The Strength We Trust

If you have your Bibles, I encourage you to find your Bibles and turn to the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 9, in part 2 of our Advent series, specifically focusing on verse 6 of Isaiah chapter 9. Before I read this, though, even this morning as we were in Isaiah chapter 9, let's turn to Isaiah chapter 11.

This idea of children, and a child, and a child will lead them. Is there anything more confirming of peace and security in a world than a child being able to run free? Whenever I read these, I think about my own children. My daughter didn't know a stranger, and I remember being afraid of that. Here's this little girl that will hug everybody, and I can hand her off to somebody she's never seen, and she'll say, Bye, Dad.

And it was a world where I had to teach her fear, a world where I had to say, honey, you can't go with people that I haven't introduced you to, or we haven't made, or they don't know the code word, right? And so, it's such a beautiful text that we have this morning. And what stands out, it seems, is this promise of a child, the very humanity of Jesus.

Portrayed in, in such a way that, that even talks about the child has to be born. And so, that's our text this morning, Isaiah chapter 9. We're going to read verses 1 to 7. Little later we'll get just a bit of context from chapter 8. But the other context from chapter 7, and I have to say this because our men's study the one on Tuesday mornings they pick apart the sermon, so I won't be there this week because I can't take it.

But, someone asked last week, why, why wasn't Immanuel a part of this? That's a great question. Immanuel's in chapter 7. Immanuel is the sign that God gives Ahaz, and says, ask me for a sign. He says, I don't want a sign. I don't need a sign. He goes, well then, one's still going to be given to you. The virgin will give birth, and you will call His name Immanuel, God with us.

And so, when we look at the four aspects of the name today, we're going to look at the, the second aspect of it, the second title. Mighty God. These are all parts of this God who is with us. And so as the scripture unfolds so does this beautiful clarity of who our Savior is and what He will be like.

That, that unfolds before us. We've been told in chapter 7 that God Himself will be with us. He will dwell with us. And now, of course, the mind starts to think, what will He be like? Has anybody ever seen this? Has this ever happened before? What will it be like? And so in the midst of darkness, overwhelming darkness, we receive this beautiful prophecy.

Isaiah chapter 9, verses 1 to 7. Please stand if you are able for the reading of God's Word. But there will be no gloom for her 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 has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shown. You have multiplied the nation. You have increased its joy. They rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest. As they are glad when they divide the spoil, for the yoke of his burden and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of the oppressor, you have broken.

As on the day of Midian, for every boot, every boot of the trampling warrior in battle, tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and of peace. There will be no end and 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. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. The grass withers, the flower fades, the word of our God will stand forever.

This is the word of God. Amen. You may be seated. Chapter 7 to 39 of Isaiah are a comparison. It's really a denouncement of the kingly rule of all who have preceded King Ahaz. And so a lot of scholars say that's why in the name of Jesus, they don't use the word king. They'll use prince, but, but they don't even wanna equate him for, for the kingship.

The monarchy has gone in such disarray and has led the people in the, in the way. It shouldn't have led them that, that, that it. It's depicted by walking in this darkness. And so chapter seven to 39, the living God and his promises are compared to the earthly kings. The immediate context is King Ahaz is about to be attacked from Judah and Syria, and they have united and they're coming against him.

And the prophet has told him, do not go to the Assyrians. They will not save you. Do not go. And if you read through 2 Kings, you find he does go. He asks for the advice of the Lord, the counsel of the Lord. He receives the word of the Lord. You know, in the Old Testament, when you, when you, you, sometimes you get the name of the prophets, sometimes you don't.

But when you're reading the Old Testament, 1 Kings and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, and it says, and the Lord said this, and the Lord said that. It's coming through the mouths of the prophets. When we talk about visions, the prophets receive a vision. When they say there is no vision, it's not something that appears in the sky.

It's the vision of the Word of God. That's how they received it. And so, King Ahaz receives this word. Don't follow the kings of the nations around you. Don't align with them. They will not save you. And yet he does. And so our context is one of gloom and darkness and children being sacrificed to these false gods.

And so our text, when it starts with the word, but it is speaking to a season, a time, a culture, a world. And so as we think through these promises, Oh, they're so real and they're so available for us today. Christian, you can sit back and talk about the darkness of the world. You can try to kind of hide in your own home away from all of its influences and all of its darkness.

But oh, brothers and sisters in Christ, a light has shown and that's what happens here. That's what's promised here. And so they're contrasted. And when you get to Isaiah 40, it's a mockery of idolatry. So if you've ever read Isaiah 40 to 48, it's one of my favorite passages in the Old Testament. He compares the living God to idols.

This section, he is comparing the living God and the King to come with those that they have trusted. Beforehand, he chose wrong. He chose to trust the enemies of God and the enemies of Israel. Unwise, ungodly, kings, priests, prophets, counselors, fathers, idols. They leave us in the dark. They leave God's people, and the world is a people of gloom, anguish.

And contempt and uncertainty. And you know what happens? There is a divine birth announcement. There's a divine birth announcement. Now I'm an old curmudgeon, just in case you're not too sure of it. I'm a bit of a curmudgeon. I like the word curmudgeon, you know, it, it, it's, it's what I am. So, you know, you get these birth announcements, and these reveal parties, and the push gifts, and just, I mean, you know, in my day, yeah, you knew a baby was coming, but you didn't celebrate it till the baby was here, and you know, then it was all done, and you know, so now my, my, my second grandson's on the way, and you know, there's a whole slew of things now that you have to do, but these birth announcements that go out, now, that's really what this is.

Hey people, you're walking in darkness, but you know what? God has promise that he is going to give you a human being that will be God with us. He will be born of woman. He will be born of a virgin. And he will bring light into this dark world. He will bring human flourishing. If you look at all the things that it lists here light, fertility, he's going to multiply the nation.

He's going to increase its joys, like harvest, yokes of oppression, slavery. They're going to be broken, invading troops defeated, and government systems replaced. But what will be his? Name. Well, name and title in the Bible are very significant. We sometimes get it here. And sometimes I'll, I'll hear a person's name and I know what it means.

And, and I, I tell you, there's times when someone will tell me their name and I'll say, Oh, it means this. And they'll look at me like, Hmm, I didn't know that. I had a bank teller whose name was Sol. And I remember at one point, you know, friendly Mark gets to talk to her. And, you know, after several visits, I'm like, Hey, is Sol your real name?

Or is it, is it, is it, you know, part of something? And she goes, Oh yeah, my real name is Solzhenitsyn. But I have no idea what that means. And I'm like, are you kidding me? You never ever took the time to look up this amazing figure in history. We don't think about it as much. We name people after Friends, family sports heroes, maybe.

I have a dog named after me. He got put down last year. Why are you laughing? It was, I get a note. We're putting Kuiper down today. I'm like, what? My brother named his dog after you. He thought he looked like you. Like, Thanks, thanks for that. Names are significant. Isaiah, Yeshua, which means God saves. He has two sons, right?

Shir Jashub, the name of Isaiah's elder son, which means a remnant shall return. He has another son, Maha Shalal Hashbaz, the name of Isaiah's younger son. And it means speed the spoil, hasten the plunder, and the haul, and the prize. An ill gotten gain. What a terrible name. My mother in law's not here this morning, but when I met her, when I was dating Tammy, she had a cat.

I have a long history with cats. She had a cat named Ichabod. I'm on maybe my first or second date with Tammy, trying to impress everybody with my wonderful, profound wisdom. And I'm like, well, that's interesting. Perchance, why did you name your cat the glory of the Lord has departed from Israel? Kay can tell you that she looked at me as she often still does.

This man's crazy. But they have significance, but here this name, this name he is called, it differs in that it describes the nature and the character of the person. Not an event, not some future event, but the actual nature and character and completion. And so what we are getting fleshed out these four weeks is, is if you're looking at a Google map and you're trying to find a place and you keep zooming in and zooming in, and the whole point of scripture keeps getting zoomed in, zoomed in, and you come to Christ in the middle of Isaiah, you come to Christ and you zoom in further and we're diving into the wonderful, magnificent nature of God with us.

If you weren't here last week, oh man, you missed it. And I encourage you, get a podcast or however we do this. I don't know how we do it, but it's out there in the ether somewhere. And look at Pastor Blake talking about this wonderful counselor. And if you're like me, you sat through that and you're like, Oh, it's absolutely true.

We are desperate people in need of counsel. We need wonderful counsel and we'll pay almost anything to get it. That's our Savior. Yeah. This morning we find out that a wonderful counselor is not enough. Wonderful counselors, not enough. It's not just good that our, our God is a wonderful counselor. Our God must be mighty.

He must not just be a mighty, a wonderful counselor. He must be a mighty God. What we need is more than just great counsel. We need a mighty God. Oftentimes, we receive biblical counsel. It's wise, and it's clear. We oftentimes give biblical counsel, counsel from God to people, and we wonder why they don't take it.

Oftentimes, I have, I have referred people to wonderful counselors, in their marriage and in their life, and then to find, well, it just didn't work. And I'll say, well, what, what didn't work? Yeah. Did you not do what they instructed you to do? Well, no. It didn't make sense to me, so I didn't do it. It's not just enough.

That's so wonderful that our God is, He is this wonderful counselor, but He is also a mighty God. The sermon and the sentence this morning is that our Emmanuel, our God with us, is this mighty God. One of the beautiful things we find in our text here and throughout the whole story of scripture is that he will not allow the sins of his people or any evil powers to thwart his mission.

This comes, this prophecy comes with assurance. It's called a prophetic present in the sense of language that he speaks of things as if they exist because they are so, so certain that we can trust in them. And these words come to Judah specifically in its darkest hour. Our Emmanuel, he is a mighty God and he will not allow the sins of his people or any evil power.

to thwart his mission. We get anxious and we doubt when we trust in others, when we trust in ourselves, when we trust in rulers. And here the call is trust in Emmanuel. Why do we need a mighty God? I've got three things I'm going to pull from our texts quickly this morning. There are three things that Isaiah says he does.

And it requires God and His might to do it. These three things that He does, He has to do because human beings of their own are incapable of doing these things. The first is we need a mighty God to turn on the lights. My grandson was visiting a few weeks ago. Have I told you about him? He's top tier, just in case you're wondering.

He loves cars, like he loves little cars. I mean, I think it's just genetic, the poor kid. He's got no chance. He loves cars. My older son loves cars. One of the funniest things he's ever said is he's sitting around all these toy cars and he looks at Tim and he goes, I need more cars! One of his first sentences.

Now, when I get up early in the morning and I walk through the living room, Normally, the phone from my, the light from my phone is fine. I can find my way to the lamp, I can find my way to the coffee machine, I can find my way to turn on the office light. When my grandson is there, what do I have to do? I absolutely need a spotlight.

Because you know what happens when an old curmudgeon steps on a matchbox car.

Isaiah is saying, this son that is born, that is given, is going to be the light of the world. He will turn on the lights.

It's not just here, it's all throughout the scriptures that we are told Jesus brings the light. Timothy says in one of his kind of doxological responses in verse 16 of chapter 6, he's, this, this Jesus, he's sovereign. He is blessed. He's the king of kings. He's the Lord of lords. He comes to verse 16.

He has immortality. And he dwells in this unapproachable Luke 2. And suddenly, there it is at this birth announcement, shepherds and light and angels. In Matthew 2, the wise men from the east, what do they say? We've seen his star, God using all of nature to show, I am bringing my son into the kingdom. This world, I am fulfilling my promises.

In your bulletin insert, John Oswalt says throughout the Bible, God's presence is equated with light. So here there is light for these people because their sin and rebellion are not enough to keep God from manifesting himself to them. Nothing can prevent God's light from shining as it in fact has in Jesus.

Last week, our world longs for wise counsel. This week, our world longs for light. And only a mighty God can deliver a mighty light. Only a mighty God can take the scales off our eyes and open and restore our sight. Just think of how we use those terms, right? So and so has been enlightened. What does that mean?

It means knowledge has come to them. It means they have been changed by something that has been brought up, something that they can see. Light the way bring fresh light to a situation. Our God turns on the light. It's interesting what the light does Blake mentioned it last week, but it's in here It says in the days of Midian you think about what happens in Midian and Gideon as he is called It's this beautiful scene.

A lot of our men have been studying the book of Judges this amazing scene. He's there in a winepress Threshing threshing grain in a winepress and the angel appears to him and says greetings mighty warrior And I think it's comedic. Here he is, hiding from everybody, and the angel says, Hey, you, hey mighty warrior.

But when the light of God's revelation comes, even upon Gideon, what does he say? You know what? I'm gonna, I'm gonna use you, and you're, I'm gonna defeat Midian. But it is vitally important that all of Israel knows that it's from my hand. And so, the first thing you have to do is get rid of the Baal, and get rid of the Ashtoreth.

Gideon, before I bring my saving work, it is apparent, it is absolutely imperative that the idols are removed, otherwise I know my people. They will give my glory to another, as they have always done. Sometimes we don't like the light of God shining upon us. The king of kings and lord of lords comes as a baby, and here it tries to kill him.

I love the way that it's pictured in the book of Revelation. And there was a woman and she was giving birth to a child. And the dragon sat there waiting to eat and devour the child. Christian, of all people, we can welcome the light. We absolutely can welcome the light. We pray that we do that every week when we gather to worship them.

That the call to the Lord, the call to worship reveals who God is more and more each time. That the power of his spirit as we read his word and we recite it one to another is illuminating what we think of our God. That the call to confession is a light shining in the very recesses of our heart. Here is where King Jesus, I have still refused to confess and repent and submit.

It would be terrible for God to rescue them without the light of Christ shining in them. C. S. Lewis says that uh, the light of, the light of scripture is like turning the light on in a basement. You turn on the light in a basement and you see a whole bunch of cockroaches. The light didn't create the cockroaches.

It exposes what was already there. But many want to continue to live in darkness. I don't want to know. And so it's not even enough that our God turns the lights on. Without revealing Christ as our Savior, the turning on the lights is one of the most evil things that could be done to a person. Right? It's an inherent for us as we worship and we realize there may be people amongst us that don't know the gospel that, that if the light of God is used for the preaching of the word or the singing or the liturgy and it opens up this wound, this darkness, if it points out to a person where you're wrong and where you're sinful, it's absolutely important that we point them to Christ.

We don't send them out with this light showing all that they have done wrong without that light pointing them to the way. And so, the second thing that a mighty God has to do, He turns on the light, but then our God does it in order to rescue us from our captors. You see, in the days of Ahaz, the idolatry had, had captivated the minds and the hearts and the lives of the people.

So, but, comes verse 1. The gloom is not final. God will not be satisfied that His people have experienced just the results of their rebellion. He doesn't sit there and say, I told you so, which He did. I told you that you thought you would control them, and eventually they would control you. I told you, my prophets told you, they begged you for generations, don't turn that way, it will cost you your children's lives.

And your Ahaz did? He sacrificed his son. The king sacrificed his son. You see this glaring, glaring contradiction between the kings of men and the king of kings. We need a mighty God to rescue us from our captors. The experience itself is not an end, it is a means. The frustration that we have in the darkness.

Anxiety that we oftentimes feel. It is a means of God whereby his goodness can be manifested in the salvation of his people, people now aware of his true resources and the source of their life quickly. What does he do? He rescues us and he multiplies the nation. We looked at that. They grow numerically.

The nation grows. It increases his joy. As men do when they divide the spoil and he breaks the yoke of our slavery This is why Christians We celebrate Christmas This is why we celebrate the amazing gift of God giving his son This mighty God coming to us as a child But it's also why that if the idea that you harbor in your heart is I need to get myself right with God You It's foolish and shallow.

He must save you. He has the power to save you. And by the power of His Spirit, when the light shines into the recesses of your heart, your response is not to go back and try better next week. Your response is to run to your Savior and cry out, Rescue me, O Father, rescue me once. Again, I remember a friend in California that came to our church there, and he had kind of come back to the church.

He had given it a try for years, and he went through a bitter divorce, a horrific divorce. And he said, Pastor, I feel like when that happened, that I was run over by a car, and I was laying in the street in front of the church. Yeah. Yeah. And he said, and everybody was standing at the church door saying, come on, come on in.

He said, I couldn't move. That stuck with me. We can't just as a church say that, just come here. It's here. The water's fine. You have to be rescued Ephesians that you're dead in your trespasses and said, there's nothing you can do. God reaches down to rescue us. He turns on the light, he rescues us from our enemies.

And thirdly, he shoulders our governance. And this is going to overlap to some of the stuff Blake will talk about in the next couple of weeks. But, but this mighty God also has power over everything. Hence the word mighty. If you've just said God. Especially in that culture, they would have thought, well, he's a God, he's a localized deity.

And if we serve him right and we sacrifice right, then, then yeah, there's a God here and he rules this certain area of, of the world, of the country. But no, he says, no, no, he's not a God like the ones you have made. Again, 40 to 48 we'll deal with that. He's not like, he's not like one of those. He is mighty.

Yeah. and he will shoulder the governance of his people of the world. And your outline. I have three of them. I have a religious governance as as the religion and the worship of the people go, then as the people go, and this religious governance is both personal and corporate. Right, there is this personal side of the people of God returning to God with their whole hearts.

But there's absolutely also a corporate part to this. People of God return to their, return to their Savior, and people of God return to the people of God. People of God who are called by Him by name are placed in His family, have brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles, and they are called to be a part of that community.

Next week we get to receive people. Making a commitment to this community, and we make a commitment to them. The governance of this church, praise the Lord, is not upon my shoulders, Blake's shoulders, or the session's shoulders. Our book of church order, when the first preliminary principle said, Christ and Christ alone is the head of his church.

This mighty God brings political governance. This mighty God brings social governance. Amen. And our text ends with the increase. He will know no end. Why? Because we're going to repent. Why? Because we finally figured it out. It's finally dawned on us. Why is this going to happen? And this might be the most beautiful part of the whole text.

Why is this going to happen? Look at that last verse. Because the zeal. Of the Lord of hosts will accomplish it. Oh, Christian, is that not the greatest news? I mean, we may walk out here all on fire this week. I'm going to do it right this week, right? But it's not on you. Our God is doing what He promised.

And we are the beneficiaries of that. His zeal will do this. And so this picture that the prophet has painted for us, it's not going to come about in the ordinary way. It will only happen because of God's passionate involvement with his people. Let us pray. Father, as we prepare to take the bread and to drink the cup, as we prepare Father to proclaim to this world that we have a mighty God and we have a wonderful counselor.

That your zeal will accomplish all that you have promised. Father, we long for the day of no more gloom. We long for the day where there is no more darkness. We praise you that where we stand in earth's history, we have seen the fulfillment of this promise in phase one of Christ coming. And we long for the fulfillment when he returns.

And everything is set right. Father, may we live as people in light of the first advent. That guaranteed by his resurrection that will culminate with the child returning. The mighty God. Oh, help us, Father, that we surrender everything to your light and to your rule. Receive now our offerings. Lord, may they work to further your great name and your kingdom.

We ask in Jesus name. Amen.