Hope in the Promise

Isaiah 9:1-7

This writer served in the military but never went to war, and never experienced the human devastation of war, as many of my classmates have.  But when war comes to your homeland, it is a time of gloom and darkness.  This is what Isaiah is implying about Zebulun and Naphtali, two northern tribes attacked by the Assyrian invasion led by Tiglath-pileser in 733 B.C.

If you have been to a nursing home, where many a person disposes of family members who are never visited and they long to be touched, talked to and listened to; they have health issues and yet many never see or hear from their loved ones.  All you need is to walk down those halls of the nursing home and look into the faces, to see that they have lost all hope and are the walking dead.  Isaiah is telling us the people were in darkness, in defeat, but hope was not gone, in fact, he is writing as if the event has happen, yet it is in the future.

The people recall how God used Gideon with a handful of men and the power of God to defeat the oppressive Midianites and run them out of the land.  But they are also looking for a child to be born who will lead them in victory.  You may have heard the words of the prophet Isaiah tell the people of his time who are living in the darkness of defeat and controlled by a foreign power, about the child as if it had already happen.  This is the account: “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, 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.” (Isaiah 9:6-7 ESV)

These people of Judea put their hope in the promise of the coming Messiah, while they lived in the control of the Assyrians, it was their present darkness, and we who live in this present darkness of the love of self over the love of God, we are also in captivity to the enemy of our soul.  If you examine the titles given to this child, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, no human king can fill those shoes, only the one promised, the Messiah.

Now you may be reading this and have no belief system other than self, or you may be an agnostic, your in good company, so were the twelve who followed Jesus for almost two years, they were full of unbelief, but if you, like them, will just follow Jesus, He will do for you what He did for the disciples.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice