turned away from God, we don't even know that we live and breathe by the grace of God.

But the claim of Isaiah, and it is a claim, as he frames the advent of Christ, is that there is a saving hope.

God refuses to see his people, his creation, stumble around in the darkness forever.

He refuses.

And this is one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith.

We sang it in almost every hymn we just sung.

God has every reason to leave us to our own rebellion.

But his love is stubborn and his grace is intrusive.

And that is good news.

God is always on the move, calling us home, and making a way for us to come home.

Come behold, the wondrous mystery we opened our service with.

Such embrace is precisely what he loves to do.

He cannot bear to hold back.

If what you've been taught is that God is cold, aloof, waiting for us to get our act together first, hear this good news of grace for you this morning.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given.

The gift of Christ is just that.

It is a gift to be received by faith.

In the New Testament, Paul begins his letter to the church at Colossae.

He breaks out into a prayer of thanks for this kind of grace.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

God is always on the move, calling us home, making a way for us to come home, the saving grace of God in Christ.

And that's our third point.

The third variety of grace that we see in this text.

As we read Isaiah 8, we all should have noticed that those people look a whole lot like me and you.

Looking here and there for meaning and purpose, looking to satisfy a longing, a spiritual hunger, with a salad bar of options that the world has on offer, only to find them insufficient and empty.

I came upon this quote from theologian David Wells.

I loved it.

It's not on the screen.

Modern culture is sagging beneath the weight of emptiness.

It was in Isaiah's day, and it is in ours.

On our own, apart from God, we are weak, we're frail, we falter, turned away from God.

We have no lasting hope.

Turned away from God, we have no resources to equip us for suffering in a broken world, no hope of any certainty against death.

Our darkest enemy.

We need a mighty God to save us.

Isaiah speaks of a Messiah who is so full of saving power, so comprehensive in his salvation, he actually needs four names.

Not to mention the name he gave him in an earlier chapter, Emmanuel, God with us.

Not to mention his earthly name, Jesus, and his title, Christ.

In the ancient Near East, your name said something about your character.

It said something about who you are.

And who does Isaiah say Jesus is?

But he says he's our wonderful counselor.

We live in an age of nearly endless counselors, don't we?

Vying for our attention and allegiance.

The New York Times published an article this year titled, The Attention Economy is Devouring Us.

A steady stream of books and apps and podcasts, therapists, teachers, AI companions can be at our beck and call at any moment, tickling our ears if we're not careful.

So where do you look for your ultimate counsel?

As we're reading Isaiah, are we like what he's describing there, looking to the earth alone for the resources that we need?

The beauty of the gospel of grace is that God Himself shines his light on us.

He himself has come as our wonderful counselor, pursuing us in our spiritual blindness, giving us the word we desperately need.

And Isaiah tells us that emphatically to the teaching and to the testimony.

I don't know about your translation, but it has an exclamation point.

He's shouting it emphatically: return to the word of God, the word of Christ, the wonderful counselor.

He also calls him the mighty God.

And it's just, it should be confounding to us that in his perfect wisdom, the Messiah comes as a helpless baby.

Needy, fully dependent on others.

Yet, do you remember in Matthew chapter 2, when Jesus was born, Herod the Great trembled.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

Herod and all of Jerusalem feared because of the birth of Jesus.

All the trappings of earthly strength and might could not compare to the power found in who Isaiah calls the mighty God.

Promises from anyone reach no farther than the strength of the one who makes them.

We say that again.

Promises from anyone reach no farther than the strength of the one who makes them.

And here we see Isaiah pointing us to the one who holds everything on his shoulders.

Colossians would tell us that in Christ all things hold together.

There is not a single square inch of the universe that is not under his watchful eye, his providential care, and his mighty hand.

My times, your times, are in held securely in his grip, the grip of the mighty God.

Martin Lloyd Jones says, Thank God, my salvation does not depend upon my frail hold on him, but of his almighty grasp of me.

Our Savior is the everlasting Father.

Our greatest need is to be in right relationship with God.

It's also our greatest longing, our greatest hunger, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Jesus tells us in the Gospel of John, whoever has seen me has seen the Father.

And that hunger that's etched into every human soul can only begin to be satisfied when that relationship is restored.

And in the coming of Christ, God has made a way for anyone to be brought back into the family of God, given all the privileges and responsibilities of being a child of God.

He calls us to turn to Him.

And his care, this kind of care, this kind of father, his care has no end, everlasting, it says.

That's the promise that we're given in our text this morning.

As a child of God, there is never a moment where you are not known and loved.

I pray you know that love this morning.

Our Lord comes into the darkness with a saving grace so comprehensive that we'll never be able to fully describe it.

S.

M.

Lockridge would say, I wish I could describe them to you.

A grace that keeps us and sustains us for all eternity, with him and in his kingdom of Shalom, which will have no end, and that is the future grace of God.

Isaiah offers us a wide overview of God's work of grace in redemption history, doesn't he?

You could put it simply: God has made promises and God will keep his promises.

Do you see the claim of Isaiah here?

The solution not only for our individual salvation, but the solution to every heinous war, act of violence, injustice, confused identity, cancer, and disease is found in this child, King Jesus, who alone can bear the government of the universe on his shoulder.

He alone can uphold justice and righteousness, true peace.

And Isaiah pulls the thread of God's grace all the way from Abraham to Gideon and forward to the one who would have all the power and authority placed on his shoulders.

Our Savior is the Prince of Peace.

And peace is such a multifaceted word, isn't it?

We long for peace.

And I think it's such a comfort if we look there at verse 7 of chapter 9.

The increase of his government and of Shalom of peace, there will be no end.

Future grace.

Those in Christ will live forever in the grace of God.

It will never end from this time forth and forevermore.

In chapter 53, Isaiah continues to reveal the grounding of this grace through Jesus.

Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.

By his wounds we are healed.

And because Christ has come and he's given himself to us, he has made a way by the cross, so that I, so that you can be at peace with God.

That's relational.

And the fruit of peace with God is the peace of God.

An internal poise, a proper confidence in the sovereign King who holds the world on his shoulders.

It's not a fragile peace.

No, I think the promise of this text tells us that this peace will one day decisively root out all that sin has stained, making all things new, as it says in Revelation.

The blight of human trafficking in our world will be no more.

Violence will be put to an end, the end of anxiety and melancholy and depression.

The peace on offer here actually gives us hope for today, genuine hope for marriages that seem irreconcilable, irredeemable, reconciliation for friendships that have long been damaged.

His peace is comprehensive, and it comes through a bloody cross and is guaranteed by his resurrection.

The end of death.

The deepest darkness is only temporary.

Death is a reality now, but it has a time limit, and one day it will be no more.

Death's dark shadow put to flight, we sang.

We say, rejoice.

Charles Spurgeon said, those little arms in the manger will one day grapple with the monster death and destroy it.

Death has touched many of us, even in this room, this week.

Family and friends who have gone on to be with the Lord.

Hear this as grace for today and eternity for all those who have turned to Him.

So, friends, let's let's push back at reducing the Advent season to mere optimism or nostalgia, but hope tethered to a God who came, who intruded, and who has the power to save those who stumble in the dark.

Fleming Rutledge, just one more quote from her.

We need to understand the difference between optimism and hope.

Optimism often arises out of the denial of real facts.

Hope, however, persists in spite of the clearly recognized facts.

There's the honesty.

Why?

Because it's anchored in something beyond.

The light shone on them.

It broke in on them, the dawn of redeeming grace.

Advent begins in the dark, but praise God it ends in the light.

And it is good for us.

The lessons of our Advent are honest and hopeful because of that one who came and intruded.

There are two ways to live in this world.

If we go back to chapter 8, verse 17, I will hope in the Lord.

Or verse 22, I will look to the earth.

Let's turn to the Lord.

To Yahweh, our only hope.

Perhaps you're hungry for that kind of anger-anchored hope this morning.

I pray you are.

Grace is on offer for all those who stumble in the dark.

Would you turn to him?

Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we praise you.

Who calls us home and has made a way for us to come home.

Open our ears and our eyes to taste and see that you're good, to see that your grace seeks and saves and sustains you are worthy of our worship.

When we're tempted to look to the earth alone for the resources we need, Lord, we pray that you would satisfy our hunger.

We would find our satisfaction in you and you alone.

May we find our hope in you and you alone.

In the precious name of Jesus, we all said.

Amen.