Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Experiencing the echoes of Christmas...


This week we find ourselves in the midst of the Christmas season. And as we find ourselves in the midst of the Christmas season, we can find ourselves reminiscing about Christmases past. You see, there is just something about the Christmas season the causes us to go back to recall our childhood and our favorite memories of Christmases growing up. There is just something about the Christmas season that echoes back to Christmases past.  And we can find ourselves in a place where the echoes of Christmas are all around us.

We can experience the echoes of Christmas as we put up the Christmas tree. We can experience the echoes of Christmas when we turn on the radio and hear a favorite Christmas carol. We can experience the echoes of Christmas when we are shopping for that special gift for that special someone. We can experience the echoes of Christmas when we gather around the kitchen table to make our favorite Christmas cookies. We can experience the echoes of Christmas as we smell the smells of our favorite Christmas meal cooking in the kitchen. And we can experience the echoes of Christmas as we gather together around a table to connect with family and friends and as we reflect on those who are no longer at the table.

You see, there is something about Christmas that powerfully echoes us back to Christmases of the past. And there is something powerful about the echoes of Christmases past the reverberate and impact our Christmas celebrations in the present. And for many of us, the powerful echoes of Christmases past will reverberate and impact our Christmas celebrations long into the future. Because, this morning, the timeless reality is that there are echoes of Christmas that have impacted humanity for over 2,000 years.

So in the weeks leading up to Christmas we are going to spend our time together at the church where I serve in a sermon series entitled "Echoes of Christmas". During this series, we are going to look at three different events from history that served as echoes that reverberated and impacted the very first Christmas. During this series, we are going to discover how these echoes of Christmas continue to reverberate and impact our lives today. And as we go through this series, our hope and our prayer is that God would move, by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we would wrap our heads, hearts, and hands around these echoes of Christmas and the impact that they have had on Christmases throughout history, so that we would live lives that reflect these echoes of Christmas to those around us every day of every year.

This week, I would like for us to spend our time together looking at the first echo of Christmas that we will look at during this series. We find this echo in an event from history that is preserved and recorded for us in a section of a letter in the Old Testament of the Bible called the book of Isaiah. And it is in this event from history that we are reminded of an echo of Christmas that has reverberated throughout history. So let’s look at the context in which this echo of Christmas appears, beginning in Isaiah 7:1-2. Let’s look at it together:

Now it came about in the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, that Rezin the king of Aram and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, went up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but could not conquer it. 2 When it was reported to the house of David, saying, "The Arameans have camped in Ephraim," his heart and the hearts of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake with the wind.

Now to understand what is happening in this event from history, we first need to understand the context in which this event from history took place. During this time in history, the Jewish people were 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. This event from history occurred between 736 and 734 B.C. and is recorded for us in a section of another letter in the Old Testament of the Bible, called the book of 2 Kings, in 2 Kings 16:5-6. At this time in history, the southern kingdom of Judea was led by King Ahaz.

Now King Ahaz was one of the most wicked kings to ever led the Jewish people. The letters that make up the Bible tells us that King Ahaz embraced the idolatry that had previously consumed the Jewish people who were a part of the northern kingdom of Israel. King Ahaz worshipped the false gods of the nations that surrounded the Jewish people that the Lord 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, King Ahaz burned incense to these false gods and even burned his sons in fire to these false gods.

With that background in mind, here we see Isaiah explain that the northern kingdom of Israel had made an alliance with the nation of Aram, which was located in modern day Syria, to attack King Ahaz and the southern kingdom of Judah. And as the united armies of the northern kingdom of Israel and Aram marched toward Jerusalem, the Jewish people were shaken with fear. Just like a tree that is pummeled by the winds of a monsoon storm, the Jewish people shook from fear at the prospect of being invaded and conquered by the invading armies of the northern kingdom of Israel and the nation of Aram.

And as the invading armies approached, King Ahaz and the Jewish people were faced with a choice. And that choice was this: who were they going to trust? Would they trust in the Lord? Or would they place their trust in the nation of Assyria, who were the Jewish people’s hated enemy. If the Jewish people chose to place their trust in the nation of Assyria, this would not simply involve relying of the military might of their army. You see, at this time in history, to enter in an alliance with another nation was to enter into a relationship with that nation’s gods.

Thus, an alliance with the nation of Assyria would require the southern kingdom of Judea to enter into a covenant commitment that involved a recognition of the Assyrian gods and an admission of their lordship over the Jewish people. In addition, King Ahaz would have to redesign the altar at the Temple in Jerusalem in order that sacrifices to the gods of the nation of Assyria could be made.  And it is in this context, as King Ahaz faced a potential invasion of the nation that shook him to the core of his being with fear, that the prophet Isaiah approached king Ahaz as the king was preparing for the defense of Jerusalem to deliver a message from the Lord. A message that is recorded for us in Isaiah 7:3-9:

Then the LORD said to Isaiah, "Go out now to meet Ahaz, you and your son Shear-jashub, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool, on the highway to the fuller's field, 4 and say to him, 'Take care and be calm, have no fear and do not be fainthearted because of these two stubs of smoldering firebrands, on account of the fierce anger of Rezin and Aram and the son of Remaliah. 5 'Because Aram, with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah, has planned evil against you, saying, 6 "Let us go up against Judah and terrorize it, and make for ourselves a breach in its walls and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it," 7 thus says the Lord GOD: "It shall not stand nor shall it come to pass. 8 "For the head of Aram is Damascus and the head of Damascus is Rezin (now within another 65 years Ephraim will be shattered, so that it is no longer a people), 9 and the head of Ephraim is Samaria and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you will not believe, you surely shall not last."'"

Now the Lord’s message to King Ahaz through the prophet Isaiah, if communicated in the language we use in our culture today, would have sounded something like this: “Do not fear these two armies that are plotting together to conquer you and set up a puppet king in place of you, because this plan of theirs will never happen. This plan will never happen because the nation of Aram and the northern kingdom of Israel will soon be conquered themselves. As a matter of fact, within 65 years the nation of the northern kingdom will no longer be Jewish. So 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”. And to make sure that King Ahaz understood how serious the Lord was when it came to His message and His promise, we see the Lord say that following in verse 10-11:

Then the LORD spoke again to Ahaz, saying, 11 "Ask a sign for yourself from the LORD your God; make it deep as Sheol or high as heaven."

Now, if Isaiah was writing these verses today, these verses may have sounded something like this: “King Ahaz, the Lord, the God of the Jewish people who has made Himself known to the Jewish people throughout history and has intervened for the Jewish people in history. The Lord, who has entered into a covenant relationship with your ancestor King David so that the Jewish people would live in a special relationship with Him invites you to put Him to the test. The Lord invites you to ask for whatever sign that you would like the Lord to do to prove that He will do what I have told you He would do. King Ahaz, there is no limit on what you may ask for when it comes to a sign from the Lord to demonstrate to you that He will do what I have told you He would do.”

Tomorrow, we will see how King Ahaz responded to the invitation to put the Lord to the test…

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