This post is written by guest blogger, Jake Cannon. Jake is a recent digital media graduate from Greenville College. He is actively involved at August Gate in St. Louis where he is taking a preaching lab. Jake will be supply preaching at WBC this Sunday, December 6, 2015.
“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, Gailiee of the nations.”
Isaiah 9:1
If there is anything that I have learned over my short time on earth it is this: your language matters. Your words and how you use them can either help or hinder others around you. One sentence can tell me a multitude about your worldview. For Christians, our language should be of the utmost importance. It is God Himself who spoke into existence the universe; it is Christ Himself who is “the Word”; it is the Spirit Himself who uses the preaching of the Bible to pierce into our hearts. Our words matter.
Never did words matter more than when the Israelites and Syrians made battle against the kingdom of Judah. It is recorded in Isaiah 7 that when King Ahaz heard that the armies of Israel and Syria were coming against him, “…his heart and the hearts of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake with the wind” (v. 2). Isaiah, the prophet to Judah, was sent to comfort King Ahaz with a word from the Lord. Isaiah’s words mattered. They mattered not only because of the historical context from which chapters 7-9 are written, they mattered because they were directly from the Lord.
We find recorded in Isaiah 7-9 a proclamation of hope, judgment, and peace. What the Lord gave Isaiah to speak mattered greatly to the people at that time. Though their wickedness brought contempt from God, He will make glorious their land. What is most powerful about verse one in chapter nine is that it is God who brings contempt and glory.
It is God, who in verse three, will multiply the nations and supply them with joy. Joy not in the harvests or in the spoils of battle, but in God Himself. Sinners cannot save themselves from the judgment of God. There is nothing good inside of Judah that can be considered worthy of escaping the contempt of God. What Isaiah ultimately tells us in just one sentence is that it is God Himself who brings judgment, and that it is God Himself who ultimately saves sinners.
Isaiah’s words mattered because Judah’s hope was gone. They knew their wickedness had brought contempt. But God’s glory is greater than Judah’s failures. Isaiah’s words mattered because he proclaims that it is God who will bring them out from their darkness and into the light. It is God who will turn their failure into a magnification of His glory. It is God who will turn their oppression into freedom, and their fear into hope. It is God who will bring a child to be born, a son that will be given, to forever seal His people.
“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 9:7
Isaiah 9:7
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