We discovered that God’s presence is desperately needed because we have a problem. Christmas is about the reality that God’s presence cannot and will not be present with selfishness and rebellion. Christmas is about God responding to the problem of selfishness and rebellion that created a void that separated humanity from God. Christmas is about God responding to the problem of selfishness and rebellion with a promise.
Now, this week, I would like for us to spend our time together discovering the promise that God made to provide an opportunity for all humanity to experience God’s presence. We find God’s promise revealed in another section of a letter that is recorded for us in our Bibles called the book of Isaiah. In this section of this letter, we see the prophet Isaiah, who was God’s spokesperson to the Jewish people, the very person who God used to reveal that humanity was in desperate need of God’s presence because of their problem of selfishness and rebellion, used by God to reveal His promise of His presence. To fully understand the significance of God’s promise, however, we must first understand the context in which God made this promise.
We discover the context in which God makes the promise of His presence revealed for us in Isaiah chapter 7 and 8, which occurred during the period between 736 and 734 b.c. The nature and condition of Jewish nation at this time is also recorded for us in another letter in our Bibles called the book of 2 Kings. At this point in the history of the Jewish people, the Jewish nation was a nation that was divided into two kingdoms; the northern kingdom, which was referred to as Israel and the southern kingdom, which was referred to as Judah.
Now Judah was led by a King named King Ahaz. And Ahaz was one of the most wicked kings that ever led the Jewish people. The Bible tells us that Ahaz embraced the idolatry that had previously consumed the northern kingdom of Israel. He worshipped the false gods of the gentile nations that God had commanded the Jewish people to destroy when He delivered them from slavery at the hands of the nation of Egypt. As part of his idolatrous worship, Ahaz burned incense to these false gods and even burned his sons in fire as an act of worship to these false gods.
During this time, the northern kingdom, Israel, made an alliance with the nation of Aram, which was located in modern day Syria, to attack Judah. And as the united armies of Israel and Aram marched toward Jerusalem, Judah had a choice. And that choice was this; who are they going to trust? Are we going to trust in the Lord? Or should we trust the nation of Assyria, which was the hated enemy of the Jewish people. Now in those days, an alliance with a foreign nation required adopting that nation’s gods and religious practices. So an alliance with Assyria would require entering into a covenant that involved recognition of the Assyrian gods and an admission of their lordship. Ahaz would even have to redesign the temple altar in Jerusalem that Solomon had previously made in order that sacrifices to their gods could be made.
It is in this context that the prophet Isaiah approaches king Ahaz as the king is making preparations for the defense of Jerusalem in order to deliver a message from the Lord. And the Lord’s message to the king was this: “Do not fear this army, because this plan will not happen. Do not place your trust in the Assyrians, place your trust in me. But if you do not trust me, if you trust the Assyrians, understand this; you surely will not last”. The prophet then puts king Ahaz to the test by inviting him to test God. King Ahaz, however, refuses to test God.
Now, the reason Ahaz refused to test God was not because he feared God; the reason Ahaz refused to test God was because Ahaz had already made up his mind. The king had already decided that he would place his confident trust in Assyria instead of the Lord. King Ahaz responded to the situation that he faced from the military threat of the northern kingdom of Israel and the nation of Aram by appealing to and paying the Assyrians a great sum of money to come to his aid. The Jewish people broke their covenant with God in order to enter into a covenant with the false gods of the Assyrians.
And it was this decision by King Ahaz that signaled the beginning of the end for the Jewish people of the southern kingdom. This decision by King Ahaz proved to be the turning point that led to God’s presence departing from the Jewish people. It was this turning point that led to what we read in Isaiah 8:19:
When they say to you, "Consult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter," should not a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. They will pass through the land hard-pressed and famished, and it will turn out that when they are hungry, they will be enraged and curse their king and their God as they face upward. Then they will look to the earth, and behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be driven away into darkness.
Instead of seeking the presence of the one true and living God for guidance and direction, the Jewish people sought guidance from those who would speak with the dead. Instead of seeking the presence of the eternal God, the Jewish people sought the presence of the temporary. And as a result, the Jewish people were wandering through life separated from the presence of God. The Jewish people were left to grope along the way like blind men without the light of God’s presence to guide them. Wherever the Jewish people looked, wherever the Jewish people searched, they only found the emptiness and the darkness that comes from the lack of God’s presence. And as the Jewish people began to experience the consequences that came from their selfishness and rebellion, the result was the inevitable emptiness that comes from the absence of God’s presence.
Maybe you can totally relate to where the Jewish people were in Isaiah’s day. Maybe you feel a void and emptiness in your life; you feel that something is missing in your life; something is missing that nothing has been able to fill. Maybe you have tried to fill the emptiness and void in your life with position, or pleasure, or possessions, but at the end of the day, the void, the emptiness is still present. You see, while darkness can swallow up a light that is failing, darkness cannot produce or replace that light on its own. Darkness cannot fill the very void that it creates. And just like the setting sun results in darkness on the earth, the Jewish people’s selfishness and rebellion resulted in moral and spiritual darkness setting over their lives. A darkness and emptiness that could not be replaced, remedied, or filled on its own: a darkness that could only overcome by something outside of us.
And at this point God would have been perfectly justified in walking away forever from the Jewish people and all of humanity. As we talked about last week, God is just and God is right. And God, in His justice, will not allow selfishness, rebellion, harm or wrong to go unpunished. For God to allow selfishness, rebellion, wrong or harm to go unpunished would only prove that He is unjust. All of humanity rejected and rebelled against God and God had every right to exercise His right and just response to that selfishness and rebellion and just walk away.
But that is not what God did. Instead of responding by walking away, God responded with an amazing promise. Instead of promising to walk away from humanity forever, God made a promise to take a step toward humanity. Tomorrow, we will see this amazing promise revealed through the prophet Isaiah...
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